Urban Refugees and IDPs

Print Pub ication Date: Jun 2014 Subject: Po itica Science, Internationa Re ations, Comparative Po itics

On ine Pub ication Date: Aug 2014

DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199652433.013.0012

Urban Refugees and IDPs

Loren B. Landau

The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies

Edited by Elena Fiddian Qasmiyeh, Gil Loescher, Katy Long, and Nando Sigona

Oxford Handbooks Online

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter examines the displacement of urban refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs), arguing that what has changed in the past decade is not displacement itself but who academics, policymakers, and practitioners choose to see as displaced. It considers how urban refugees are framed in current debates and discusses issues of protection and assistance raised by displaced persons moving into/through the highly informalized environments typically associated with southern cities. After discussing the experiences of refugees and IDPs in urban areas, it analyses the concept of

‘visibilization’ in relation to displacement, the protection of urban refugees, and the implications of the nature of the increasingly informal economy for urban refugees.

Keywords: displacement, urban refugees, internally displaced persons, protection, assistance, southern cities, urban areas, visibilization, informal economy

Introduction

People displaced into urban areas due to war, persecution, or climatic crisis have claimed an increasingly prominent position in humanitarian operations and scholarship. Those writing on ‘urban refugees’, a generic label, typically explain the urbanization of displacement and humanitarian action within broader global processes resulting in the rapid growth of cities and towns. This is sensible: if more than half the world’s population is urbanized, it is unsurprising that the displaced follow suit. Given that the alternatives to urban settlement include decades in camps, administrative detention, or another

‘protracted refugee situation’ (see Bakewell, this volume), it is hardly surprising that the displaced increasingly find their ways to population centres. Although the urban displaced may not find golden paved streets, cities nonetheless offer at least faint promises of upward economic mobility and physical freedom.

In places like Kabul and Khartoum, cities surrounded by seemingly interminable conflicts, refugees and the internally displaced significantly contribute to cities’ rapid population growth (Beall and Esser 2005: 6). Even where the displaced are proportionately less, their presence can rapidly reconfigure social and economic life. Elsewhere, the displaced move almost invisibly into cities, disappearing among longer-term residents who may share class, language, religious, or other commonalities.

The numbers alone make a compelling case for increased attention. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR 2009: 3), almost half of the world’s refugees and displaced people (i.e. people of concern to the organization) are now found in urban areas. That translates to somewhat over 5 million people compared to the 3 million who live in purpose built camps and settlements (this, of course, excludes Palestinians). Of these, the vast majority are seeking profit, protection, and possibly passage elsewhere in the towns and cities of the ‘global South’. Whereas camps disproportionately attract the most vulnerable among the displaced populations, those in urban areas typically reflect a population more representative of those in sending (p. 140) communities. If anything, they reflect population segments

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that may be more robust and resilient as the truly vulnerable are either immobile or find their way to sites where they can receive more focused, direct assistance.

It is important to note that while knowledge on urban refugees has expanded dramatically over the past decade, there are still significant gaps in our knowledge. Part of this is technical and logistical—characterizing social realities in rapidly transforming urban centres is difficult without the added challenge of hunting down new arrivals who may prefer to remain invisible (Jacobsen and Furst 2012). Many of the gaps are also due to particular forms of blindness in how we understand urban displacement. Although we know, for example, that small towns and peri-urban areas are the most rapidly growing in the developing world (UNDESA 2010), most studies focus on countries’ primary cities.

Although it is unclear whether refugees’ urban presence is as novel as many suggest—people have flagged their existence for decades (see Rogge and Akol 1989; Cooper 1992; Malkki 1995)—strong normative, political, and financial motivations have recently fixed the humanitarian gaze on what the eye had previously ‘refused to see’ (Kibreab 1996).

