What type of refugees are in the city

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Whitaker, E. Changing opportunities: refugees and host communities in western Tanzania Working Paper No. New issues in refugee research. UNHCR , pp. Washington, DC: United Nations. World Bank Lebanon: Economic and social impact assessment of the Syrian conflict No. Washington, DC: World Bank. Download references. The authors would like to acknowledge UNHCR for funding the data collection efforts on which this analysis relies.

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar. VF and CL implemented the data analysis including robustness checks. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Reprints and Permissions. Fajth, V. How do refugees affect social life in host communities? The case of Congolese refugees in Rwanda.

CMS 7, 33 Download citation. Received : 13 September Accepted : 03 June Published : 06 August Food, water access points and latrines should be properly lit and near shelters so as to protect women and girls against sexual and gender-based violence SGBV and facilities should offer refugees the possibility to access the local economy, infrastructure and services of the host community.

The average length of time that refugees spend in camps varies depending on the crisis. In protracted refugee situations - where mass displacement has affected a country for five years or more -, refugees may spend years and even decades living in camps and it is common to have entire generations growing up in the camps.

In these situations, UNHCR provides more durable, semi-permanent shelter and works with communities to build those that best meet local conditions and needs. Services are also expanded to include educational and livelihood opportunities to help refugee families rebuild their lives.

No, the vast majority of refugees approximately 78 percent live in cities. While urban locations offer more opportunities to live autonomously and find employment, they also pose major challenges as refugees are often forced to share accommodation or live in non-functional public buildings, collective centers, slums or other types of informal settlements with substandard living conditions. In Berlin, Triad—a company with expertise in staging large-scale congresses and events—is now responsible for converting four hangars at the former U.

Cracking the housing challenge : Both Berlin and Hamburg faced a shortage of available, affordable housing when the refugee crisis hit and have had to scramble to identify and develop housing for refugees in the face of restrictive planning rules, building codes, and land use ordinances. The city also collaborated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and HafenCity University to develop a City Science Lab and engage citizens in finding places for refugees.

Drawing from data provided by the planning department of the Hamburg government, the City Science Lab invites residents to participate interactively in the process of locating refugee homes, taking into account factors such as building regulations and zoning ordinances.

The exercise also helps harvest local knowledge about available land and potential building sites, providing an extra verification of city data.

The Hamburg experience shows that pairing technology with a platform for engagement can help cities solve issues as contentious as the placement of refugee centers by laying out the facts and giving communities a voice. Berlin has followed a strategy of modular housing, creating a series of container villages in communities like Lichterfelde-Zehlendorf. Although built of container modules, the buildings are far from primitive: the city has invested in expensive glass fiber to make the interiors look like regular flats, and the residents can use gym rooms.

This mechanism allowed the Lageso to identify six locations for container villages and create 2, long-term housing places for refugees. Making federalism work : Germany is a distinctive federal republic with considerable powers and resources devolved to states and cities and particular focus placed on coordination between the federal and state levels. A German state, including city-states such as Berlin and Hamburg, has representation in the upper chamber of the federal legislature, the Bundesrat.

Through this representation, German states have the right of initiative, which is the ability to recommend changes to federal laws given shifting market and social dynamics.

In addition, every law that impacts the taxes of states is subject to the vote of the upper legislature. This close-knitted network ensures collaboration, consensus, and advancement across and within German states. The Bundesrat meets every three weeks on Friday in Berlin, and representatives of the 16 states discuss the state of affairs across states and within the nation. Within each state, the cabinets meet every Tuesday to discuss the state of affairs in the individual states.

This means that both state and city delegates meet regularly with their peers to discuss proposals for improvements. In addition, there is a direct vertical line of communication and collaboration from cities to states and from states to the federal government. The refugee crisis has shown the remarkable resiliency and flexibility of the German federalist framework. Through the right of initiative, for example, Hamburg has twice initiated changes to the national housing codes to overcome local opposition to new refugee housing centers, effectively enabling the city to place refugee centers either in underutilized formerly commercial buildings or on open sites in residential neighborhoods.

The special role played by cities in emergency response and long-term integration requires new policy reforms and institutional practices.

