Why Governments Prefer Spatially Segregated Settlement Sites for Urban Refugees

The urbanization of Africa has been recent, rapid and notably disimllar from the pattern of urbanization that occured previously in Europe. Significantly, the urbanization of Africa has occured in the absence of structural transformation. Within this reality, refugees are viewed by African host governments as exacerbating the problems of urbanization and are most often located in government-designated and spatially segregated sites - refugee camps or settlements. Often in defiance of such policies, most refugees with urban backgrounds tend to congregate in urban centres. The case study of Sudan illustrates that even where the stay of certain refugees in urban areas may be formally regularised by governments there are nonetheless identifiable common patterns and problems arising out of and causing the spatial segregation of refugees away from urban centres. It is argued that the underlying reality of urbanization in Africa plus the protracted problems for governments created by urbanisation generally and cross-border ethnic solidarity in the case of many refugee movements in Africa, shape current hostile refugee policies towards urban refugees.L'urbanisation de l'Afrique est de date récente. Elle s’est faite de façon rapide et a suivi un parcours particulièrement différent de celui emprunté par l’urbanisation précédente de l’Europe. De manière significative, l'urbanisation de l'Afrique s'est produite en l'absence d’une transformation structurelle. Avec cette réalité comme toile de fond, les réfugiés sont perçus par les gouvernements hôtes des pays d’Afrique comme aggravant les problèmes d'urbanisation, et ils sont le plus souvent installés dans des lieux spécialement désignés par les gouvernements et spatialement séparés – notamment des camps de réfugiés ou des zones d’installations. Souvent en faisant fi de telles politiques, la plupart des réfugiés issus des milieux urbains tendent à se rassembler dans les centres urbains. L'étude de cas du Soudan démontre que même là où des gouvernements arrivent à sanctionner le séjour de certains réfugiés en milieux urbains, on peut néanmoins identifier des tendances communes et des problèmes qui résultent de, et provoquent, la ségrégation spatiale des réfugiés loin des centres urbains. L’article soutient que la réalité sous-jacente de l'urbanisation en Afrique, ajoutée aux problèmes à n’en pas finir confrontant les gouvernements et engendrés, d’une part par l’urbanisation en général, et de l’autre par la solidarité ethnique transfrontalière dans le cas de beaucoup de mouvements de réfugiés en Afrique, tout cela pris ensemble, façonne les politiques actuelles relatives aux réfugiés qui sont hostiles aux réfugiés urbains

Displaced Communities and the Reconstruction of Livelihoods in Eritrea

Sub-Saharan Africa, Eritrea, Conflict, Economic reform

Urban Refugees: Introduction

Interest in refugees who live in urban settings, especially those of the global south, has developed fairly recently, although refugees themselves have always been part of urban society. This paper seeks to demonstrate that urbanization is an irreversible process in the African context, and that the movement of refugees to urban areas can only make sense in this context. It discusses state policies of segregation, securitization, and criminalization of urban refugees as inextricably linked to the objectives of states to create and perpetuate differences between insiders and outsiders—of which citizenship is a key determinant. It concludes that the issue of urban refugees has received well-deserved attention in recent years as an analytical category as well as a policy concern. The tendency of governments to deny the existence of refugees has been increasingly challenged by urban refugees themselves, who have demanded that their claim to protection be noticed

Picking up the pieces: social capital and entrepreneurship for livelihood recovery among displaced populations in Northeast Nigeria

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version.In the past few decades, there has been a significant increase in the rate of forced displacement, often precipitated by persecution, civil wars, terrorism, transborder conflicts, as well as natural disasters. The United Nations High Commission for Refugee (UNHCR) reports that there are 25.4 million refugees and 68.5 million forcibly displaced people, and only a small fraction are able to return to their former homes (UNHCR 2019). Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria has precipitated humanitarian tragedy on a scale comparable to the Nigerian civil war (1967-1970) and arguably the worst of any manmade or natural disaster in Nigeria's history. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre estimates that up to 3.3 million people have been internally displaced due to terrorist violence perpetrated by the Boko Haram (International Displacement Monitoring Centre 2015). The number of people displaced by the conflict is the largest in Africa and the third largest in the world. Using quantitative and qualitative data obtained from questionnaires and interviews conducted with respondents in Northeast Nigeria, the study examines the extent to which the displaced populations are drawing on social capital and human capital to withstand, cope with and recover from the adverse experiences and consequences of the insurgency and counterinsurgency. Given that most forced displacements occur in developing countries like Nigeria, government resources are increasingly stretched to deal with the crisis, and there are calls for fundamental rethink of the traditional approach to interventions in disaster situations. In particular, scholars and practitioners are highlighting the need to shift from the current emphasis on technological solutions and financial input, to an approach that combines both technological solutions and social solutions, bringing people and communities to the forefront of interventions (Aldrich & Meyer 2014; Wind & Komproe 2012; Johnson et al. 2013). Forced migration is a social process in which human agency and social networks play a major part. These networks can be instrumental in the construction and (re)-construction of livelihood systems and communities shattered by insurgencies and protracted conflicts

V. Repatriation and Development Assistance

The authors argue that refugees should be seen as agents of a process of development to begin during temporary protection and extend well into the process of return and reintegration. The process of development advocated is intended to engage local resources and energies in the refugee, host and stayee communities, in a "bottom-up" fashion. It involves a unified international role in allocating resources, enlivening and promoting development at the local level, and ensuring accountability. The mechanisms proposed require "judicious, not lavish" external resources, and establish a continuum between emergency relief operations and long-term development assistance. This is a substantially abbreviated version of the authors' original work. Please refer to the notice at the end of this section if you are interested in obtaining a full copy of the paper, which is expected to be published in mid-1996