Borders and Refuge: Citizenship, Mobility and Planning in a Volatile World/ Introduction: Urban Planning and the Global Movement of People/ Planning for Refugees in Cities/ The Role of Planning in Humanitarian Response, Looking at Urban Crisis Response in Lebanon/ Urban Refugees: An Urban Planning Blind Spot?/ Immigrant Rights in Europe: Planning the Solidarity City/ Propertied Liberalism in a Borderland City/ Displacement, Refuge and Urbanisation: From Refugee Camps to Ecovillages/ From Capitalist-Urbanisation as Politics-of-Refuge to Planning as Planetary-Politics-of-Care

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Planning for Refugees in Cities

Romola Sanyal

London School of Economics, London, UK

Urban planners and scholars know well that we are living in an urban age where increasing numbers of people are living in cities. This is equally true for refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs) and other forced migrants who seek safe shelter from violence and other catastrophic events. Worldwide, it is estimated that a record 68.5 million people have been forcibly displaced,¹ with developing countries being affected the most by this large scale movement of people. It should perhaps be obvious, but refugees are not a homogenous group, they differ by class, economic means, and the social networks they command. Yet, the enduring image of refugees tends to be that of helpless victims languishing in refugee camps for years. While many refugees have been put in camps, especially due to concerns over national security, geopolitics and increasing professionalization of humanitarian relief, refugees have also historically gravitated towards cities. Cities such as Delhi, Kolkata, Karachi, Beirut have been reshaped through the mass influx of refugees. Yet, while cities have always hosted refugees, they have either been ignored or the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) - the main UN agency responsible for protecting refugees - has viewed their claims with suspicion, focusing instead on refugee camps (Landau, 2014). Only since 2009 has the UNHCR acknowledged that the majority of refugees live in cities and have sought to protect them in those urban locations creating, what I argue are, humanitarian cities.

The urbanization of refugees brings its own challenges. Host governments are often keen to discourage urban refugees over concerns for national and societal security (Fabos & Kibreab, 2007). This translates into marginalization of refugees particularly from poorer, less powerful backgrounds. Many refugees who form part of mass displacements of people come from poorer, more vulnerable backgrounds. They often move into informal neighborhoods in cities in the Global South where they live amongst the urban poor. Here they share in the poor housing conditions and limited infrastructure. On the other hand they can access healthcare, education, and jobs which are elements often scarce in camps (Campbell, 2006; Jacobsen, 2006). Refugees are often self-sufficient and can in fact contribute significantly to the economy. However, their legal status as refugees marks them as being separate from the local populace and hence subject to restrictive policies around work and mobility and arbitrary harassment by the police and the local residents (Coddington, 2018; Fabos & Kibreab, 2007; Sanyal, 2018).

To illustrate these points further, I look at Syrian refugees in Lebanon and examine some of the issues around planning for refugee populations and implications for the future. Lebanon hosts the highest number of refugees per capita in the world, with estimates suggesting more than one million Syrian refugees alongside a local population of approximately 4 million. In some municipalities refugees outnumber local residents. Such large numbers of refugees since the start of the Syrian war have put enormous pressure on infrastructure, services, and goodwill in the country. NGOs attempting to support the refugees have often exacerbated tensions. It is important also to note that the discussion of refugees is contentious due to the country’s history of hosting Palestinian refugees for over six decades. As a result of that history, the government refused to have refugee camps for Syrians, fearing that they would become permanent as well. In addition, Lebanon does not view Syrians as refugees but as displaced persons or de-facto refugees- terms that carry no legal protection (Sanyal, 2017). Furthermore, the government has imposed a series of policies to limit the entry and residency of Syrians. These mostly include stricter border control, expensive residency renewal fees and other bureaucratic controls that make it too burdensome for Syrian refugees to legally remain within Lebanon. As a result of these intersecting issues, a considerable number of refugees have been unable to pay the residency fees and have gone underground. As with urban refugees in other parts of the world, they are often subject to harassment and punitive measures by the local authorities and residents.

Despite this, refugees have attempted to make lives for themselves in Lebanon. They rent private accommodation in formal and informal settlements in urban and rural areas. In rural areas many live in informal tented settlements on private agricultural land (Fawaz, Saghiyeh, & Nammour, 2014; Sanyal, 2017). What we see in the country in the face of having a no-camp policy, is the emergence of a privatized system of hosting refugees. In other words, private landlords provide land and housing for refugees to live in. This is both flexible and limiting. On the one hand, having local communities host refugees and benefit from their presence is a positive issue. Refugees have much to offer by way of goods and services, can revitalize local economies and make use of unused/underused spaces. On the other hand, private agreements between landlords and refugees also mean that the latter have less stability and protection in their everyday lives. Landlords, for example, can evict refugees as they see fit or impose costs and sanctions on them.

In order to support refugees, humanitarian NGOs have provided relief in a variety of ways. At the start of the crisis, they provided emergency supplies including blankets, winterization kits and so forth to Syrian refugees. However, as the displacement became more protracted the local populations became more hostile because hosting refugees was becoming difficult, and NGOs were ignoring the needs of local populations who were often as deprived as refugees had been. The government of Lebanon also began working with UNHCR and other NGOs to come up with a strategy to shift from an emergency mode to a stabilization mode. The Lebanon Crisis Response Plan (LCRP) published in 2016 offered a blueprint for how to support host communities and refugees. But already in many parts of the country, INGOs often with their local partners were trying to find ways in which to incentivize and support local populations to host refugees. The interventions varied by scale. These included providing funding to landlords to complete or improve unfinished houses in exchange for hosting refugees for a period of time (6 months to a year) either rent free or for reduced rent. Others intervened at a neighborhood level, providing services, upgrading infrastructure such as water, sanitation, improving communal areas and attempting to improve community relations and addressing issues such as gender based violence. Experiments that have taken place within the context of Lebanon have then been taken up by other agencies and circulated to other countries such as Turkey.²

International aid agencies have long engaged in development and upgrading work throughout the world. There are, however, a few points that are particularly interesting in this case study. Firstly, these are humanitarian organizations, not development organizations and their mandate is to protect refugees, not engage in developmental work. Their understanding of urban systems and politics as such is limited as their expertise tends to lie in camp settings rather than urban ones. As a result, what we see is the emergence of unique urban experiments by humanitarian organizations that have the potential to fundamentally change the urban fabric. Secondly, these organizations – like development organizations – are at the mercy of donors, and as emergencies develop through different parts of the world, so the funding priorities continue to shift and change. Humanitarian organizations have to not only contend with these continuous changes to funding but also convince their donors that undertaking such interventions in urban areas is important, even if the results are not as visible as in refugee camps. Thirdly, humanitarian organizations also have to convince local and national governments to allow them to work in these spaces and engage in supporting both refugees and hosts. This is also contentious as refugees are set apart as outsiders and projects involving them that hint at any kind of permanent resettlement can raise alarm for host governments. Furthermore, the priorities for NGOs and those of local governments may be strikingly different and funding shifts may impact relations between the two. This means NGOs have to proceed with caution and find ways to work together with authorities and communities to address complex urban issues. Perhaps more problematically, intervening in one area and not in another means that development becomes uneven and those who fall outside the intervention areas can become resentful of being left out.³

