Ilana Feldman (Professor of Anthropology, History, and International Affairs, George Washington University, Washington, USA)

Humanitarian assistance regimes, displacement experiences, and life in refugee camps create disruptions in temporality. The repetitive aspects of humanitarian assistance, the monotony of life in a refugee camp, and the ways that displacement cuts people off from the experiences of their past and denies them opportunities to imagine their futures, all seem to reduce life to an unending present. But, even as disruptions in time are real, humanitarian temporalities are quite variegated. Life in humanitarianism is not a singular present, but layers of multiple, often quite different presents. Considering the case of Palestinian refugees, who have been displaced for more than seventy years, this talk explores these multiple humanitarian presents. Particularly, it takes up how people have lived in, and sometimes against, humanitarian time. It investigates how refugees make claims, take action, and get-by over years and decades of displacement.