Displacement as Precarious Inhabiting: Care and Repair at the Urban Margins

Abstract

We are all left with a broken world, where there is no way back to integrity. The only choice is to learn to live with the fragments, ‘staying with the trouble’ of displacement, mending holes, restoring functions, in an attempt to preserve some form of life. Confronting the crisis—as a possible counter-ontology that can be traced back to Deleuze’s proposal of a continuous commitment to the present, the chapter will reflect from practices that preserve human value and accomplish life in conditions of displacement. Weaving the spatial narratives of three different territories—Iquitos in Peru, Bar Elias in Lebanon, and Hlaingtharyar in Yangon we aim to disclose forms of displacement as precarious inhabiting.