Since 2015, Europeans have become more familiar with programmes that ask city residents to offer a spare room to asylum-seekers and refugees. Yet refugee hosting exists beyond the borders of Europe. In countries around the world, sharing accommodation with IDPs and refugees is a widespread and longstanding practice, offering vital support to thousands of people displaced by conflict and disaster. As humanitarian action moves increasingly into urban areas, we need to better understand how such community support mechanisms work and the impact of external actions on them, including the unintended consequences of humanitarian policies.
In such contexts refugee hosting is rarely mediated by an NGO or other external facilitator. Rather, the people involved create these relationships, often independently or perhaps with some support from an organisation or institution already present in their lives – a religious organisation, a community leader, or a local group. In many cases, displaced people may live with extended family members, but this is by no means universal.
My talk is based on research with young, single, Sudanese men living in urban Amman, Jordan. These men arrived without pre-existing connections, to an environment that is largely hostile towards them, where they receive little to no humanitarian support. Under such conditions, learning to negotiate the urban environment and forge their own support networks is essential. In this talk, I will explore how and where they make connections with their hosts, why they decide to live together, and how they experience living in a hosting arrangement.
Time: Thursday 15th November at 16.30
Place: Abercrombie building 3rd floor, white space/student hub (Oxford Brookes University)
Please find details of the entire Work in Progress seminar series here.
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