Paper details

Paper authors	Peter Mackie
In panel on	A world without camps? Understanding the potential for refugees and IDPs to achieve well-being and decent livelihoods in urban areas.
Paper presenter(s) will be presenting	In-Person / Online

Abstract

Contemporary understanding of the economies of displaced populations – including over 48 million conflict-affected internally displaced people (IDPs) and over 30 million refugees and asylum seekers – is fragmented, with no coherent framework available to help improve economic outcomes. Existing work has focused either on individual livelihoods or on the economic impacts of displaced people on host communities. As part of research on ‘Protracted Displacement in an Urban World’, this contribution posits a new Displacement Economies Framework (DEF) that captures the collective economy created by refugees and IDPs through their livelihood activities, enterprise, need for services and consumption, and through mutual support, both in camp-based and urban settings.

The DEF integrates and advances refugee, migration, and informality literatures, by centring on the importance of time, place and relations. Time is examined through people’s economic pathways in displacement, from origin, to current enterprise, and future aspirations. Place focuses on the political, economic and social contexts of displacement economies. Relations situate the displacement economies within the wider host economy. These form the foundations of a coherent new Displacement Economies Framework, presented here and illustrated with emerging insights from fieldwork with displaced populations in city and camp locations in Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Kenya.

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