Rather than crediting global socio-political processes with a growing attention to the displaced in urban settings, this chapter links the emergence of the ‘urban refugee’ as object of study to trends within the humanitarian and humanitarian studies field towards ‘visibilization’: to identifying and exposing the vulnerability of varied groups and defining them in terms that make them suitable objects of humanitarian action (see Polzer and Hammond 2008; Lubkemann 2010). That displaced persons who live in or pass through urban spaces—and the processes affecting them—ultimately fit so poorly in how scholars and practitioners typically understand and respond to humanitarian concerns means that many may ultimately lose interest. Given the close relationship between humanitarian action and the academic study of displacement (see Barnett, this volume), this will also undoubtedly diminish scholarly interest in displacement into urban areas.

A retreat from research on urban displacement will have important, negative implications for both humanitarianism and the scholarship thereof. If nothing else, this chapter suggests there are compelling normative and intellectual attention for sustained attention to both cities and the people seeking protection within them. However, such inquiries’ potential will only be achieved through a substantial redefinition of the modes through which we ‘see’ and understand displacement and humanitarian intervention.

The remainder of this chapter proceeds through three sections offering a review of the stylized forms of knowledge that have been produced about ‘urban refugees’, a discussion of what this perspective overlooks, and a series of reflections on the practical and intellectual opportunities lost through such an approach. It concludes with tentative suggestions on how the ‘urban refugee’ may be redefined which recognize that doing so means challenging institutionalized structures within the academy and humanitarian field.

A few caveats before getting down to business. First, while critical of how urban refugees are framed in current debates, this chapter nonetheless follows current (p. 141) conventions in focusing almost exclusively on displaced persons and processes in ‘Southern’ cities. Although there are strong arguments for integrating stories of labour, social, and political integration in the global North with work elsewhere, this piece’s scope is too limited to bridge that gap. It instead emphasizes issues of protection and assistance raised by displaced persons moving into/through the highly informalized environments that often characterize southern cities. Second, this entry by no means offers a comprehensive review of the ever more expansive work relevant to a discussion of displacement to and within urban areas. More significant than missing references to specific studies or places is the exclusion of the broad, if imperfect, literature on urban poverty and mobility in the South. As such scholarship often includes stories of intra-city displacement due to housing ‘upgrading’, slum clearance, or other forms of development along with broader stories of marginalization, aid, and empowerment, it could and should contribute to our understanding of displaced people’s urban experiences (see, for example, Watson 2006 and Simone 2009). This entry ends by advertising the benefits of future cross-fertilization.

Visibilizing the ‘Urban Refugee’

Catalysed in large measure by the second Gulf War, which displaced hundreds of thousands of Iraqis through the politically sensitive Middle East, humanitarian and scholarly attention to urban refugees has grown remarkably over the past decade (see Sommers 2001; Jacobsen 2006; Bernstein and Okello 2007; Fábos and Kibreab 2007; Margesson, Sharp, and Bruno 2008; Lubkemann 2010). This attention not only bring us new stories and experiences, but also a further instance of the ‘visibilization’ imperative. This impulse to reveal hidden populations, processes, and patterns of marginalization not only informs, but to some extent still drives the study of displacement. From early inquiries into camp- based refugees, scholarship has expanded to include various categories of the displaced (especially those ‘internally

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displaced’). More recently, scholars have added studies on people being involuntarily held in place, those left behind, returnees, and other groups. However, as Polzer and Hammond (2008: 421) note, this process of visibilization must be situated within a complex set of power relations: ‘Invisibility is a relationship between those who have the power to see or to choose not to see, and on the other hand, those who lack the power to demand to be seen, or to protect themselves from the negative effects of imposed visibility.’

With this in mind there are reasons to interrogate how urban refugees moved from an academic side interest to the centre of considerable debate and attention. Until the ‘noughties’, UNCHR’s own scepticism as to the veracity of refugee claims made in urban areas and fears over the spiralling costs of providing assistance in urban space contributed to their reluctance to engage in cities (Marfleet 2007; Kagan 2007; UNHCR 2009). However, after years of trepidation, the political imperative to respond to displaced Iraqis provided the institutional and financial incentives for change.