From a planning perspective, the urbanization of refugees is important for a number of reasons. As this piece has discussed, refugees affect the urbanization of cities and urban social relations. Paying attention to that is important as we unearth the myriad ways in which cities are shaped by different kinds of people. Having refugees in cities also draws in the different and often contradictory priorities of donors, humanitarian NGOs and local authorities. These can lead to an uneven development of urban spaces which can have long standing consequences for cities. As noted by various planners, planning as a profession is driven by a focus on public interest. Operating through constant changes brought about by various actors, planning aims to enable urban change that is collectively agreed upon using a mix of means (Holman, Mossa, & Pani, 2018; Rydin, 2013). With large influxes of refugees and migrants for varying periods of time, the often tense relations between hosts and refugees, and the competing practices of NGOs and donors financing urban projects - all beg the question; who constitutes the polity that envisions urban change and how do they make their voices heard? How do planners help develop visions for urban change, when so much of that is driven by the unpredictability of war and policies towards refugees and global and national scales? How do the mass migrations of people affect the planning and management of infrastructures and economies of places that are designed for fewer people and for different timescales? Finally, planners ought to also pay attention to the various kinds of experts and knowledge that are reshaping cities. Here humanitarian NGOs with little urban expertise are reshaping neighborhoods. They are then taking these experiments and circulating them to other parts of the world. This is not unlike what we have seen with planners and urban experts in the policy mobilities literature. What we are witnessing is perhaps the emergence of humanitarian cities, and that should be exciting and cautionary in equal measure.

Notes on contributor

Romola Sanyal is Assistant Professor in Urban Geography at the London School of Economics. She is interested in forced migration, urbanization and urban politics in the Global South. She has worked on the Middle East (Lebanon) and South Asia (India) with a focus on the urbanization of refugees and has published widely on the subject. She is currently studying the management of refugee and migrant crises in cities by local governments and humanitarian organizations in different parts of the world. Email: [email protected]

The Role of Planning in Humanitarian Response, Looking at Urban Crisis Response in Lebanon

Synne Bergby

Independent consultant, Oslo, Norway

Over the past years the world has seen an increasing number of humanitarian crises affecting cities. This has forced the humanitarian sector to rethink response approaches in order to react in effective and cost-efficient manners to the scale and complexity of urban emergencies. One of the key tools emerging is the Neighbourhood Approach. The Neighbourhood Approach – a scale bound area-based approach – is a familiar concept within urban planning but has necessarily taken a somewhat different form when applied in a humanitarian response.

In this article I will share some of the experiences from UN-Habitat’s efforts to build up an urban crisis response programme in Lebanon, and seek to draw some lessons from this work toward the role of urban planning in humanitarian response. While the refugee crisis in Lebanon shares similarities with other current urban crises, there are many contextual differences in types of emergencies and of adaptation of tools. While this essay does not discuss those here, the broad similarities are important to observe.

The Neighbourhood Approach in the Humanitarian Response

The large-scale humanitarian emergencies affecting cities over the last few years have been caused by natural disasters, conflicts – with devastating impacts on the population as well as the physical environments, exacerbated by urban density and large-scale migration and displacement to cities – or a combination of these. The greatest impact has often been on already impoverished urban areas, marked by poverty, informality, poor service provision, social tensions and weak spatial planning. The conflicts in places such as Syria and Yemen have also had devastating impacts on some of the greatest urban heritage in the world. Moreover, a significant common feature, is that these crises have become protracted, with little prospect of ending.

The humanitarian response architecture is well established and coordinated by the UN under sector clusters including; Food security, Shelter, Water, Protection, Nutrition, Health, Education, Camp coordination and management, Emergency (tele)communications, Logistics, and Early recovery (UNHCR, 2015). Each sector has a global sector lead and partner organisations, ensuring pre-agreed standards and accountability in responses. Humanitarian aid is by nature a short-term intervention, while chronic long-term challenges are addressed through development aid. In an urban crisis however, unfolding in already dense built up areas, both displaced and host populations are directly impacted by malfunctioning service-provision, lack of protection, impact on livelihoods and so forth. Responding with repetitive short-term solutions, such as trucking of water or temporary shelter, may be both expensive and only benefit a select few, and at the same time may not contribute to building resilience to new shocks or local capacities. Targeted response to those deemed most vulnerable may also trigger community tensions between those who are receiving assistance and those who are not.

The newer area-based approaches acknowledge the complexity of urban vulnerabilities – considering both displaced and affected host populations, and seeking to build resilience through longer term interventions and local systems strengthening while responding to urgent needs. The approach also promotes a cross-sectoral coordination from vulnerability assessments and spatial profiling, to action plans and interventions, to avoid sector silos. In theory, cross-sectoral strategies could be used to define priorities between and within sectors, for instance prioritising large scale infrastructure upgrades benefitting both households and businesses, over housing repairs of only a selected few buildings. An area-based approach has also been applied on the broader city scale, often in parallel with zoomed attention to specific affected neighbourhoods.

Urban Impact of the Syrian Refugee Crisis in Lebanon

From the outset of the civil war in Syria, more than a million Syrian refugees sought refuge in Lebanon. With official pre-crisis figures of about 4 million Lebanese, about 270 000 Palestinian refugees, and a smaller number of Iraqi refugees, this is the highest refugee-to-host population in the world. I will come back to the challenges of these population figures.

In Lebanon, about half the size of Wales, some 88% of the population is urbanised (UN-Habitat, 2018), with the largest cities located along an urbanised stretch of coast. The pre-2011 Palestinian population is predominantly residing in 12 official camps as well as adjacent areas to the camps and concentrations in certain neighbourhoods, the majority located within or in close proximity to the key cities. Fleeing Palestine in waves from 1948, the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon have not been able to return to Palestine since, nor have they been naturalised in Lebanon which would grant them equal rights and access to livelihoods, housing and other services. As the Syrian crisis unfolded, the Lebanese government adopted a no camp policy for Syrian refugees to prevent a repetition of the Palestinian experience. As a result, Syrian refugees spread across the whole country as they instead found shelter through market channels, with the highest availability of affordable shelter in and around urban centres. About 17% of the refugees settled in Informal Tented Settlements, typically makeshift shelters on farm land, while the remaining majority resided in apartments or sub-standard shelters like converted garages, roof-structures, and workshops.

