Structures or Protection?: Rethinking Refugee Shelter

Questioning what shelter is and how we can define it, this volume brings together essays on different forms of refugee shelter, with a view to widening public understanding about the lives of forced migrants and developing theoretical understanding of this oft-neglected facet of the refugee experience. Drawing on a range of disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, law, architecture, and history, each of the chapters describes a particular shelter and uses this to open up theoretical reflections on the relationship between architecture, place, politics, design and displacement.

Tom Scott-Smith is Associate Professor of Refugee Studies and Forced Migration at the University of Oxford. His book On an Empty Stomach: Two Hundred Years of Hunger Relief is published by Cornell University Press.

Mark E. Breeze is a Harvard-trained architect and the Founding Chair of the University of Cambridge Sustainable Shelter Group. He currently teaches architectural design, history and theory at the Architectural Association, London.