Urban Refugees
Urban Refugees

Author: Koichi Koizumi

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-04-10

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 1317557417

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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.

The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies
The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies

Author: Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2014-06-12

Total Pages: 785

ISBN-13: 0191645877

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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.

Fear in Bongoland
Fear in Bongoland

Author: Marc Sommers

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2001-10-01

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 1782384707

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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 Spaces and Urban Citizenship in Nairobi
Refugee Spaces and Urban Citizenship in Nairobi

Author: Derese G. Kassa

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781498570992

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Derese G. Kassa provides an in-depth ethnographic account and analysis of state-refugee relations in Nairobi, Kenya, with a focus on the lived experience of Ethiopian refugees. This book is a timely and remarkable addition to comparative urban studies, African studies, and refugee studies.

Urban Refugees and Digital Technology
Urban Refugees and Digital Technology

Author: Charles Martin-Shields

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 2024-04-16

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0228020549

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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.

Refugee Rights
Refugee Rights

Author: David Hollenbach, SJ

Publisher: Georgetown University Press

Published: 2008-04-30

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 1589014057

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Of the over 33 million refugees and internally displaced people in the world today, a disproportionate percentage are found in Africa. Most have been driven from their homes by armed strife, displacing people into settings that fail to meet standards for even basic human dignity. Protection of the human rights of these people is highly uncertain and unpredictable. Many refugee service agencies agree advocacy on behalf of the displaced is a key aspect of their task. But those working in the field are so pressed by urgent crises that they can rarely analyze the requirements of advocacy systematically. Yet advocacy must go beyond international law to human rights as an ethical standard to prevent displaced people from falling through the cracks of our conflicted world. Refugee Rights: Ethics, Advocacy, and Africa draws upon David Hollenbach, SJ's work as founder and director of the Center for Human Rights and International Justice at Boston College to provide an analytical framework for vigorous advocacy on behalf of refugees and internally displaced people. Representing both religious and secular perspectives, the contributors are scholars, practitioners, and refugee advocates—all of whom have spent time "on the ground" in Africa. The book begins with the poignant narrative of Abebe Feyissa, an Ethiopian refugee who has spent over fifteen years in a refugee camp from hell. Other chapters identify the social and political conditions integral to the plight of refugees and displaced persons. Topics discussed include the fundamental right to freedom of movement, gender roles and the rights of women, the effects of war, and the importance of reconstruction and reintegration following armed conflict. The book concludes with suggestions of how humanitarian groups and international organizations can help mitigate the problem of forced displacement and enforce the belief that all displaced people have the right to be treated as their human dignity demands. Refugee Rights offers an important analytical resource for advocates and students of human rights. It will be of particular value to practitioners working in the field.

Crossing
Crossing

Author: Rebecca Hamlin

Publisher:

Published: 2021-05-11

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 9781503610606

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The first in-depth exploration of the persistence and pervasiveness of a dangerous legal fiction about people who cross borders: the binary distinction between migrant and refugee. Today, the concept of "the refugee" as distinct from other migrants looms large. Immigration laws have developed to reinforce a conceptual dichotomy between those viewed as voluntary, often economically motivated, migrants who can be legitimately excluded by potential host states, and those viewed as forced, often politically motivated, refugees who should be let in. In Crossing, Rebecca Hamlin argues against advocacy positions that cling to this distinction. Everything we know about people who decide to move suggests that border crossing is far more complicated than any binary, or even a continuum, can encompass. The decision to leave home is almost always multi-causal and often involves many stops and hazards along the way--a reality not captured by a system that categorizes a majority of border-crossers as undeserving, and the rare few as vulnerable and needy. Drawing on cases of various "border crises" across Europe, North America, South America, and the Middle East, Hamlin outlines major inconsistencies and faulty assumptions upon which the binary relies, and explains its endurance and appeal by tracing its origins to the birth of the modern state and the rise of colonial empire. The migrant/refugee binary is not just an innocuous shorthand, indeed its power stems from the way in which is it painted as objective, neutral, and apolitical. In truth, the binary is a dangerous legal fiction, politically constructed with the ultimate goal of making harsh border control measures more ethically palatable to the public. This book is a challenge to all those invested in the rights and study of migrants, to interrogate their own assumptions and move towards more equitable advocacy for all border crossers.

The Economic Life of Refugees
The Economic Life of Refugees

Author: Karen Jacobsen

Publisher: Kumarian Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 145

ISBN-13: 1565492048

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What happens to refugees, the victims of forced migration, once the first rush of media attention and aid has passed and they must rebuild their lives essentially on their own? Karen Jacobsen explores the economic survival strategies of refugees, and the obstacles that they face, as they live in a protracted state of displacement. She also proposes alternative approaches for humanitarian agencies seeking to offer meaningful support.

Refugee Spaces and Urban Citizenship in Nairobi
Refugee Spaces and Urban Citizenship in Nairobi

Author: Derese G. Kassa

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2018-12-12

Total Pages: 103

ISBN-13: 149857100X

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Kenya has been the third major outlet through which hundreds of thousands of refugees from Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and South Sudan flee from political persecution and for better livelihoods. This book is a commentary of Nairobi as an urban refugee space. It provides an in-depth ethnographic account and analysis of state-refugee relations in Nairobi focusing mainly on the lived experience of Ethiopian refugees. In addition, the author employs Henry Lefebvre’s work on “right to the city” to explore and qualify whether the literature in urban citizenship can speak to the Kenyan experience. This book is a timely and remarkable addition into the cannon of scholarship in comparative urban studies, African studies, and refugee studies.

The Urban Refugee
The Urban Refugee

Author: Bülent Batuman

Publisher: Intellect Books

Published: 2023-11-24

Total Pages: 435

ISBN-13: 1789389011

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The presence of the refugee in the contemporary metropolis is marked by precarity, a quality that has become a characteristic feature of the neoliberal urban milieu. Bringing together essays from diverse disciplines, from architectural history to cultural anthropology and urban planning, this collection sheds light on both the specificities of the contemporary urban condition that affects the refugees and the multi-dimensional impact that the refugees have on the city. The authors propose investigating this connection through three interlinked themes: identity (informality, imagination and belonging); place (transnational homemaking practices); and site (the navigation of urban space). In recent years, there has been a significant growth in scholarship on forced migration, particularly on the relationship between displacement and the built environment. Scholars have focused on spatial practices and forms that arise under conditions of displacement, with much attention given to refugee camps and the social and political aspects of temporariness. While these issues are important, the essays in this volume aim to contribute to a less explored aspect of displacement, namely the interaction between refugees and the cities they inhabit. In this respect, the volume underlines the specificity of the urban refugee as well as their spatial agency and investigates the irreversible effect they have on the contemporary urban condition. The authors argue that viewing urban refugees solely as dislocated individuals outside the camp-like spaces of containment fails to understand the agency of the urban refugee and the blurred boundaries of identity that result. The term "refugee crisis" objectifies and denies active agency to refugees, homogenizing dislocated individuals and groups. The neoliberalization of the past four decades has led to the precarization of labour and the displacement of refugees, who frequently blend into the urban environment as hidden populations. Refugees are subjected to constant surveillance and the state's attempts to control them. However, these attempts are not uncontested, and the involvement of activist interventions further politicizes the urban refugee.