Research in forced migration tends to focus either on points of origin or destination--that is, what event forced the migration and where migrants were resettled. Less well studied is the impact that the life-changing journey itself has on migrant identities and ontologies between the crisis event and resettlement. ‘The camp’, remains a notable exception, and is a conceptual framework that too often casts migrants as monolithic ‘suffering subjects’ living in conditions of ‘bare life’. To envision the entire migration route in this view is reductive and erases a wide variety of experiences. The lived experiences of migrants on the route amount to a prolonged liminal state, where migrants are de-territorialized, moved from context to context, and continually forced to adapt. Migrants are always ‘becoming something’ while never ‘settling into anything’. Migration research that focuses only on impacts on sending and receiving countries overlooks generative processes in social-spatial zones along the route. Here, addresses this gap by taking an anthropological and ethnographic look at the case study of a Refugee English as a Second Language Class in the migration hub of Amman, Jordan as a site of agentive personal change rather than bare life. This study explores the process of changing identities and ontologies through feelings of communitas as a result of shared experiences.

*This project is in the process of being published. A copy is available upon request.