What opportunities do people in the camps have to leave, to work, to create a future for themselves? How much does humanity lose when they are, seemingly, excluded from participating in the “ongoing event of being”?
I also wonder what happens when these places start to become “home”?Are subjects here socialized into despair and swayed more easily to support terrorism or are they motivated by their experience to become contributors to a better world for all humanity? How does Jesus show up here?
This is the first in a series of posts about images of refugee camps. For three earlier posts about images of refugees, click here, here, and here.
You’ve already seen this photo, or one like it. It’s Zaatari refugee camp in northern Jordan, home to a large (though fluctuating) population of Syrian refugees—about 80,000 at the time of writing, according to the UNHCR data portal’s page on the camp, though it’s been higher. At the moment, Zaatari is probably the most famous refugee camp in the world, though there are many that are older, or bigger, or both. Politicians, diplomats, celebrities, and tourists visit it, and so do many, many journalists. That’s one of the reasons why I say that you’ve already seen this photo, or one like it: if you pay even the slightest bit of attention to the news media, your eyes have…
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