(p. 142) In response to new forms of massive and politically sensitive displacement in the Middle East coupled with long- standing frustration with its earlier approach, the UNHCR revised its 1997 policy on urban refugees, overtly recognizing,

‘the need to address the issue of urban refugees in a more comprehensive manner’ (UNHCR 2009: 2). Towards this end, the UNHCR has publicly moved away from its institutional scepticism towards the displaced in urban space and

committed itself to maximizing, ‘the protection space available to urban refugees and the humanitarian organizations that support them’ (UNHCR 2009: 5). By its own admission, the UNHCR’s policy document is aspirational, a kind of bill of rights that it hopes will be progressively realized. Critics will note that it remains vague, offering few concrete measures of success. Indeed, beyond their geographic demarcations, the recommendations for realizing such protection closely follow the principles accepted for refugee protection in dedicated settlements: promoting legal status, ensuring basic access to food and shelter, and prohibitions on refoulement. These principles provide neither the UNHCR nor its implementing partners with the empirical or ethical basis needed for work in the ‘Southern’ cities in which they are increasingly asked to operate.

As humanitarian analysts have peered into cities, they consistently relay a Malthusian vision, portraying both cities and those living therein as borderline catastrophes threatening descent into Hobbesian states of nature should rapid and firm intervention fail to arrive (see, for example Pavenello, Elhawary, and Pantuliano 2010; Women’s Refugee Commission 2011). Within these accounts there remains a distinct tension. On one side are those who see refugees in urban areas as little different from those in camps: people needing to be indefinitely sustained by international and domestic

humanitarianism. On the other, more sophisticated analyses suggest the need to revisit what humanitarianism means in urban environments. Yet even here the literature remains distinctly refugee-centric, both in its normative ambitions and its presumptions about those it aims to assist.

The refugee-centrism alluded to above reflects a general pattern within refugee studies and humanitarianism. Underlying the effort to highlight these forms of neediness is a humanitarian imperative, driven both by efforts to permanently remedy the unfortunate conditions of those in need and, perhaps more immediately, by the imperative to legitimize humanitarian assistance. As a result, there is a consistent effort to demonstrate how refugees—due to their displacement

—have poorer access to social services, compete less effectively in the marketplace, and are regularly harassed, detained, and disadvantaged. Schoeller et al. (2012: 10) exemplify this position in their argument that: ‘urbanization uproots individuals and households from these long-standing, kinship-based communities and drops them into informal settlements with a diverse population, forming a community of strangers.’ The second generation of debates over urban refugees draws attention to the varied experiences of those who end up in urban centres and towns in ways that follow the predictable course of refugee-oriented scholarship: first focusing on women, then youth (and girls in particular), the aged, and the disabled.

(p. 143) What is notably absent from many of the accounts of vulnerability—which is undeniably real across many of the groups discussed—is a nuanced analysis of what results in vulnerability and varied forms of socio-economic

marginalization. There is a largely untested faith that the observed challenges facing people are largely due to

displacement. Consequently, the first impulse is to respond to this vulnerability with the same modalities evident in camp- based settings: direct assistance and documentation with a focus on ‘classically’ vulnerable groups, particularly women and children. In terms of modalities for assistance, here we see both continuity and adaptation without a fundamental reconsideration of what assistance may entail. While there are regular calls to engage local officials and service providers

—rather than contracting implementing partners—the primary call to action is in the form of direct assistance. In South Africa—once considered the site for model urban refugee assistance—such direct assistance has proved both financially unsustainable and politically counter-productive as it has drawn negative attention to refugees from an equally deprived

and under-serviced host population. Similarly, the kind of expensive direct assistance provided to Iraqi refugees in Jordan and elsewhere has proved problematic and is now recognized as a model that cannot be widely replicated.

Through much of the discussion there remains an unchallenged premiss that assistance for refugees should come in the form of bespoke programmes exclusively targeting people of concern. Although many suggest the need to avoid building parallel programmes, they nonetheless demand initiatives aimed explicitly and, often exclusively, at the displaced.

