The spatiality of refugee protection has been a key issue for humanitarian practitioners and policy-makers, and it has become of increasing concern in academic studies. This study interrogates the policy and practice-oriented concept of ‘protection space’ in regard to the experiences of the Congolese refugees in the city of Kampala, Uganda. My analysis of ‘protection space’ uses the geographical concepts of the ‘right to the city’ and ‘sense of place’ to emphasise the physical, imagined, lived and relational understandings of urban space. I also investigate the conceptual links between ‘protection’, ‘space’ and ‘trust’. I apply a qualitative case-study approach in this study and collected primary data from individual Congolese refugees, refugee communities and officers of the protection institutions. The data-collection methods included a combination of semi-structured interviews, observation and focus group discussions, supported by visual methods. I rely on aspects of discourse analysis to analyse my textual and visual data. I conclude that the Congolese refugees informing this study conceptualised ‘protection’ not only legally, physically and relationally, but also spiritually. The geographical levels of protection and insecurity that refugees experienced varied: their ‘sense of place’ in relation to the city of exile depended on their micro-, meso-, and macro-scale experiences and perceptions of protection. Given the prevalence of generalised and particularised social mistrust and institutional mistrust – two matters that were intertwined in refugees’ discourses of their everyday urban life – it is concluded that the distinction between protection and insecurity was at times unclear. Refugees, however, found a sense of protection from various ‘communities of trust’, even though their community life was also characterised by struggles over their ‘right to the city’ and inter-community mistrust.

Background: The current global refugee crisis requires attention from the public health community to improve the health and wellbeing of forcibly displaced groups. Eighty-six percent of refugees are hosted in developing countries, while 58% migrate to urban centers in search of opportunities. Although there are benefits to urban migration, refugees residing in Nairobi, Kenya are vulnerable to police extortion, arrests, deportations, and social exclusion as a result of anti-refugee policies. Despite threats to psychosocial wellbeing, many refugees successfully cope with acute and cumulative stressors to exhibit positive mental health outcomes in the context of adversity. This dissertation explores the ways urban Congolese refugees in Nairobi negotiate and navigate personal, social, and environmental resources to mitigate stress and promote psychosocial wellbeing. Research Aims: The dissertation included the following three aims: (1) document stressors experienced by urban Congolese refugees in Nairobi; (2) describe the range of coping supports available to Congolese refugees; identify how individuals, families, and groups navigate and negotiate these resources; and (3) explore relationships that exist among stressors, supportive resources, and reported mental health status of urban Congolese refugees. Methods: Mixed-methods exploratory research took place over a 12-month period in Nairobi. Preliminary research was conducted between May and August 2012, and dissertation fieldwork occurred between January and August 2014. Qualitative research included ethnographic participant observation, semi-structured in-depth interviews, and small group discussions with Congolese refugees (n=70). Additional interviews were conducted in Kenya with academics (n=3), intergovernmental employees (n=4), representatives from government agencies (n=2), and refugee service providers (n=18). Quantitative research was comprised of two surveys administered to Congolese refugees (N=244) in 150 households. The Self-Reporting Questionnaire (SRQ-20) assessed mental health functioning, and a survey developed in-field inventoried perceived stressors and supports. Results: The results by aim were: (1) stressors fell within three primary domains: inadequate material resources, political and personal insecurity, and emotional distress; (2) Congolese refugees utilized three salient coping strategies, comprised of reliance on religious communities and faith in God, participation in borrowing networks, and managing memories; and (3) isolation was associated with poor mental health functioning, while perceived support from religious communities enhanced mental health outcomes. Recommendations: Organizations should bolster community-based programs and strengthen partnerships with religious communities to improve the psychosocial wellbeing of urban Congolese refugees. Conclusions: Shifting the paradigm with refugee populations from a deficits-centric to resilience-focused framework recognizes the inherent strengths of individuals, families and communities with refugee status, and has the potential to mold future research and praxis that aims to enhance the wellbeing of displaced populations.