Initially the refugees living in informal settlements were deemed the most vulnerable, but from 2015 the vulnerability assessments started to indicate equal, if not even higher vulnerabilities in other shelter typologies. While depletion of funds could explain relocation to shelters of poorer standard, the shift could also be explained by increased attention to urban vulnerabilities and thus better assessment methods to unmask urban needs. For refugees finding shelter in urban areas, affordable housing – albeit often informal, was found in some of the already most vulnerable and densest neighbourhoods. The rapid population growth caused population densification within the same footprints through larger households within apartments, division of apartments into smaller units, roof top additions and utilisation of ground floors. Yet, the sudden growth put additional pressure on already poor services and infrastructure, as well on local authorities’ ability to manage service provision. For example, in one neighbourhood in Tripoli we found that the sewerage system, in parts, was still running in open Ottoman pipes. In another Beirut neighbourhood, electricity cuts forced residents to rely on expensive privately-operated generators, often unaffordable to small business-owners forced to terminate their work for several hours a day.

Due to the chronic lack of investment in public infrastructure, the costs of utilities in Lebanon are high, despite unreliable services. While central ministries coordinate and execute some of the larger inter-city infrastructure, local authorities seldom have the resources or capacity to address needs from a systems approach and have been restrained to doing somewhat sporadic interventions. Early on in the Syrian crisis, several agencies sought to strengthen the capacity of local authorities in service provision by donating equipment such as garbage trucks. The problem, however, was that the provision of equipment was not a result of assessments of systems, management and resources within and between municipalities, nor was it followed by capacity building or fleet management plans. For many municipalities this meant additional equipment, but these assets only had limited operational hours, and there were unexplored opportunities for pooled resources between municipalities.

Planning in Lebanon

Beirut is known to many as a cosmopolitan city with pulsating culture, restaurants, night clubs, high end housing, and a number of new institutions, high rises, and commercial buildings designed by international star architects. While these could be seen as signs of good and progressive planning, in Beirut’s case I would rather argue that these signs are symptoms of the lack of it. The contrast is stark between the affluent areas and the neighbourhoods hosting both poor Lebanese and refugees, exacerbated by both physical and social boundaries to an equal access to the city. Poor neighbourhoods still bear marks and damages from the civil war, while Downtown Beirut was fully privatised after the war, with private real estate development driving the reconstruction. Property financing has been a key strategy to strengthen the national GDP, resulting in massive property investments predominantly in the capital, where “residential high-rises [..] have thus been constructed primarily to accommodate capital, not people, as anyone can see at night, when most units soaring above are unlit.” (Marot, 2018).

While the National Physical Master Plan for the Lebanese Territories (CDR, 2005) offers a robust spatial framework, the plan was never translated into binding planning at regional or city level, least of all at a neighbourhood level. For several of the largest cities’ efforts have been undertaken to develop some strategic plans, however, these are often not linked to the national framework - have competing priorities - or are again not rooted in any binding spatial plans. Moreover, spatial strategies have often been developed following old Municipal borders (noting the existence of more than 1000 municipalities in Lebanon), and have not considered the continuous urban areas making up the city today or the city neighbourhoods. Due to the lack of overall urban regulation, sector ministries develop plans for service provision which are often not aligned to the same priorities.

Limited mandate of the planning institution at the central level, and lack of granularity in spatial strategies at city level, restrict local authorities’ ability to do any sound planning within their mandate areas. Significant deviations on population data between different estimates and data sources also constitute a key challenge to sound planning (see below). The lack of overlaid data of the built environment, existing infrastructure, service provision (formal and informal) and agreed boundaries to the cities and neighbourhoods within, further challenge any sound planning.

Area Based Programming in Lebanon

With the urban challenges outlined above as a backdrop, and the Syrian refugee crisis unfolding, UN-Habitat in 2014/2015 started to develop an Area Based Approach to more effectively understand and respond to the needs of the thousands of refugees residing in urban areas in Lebanon. Building on already developed methodologies tested elsewhere (ALNAP, 2018) (UN-Habitat, 2014), a cornerstone to this work was the development of a contextual urban analysis methodology that would allow for spatial mapping at both city and neighbourhood levels, informing intervention strategies between responding agencies, local authorities and service providers. In developing these spatial tools, there was also an opportunity to inform longer term aid, as well as national and local planning policies. The approach has four core pillars; Urban Analysis, Strategy Formulation, Implementation of Interventions, and Capacity Building of Local Authorities and Service Providers. In addition, the close collaboration and inter-sector coordination between actors active in urban areas was crucial to building a robust and shared methodology (UN-Habitat, 2016a).

Urban Profiling

As mentioned above, a critical challenge to the planning task in Lebanon is the unreliability of official population data. There are several reasons for this, first and foremost that the last population census dates all the way back to 1932 (UN-Habitat, 2016b). The national physical masterplan uses a population estimate from 1997, an estimate based on a sample study of primary and secondary households, and further extrapolated from samples based on family size averages. Municipalities on the other hand sit on records of residents as per their village of origin – meaning where families originate from and not necessarily birth place, or where inhabitants reside (this also has ramifications on voting districts, and in turn political power brokering, as well as taxes). In some of the larger cities there have been some attempts to do more accurate estimates of the resident population, yet with major caveats as to used baselines and methodology. The methodologies developed for conducting both city and neighbourhood profiling thus have to be able to more accurately estimate actual population. At the city level, we used triangulation of available datasets against other available spatial information such as satellite imagery or estimates based on service provision (for example in Tyre the volume of solid waste was used, while in Zahle subscribers to the local electricity company was used). In Tripoli, the second biggest city in Lebanon, this exercise led us to a total population figure which was almost double the official numbers, underlining the acute need to know for whom and how to plan.

At the neighbourhood level, resources were put in to do a full mapping of all buildings, number of units per building and accurate number of residents in each building, aggregated by cohorts (UN-Habitat, UNICEF, 2018). Another key challenge was to define the boundaries of the cities and neighbourhoods, and not to be limited by outdated municipal boundaries. While the analysis at the city level used an imperfect continuous built up area as the main criteria (noting that this was not an attempt to define a new city boundary, but rather expand the area of the shared work market, services etc), the defining boundaries at the neighbourhood level relied on both mapping of peoples’ perception, definition by local authorities, as well as studies of the urban fabric. Again, this methodology had some caveats, but allowed us to define some spatial limitations to targeted areas.

In addition to the definition and mapping of the physical area at city or neighbourhood level, estimates on population data and poverty levels, the profiles looked into governance, and services (from shelter and tenure security, to health and education) using both in-depth on the ground mapping, focus group discussions and interviews with the lead person at the service provider. I will elaborate on the detailed methodology here. However, a significant addition came in 2017 when the neighbourhood profiling methodology was revised as part of a partnership between UN-Habitat and UNICEF, with the revised methodology now including a representative sampled Household survey. As this profiling continues, this is currently the most in-depth spatial mapping effort in Lebanon for the most populous areas of the country.