This research brief has illustrated the wide range of roles being performed by city-states and cities in the response to the refugee crisis. Public, private, and civic leaders and institutions as well as ordinary citizens deserve enormous praise for the dedication of their time and resources and the creativity of their actions.

As described above, the federal government has worked closely with states to adapt as nimbly and quickly as possible to the myriad of issues raised by the refugee response.

This inquiry raises additional reforms and initiatives for consideration:. A study conducted by the Institute for German Economy IW , for example, concluded that the system is not an adequate instrument for the fair distribution of refugees and suggested that a system include criteria such as housing perspectives, general level of service provision, labor market situation, and education capacities.

Recommendation : Appoint a task force of representatives of the federal, state, and local governments to review the benefits and drawbacks of the current quota system and suggest a range of options for the federal government to consider. Identifying and spreading best innovations: Initial visits to Hamburg and Berlin unveiled multiple innovations in practice and process being conducted by both cities.

Other cities within Germany and Europe could benefit from a detailed assessment of these innovations and could contribute their own creative improvements and practices to the mix.

Which cities, for example, are showing substantial progress on improving the language skills of recent refugees? On improving tangible technical skills among refugees? On moving the dial on educational attainment and employment attainment? On empowering individual refugees and refugee associations to take leadership roles within their communities? The rapid replication of innovations across cities reflects the fact that cities—and deciders and providers within cities—are often eager observers and fast adopters of new models.

Intermediaries have arisen in other areas of urban challenge—C in the climate arena, for example—to capture and codify innovative practices for fast adoption and adaptation. The same could be done in the refugee area. Recommendation: Create or expand intermediaries with the sole purpose of identifying and spreading innovations. Learning from international examples: Cities in the United States, Canada, and beyond have had vast experiences with either accommodating large numbers of new residents either because of natural disasters e.

Paul after the Hmong crisis. While these experiences are different from those of Germany and unique to their respective contexts, these cities have ample expertise about how to approach crises, stage and sequence responses, and galvanize the talents and energies of the broad community. This expertise could be applied to German cities, large, medium and small, through structured interactions and engagements.

Establish relationships between cities facing similar challenges say Houston and Hamburg with supported visits and exchanges among experts who are grounded in real practice. Having a seat at the policy table: German federalism already benefits from the close, intimate relationship between the federal government and individual states. This federalist arrangement already benefits cities, since three of the 16 states are city-states.

Yet the system could be further improved if there was a direct vertical line of communication and collaboration from large cities or even large conurbations to the federal government. Recommendation: Establish pilot projects between federal, state, and local governments to develop consensus policy responses to tough themes or challenges and to assess on a periodic basis the cost-sharing between different levels of government with regard to distinct activities.

These suggestions are meant to be reflective of our findings and exemplary rather than exhaustive. The potential for either catalyzing new innovations or spreading existing ones are limitless. As the settlement of refugees continues and shifts from emergency response to long-term integration, several new questions and challenges arise which will be the topic of further research. First, how can cities and other municipalities avoid repeating patterns of segregation and the additional challenges that such patterns present?

One of the main concerns for policymakers with regard to long-term accommodation and integration of refugees is the potential formation of parallel societies within increasingly segregated urban neighborhoods. An analysis from by the German Federal Ministry for Traffic, Building, and Urban Development confirms that there were 1, boroughs in municipalities hosting a disproportional share of migrants, with more than half of these boroughs being located in major cities. As migrants move into segregated urban neighborhoods, problems with education, language, and social capital can accumulate.

But in dense areas, housing space is scarce and rents are high. Ghettos evolve quickly. A study conducted by Teltemann et al. Discrimination by landlords and local communities in the settlement of people of another cultural background also reinforces the accumulation of migrants in certain neighborhoods.

The federal government is working to avoid the concentration of refugees. The latest integration law enacted in July attempts to distribute refugees more evenly once they are registered as job-seekers. This means that refugees with a recognized status can be assigned to a municipality by the federal state authorities, who can also establish migration limits for areas with a difficult socioeconomic structure.

Municipalities are also seeking to prevent the accumulation of refugees and migrants in neighborhoods with a high concentration of existing refugees and migrants. Analyses from the German Association of Cities and the Robert Bosch Foundation found that creating decentralized pockets of accommodation across the city is an important first step toward local integration of refugees and migrants into German society.

