INSIGHTS BRIEFING: Gendered youth responses to house demolitions
INSIGHTS BRIEFING: Legal challenges of responding to house demolitions
Data from ISSRAR has revealed new insights into young people’s experiences of house demolitions, the diverse ways in which different young people respond to those experiences and how key stakeholders engage with and support young people. We are exploring these findings through five interlinked areas:
Theme 1: Impacts on young people’s health and well-being
Theme 2: Anticipation, waiting and deferred futures
Theme 3: Legal geographies and youth education
Theme 4: Youth responses and humanitarian action
Theme 5: Intimate and hidden responses
Project findings and analysis are being explored in more depth through a series of academic papers, insights briefings and other publications. You can read our exhibition booklet here.
You can read an overview of each of these themes below.
Theme 1: Impacts on young people’s health and well-being
Our data highlights the multiple ways house demolitions impact youth health and well-being. House demolitions cause significant trauma for young people and their communities, but this is experienced differently by different young people. Impacts are highly gendered, and there is a geography to their impacts, with variations between rural and urban areas. Our data shows that it is important to look beyond a medical model of understanding impacts on health and well-being. In particular, it is important to link understandings of the impacts of demolitions to experiences, expressions and ideas of identity and heritage.
Theme 2: Anticipation, waiting and deferred futures
An important theme on the project has been the ways that prospective futures bear on the lives of people living in demolition-threatened areas. In this area of focus, the very idea that one’s house might be demolished, or even will be demolished pushes on the ways that lives are lived in the present. This anticipation creates further trauma and long term impacts on marriage, reproduction, education, employability and skills. For instance, it is not uncommon for people to decide not to travel for studies in a different city – “what if I return to no home?” – or, and significantly, for some to question important life decisions: “you can’t have a family in this situation”. Decisions are thus made in the context of threat – whether or not material demolition takes place – that are tied to levels of education, mobility and even demography. These decisions have significant implications for future demographics in Palestine. Our research has highlighted the importance of looking across different timeframes, recent loss and anticipated futures and asks how this could be better supported.
Theme 3: Legal geographies and youth education
ISSRAR has identified a complex legal geography that plays a key role in shaping and constraining young people’s responses to house demolitions. Multiple legal frameworks using different concepts and languages govern house demolitions across different geographical settings in the West Bank. Our research has identified not only this complexity, but the struggles young people face in making sense of them in order to challenge demolition orders. This in turn has highlighted issues of learning and education, both in terms of education around legal systems for young Palestinians, as well as lifelong learning in terms of the ways stakeholders work with young people to build their capacities and knowledge.
Theme 4: Youth responses and humanitarian action
Our data reveals a complex geography to civil society and youth activism in relation to house demolitions. We have identified a strong contrast between humanitarian response from civil society actors and young people’s own actions for accountability and solidarity. Often young people do not view the support they receive from civil society and other organisations as adequate. Most support is offered under a banner of humanitarian response, and this is often limited to immediate help. This means that young people’s needs for longer term housing and livelihoods can be neglected. Our data suggests there is limited understanding of young people’s own responses to house demolitions. Some young people respond to the limited support through documenting house demolitions and their impacts, while others have shown increasing independent use of social media. In both cases, young people are often concerned to mobilise international support rather than changing local response. This then leaves a gap in relation to strategies for sustainable development.
Theme 5: Intimate and hidden responses
Our use of the youth engagement kit has enabled ISSRAR to identify hitherto hidden forms of youth response to house demolitions. While there is recognition of public forms of activism and resistance, our research has identified more quiet forms of response and how these are shaped by different vulnerabilities. This has included exploring the spaces within communities that create a sense of safety, the things that people do as a demolition gets underway, who young people connect with as well as how the decisions they make about their futures emerge through and against the threat of house demolitions. These different kinds of response present a significant challenge to established thinking about young people experiencing house demolitions in Palestine, and how they can be supported to build sustainable development for themselves and their communities.
Young Palestinians' Responses to House Demolitions 