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