Spatial Strategies, Response Interventions and Capacity Building

At the Neighbourhood level, the initial profiles were followed by a participatory process with neighbourhood representatives contributing to the formulation of strategies responding to identified needs. This process resulted in some well-defined priorities at the community level, whereby several interventions have been implemented. Typical interventions have sought to improve infrastructure networks by repair, upgrade or extension of secondary and tertiary networks improving service provision at household level as well as for local businesses. There has also been implementation/upgrade of public spaces, including street safety for women, awareness and cleaning campaigns on solid waste management, upgrades of residential buildings or service institutions, and so forth. However, falling between a humanitarian response tool and a first step towards a more holistic planning, the initial strategies had a somewhat unrealistic listing of all possible interventions to the range of identified needs, with limited prioritisation between possible interventions besides urgency of needs. With the new UN-Habitat/UNICEF partnership, a possible revision of the methodology for the strategy formulation will follow.

At the city level, the profiles have not been translated into spatial strategies or plans, however the profiles have provided valuable spatial information on needs and at the same time opportunities for urban development and investments, which have been used to inform an upcoming large-scale capacity building and systems strengthening programme in two of the largest cities. UN-Habitat also established several regional technical offices within local authorities’ offices, supporting the local authorities with staff to contribute to urban assessments and planning.

Upon leaving Lebanon at the end of 2017, the efforts to bring together key actors to jointly address urban needs were indeed moving forward, and an increasing number of donors were backing these efforts. In both Tripoli and Tyre, the two first cities to be profiled at city and neighbourhood levels, some early stages of inter-sector coordination at the city level was initiated, allowing for more focused coordination. Despite this, a clear challenge to the area-based approach in Lebanon were the diverging priorities and mix of working methodologies applied between UN agencies and NGOs, as well as local partners. While here describing the UN-Habitat developed tools and approach, several other agencies operated in urban areas often following different assessment methodologies and/or response strategies. At times, several agencies could be working within the same urban areas, each conducting both assessments and response planning. While UN-Habitat had the lead on the urban response, and perhaps developed the most elaborate tools, the tools required both significant time and resources, often not possible within the short time frame of humanitarian funding instruments and thus operational flexibility of partner agencies. The lack of resources and capacities to develop a joint methodology for urban response in Lebanon from the outset of the refugee crisis, and the lack of clear agreed global frameworks for urban response, meant that the approach had to be tailored around pre-existing sector-driven programmes – in a context of an already weak planning system. For refugees and affected host population in need, the resources and time used to develop new (and overlapping) methodologies, has delayed effective delivery of services at scale.

Concluding Remarks

While the above only gives a brief introduction to the urban response in Lebanon, and does not elaborate on the various programmes, nor does it compare the urban crisis in Lebanon to other urban crises, it hopefully gives a glimpse into the complexity of urban humanitarian needs and response, and not least the importance of urban planning competencies in such emergencies. As noted, while the urban profiling tools have indeed provided important data on urban vulnerabilities and pointed to opportunities for urban development, there is still a way to go before urban intervention strategies have the full buy-in of all partners and manage to inform equally emergency programming and longer-term urban development. Traditionally, humanitarian response follows a person-centred protection mandate towards those directly affected by a crisis, while the urban approach in contrast emphasises the common community needs shared between various affected populations. Crises-affected populations in urban areas have the advantage of potential easier access to work markets and improved and more cost-effective service delivery, and thus are less dependent on aid. Done well, an area-based programme could therefore contribute to both addressing urgent needs and laying the ground for resilient and inclusive planning. To achieve that, urban response tools need to be applied sooner, more efficiently and in a joint manner, and with the right technical capacity. Here planners have a role to play.

Notes on contributor

Synne Bergby is a Norwegian architect specialising in urban analysis and planning, with rapid urban growth, migration, urban poverty, the relation between the formal and informal city, and urban crisis response as focus areas. She worked as Programme Planning Advisor with UN-Habitat Lebanon, seconded by the Norwegian Refugee Council and was previously the chair of Habitat Norway, a Norwegian non-governmental organization addressing global urban development issues, urban poverty and slums. Bergby has worked as a consultant to Rodeo Architects on their international portfolio, and worked as an independent consultant. Email: [email protected]

Urban Refugees: An Urban Planning Blind Spot?

Kelly Yotebieng

Ohio State University, Columbus, USA

The world’s urban population includes over half of the world’s refugees (100 Resilient Cities, 2017; Prasad et al., 2015; Thomas, Roberts, Luitel, Upadhaya, & Tol, 2011; Turner, 2015; United Nations, 2014). Yet, despite the fact that urban refugees may reflect a very different population, facing a completely different set of challenges than those who stay in camps, they are often lost in research and programming on forced migration under the blanket umbrella term ‘refugee’ (Landau, 2014; Thomas et al., 2011). Many of the issues that urban refugees face mirror those of urban planning and development in these contexts such as unemployment rates, and strained infrastructure (100 Resilient Cities, 2017). Just as urban refugees are often not explicitly considered in ‘refugee’ research and programming, at the same time humanitarian issues are also often left out of studies of city and regional planning, with the impression that the issues facing the city are perhaps only those related to development (Betts, Bloom, & Weaver, 2015; OXFAM, 2013; Yotebieng, 2017b; Yotebieng et al., 2018a, 2018b; 100 Resilient Cities, 2017). I argue, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (Taran, 2016), that humanitarian programs and urban planning need to better coalesce to ensure that refugees are not left out of urban planning, and urban planning issues are not left out of refugee programming.

I began my career in humanitarian program implementation and research 15 years ago. Over this time I worked with several United Nations, governmental, and non-profit agencies. I cannot recall one project that I worked on over that time that focused on urban areas, yet the majority of the world’s population, including persons affected by various forms of disasters, live in urban areas. Urban areas in many developing countries face a host of challenges as their populations grow. This growth places enormous strain on existing infrastructure and already limited employment opportunities. Urban refugees often face challenges linked with xenophobia and potential legal precarity that further complicates their access to city services. These legal and social constraints related to belonging are only exacerbated by the fact that the populations of the cities in which many urban refugees are settling are also struggling to survive, creating potential conflict between refugees and host populations (Duyan, Çifçi, Gök, & Arslan, 2015; Vammen, 2016). Wanting to shift the focus to urban areas in humanitarian research, specifically with a focus on urban refugees, I returned to a doctoral program in Cultural Anthropology to develop my skills as an urban anthropologist. Most recently, I have been conducting independent research with support from the United States Fulbright Program and the United States Institute of Peace’s Randolph Jennings Peace Scholar Program.

