Refugee Camps as "Non-Place"

Refugee Economies and Local Community

Abstract

This study analyzes the Myanmar refugee camp in Thailand as a "non-place." The concept of non-place encompasses temporality, anonymity, and the recombination of multiple locales; accordingly, this article demonstrates how economies circulating through the camp and its adjacent village continually reshape spatial and social boundaries. Under recent aid reforms, rations have been replaced with electronic money, ostensibly enhancing self-reliance; however, refugees utilize long-standing survival tactics to bridge inevitable shortfalls. Beyond small businesses, they upload YouTube videos and send goods to third countries, thus generating transnational circuits that extend to and from resettlement destinations. The neighboring Thai village mediates these flows, consequently tightening interdependence and gradually integrating the camp into local society while simultaneously "camp-ifying" the village. The fluid, hybrid landscape produced by these flows of people, commodities, and information undermines the fixed camp/village dichotomy. Therefore, the refugee camp is reconceived not as a bounded humanitarian site but rather as an evolving non-place generated by refugee economies.