Podcast - Displacement urbanisation and durable solutions: a researcher/practitioner dialogue

In this podcast - the first in a new series for Global Policy - Tom Kirk hosts Jutta Bakonyi and Peter Chonka, authors of Precarious Urbanism: Displacement, belonging and the reconstruction of Somali cities (Bristol University Press, 2023), and Andrew Maina, a humanitarian practitioner from the Regional Durable Solutions Secretariat (ReDSS).

Their conversation covers issues of conflict and climate-crisis linked displacement in the Horn of Africa and the role of rural-urban migration in shaping rapidly growing Somali cities. They focus on how research findings about the complex political economy of camp urbanisation can be translated into practical policy approaches for organisations working on providing durable solutions for vulnerable, displaced populations. For instance, they discuss the ways in which understanding of the incentive structures of landowners, camp managers and local communities can enable humanitarian actors to potentially support marginalised in-migrants through the provision of particular resources and innovative interventions such as shared tenancy schemes.

Find out more about the discussed book:

This book explores relationships between war, displacement and city-making. Focusing on people seeking refuge in Somali cities after being forced to migrate by violence, environmental shocks or economic pressures, it highlights how these populations are actively transforming urban space.

Using first-hand testimonies and participatory photography by urban in-migrants, the book documents and analyses the micropolitics of urban camp management, evictions and gentrification, and the networked labour of displaced populations that underpins growing urban economies. Central throughout is a critical analysis of how the discursive figure of the ‘internally displaced person’ is co-produced by various actors. The book argues that this label exerts significant power in structuring socio-economic inequalities and the politics of group belonging within different Somali cities connected through protracted histories of conflict-related migration.

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