Despite spending the majority of my time as a humanitarian professional living in cities across Central Africa, namely Yaoundé, Cameroon and Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, all of the programs aimed towards refugees and displaced persons that I was responsible for were focused on rural areas across Central Africa and the Great Lakes Region of Africa. It was as if there were no refugees or displaced persons in urban areas. Yet, upon returning home, or to my hotel when I was traveling to countries like Kenya, Uganda, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Nigeria, or Burundi I frequently observed how urban poverty seemed almost harsher than rural poverty. The lack of response to this urban refugee poverty led me to undertake research about how refugees were coping in urban areas where large proportions of their host populations were struggling to get by, particularly those living in informal settlements or slums. Asking around, it was never hard to find urban refugees in most of the large cities in which I worked, situated within reach of many of the crises causing forced displacement across the region. When I asked my home offices or colleagues about why we were not implementing programs in urban areas, they would often shrug, saying it was complicated and political. Indeed, engaging in humanitarian programs in urban areas meant embracing the development-humanitarian divide as false, and engaging with partners we were not used to working with including urban planners and government officials. But, do the apolitical aims of humanitarian paradigms mean we can just neglect the enormous needs in cities and the necessary partnerships that accompany addressing them?

Frischkorn (2015) underlines that in many cases strict legal structures aim to discourage refugees from moving to cities. However, living outside of the constraints of the camps can open new opportunities for refugees, so many will hedge their bets regardless of these legal challenges (Rainbird, 2014; Tibaijuka, 2010). Malkki (1995), in her comparative study of camp and town refugees from Burundi in Tanzania, suggested that “town refugees” tended to experience improvements in their lives over time. Over the course of my research with urban refugees in Yaoundé, Cameroon, several of my urban refugee research participants told me “we, urban refugees, we don’t like to be seen.” This desire for invisibility is often linked to sentiments of xenophobia or legal constraints. Xenophobic attitudes of government officials or service providers and legal precarity result in reduced access to city services by urban refugees. In other words, even if they need these services, urban refugees often desire to stay under the radar of government (including local government) officials (Landau, 2014; Sommers, 2001; Turner, 2015). This invisibility of urban refugees means they often fall off the urban planning and development radar of planners in these countries.

I conducted 12 months of fieldwork over the past 3 years in Yaoundé, Cameroon with urban refugees from several different countries. Yaoundé is a growing urban center in a lower-middle income country experiencing both demographic transition and an influx of refugees and immigrants given increasing insecurity and conflict in the Central Africa region. In this way, Yaoundé is reminiscent of many other large African metropolises that are hosting growing numbers of refugees. Yet, even before the influx of refugees, Yaoundé was estimated to be growing at a rate of 5% each year, with growth primarily occurring in informal settlements throughout the city that are already struggling with adequate access to electricity, water, sanitation, and other city services (Sikod, 2001; UN Habitat, 2015).

In this context, Cameroon continues to host growing numbers of refugees (Church World Service, 2013; Mattheisen, 2012; Walbert, 2014). Similar to the situation in many countries of the world, increasing numbers of these refugees are skipping the traditional camp context, which represents, to some, less opportunity for livelihoods with the potential to increase their vulnerability. According to the most recent published refugee statistics, at the end of 2017, there were an estimated 598,570 refugees, internally displaced persons, and asylum seekers in Cameroon, of which over 22,000 are estimated to live in urban areas, especially Yaoundé (UNHCR, 2018). This is driven in part by a desire to be closer to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office with hopes of resettlement. However, most of the motivation for living in cities I heard over the course of my fieldwork with urban refugees was related to being able to carve out a space for themselves, enter into the informal sector, and feel a part of a society, rather than live within the confines of a refugee camp.

In this context, Cameroonian urban planners should ideally be working on solutions to support the country’s growing urban population. However, the proportion of the country’s budget allocated towards developing and implementing urban planning is limited, and little is being done in the parts of the city that need it most. This limited allocation is due in part to the reality that most resources in Cameroon are prioritized to combat the various crises the country is facing, including terrorism and a secessionist movement. Over the course of the three years of my fieldwork, the security crises across the country worsened, with increasing reports of state-sponsored violence against separatist regions, as well as counter-violence from vigilante groups (Human Rights Watch, 2018; International Crisis Group, 2018). These issues were only exacerbated by the October 2018 Presidential elections where the sitting president of 36 years was re-elected amidst increasing suppression of opposition party voices. Rumors, suspicion, and fear were rife among the general population. This included suspicion of foreigners, including refugees. The host population and the urban refugees living with them recognized that Cameroon had become increasingly challenging to live in as its populations dealt with the repercussions of these multiple crises, and a climate of xenophobia seemed to be increasing, with the impression that outsiders were taking resources that should instead be destined towards Cameroonians in need.

Humanitarians have traditionally focused on rural and refugee camps. With this focus lies an assumption that refugees arriving in the city have decided to come because they are less vulnerable and have the means to leave the camp context. The looming problems on the horizon as cities across the developing world continue to grow in unexpected ways as a result of forced migration questions, these simplistic conclusions (Yotebieng, 2017a, 2017b). In fragile contexts like Yaoundé, Cameroon, there is both a lack of investment in physical infrastructure as well as education and appointment of urban planners, and the efforts that do exist largely leave out consideration of issues experienced by growing refugee populations, such as how to ensure that services are still accessible and available to persons with varying legal status, cultural, or linguistic backgrounds.

Urban refugees, often living outside of humanitarian assistance zones, demonstrate the agency and creativity inherent in the adjustments that displaced persons adopt to live meaningful lives. Over the course of my research, I found that they want to be part of efforts to give back to the cities that are hosting them. I observed this through their integration into public service and volunteer work. For example, several urban refugees had become university professors, medical doctors, nurses, and teachers in both public and private institutions. Many others were involved in service and faith organizations that did environmental clean-up, outreach to vulnerable populations including prisoners and slum dwellers, and HIV prevention activities. Perhaps urban planners can learn something from the strategies of urban refugees who have found ways to integrate into their urban environments and work in collaboration with humanitarian professionals to better devise strategies to support the growing numbers of urban refugees globally in a respectful and sustainable manner. Either way, the effort towards building resilient cities will be largely fruitless if it ignores an undeniable reality; urban refugee numbers appear to be on the rise and as residents of these cities, their needs and potential contributions need to be considered. In this way, the experiences of refugees can support the broader efforts of urban planners to make cities liveable for all of the diverse populations living within them. In the context of crisis, this is critical so as not to create another disenfranchised group.