Recevoir en trois ans un afflux de migrants correspondant à un quart de sa population constitue un défi majeur pour n’importe quelle nation. Cette recherche tente de comprendre comment un tel phénomène, à priori inconcevable, a pu advenir dans les villes du Liban, qui ont accueilli plus d’un million de réfugiés depuis 2011. Partant de ce phénomène brutal, elle examine les facteurs qui ont permis à ces réfugiés urbains de s'installer tant bien que mal dans des espaces marqués par des processus extrêmes d'injustices socio-spatiales. La thèse aborde cette question à trois niveaux : (1 ) à l’échelle urbaine locale, où citadins et réfugiés vivent un cycle continu de négociations dissymétriques concernant l’occupation et l’appropriation de leurs espaces respectifs, reflété dans des situations quotidiennes de tension et de conflit ; (2) au niveau national, dans lequel la géopolitique interne à la société libanaise et les effets de l’action publique du gouvernement, des collectivités territoriales et des ONG prennent un rôle direct, influençant l’accès des réfugiés à la ville ; (3) à l’échelle géopolitique internationale enfin, qui aborde la situation du Moyen-Orient. À cette échelle, l’analyse s’attache aux effets des relations historiques entre le Liban et la Syrie dans l’installation actuelle des réfugiés. Cependant, l’espace de négociation n’est pas exclusivement perçu comme le résultat d’une relation binaire entre réfugiés et société d’accueil. Plus largement, la thèse démontre comment cette relation s’insère dans des mécanismes qui produisent et reproduisent des inégalités exprimées à des échelles multiples et qui opèrent sur l’ensemble des populations citadines, que ces dernières soient d’origines syriennes, palestiniennes, qu’elles appartiennent aux différentes communautés religieuses libanaises ou qu’elles soient originaires de pays étrangers. L’étude repose sur une approche ethnographique qualitative faisant appel à diverses méthodes, particulièrement des entretiens approfondis auprès d’échantillons de population très divers. Ceux-ci sont accompagnés d’observations systématiques menées dans trois quartiers urbains : Tebbeneh à Tripoli, El-Nab’a et le camp palestinien de Bourj el-Barajneh à Beyrouth. / It is a major challenge for any nation to accommodate an influx of migrants corresponding to a quarter of its population in three years. This research seeks to understand how such a phenomenon, inconceivable at first glance, could have taken place in cities in Lebanon that have hosted over a million refugees from Syria since 2011. With this brutal phenomenon as a starting point, the thesis examines the factors that have made it possible for the urban refugees to settle in places marked by extreme processes of socio-spatial injustice. The thesis addresses this issue at three levels: (1 ) at the local urban scale, within which urban dwellers and refugees live a continuous cycle of dissymmetrical negotiations on the occupation and appropriation of their respective spaces, reflected in daily situations of tension and conflict; (2) at the national level, within which the internal geopolitics and the effects of government, local authority, and NGO actions play a direct role in influencing the access of refugees to the city; (3) finally at the international geopolitical scale which addresses the situation of the Middle East. At this scale, the analysis focuses on the effects of historical relations between Lebanon and Syria in the current settlement of refugees. Negotiating space is not seen as the result of an exclusively binary relationship between refugees and the host society. Rather, the thesis demonstrates how this relationship fits into mechanisms that produce and reproduce inequalities expressed on multiple scales, and touch all urban dwellers - whether they are originally Syrian, Palestinian, Lebanese from different religious groups, or even from a foreign country. The study is based on a qualitative ethnographic approach using a variety of methods, particularly in-depth interviews with diverse population samples. These are accompanied by systematic observations in three urban neighbourhoods: Tebbeneh in Tripoli, El-Nab'a and the Palestinian camp of Bourj el-Barajneh in Beirut.

The situation of Somali Bantu refugees has been studied in the USA and, to a lesser degree, in the refugee camps of Kakuma and Dadaab, but not in self-settled urban contexts in East Africa. This qualitative study, a needs assessment of the Somali Bantu refugee community in Nairobi, Kenya, contributes towards filling that gap in the literature. Participant observation and semi-structured interviews with both Somali Bantu refugees and staff of refugee-serving NGOs in Nairobi provided rich ethnographic data. Research questions focused on perceived needs and assets of refugees, community support structures, and NGO services available to Somali Bantu refugees. The results of the study showed how systems of marginalization and oppression found within Somalia are reproduced within the urban refugee environment of Nairobi. It also revealed how this marginalization was exacerbated through the systems set up by refugee-serving NGOs. However, the study also demonstrated refugee agency and aspirations, revealing strategies employed by individual refugees to improve their situation as well as multi-local and transnational kinship networks of mutual support.

No description available.

