Placemaking and mental health in refugee camps: An ethnography of asylum seekers' lived experiences in the UK

"Camps are among the most widely used institutional responses to global displacement.

Such camps are defined as "temporary facilities built to provide immediate protection and assistance to people forced to flee" (UNHCR, 2022).

Though nominally designed to provide protection, camps have been criticised for confining asylum seekers to forced waiting in a system of "carceral humanitarianism" (Oliver, 2017).

In the UK, policies such as the Nationality and Borders Act (2022) and Illegal Migration Act (2023) have criminalised asylum seekers arriving in the UK by 'irregular' routes, rendering their claims 'inadmissible' and threatening them with removal.

Many of those awaiting their asylum claims to be processed are being indefinitely held in 'quasi-detention' camps, such as the former military base Wethersfield Airfield and the Bibby Stockholm barge, with unsafe housing conditions and inadequate healthcare.

Academic literature has shown that the poor living conditions of camps severely harms asylum seekers' mental health, increasing depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and suicide attempts (Jones et al., 2022, Davidson, 2023).

While the negative impact of camps on mental health has been well studied, much less is known about how asylum seekers can make a place for themselves while living and waiting in camps, and how these placemaking practices influence their mental health and wellbeing.

This study understands 'place' as a site of negotiation and contestation between people and institutions; and 'placemaking' as a set of relational practices through which individuals are not only shaped by environments, but are able to actively interpret and transform the places they occupy (Eckenwiler, 2016).

The importance of placemaking is increasingly gaining traction in health and social sciences as a key dimension affecting wellbeing and contributing to mental health inequalities (Fitzpatrick and LaGory, 2013, Ermansons et al., 2023).

Foregrounding asylum seekers' lived experiences, this study will provide nuanced insights into the role and importance of placemaking on asylum seekers' mental health in the context of displacement and encampment.

The findings of this study will inform contextualised recommendations for policy and practices to improve asylum seekers' mental health. The specific research questions are: How do asylum seekers living in camps make a place for themselves? How do asylum seekers perceive that the camp living conditions affect their everyday lives?

How do asylum seekers perceive that the camp living conditions affect their mental health and wellbeing?

What spaces, relationships, and services do asylum seekers see as important for influencing their mental health and wellbeing in camps?

The study will be carried out by the PhD student in partnership with the Helen Bamber Foundation (HBF), a UK human rights charity who has extensive experience of providing holistic care for asylum seekers and conducting policy-relevant research on asylum seekers' mental health. HBF will play a crucial role throughout the project, assisting during fieldwork, data analysis, and dissemination.

The study will take an in-depth ethnographic exploration of a single camp, provisionally identified as the Wethersfield Airfield - one of the main sites designed for the reception of newly arrived asylum seekers in the UK.

The study will adopt an ethnographic approach combining participant observation with narrative interviews and creative methods with asylum seekers and key stakeholders.

During the first phase (two months), the student will be involved in the daily routines of community organisations (e.g., Care4Calais; the Humans for Rights Network) providing basic assistance to camp residents.

HBF has strong collaborative links with these organisations who will act as gatekeepers and intermediaries aiding the introduction to the field site and to identify research participants. This first phase is key for gathering