Gendering Placement in Displacement: Transnational Im/mobility and the Refugee Camp in Emer Martin’s Baby Zero

Abstract

This article concentrates on the analysis of the space of the refugee camp in Emer Martin’s third novel Baby Zero (2007), critically appraising this space as a fundamental site of transnational im/mobility simultaneously “homing” those who have been violently expulsed from their home, as well as retaining them as a measure of containment of migratory flows. As such, the camp will be posed here as a relevant example of the necropolitics (Mbembe) that extremely precarise the lives of displaced populations thrusting them into bare lives (Agamben), while concurrently pushing forward a much needed insight into its gendered inflections. This examination will evidence not only that “placement in displacement matters” (Hyndman 25), but also that placement in displacement is profoundly gendered and brings with it distinct forms of violence that feed on the extreme social vulnerability of women and girls in conflict zones and also in refugee settlements.

Keywords

• transnational im/mobility
• refugee camp
• gender
• displacement
• emer martin.