Abstract
More than half of the world's refugees now live in cities. How do critical urban studies dialogue with current debates in refugee studies? This paper advances a preliminary mapping of two recurring readings of the question of urban refugees, notably related to themes of protection, bordering practices and strategies of resistance. On one hand, we discuss the city and asylum as experiences controlled and disciplined by institutional apparatuses and framed as policing dynamics. On the other, we highlight narratives of the junction of the urban and of refugee populations as spaces of transformation and experiences of subjective affirmation of freedom, framed as practices of politicization. Based on examples, the paper explores the possibilities opened up by the insertion of the urban as a central dimension of the refugee condition today.
Keywords:
urban refugees; politics; resistance; city