Indeed, humanitarian organizations fear that doing otherwise may decrease their aid effectiveness or undermine their ability to attract funding and act. The increased call from those supporting such operations—multi- and bilateral donors along with private foundations—for improved accountability, measurable output, and clearly defined beneficiaries has further encouraged the delineation of refugees from other groups while retaining an emphasis on direct service delivery.

That there is so little longitudinal data or other information demonstrating dynamics within refugee communities—

particularly the impact of interventions and policies on welfare and protection—further encourages organizations to rely on legitimized and immediately quantifiable programmes that conflate provision with protection.

Registration and legal status is perhaps the most notable assistance modality borrowed from camp-based assistance policies. Although there is evidence that national policy frameworks and refugees’ individual legal status may have limited practical impact in the informalized environments in which they live, humanitarian organizations and the literature continue to emphasize the importance of formal documentation and legal frameworks (Kagan 2007; Landau and Duponchel 2011).

In some instances such approaches undeniably open space for refugees and displaced people to pursue livelihoods and access services although there is little evidence within the literature to show that policies can affect such outcomes.

Elsewhere such efforts may play important symbolic roles, signalling to refugees that their rights are protected and that governments are committed to protecting them.

(p. 144) In the attention to documentation we see the academic visibilization imperative realized in humanitarian practice. While there may well be potentially positive or benign consequences from legalization and registration, demands that refugees self-identify and organize access to services, livelihoods, or opportunities as refugees per se (rather than as urban residents, for example) all but ensures their continued segregation. In some instances, it may create a devils’ bargain forcing individuals to choose between services accessible only to refugees and the

precariousness stemming from publicly self-identifying to hostile governments and host populations. As Kibreab (2007:

31) argues, ‘Though the economic crises facing African countries have nothing to do with the presence of refugees the latter are invariably blamed for being the causes of economic crisis and shortages of housing, transportation, water, electricity, employment, etc. Refugees are also blamed for theft, crimes, prostitution and other forms of anti-social behaviour.’ Insisting on revelation to the state, to the United Nations, to humanitarian agencies, and to potentially hostile host populations may only encourage or facilitate such scapegoating.

What the Eye Won’t See and the Hands Won’t Do

Visibilization for the purpose of intervention relies heavily on concomitant processes of categorization and verification.

The solidity of this trifecta is shaken by the sociological and political dynamics of displacement into urban areas in ways that fundamentally challenge the humanitarian imperative behind visibilization. This can be seen in three primary areas although others might also be included here. First and foremost is the inability to legally delineate who counts as a

‘person of interest’ to those humanitarians (and their donors) concentrating exclusively on the needs of the displaced.

These tendencies are only exaggerated by a general suspicion among many within the UNHCR and elsewhere that those entering urban areas are substantively indistinguishable from other newly urbanized populations and should be treated as such. Indeed, there is considerable evidence that in many instances the two are more similar than different in terms of their urban experience if not the motivations for movement. The second factor frustrating conventional humanitarian thinking is the difficulty in distinguishing those needs that are inherently linked to displacement. Indeed, there may be traumas and disadvantage associated with forced movement, but the casual links are often rooted more in faith than in evidence. Third, and perhaps most fundamental, is the profound difficulty in verifying the effects of humanitarian interventions in urban areas.

As noted, much of the research and discussions on the displaced in urban areas focuses on the content of the policies itself and the presumed consequences for refugees and other people of concern. This work offers important critiques and draws attention to protection gaps, logical contradictions, and oversights. However, the tendency (p. 145) of existing scholarship to focus almost exclusively on the displaced and policies directly framed in terms of displacement

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unduly binds and limits the effects of our work. If we are to move beyond a focus on law as principle and ask how it translates into practice (see Kälin in this volume on the internally displaced), we would gain not only a more realistic understanding of the limits of formal policy in promoting protection, but a more comprehensive understanding of (a) the mechanisms through which positive and negative policies operate in loosely formalized and highly dynamic cities and (b) of processes by which progressive policy change might be promoted. By studying the policies and laws as outcomes alone, we often overlook the processes behind their production. Moreover, the policies most likely to help or hinder the displaced are rarely about refugees. Inasmuch as we ultimately hope to shift policies, laws, and their associated practices, we need to better understand their origins and the interests they serve.

