“We were building a camp, they were building a city.”

-UNHCR camp manager of Za’atari

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This image depicts a market street in Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan. Za’atari refugee is the second largest refugee camp in the world and is home to about 80,000 refugees. Unable to leave the camp or gain work visas in Jordan, refugees in Za’atari have established a thriving internal economy within the camp in which businesses bring in a total of over 13 million dollars a month. How do refugees and refugee camps as sites of business and innovators contradict common understandings of the role of refugees? In what ways does the comparison between camps and cities offer a different framework for thinking about refugee camps?