By Zoë Jordan
Refugee hosting at the household level – the sharing of accommodation between people who, in non-displacement contexts, would not normally share a home – is a vital yet often overlooked facet of displacement. Described as “the silent NGO” due to the scale of support it provides to refugee populations, it nonetheless has remained largely overlooked in research, policy, and humanitarian response. This is particularly the case for young single refugee men. My doctoral research considered the role of hosting for young Sudanese refugee men living in Amman. In this blog, I discuss how hosting interacts with their identity as young men. [1]
Skatepark. Credits: Zoë Jordan
In Amman, Jordan, accommodation sharing between young Sudanese men is prominent. The largest proportion of Sudanese refugees in Jordan are young men, fleeing conflict and conscription into armed groups, though the number of women and children appears to be growing. As of late 2018, 31% of the Sudanese refugee population were young men between the ages of 12 and 35 (compared to 14% of the population being women in this age group, and 23% being men between 36 and 59).[2] Refugees have restricted access to formal employment and risk detention and deportation if caught working yet UNHCR and NGO funding is inadequate in the face of the scale of need. As young non-disabled men, they are seen as capable of meeting their own needs and, as a result, receive little humanitarian support. The immediate impact of hosting arrangements is therefore on securing accommodation and basic needs. However, the young men also identify an important protective aspect of hosting, namely as support in case of physical attack, keeping an eye on one another, and for sharing information. Eight of the nine men involved in this stage of my research had lived in Amman for more than five years and, despite anticipating and working towards future resettlement, they felt largely pessimistic about the possibility of being selected. In such a context, hosting also provided the men with a community, a limited but present sense of home, and support in endeavours – such as continued education - to build networks and skills that would serve both in displacement and in the hoped-for future country of resettlement. In the words of Ali", “Sometimes I feel good, I’m with my friends, and I'm still alive and things are going well, I’m waiting. And sometimes, it turns around and I feel bad and like I'm away and restricted by rules, regulations, government, and stuff.” Living in host relationships is one response to these bureaucratic and social constraints.
The men I worked with gave multiple explanations for why they lived together.[3] Unsurprisingly, the most prominent among these was the common understanding of the difficulties of living in displacement and the economic and protection needs of the men. For the men, these hardships took on a specific form in light of the widespread discrimination they face as black, Sudanese, refugee men. They highlighted the common understandings that this engendered as a principal reason to live with other Sudanese men. In some cases, this was expressed in terms of their sense of community obligation to assist each other. In more in-depth conversations, it often became apparent that there was a preference for people with the same tribal background or place of origin, based on the idea that people with a shared background would have a shared understanding of how to act in ways that were acceptable to each other. Beyond this, there was also a connection between hosting and personal identity, particularly when men chose to seek out accommodation with friends who had something in common – whether an interest in studying, playing football, or attending social or cultural activities together.
The men’s gender, age, and lack of child-caring responsibilities, which limited demands for care that might otherwise have been placed on them, enabled their participation in shared group hosting arrangements was enabled by their. Despite this, the image of men as ‘care-free’ is inaccurate. When relations arrived in Jordan, the men often were obliged to support them and to incorporate them into their hosting arrangements. In some cases, the arrival of ‘real’ brothers supplanted caring arrangements with ‘fictive’ brothers. The capacity and willingness to engage in hosting relationships – most commonly described by the men as an open-ended reciprocal relationship, in which they had previously or would later help others – has become part of what it means to be a ‘good’ young man in Jordan.
“It’s not a problem to live with the family, but you don’t feel free like you do when you live with the guys…If you live with guys, you can talk with guys and you can share any problem you have, something like that. But if you live with a family, you can’t do that.”
Further, sharing accommodation has become part of “being one of the guys.” Other participants had shared that young men were often required to move out of a family home and into shared accommodation due to concerns about unrelated men and women sharing a home. However, Adam felt that this was overstated and that living with other men was a rite of passage, a way to ‘be one of the guys’. In his words, “It’s not a problem to live with the family, but you don’t feel free like you do when you live with the guys…If you live with guys, you can talk with guys and you can share any problem you have, something like that. But if you live with a family, you can’t do that.” To him, moving in with other young men represented freedom, consolidating membership in the group of young men, and taking charge of his own behaviour.
Hosting provides an essential support for young Sudanese men in Amman to meet their basic needs. It also has become an important component shaping what it means to be a young Sudanese refugee man in Amman. The interdependencies of hosting provide an avenue for young men to demonstrate their belonging with others, but also to the city of Amman, allowing them to maintain their presence and inhabit the city.
About the author
Zoë Jordan is a Postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Development and Emergency Practice (CENDEP), Oxford Brookes University, UK. She researches forced migration and humanitarianism, with a focus on how displaced populations respond to displacement in protracted and urban contexts. Her PhD (2020) addressed the act of refugee hosting among urban refugee populations in Amman, Jordan, primarily working with Sudanese refugees. You can find more information on her website or follow her on Twitter.
[1] While recognising the importance of intersectionality in understanding their experiences, here I forefront their youth. Due to my position as a young white British woman, there were some limitations on the extent to which I could accompany the men in their daily activities. The insights offered here therefore should be taken as indications that would merit further attention.
[2] Updated statistics are difficult to locate, and UNHCR has been requested to halt registration of Sudanese refugees (alongside other non-Syrian nationalities) in Jordan.
[3] A minority of the men mentioned an unwillingness to participate in hosting arrangements while they were in the less powerful position, for example while unable to work or following injury or ill-health. They were not concerned about their ability to ‘repay’ the assistance received, but did not wish to be seen as dependent, and did not want to be spoken about as someone who took from others.