Only after 15 years are these flats to be opened for the common housing market. How does Germany ensure that high concentrations of refugees do not emerge in small suburban municipalities that surround large cities? While this research has focused on the concentration of refugees within the 15 largest German cities, it is well understood that cities are part of broader metropolitan labor and housing markets and that refugees might be attracted to suburban municipalities for a variety of reasons.

Recently released data on job-seeking refugees collected by the German Federal Employment Agency 41 allows us for the first time to assess the share of job-seeking refugees relative to the total number of all job-seekers. A close analysis of the data for Munich and its surrounding municipalities yields striking results.

While the average share of refugees among overall job-seekers is 6. Again, the shares vary widely between municipalities, ranging from 6. It is worth noting that Munich is by far the most expensive city in Germany with regard to real estate prices. This may explain the tendency of asylum seekers to seek accommodation in the surrounding municipalities.

Another factor may be population density: Munich has by far the highest population density of all focus cities, with 4, people per square kilometer. This increases the scarcity of accommodation and pushes apartment-seekers with limited resources out of the centers. The legal facilities available to asylum-seekers—including lawyers, consulates, and diplomats—are often clustered in cities. Nongovernmental organizations, such as religious groups, can respond to refugees more quickly in urban areas.

Most importantly, however, is the community of other immigrants in cities. Refugee camps are temporary communities built to provide shelter and resources to refugees.

UNHCR works with the asylum country to provide tents or other temporary shelters, emergency medical facilities, communications equipment , and security. Most refugees remain near their home regions, moving to neighboring countries. For example, refugees from Afghanistan are likely to move to Pakistan. Refugees fleeing conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan settled in Chad.

Internally Displaced Persons Not everyone who has to leave home ends up leaving their country. Today, about 40 million people around the world are internally displaced by conflict or violence.

That is the highest number recorded since International refugee laws do not provide protection and support for IDPs, rather, IDPs have to rely on their own government for protection. Sudan, in eastern Africa, has one of the largest internally displaced populations in the world. From through , civil war between north and south Sudan forced millions of people from their homes.

By the end of , around 4. Overcrowding causes illness to spread quickly, and malnutrition can occur when food deliveries are reduced or delayed. Refugees from Colombia flee internal conflict associated with the illegal drug trade.

Iraq is the site of a major international conflict. Political conflict between rebels and the government have driven Congolese and Somalis from their homes. Pakistan, asylum for thousands of refugees from other countries as well as IDPs, is tied to the international conflict in neighboring Afghanistan. The government of Pakistan must also deal with militias and rebel groups.

Environmental Refugees Environmental refugees are people who must leave their homes because of environmental disruption. Natural disasters like earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods often force people to flee. The eruption of Mount Vesuvius, Italy, in 79 A. Toxic volcanic ash and pumice stone entirely buried the towns. Residents of the towns had to find shelter and work elsewhere in the Roman Empire. In January , a magnitude Still more sought asylum as refugees in the neighboring Dominican Republic.

Environmental disruption can also be man-made, such as a nuclear accident or pollution. The World Bank estimates that million people were displaced by dam -building projects in the s. This generally happens when the reservoir of water held behind the dam floods towns and villages where people once lived. In addition, people who live downstream from dams may be unable to support themselves through fishing or farming once the water dries up. Construction of the massive Three Gorges Dam in China, for example, flooded dozens of towns and displaced 1.

The disaster released a lethal amount of radiation. More than , people were permanently evacuated from the area and had to resettle elsewhere. The effects of climate change can also lead to environmental refugees. During the last Ice Age , for example, people living near glaciers were forced to migrate to warmer climates as the glaciers and ice sheets spread across the land.

Today, human activity contributes to the current instance of climate change, called global warming. The rising temperature causes glaciers and ice caps to melt, making sea levels rise. It also leads to droughts, floods, and desertification —the transformation of arable land to desert. Environmental refugees impacted by climate change are often called climate refugees.

Climate refugees may be forced to seek asylum because of changes in their ecosystem , such as major portions of Maldives being underwater. Climate refugees may also seek asylum as their economic livelihood vanishes, as farmers bordering the Gobi Desert in China lose their land to desertification.