Urban refugees now account for over half the total number of refugees worldwide. Yet to date, far more research has been done on refugees living in camps and settlements set up expressly for them. This book provides crucial insights into the worldwide phenomenon of refugee flows into urban settings, repercussions for those seeking protection, and the agencies and organizations tasked to assist them. It provides a comparative exploration of refugees and asylum seekers in nine urban areas in Africa, Asia and Europe to examine issues such as status recognition, international and national actors, housing, education and integration. The book explores the relationship between refugee policies of international organisations and national governments and on the ground realities and demonstrates both the diverse of circumstances in which refugees live, and their struggle for recognition, protection and livelihoods.

Urban refugees now account for over half the total number of refugees worldwide. Yet to date, far more research has been done on refugees living in camps and settlements set up expressly for them. This book provides crucial insights into the worldwide phenomenon of refugee flows into urban settings, repercussions for those seeking protection, and the agencies and organizations tasked to assist them. It provides a comparative exploration of refugees and asylum seekers in nine urban areas in Africa, Asia and Europe to examine issues such as status recognition, international and national actors, housing, education and integration. The book explores the relationship between refugee policies of international organisations and national governments and on the ground realities and demonstrates both the diverse of circumstances in which refugees live, and their struggle for recognition, protection and livelihoods.

This book sheds light on Africa’s urban refugee spaces and is an expose and critical analysis of state–refugee relations in Nairobi, Kenya. The author employs Henry Lefebvre’s work on “right to the city” to explore and qualify whether the literature on urban citizenship can speak to Nairobi’s context.

Spurred by wars and a drive to urbanize, Africans are crossing borders and overwhelming cities in unprecedented numbers. At the center of this development are young refugee men who migrate to urban areas. This volume, the first full-length study of urban refugees in hiding, tells the story of Burundi refugee youth who escaped from remote camps in central Tanzania to work in one of Africa's fastest-growing cities, Dar es Salaam. This steamy, rundown capital would seem uninviting to many, particularly for second generation survivors of genocide whose lives are ridden with fear. But these young men nonetheless join migrants in "Bongoland" (meaning "Brainland") where, as the nickname suggests, only the shrewdest and most cunning can survive. Mixing lyrics from church hymns and street vernacular, descriptions of city living in cartoons and popular novels and original photographs, this book creates an ethnographic portrait of urban refugee life, where survival strategies spring from street smarts and pastors' warnings of urban sin, and mastery of popular youth culture is highly valued. Pentecostalism and a secret rift within the seemingly impenetrable Hutu ethnic group are part of the rich texture of this contemporary African story. Written in accessible prose, this book offers an intimate picture of how Africa is changing and how refugee youth are helping to drive that change.

Refugee and Forced Migration Studies has grown from being a concern of a relatively small number of scholars and policy researchers in the 1980s to a global field of interest with thousands of students worldwide studying displacement either from traditional disciplinary perspectives or as a core component of newer programmes across the Humanities and Social and Political Sciences. Today the field encompasses both rigorous academic research which may or may not ultimately inform policy and practice, as well as action-research focused on advocating in favour of refugees' needs and rights. This authoritative Handbook critically evaluates the birth and development of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, and analyses the key contemporary and future challenges faced by academics and practitioners working with and for forcibly displaced populations around the world. The 52 state-of-the-art chapters, written by leading academics, practitioners, and policymakers working in universities, research centres, think tanks, NGOs and international organizations, provide a comprehensive and cutting-edge overview of the key intellectual, political, social and institutional challenges arising from mass displacement in the world today. The chapters vividly illustrate the vibrant and engaging debates that characterize this rapidly expanding field of research and practice.

Refugees and displaced people are increasingly moving to cities around the world, seeking out the social, economic, and political opportunity that urban areas provide. Against this backdrop digital technologies are fundamentally changing how refugees and displaced people engage with urban landscapes and economies where they settle. Urban Refugees and Digital Technology draws on contemporary data gathered from refugee communities in Bogotá, Nairobi, and Kuala Lumpur to build a new theoretical understanding of how technological change influences the ways urban refugees contribute to the social, economic, and political networks in their cities of arrival. This data is presented against the broader history of technological change in urban areas since the start of industrialization, showing how displaced people across time have used technologized urban spaces to shape the societies where they settle. The case studies and history demonstrate how refugees’ interactions with environments that are often hostile to their presence spur novel adaptations to idiosyncratic features of a city’s technological landscape. A wide-ranging study across histories and geographies of urban displacement, Urban Refugees and Digital Technology introduces readers to the myriad ways technological change creates spaces for urban refugees to build rich political, social, and economic lives in cities.

This study analyzes coordination of international and national entities managing the Syrian refugee response in urban areas in Jordan and Lebanon and provides recommendations on improving coordination strategies and practices. It presents a new framework for planning, evaluating, and managing refugee crises in urban settings, both in the Syrian refugee crisis as well as other such situations going forward.