Uchodźstwo jako sytuacja wymuszonego kontaktu kulturowego: przypadek obozu dla uchodźców palestyńskich na Zachodnim Brzegu Jordanu
The Situation of Refugees as the Ones Being Forced into Cultural Contact: The Case of Palestinian Refugee Camp in the West Bank

Summary/Abstract: Fleeing the dangers of war, refugees leave behind their social and physical worlds of home. While in exile, they face economic hardship, insecurity and estrangement, trying to adapt themselves to a new, often very different, reality. In the case of those staying in refugee camps, the situation of forced cross-cultural contact can be analyzed on two levels, in regard to: (1) interactions between refugees and members of the host population, understood both locally and nationally; (2) relations between refugees themselves within the emergent camp community, most often composed of people coming from different socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. The article describes the such-defined situation of cross-cultural contact as lived by the inhabitants of Al-Am‛ari, a Palestinian refugee camp established in 1949 in the vicinity of Ramallah, West Bank. The unique situation of the researched community, pertaining to both the length of their exile and the fact of being “refugees in their own land”, allows to address matters that are rarely reflected upon in the literature on refugees, i.e. the cosmopolitan aspect of the refugee condition and the formation of a hybrid camp identity.

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