Evan Easton-Calabria, (2025) ‘How Do Camps Affect Cities? The Political Economy of Refugee Camps and Arua, Uganda’, in L. Oesch and L. Lemaire (eds) Refugee Reception and Camps: Local and Global Perspectives. Bristol, UK: Bristol University Press. https://doi.org/10.56687/9781529222852-015.
Despite an increased recognition of urban refugees, there is startlingly limited research on the relationship between the towns and cities where refugees reside and the often nearby settlements and camps. Taking a political economy approach and drawing on Michel Foucault’s discussion of populations, this chapter highlights how the existence of refugee camps affects neighbouring cities and vice versa, particularly when refugees leave camps for cities or engage in urban–camp circular migration. It contributes to camp studies through examining camps and cities as distinct yet connected spaces, linked both by the refugees moving between them and – critically – policies, practices and events in each that influence the other in often overlooked ways. This includes the flow (or lack thereof) of national and international funding to the cities now hosting many of the world’s refugees, dwindling resources in many refugee camps and the lack of refugees’ ‘statistical existence’ in most urban areas.
Foucault News 