This research was supported by a Jennings Randolph Peace Scholar award from the United States Institute of Peace. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Notes on contributor

Kelly Yotebieng is a PhD candidate with the Ohio State University’s Department of Anthropology. Her research focuses on the intersections of urbanities, hope, risk, and health disparities among refugees globally. Her work has been recognized with several prestigious awards including a United States Institute of Peace Randolph Jennings Peace Scholar award and a Fulbright research award. She is fluent in French and has lived and worked since 2004 in Central Africa focusing on humanitarian and public health issues. Email: [email protected]

Immigrant Rights in Europe: Planning the Solidarity City

Henrik Lebuhn

Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany

When in summer 2018 the Italian government denied rescue vessels operated by NGOs access to their ports, it kicked off a new round of aggressive fortification of the ‘Fortress Europe’. For days, hundreds of refugees remained cooped-up on the ships enduring the brutal Mediterranean heat. When the refugees were eventually allowed to go ashore, several European cities intervened in the humanitarian crisis. Palermo, Naples and Ravenna criticized the central government in Rome and declared that they would accept a number of refugees in their cities. Barcelona, Cologne, Berlin and others followed on their heels. As of October 2018, when this text was written, civil rescue missions in the central Mediterranean remained literally blocked. NGO ships are not allowed to leave the ports. Captains and crews are being threatened with criminal charges for allegedly flawed ship registrations or human trafficking. Even many military and cargo vessels that have taken refugees in distress on board are denied access to Italian harbours. UNHCR reported that at least 700 refugees drowned in June 2018 alone.¹ But progressive cities all over Europe have started to raise their voices and protest the deadly EU-border regime.

Against this background, city planners and right to the city activists are faced with new needs and opportunities to work with local politicians and urban administrations, immigrant rights groups and refugees themselves. Similar to the sanctuary city movement in North America, innovative urban alliances are emerging and diverge away from the right-wing forces at the national and European scale. However, planning for immigrant rights in European cities comes with many challenges. Two of them seem particularly tricky: First, the local alliances and regional networks that have recently emerged under the banner of the ‘solidarity city’ include different approaches and raise various expectations, ranging from top-down migration management to bottom-up civil rights movements. Second, over the past two decades, the politics of national border control have become deeply embedded in the urban realm. As a result, seemingly benign sites and institutions such as public schools, municipal offices, neighborhood parks and district libraries have become places of control and exclusion. Hence, activists, planners and policy makers need to be acutely aware of how, for whom, and with whom they work in order to strengthen immigrant rights and urban citizenship for all, and advance the idea of the solidarity city.

Maneuvering Urban Borderlands

The European border regime is not an invention of right-wing movements – even though they seem to be more than willing to escalate the politics of exclusion – but has been constructed over years by social democratic and conservative elites alike. At its core is the Schengen Agreement, first signed in 1985. It allows for free mobility within the Schengen space and creates a shared border around it. Since the EU has militarized the borders around Europe, especially along the migration routes through the Balkan states and along the Mediterranean coasts, many critics speak of the ‘Fortress Europe’. However, the term can be misleading. Not only are the walls of the fortress heavily patrolled, but also the interior of the Schengen space has become subject to massive border enforcement - with cities being an important arena, where the re-scaling of spaces and borders, and the expansion of control and enforcement takes place (Fauser, 2017; Lebuhn, 2013).

This includes at least three elements: First, the policing of public spaces and infrastructures of mobility far away from any national border by law enforcement agencies. Train routes and train stations, interstate highways, and large public city plazas are being reclassified as strategic transit areas, as de facto internal extensions of the border. In Germany, for example, this was done through the expansion of the Border Protection Agency’s area of operation during the 1990s and its reorganization into a Federal Police Force in the early 2000s. Second, the ubiquitous collection, analysis and exchange of personal data from denizens and citizens alike. Despite privacy concerns, personal information is increasingly accessible to government scrutiny as a result of cross-border data sharing and cooperation among European agencies. Third, many countries have introduced laws that require public agencies and private entities to report directly to immigration authorities.

The third measure probably has the most immediate effect on cities, since it strategically downscales the logic of the border to the local level. In Italy, for example, the bosso fini law from 2002 and the more recent pacchetto sicurezza (security package) from 2008 incorporates the housing market into the sphere of migration management. Italian landlords are now facing possible prosecution and even up to three years in prison, if they fail to actively check on their tenants’ legal status and rent an apartment to someone without valid immigration papers. In 2014, the UK passed a similar law.² In the UK, landlords now “have a responsibility to restrict illegal immigrants accessing the private rented sector”. The government even released a brochure entitled “Landlord‘s guide to checking immigration documents.” The result is not only a tighter monitoring of immigrants’ status, but straightforward discrimination in the housing market. Many landlords are unsure about how to handle legal issues, or simply try to avoid additional bureaucracy. Hence, they now prefer national citizens over immigrants when it comes to finding tenants. The Immigration Act also bars undocumented immigrants from opening bank accounts and from accessing numerous other services including the National Health Service (NHS). In Germany, a similar piece of legislation makes it obligatory for all public agencies to report migrants to border authorities in case they coincidentally become aware of an immigration status violation. This makes it impossible for undocumented migrants, and migrants who are unsure about their status, to access public services or resources; it turns cities, neighborhoods and public institutions quite literally into urban borderlands.

Activist planners and progressive policy makers have to be aware of this European trend to re-scale and expand the border into all niches of everyday life. Major challenges consist in finding ways to restrict data collection and data sharing, to bar law enforcement agencies from scrutinizing immigration status in public spaces, and to democratize access to public goods, services and resources at the local level.

Building Alliances for a Solidarity City

Progressive cities all over Europe have started to protest the EU-border regime in the Mediterranean. But the urban initiatives are heterogeneous and not all of them necessarily connect the dots between the humanitarian crisis in the periphery of the EU and the expansion of borders and control inside Europe (Kron & Lebuhn, 2018). Many cities that are now officially welcoming refugees are part of the ‘Solidarity Cities’ Network.³ It was founded in 2016 by a number of European city governments and argues for a more efficient management of the so-called ‘refugee crisis’. Crucially, the Solidarity Cities Network addresses the EU-Commission and demands that those cities who have the greatest numbers of refugees should receive extra EU-funding for additional social infrastructure.

At the same time, urban activists in Berlin, Bern, Cologne, Zurich and many other large and small cities in Europe are building alliances under the - almost identical - banner of ‘Solidarity City’.⁴ Solidarity City initiatives bring together a kaleidoscope of groups including self-organized refugees, immigrant rights groups, citizens’ welcome initiatives, various churches, activist scholars and right to the city networks. Similar to the progressive city governments mentioned above, they welcome refugees in their cities, demand the strengthening of social infrastructure and protest deportations. But they also target the means of control and exclusion in urban everyday life and argue for a fundamental democratization of the city. An important conceptual and practical reference is the North American sanctuary city movement, which aims at disconnecting local politics from immigration and border policies, and experiments with innovations like City IDs – for example the IDNYC in New York⁵ - in order to recognize and include all urban residents regardless of national origin or immigration status.

Where activist alliances and progressive city governments manage to find common grounds, however confrontational and limited in scope this may be, the results can be astonishing. In Berlin, for example, a new and anonymous health fund will give undocumented migrants safe access to regular medical services. Starting in Fall 2018, the city will allocate 1.5 million Euro per year to pay for medical treatment not covered by the strictly regulated national health insurance system. Patients without proper documentation will not have to reveal their identity or immigration status and are channeled into the medical system through an independent NGO. Immigrant rights groups had lobbied for this policy for years, but were frequently dismissed by Berlin’s conservative state secretary. After a coalition of Socialists, Social Democrats and the Green Party was voted into office in 2016, the idea of an anonymous health fund was discussed at a Round Table that included local government officials, the city administration and immigrant rights activists. Eventually, the policy was developed and implemented within less than two years – heavily relying on the expertise that activist doctors who had been treating undocumented migrants in a legal limbo brought to the table.

