The Nature of Displacement

This paper argues instead that displacement should be understood as a disruption of spatial agency. Although the term “displaced person” originated in the post–World War I context to address statelessness, it has since expanded to include refugees, climate-displaced populations, those displaced through gentrification, and, in some cases, individuals who relocate their homes. Despite this expansion, contemporary discussions tend to classify displaced persons by the causes of their displacement rather than by offering a unified account of what displacement itself consists in. What unifies these diverse cases is not the reason displacement occurs, but the way displacement destabilizes the spatial relations through which agents act, orient themselves, and inhabit places. Displacement interrupts these relations, altering how environments are navigated, how actions are made intelligible, and how places are experienced as practically meaningful. Reframing displacement in these terms shifts how the phenomenon itself is understood. Rather than treating displacement as a condition defined by loss, movement, or status, this account identifies displacement as a distinctive disruption of place-based relations. By cutting across legal, economic, environmental, and social forms of displacement without reducing displacement to any single causal mechanism, this framework offers a clearer conceptual foundation for future normative and political discussion.