Call for Paper TRIALOG “Cities and displacement“

Guest editors: Eva Dick, Einhard Schmidt-Kallert, Benjamin Schraven

Urban authorities are at the forefront of responding to forced migration and do so in highly varied ways. Only one third of the world’s more than 20 million refugees presently live in camps; the majority settle in urban areas and peri-urban settlements, to the largest part in developing regions in the global South. An even larger part of internally displaced people lives in cities. Due to a universal trend towards protracted displacement and concomitant pressures for governments to react to this, cities are becoming increasingly important spaces of integration.

While the importance of cities and urban areas for people who seek protection, means of livelihood and passage has been highlighted for some time, many questions remain unanswered. This special issue enquires into the degree to which policies at global, national and local level acknowledge the urbanisation of displacement, as well as into the interdependencies between them. Moreover, strategies and motivations of local urban stakeholders in a multi-level governance context are of interest. The issue further asks how climate and environmental stresses,

inter- and intra-state conflict and digitisation influence people’s movement decisions, trajectories, and their experiences in urban arrival areas.

Objective of this issue

The objective of this special issue is to analyse and seek policy and planning responses against the background of global sustainability requirements on the one hand and a large variety of displacement contexts on the other. This is particularly important in a time in which global policy discourses call for linking relief with development and localizing responses to forced migration. For example, the New Urban Agenda (2016) of the Habitat III Conference stressed the responsibility of cities to promoting the rights of migrants and refugees, and the UN’s Global Compact of Refugees (2018) called for “Out-of-Camp” solutions to forced migration.

Geographical scope and definition

The focus of this special issue are cities and urbanising areas in the global South. The understanding of “cities” is large and procedural, encompassing a variety of areas undergoing urbanization. A point in case are refugee camps, which in many instances reminisce transformative dynamics and transformations at play in informal neighbourhoods and slums around the globe.

Important dates

– Deadline for submission: 10 December 2020

– Feedback from editorial committee: 21 December 2021

– Deadline for submission of articles: 15 February 2021

– Expected date of publication: 31 July 2021

Contact

Please submit an abstract of 2000 – 3000 characters and a biographical note until 31 December 2020 to:

Eva Dick, eva.dick@die-gdi.de

German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE)