In most of our minds the word refugee conjures up images of rows upon rows of tents or mud shelters stretching out to a dusty horizon. This tent city image further lends itself to a sense of temporariness and the associated idea that these people are awaiting rescue in the form of rapid resettlement to a western country or perhaps return to their homeland.
In the last ten years however the world of the refugee has rapidly shifted. The refugee camp is now the exception rather than the rule: 58 per cent of all refugees reside in urban areas, mostly in the rapidly growing slums of the cities in the global south.
Johannesburg hosts an estimated 450,000 people in refugee or refugee like situations. This is the largest concentration of refugees anywhere. Damascus, Cairo, Addis Ababa, Nairobi, Amman, Bangkok and many others also host large forced migrant populations.
What is this significance of this shift?
It must be said that life in a refugee camp is never rosy, and the duration of stays in camps has been steadily increasing, Camps can be a hotbed of illness, violence and boredom. Most inhabitants adopt coping mechanisms for these long stays that vary from the clever to the criminal.
The crucial factor is that, without a firm plan for onward movement, camps essentially trade the right to safety with a whole host of other human rights — to movement, to gainful employment, to education and so on. Without an 'exit plan' there is little to live for.
Nonetheless camps do generally provide basic food and shelter and a semblance of safety. For the urban refugee there is no such security.
In some cities the UNHCR or a local NGO provides money for shelter and food for three months only. In that time, the urban refugee is expected to: register with the authorities and begin processing their refugee case; gain a working knowledge of a new language; train themselves so they can find sustainable employment; and locate new accommodation, while at the same time keeping their documentation in order, their family fed, children in schools, sick people looked after and so on.
All this while negotiating a complex social transition into an often-hostile local population in an urban area characterised by high crime rates