Protection Amid Chaos

Protection Amid Chaos follows Palestinians living in refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan as they develop binding claims on assets and resources in challenging spaces. Nadya Hajj shows how they adapt flexible though legitimate property rights claims based on legal knowledge retained from their homeland to the restrictions of refugee life.

Nadya Hajj is an assistant professor of political science at Wellesley College.

Jeannie Sowers, The University of New Hampshire:
With unprecedented numbers of displaced people across the Middle East, this book provides a timely and powerful analysis of how refugee communities seek to establish and enforce property rights in conflict and transitional settings. Drawing on her extensive research in Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon, the author combines rich empirical documentation with original theoretical insights. Essential reading for anyone interested in understanding how refugee communities adapt to insecure environments.

Amaney A. Jamal, Princeton University:
Hajj has written an outstanding book on the politics of Palestinian property rights in the refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon. With careful precision, Hajj documents the circumstances that resulted in the degree of Palestinian property rights formalization across the various camps. The book masterfully documents the debates and strategic considerations confronting dislocated and dispossessed Palestinians as they began to build local communities in their new settings.

Melani Cammett, Harvard University:
Nadya Hajj asks an important question – namely, why and how do property rights get institutionalized in "transitional" contexts? With so many places in the world characterized by unpredictability and uncertainty, this question resonates far beyond the Palestinian refugee camps of Lebanon and Jordan. Based on a treasure trove of data from in-depth interviews and original documents, among other sources, Hajj traces the evolution of property rights in the camps over time, showing how they evolved from informal understandings of ownership to formal legal claims as Palestinians sought greater predictability in their lives. These strategies, however, had ambiguous effects: On the one hand, the formalization of property rights afforded refugees a measure of protection. On the other, they exposed them to greater control by external actors such as the Jordanian state, the Lebanese military, and the Palestinian Fatah. Hajj's impressive work sheds light on a critical and enduring question of great consequence for macro-level development outcomes and for micro-level concerns of people living in uncertain conditions.