Acting Together on Common Grounds

The current need to develop innovative urban integration policies in areas like health care, housing, mobility and education opens up new opportunities for planners and activists. If we want to build progressive and inclusive alliances that become politically relevant and produce ‘good policies’, it is crucial to know the different actors involved, understand their interests, potentials and constraints. But most importantly, the Solidarity City should not be misunderstood as a project that ‘we’ pursue for ‘the refugees’. Rather than emphasizing the (presumed or arbitrary) difference in legal status, nationality or cultural identity, this movement begins with the idea that urbanites share vital interests and can act together no matter where they come from. After decades of neoliberalization and being faced with growing right-wing movements all over Europe, building the Solidarity City means strengthening urban citizenship, social justice and the right to have rights for all.

Notes on contributor

Henrik Lebuhn is assistant professor for urban and regional sociology at Humboldt University Berlin, and KTH and TU Vienna joint visiting professor in urban studies 2019 at the University of Technology in Vienna. His research interests include urban politics in comparative perspective, migration and border regimes, urban citizenship, participatory politics and urban social movements. Email: [email protected]

Propertied Liberalism in a Borderland City¹

Magie M. Ramírez

Stanford University, Oakland, CA, USA

In late February 2018 in Oakland, California, mayor Libby Schaaf posted a press release on Twitter warning of an imminent immigration raid in the San Francisco Bay Area. The statement read, “My priority is for the well-being and safety of all residents – particularly the most vulnerable – and I know that Oakland is safer when we share information, encourage community awareness, and care for our neighbors”. Schaaf stated that she was exposing the raid not to cause panic, but to protect residents, and sure enough, a massive immigration sweep occurred that same weekend, with over 200 people being detained over a two-day period.

On a national scale, Schaaf’s actions were seen as a rebellious affront to the Trump regime, a progressive attempt to intervene in the federal government’s efforts to override the sanctuary status of cities like Oakland. The press flocked to report on the mayor’s actions, and by the end of the week Schaaf was being interviewed by national media as she was being lambasted by Trump, who called her a “disgrace,” and Attorney General Sessions, who stated “how dare you needlessly endanger the lives of our law enforcement officers to promote a radical open borders agenda”.

In Oakland itself, Schaaf’s actions were not seen as being quite as valiant as they were on a national level. Those of us who know Libby Schaaf’s politics and live in the day-to-day of her administration saw this public display of rebellion for what it was: a political stunt in an election year when Schaaf’s mayoral position was at stake. Schaaf’s Twitter charade was particularly deceptive in the way that she used the vulnerability of Oakland’s undocumented community for her own political performance, while her administration continually neglected those most vulnerable in Oakland’s current housing crisis: the undocumented and un-housed communities. While Sessions may have interpreted Schaaf’s actions as representative of a “radical borders agenda”, the bordering practices that are authorized by the City of Oakland under Schaaf’s leadership are reflective of a notion of propertied liberalism that upholds white supremacist notions of property.

Immigration raids are a clear extension of the colonial U.S.-Mexico border into the city space of Oakland, some 500 miles north of the physical border itself, and yet, as I argue elsewhere (Ramírez, Forthcoming), urban bordering practices do not solely affect undocumented peoples or peoples who are racialized in relation to illegality (DeGenova 2004; Hiemstra, 2010). As Gilmartin and Wood assert, “borders serve to demarcate the boundaries of state territory and communicate who is included and excluded…bordering practices produce a discourse of othering that reinforces a hierarchy of mobility” (2018, p. 12). I argue that the bordering practices that occur in urban space extend beyond that of the actual borderlands, in which undocumented peoples are spatially policed by the increasingly militarized colonial boundaries between nation states (Jones, 2016). I extend this consideration of bordering practices to consider how gentrifying cities such as Oakland are marked by structural and everyday forms of racial capitalist extraction, that uphold white supremacist notions of property, and police the presence of surplus labor in urban space (Bonds, 2018). Utilizing Gloria Anzaldúa’s (1987) theorizations of the borderlands, I consider how a borderlands analytic conceptualizes the policing of Black, Latinx, Indigenous and other racialized peoples in relation to urban processes of dispossession such as eviction, foreclosure and gentrification. The city’s most vulnerable are subjected to the violent bordering practices of racial capitalist extraction, reinforcing the ‘hierarchy of mobility’ as residents of color are displaced, and the property rights of the white supremacist capitalist class are upheld as borders are spatially enforced in city space.

Returning to the actions of Libby Schaaf, while her press release may well have kept people from being detained and deported by federal immigration enforcement, in many ways the economic and spatial conditions for undocumented peoples, ‘the most vulnerable’ as she put it, have worsened since she took office in 2014. This is due in large part to the exponential increase in housing costs in the San Francisco Bay Area,² and the glaring lack of policies implemented to protect the city’s most vulnerable from the sharp increase in inequality in the region. The tech economy of the Bay Area has largely driven this transition, in which tech companies have worked hand in hand with specialized investment banks to invest capital in the industry, over $23 billion in the San Francisco-Oakland region in 2016 alone.³ Capital has also been funnelled into the local housing market, with high-income workers driving up housing prices at exponential rates, creating a housing bubble that has provoked mass out-migration of low-income communities and people of color from the Bay Area (Stehlin, 2015).

Amidst this housing crisis, Oakland’s undocumented and unhoused communities are those that feel its affects most severely. According to a 2018 study put out by the Urban Displacement Project at UC Berkeley, between 2000 and 2015, Oakland neighborhoods where residents are primarily low-income people of color experienced “significant and uneven shifts” indicative of displacement, with residents moving due to “eviction, foreclosure, large rent increases, uninhabitable housing conditions or other reasons that are beyond a household’s control” (2018, p. 2). Undocumented Oakland residents are also particularly susceptible to unstable living conditions and are more vulnerable to “displacement through harassment and inadequate maintenance, due to fear of retaliation for reporting violations” (2018, p. 5). As the report explains, “involuntary moves have adverse and destabilizing effects across many aspects of everyday life”, and while many Oakland residents facing displacement have migrated to less expensive cities on the fringes of the Bay Area, others have found themselves without shelter (2018, p. 2). The housing crisis has only grown more severe over the past few years; Alameda County’s Point-in-Time Count of unhoused peoples tallied 2,761 unhoused individuals living in Oakland in early 2017, up from the 2015 count of 2,191 unhoused peoples. Of those unhoused in 2017, over 68% percent were found to be Black, which is disproportionately high for a city with a Black population of around 30%.⁴ This data tells us that the most vulnerable in Oakland’s housing crisis are most likely to be undocumented and/or Black.

