I’m interested in the lives and experiences of refugees and the policies and processes that support, protect, and obstruct them. I’m also interested in cities–how and why they attract people, the dangers and prospects they offer, and the unique way in which humanitarianism happens (or doesn’t happen) there. I’m an interdisciplinary academic who has spent years researching these issues and more.
I wrote
The Urbanization of Forced Displacement: UNHCR, Urban Refugees, and the Dynamics of Policy Change
By
Neil James Wilson Crawford,
What is my book about?
The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) estimates that over 60 percent of refugees now live in urban areas. This book…
We can learn a lot about urban refugees from works of fiction. This short story is a tragic tale of Boniface Louis R. Kuseremane, a Rwandese prince, who finds himself in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.
The story does well to remind us that refugees come from all backgrounds and how quickly support and wealth can disappear. Nairobi initially exists as a stop-off on route to continued comforts in Europe, but the protagonist finds himself trapped on a downward spiral as his social and material privileges slip away.
Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor is most well known for her beautifully written novels Dust and The Dragonfly Sea, but long before these, her short story Weight of Whispers won the prestigious Caine Prize for African Writing.
This book is one of the first full-length books devoted to the specific topic of urban refugees. It was published in 2001, years before the pronouncement that most refugees live in towns and cities.
The book provides an intimate and detailed account of the promises and hardships refugees face in cities–in this case, Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.
An engrossing and accessible ethnography, the book shows the way that a variety of factors–age, religion, language, memory–intersect to shape refugees’ experiences in urban space.
A rich historical account of the experiences of Afghans living in urban Pakistan from the 1970s to the post-2001 ‘War on Terror’ period, this book provides a fascinating discussion of urban informality, what it means to belong, the role of citizenship, and the engagement and absence of the state in cities.
The book utilises ethnographic observations and interviews but also valuable archival data–raising important considerations of who gets remembered, as well as underscoring that urban refugees are not a new phenomenon.
This book is a fascinating and well-written book on ‘gender refugees’ –people who make their claim for asylum based on their gender identity.
The book illuminates these refugees’ unique and challenging journeys as gender refugees, from their reasons for leaving their countries, the various violences in the asylum system, the South Africa they imagined, and the South Africa they experienced.
The book de facto deals with urban refugees. South Africa does not practice a system of encampment, while nearly all the participants in the research reside in Cape Town and Johannesburg.
This book tracks the conceptual journeying of the term 'transgender' from the Global North-where it originated-along with the physical embodied journeying of transgender asylum seekers from countries within Africa to South Africa and considers the interrelationships between the two. The term 'transgender' transforms as it travels, taking on meaning in relation to bodies, national homes, institutional frameworks and imaginaries. This study centres on the experiences and narratives of people that can be usefully termed 'gender refugees', gathered through a series of life story interviews. It is the argument of this book that the departures, border crossings, arrivals and perceptions of…
This book is set in the small city of Ithaca in Upstate New York and provides an engaging account of people living there before and during the anti-migrant policies of Donald Trump’s Presidency.
Despite the overwhelming majority of refugees being hosted in the Global South, some do receive third-country resettlement to countries such as the United States. As Hartman’s book shows us, challenges and issues don’t stop upon resettlement, and often, resettled refugees face new obstacles.
The book is also an important reminder that while most studies of urban refugees tend to focus on mega- and other large cities like Istanbul, Bangkok, and Beirut, smaller urban areas–like Ithaca, with a population of little over 30,000–are also key sites of refuge.
A gripping portrait of refugees who forged a new life in the Rust Belt, the deep roots they’ve formed in their community, and their role in shaping its culture and prosperity.
"This is an American tale that everyone should read. . . . The storytelling is so intimate and the characters feel so deeply real that you will know them like neighbors."—Jake Halpern, author of Welcome to the New World
War, persecution, natural disasters, and climate change continue to drive millions around the world from their homes. In this “tender, intimate, and important book—a carefully reported rebuttal to the xenophobic…
The Urbanization of Forced Displacement: UNHCR, Urban Refugees, and the Dynamics of Policy Change
By
Neil James Wilson Crawford,
What is my book about?
The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) estimates that over 60 percent of refugees now live in urban areas. This book introduces the organization’s response to the growing number of refugees migrating to urban areas as a broader study of policy-making in international organizations. Crawford addresses how and why UNHCR changed its policy and practice in response to shifting trends in displacement.
Citing over 400 primary UN documents, Crawford provides an in-depth study of the internal and external pressures faced by UNHCR–pressures from above, below, and within–that explain why it has radically transformed its position from the 1990s onward. The book sheds new light on how the organization works and how it conceives its role in global politics today.