[pt] Em inquestionável estado de vulnerabilidade, a condição refugiada é permeada por uma gama de relações de poder e violência, que tornam sua sobrevivência uma jornada cada vez mais tortuosa. Dificilmente conseguimos deixar de mencionar seu estado de precariedade que os torna sujeitos do humanitarismo que, através de um discurso do cuidado típico da governança humanitária, transforma esses indivíduos refugiados em um grande corpo cheio de feridas abertas prontas para serem suturadas. Quando diante de um complexo aparato fronteiriço de securitização, são tratados como uma ameaça à ordem e manutenção das estruturas e forma de vida de uma sociedade que é aparentemente incapaz de responder imediatamente com hospitalidade. Uma vez assentados em centros urbanos, essas populações também têm suas experiências atravessadas pelas relações de poder que se fazem presentes em suas vidas cotidianas, em sua condição de vida refugiada e vida precarizada, reduzidas à sua luta e suas dores, tornadas vítimas puras e despolitizadas. À primeira vista, corpos anônimos, abandonados, securitizados, gerenciados, cujas forças foram tolhidas pela jornada e pelo discurso sobre suas vidas. Inspirada pelas proposições analíticas da Autonomia da Migração, essa dissertação está interessada em olhar para a migração e, consequentemente, para o refúgio enquanto político em si; afetada pelo filme Era o Hotel Cambridge (2016), de Eliane Caffé, recorta o cotidiano urbano como espaço-tempo a partir do qual também devemos pensar essa política autônoma da migração. Neste trabalho, busco refletir sobre a resistência e politização da vida no refúgio urbano, fora do eixo da cidadania, deslocando as possibilidades de suas experiências políticas para um lugar de indiscernibilidade às relações de poder que buscam predicá-los a um conjunto de subjetivizações expectadas. O ímpeto que move este trabalho é o desejo de poder olhar para outros lugares, outras relações, outros afetos, outros mundos, que não os delineados pelos significantes da política moderna intimamente relacionados à figura essencializada do cidadão, demarcadora do pertencimento e exclusão, ativo qualificante da vida. Este trabalho é um convite para buscarmos traçar novas rotas, para desvendarmos caminhos outros na diferença que se faz comum, retomando a condição refugiada urbana (e seus corpos marcados pela precariedade e precarização da vida) como política nos encontros nas encruzilhadas do cotidiano da vida urbana. / [en] In an unquestionable state of vulnerability, the refugee condition is pervaded by a range of power and violence relations, which turns their survival into an increasingly tortuous journey. One can hardly fail to mention their precarious state that makes them subjects of humanitarianism that, through a discourse of care typical of humanitarian governance, transforms these refugee individuals into a large body full of open wounds ready to be sutured. When faced with a complex border apparatus of securitization, they are treated as a threat to the order and maintenance of the structures and way of life of a society that is apparently incapable of responding immediately with hospitality. Once settled in urban centers, the experiences of these populations are also permeated by the power relations that are present in their daily lives, in their condition as refugees and as precarious life, being reduced to their struggle and their pain, turned into pure and depoliticized victims. At first sight, anonymous, abandoned, securitized, managed bodies, whose forces were diminished by the journey and the discourse about their lives. Inspired by the analytical propositions of the Autonomy of Migration, this dissertation is interested in looking at migration and, consequently, at refuge as political itself; affected by the film Era o Hotel Cambridge (2016), by Eliane Caffé, it focusses on urban daily life as a space-time from which we must also think about this autonomous politics of migration. In this work, I seek to reflect on the resistance and politicization of life in condition of urban refuge, outside the axis of citizenship, shifting the possibilities of their political experiences to a place of indiscernibility from the power relations that seek to predicate them to a set of expected subjectivizations. The impetus that moves this work is the desire to be able to look at other places, other relations, other affections, other worlds, other than those outlined by the signifiers of modern politics closely related to the essentialized figure of the citizen, demarcator of belonging and exclusion, qualifying asset of life. This work is an invitation to seek to trace new routes, to unveil other paths in the difference that is made common, recapturing the urban refugee condition (and their bodies marked by precarity and the precariousness of life) as political in the encounters at the crossroads of everyday urban life.

[pt] Embora mais da metade dos refugiados no mundo resida hoje em cidades, o tema ainda ocupa espaço periférico no campo de estudos sobre refúgio. Parcela expressiva das políticas e pesquisas na área tratam refugiados urbanos como uma população distinta cuja vivência nas cidades é moldada majoritariamente ou exclusivamente por sua condição de deslocados forçados. Ao relegar o urbano à segundo plano, oferecem um olhar pasteurizado, incapaz de apreender quais potencialidades e desafios particulares imprime ao refúgio. Neste sentido, a presente tese tem por objetivo central promover a interlocução entre o campo de estudos sobre refúgio e sobre o urbano de modo a ampliar a compreensão acerca de como ambos os fenômenos se articulam e se (res)significam mutuamente. Do vasto corpo teórico disponível, a pesquisa parte da teoria urbana crítica, especialmente das reflexões de Lefebvre sobre a produção do espaço e o direito à cidade, na tentativa de iluminar como a inserção de refugiados na cidade não pode ser dissociada da forma como o espaço urbano é produzido hoje. A partir dessa leitura, discute-se como o refúgio encontra-se articulado com as práticas de regulação, controle e fronteirização materializados nas cidades, bem como com os processos de contestação, resistência e subversão que nelas se processam. / [en] Although over half the number of refugees worldwide currently lives in cities, this subject is still considered peripheral in the field of refuge studies. A large number of policies and research about this issue addresses urban refugees as a distinct population whose lives in cities are shaped mainly or exclusively by their condition as victims of forced migration. When the importance of the urban theme is not acknowledged, the result is often a sterile viewpoint that is incapable of understanding potentialities and particular challenges pertaining to refuge. The main objective of this thesis is to promote the dialogue between the study of refuge and the city in order to enhance the understanding of how both phenomena relate to and give new meaning to each other. Using some of the vast theoretical data that is available, the research stems from the critical urban theory, particularly Lefebvre s thoughts on the production of space and the right to the city, in an attempt to show how the insertion of refugees in the city cannot be dissociated from the way in which urban space is produced today. Based on this, the thesis discusses how refuge is tied to the practices of regulation, control and the creation of boundaries that take place in cities, as well as to the processes of contestation, resistance and subversion that occur within them.