Take for example the impressive work that has been accomplished around IDPs in and out of urban areas. As Lubkemann (2010) notes, there has been a tremendous amount of valuable work conducted on internally displaced people (IDPs) largely inspired and shaped by two seminal volumes by Cohen and Deng (1998). These texts collected case studies (heavily weighted towards Africa) while laying out the sociological predicament facing both the displaced and would-be humanitarians. Few would deny that this work has facilitated the adoption of the Guiding Principles of Internal Displacement, a document that has been widely hailed as the first international framework securing the protection of IDPs. However, there is little evidence that the guiding principles have translated into greater protection. In the words of the UNHCHR’s special advisor of policy and evaluation, ‘No comprehensive study has yet been undertaken to evaluate their actual impact’ (Crisp n.d.: 16).

In terms of work on the displaced in urban areas, there is a similar disjuncture where we know little about how ‘good’ or

‘bad’ policies are actually formed, their impacts, and, perhaps most importantly, what constitutes a ‘good’ urban refugee policy. Even if dialogues on global, regional, and national refugee policy offer important opportunities for agenda setting, normative pronouncements, and symbolic action, there are good reasons to challenge the primacy of law and policy tools for achieving protection. The first comes from the observation that legal status and documentation have only limited practical protection effects in the informalized environments in which many refugees and the displaced reside. Work in South Africa, the most legalized state in sub-Saharan Africa and one that has been a pioneer in its progressive urban refugee policy, suggests that additional legislation is unlikely to be effective and may be counter-productive (Amit 2012).

As indicated, such strategies have already provided incentives for continued self-segregation. Moreover, in the absence of a population that is sympathetic to refugees, specialized and highly visible programmes intended to promote refugee welfare have helped legitimize both popular and legislative backlash.

The second and more important blinder in the field relates to what is considered ‘refugee’ policy. Inasmuch as we retain faith in our ability to predictably translate policy into protection, there are a number of critical reasons why we should reconsider what substantive policies and whose polices we should be talking about. In this regard we need to (p. 146) step beyond the boundaries of humanitarianism if for no other reason that our continued emphasis on refugee and emergency policy makes it all the easier for governments to make commitments that they are unlikely to honour. By stepping into the space of policies where citizens or ‘locals’ have direct interests and working to ensure that these interests are aligned with humanitarians’ ‘people of concern’ we can raise the odds that governments will dedicate the needed energies and resources.

Research on local government and urbanization—in the developing world and elsewhere—can provide considerable guidance into areas where we might dedicate our advocacy and scholarly activities. This work can provide an important complement to both the literature on international and regional policy instruments and debates regarding the connection between migration and development. We can take as our starting point Sandercock’s (2004) demand that we rethink the role of planning and local authorities in an era of diversity and mobility. But this is not simply to demand that municipalities or local government authorities develop purpose built policies on refugees and the displaced, but that they—with assistance from scholars and advocates—understand the factors working against effective protection. While legal prohibitions on livelihoods and residence are clearly part of the picture, we need to consider more carefully the

functional implications of decentralization; budgeting; vertical and horizontal cooperation; and popular participation. Many of these arrangements currently provide incentives for local authorities to ignore or exclude newcomers—citizens and foreign as well as voluntary and forced. Recognizing how these operate can also lead us to those areas where incentives might be realigned. While we should continue to work to maximize the impact that sound research and data play in decision making, we must also seek to understand the cognitive frames that lead to wilful ignorance or bias (Feldman and March 1981; Schmidt 2008). Where these frames can be reshaped, we should do so. Where they cannot, advocates must then learn to appeal to the interests and incentives with which they are confronted.