Libby Schaaf has been critiqued by many community groups for not only her lack of rapid action to address Oakland’s escalating housing crisis, but also for her administration’s heavy-handed approach to squelching autonomous encampments of unhoused peoples on public land. In early 2017 a group of unhoused and housed activists of color founded a site called The Village, a semi-permanent housing encampment that took over a “neglected public plot of land known as Grove Shafter Park” in West Oakland as an action on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, January 21st, 2017. The Village organizers built small insulated homes, a hot shower, a portable kitchen, a healing clinic, and a free shop with clothing, toiletries, and books to serve unhoused peoples in Oakland. The intention behind The Village is:

We aimed to demonstrate through our visionary encampment that housing is a human right. We also hoped to show that, in the face of a city government that fails to meet the needs of its people, it is possible for the community to unite to serve those on the street in a dignified and humane manner. We challenged the inaction of the City of Oakland, saying that the City has proven not been to be loyal to its long-term families displaced in this city-initiated housing crisis. We broadcasted that the City has not implemented sufficient efforts to address homelessness, such as building permanent public housing, starting with housing for those who have been displaced by the housing crisis, particularly Black and Brown people.⁵

After having more than 130 people sign up to have small homes built for them, and 16 elderly residents housed in the four small houses built, the Village was razed on 2 February 2017 by 80 police officers in riot gear and a bulldozer under orders from Schaaf’s administration, only three weeks after its emergence.

The Village has since rebuilt a community in East Oakland along East 12^th street and 23^rd Avenue, and while this encampment was allowed by the city council under the re-instatement of the Shelter Crisis Declaration, the city’s eviction of other encampments near Lake Merritt has caused over-crowding of the East 12^th Street site. On 11 September 2018 there was a fire in the Village which destroyed 37 shelters, which made up about one-third of the camp. Another fire at the Village on 2 November 2018, just days before I wrote these words, destroyed an additional 15 shelters. As Village organizer Needa Bee expressed, the city is no longer working with the Village to identify additional sites to build encampments to keep from the dangerous overcrowding that causes hazardous conditions. Indeed, on 7 November 2018, the day after Libby Schaaf’s successful re-election as mayor, Schaaf’s administration posted eviction notices on encampments across Oakland.

Schaaf’s treatment of those most affected by the violence of the housing crisis offers examples of how borders are enforced in Oakland. The propertied liberalism behind Schaaf’s actions enables her to disrupt the federal bordering practices that she has positioned herself in opposition to, while remaining a staunch defender of the local bordering practices that protect white supremacist property rights in Oakland. A borderlands analytic of Oakland requires an attention to the ways in which the borderland state of the city is experienced in an embodied sense. By this I mean, what are the day to day lived experiences of those undergoing policing, displacement, and other forms of racialized dispossession? In the case of the unhoused residents of the Village, their struggle to create a safe and autonomous community in the city reveals the local politics at play in the borderland city, and how white supremacist property rights are upheld above human rights for affordable, safe housing.

An analysis of the city as borderland extends the violence of the border where, as Anzaldúa (1987) writes, the Third World grates against the First and bleeds, to consider how these violent frictions are produced in city spaces through the increasing inequalities of the housing crisis. Schaaf’s administration upholds and enforces these borders by defending the property rights of the elite as inequality surges, while continually denying the right of the unhoused community to build safe and autonomous living spaces. While Libby Schaaf’s propertied liberal publicity stunt may have angered the federal government by cautioning the undocumented community, her local politics have done far greater damage to the ‘vulnerable’ she sought to protect: the undocumented, low-income, Black, Brown and unhoused communities of Oakland. A borderlands analytic expands conceptions of how borders are enforced in urban space, who is subject to the violent policing of the borderlands, and connects the defense of the nation-state at the border to how property rights are upheld and defended in urban space. When theorizing bordering practices in city space, an attention to not only the nuance of scale, but an expanded consideration of what constitutes bordering practices reveals how diverse mechanisms of racial capitalist extraction function in tandem to displace, police and incarcerate surplus labor so as to serve white supremacist property rights.

Notes on contributor

Margaret Marietta Ramírez is a Xicana feminist urban geographer, whose work explores the interstices of racial capitalism, urban space, and art-activism in cities across the Americas. She is currently based at Stanford University as a Creative Cities Fellow and engaged in anti-colonial and anti-displacement work in Oakland, CA. Email: [email protected]

Displacement, Refuge and Urbanisation: From Refugee Camps to Ecovillages

Pedro Figueiredo Neto

Instituto de Ciências Sociais, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

In this piece I reflect upon the link between displacement, refuge and urbanisation. I will start with a broader reflection on refuge today and its urbanising force by establishing some links between refugee camps and another quite different form of seeking refuge – gated communities, but especially its sublimated form, ecovillages. This sounds an unlikely comparison. However, when we think of the accepted definitions of refuge - as a sanctuary, a safe haven, a place that provides shelter or protection from danger or distress, or something to which one has recourse in difficulty – the links start to become clearer. Then, I will summarize the urbanisation process in and around the Meheba Refugee Camp (Zambia), which has been the nodal point of my research on borders, refuge and camps for the past seven years. The scenario in and around the camp with the springing up of a range of other kinds of settlement patterns that are also about seeking refuge, but for the wealthy elite and for what is left of wildlife, is, I argue, paradigmatic of a broader trend in which the question of refuge differentially drives urbanisation processes and territorial organisation.

Be they due to environmental degradation, ‘natural’ catastrophes, war, violence, economic hardships, or rather mega-projects of development, urban renewals and real estate speculation – perhaps even an explosive combo of these – it is clear that a myriad of inter-related factors and processes are at the core of growing population displacements. As conflicts due to both socioeconomic and ecological crises continue, the number of people seeking refuge will grow in the foreseeable future.

However, refuge in such volatile times can also be seen as an ambiguous concept. In fact, a Google search of the term ‘refuge’ opens a Pandora box. In the first 60 entries that result, only a tiny fraction relates to de jure refugees (as recognized by international legal bodies), to wildlife sanctuaries (nature reserves and conservation areas), or to the protection of specific groups such as young people and women (normally from domestic violence). Most links are to hotels and apartment rentals for tourists, golf clubs, spas, restaurants and cafés, clothing, restrooms, and religious sects. Refuge might in this way also be seen as a complex and Janus-faced phenomenon.

Even if apparently unrelated, the similarities and contrasts between some possible spatial expressions of refuge are striking and also disturbing. On the one hand there are those who are displaced due to the kinds of social, economic, ecological or political crises described above, and end up in camp-like structures. On the other, there are those who, in an effort to escape – urban, violence and/or more or less tangible fears and concerns such as pollution, stress and unhealthy lifestyles, deliberately seek refuge in spaces like gated communities, alphavilles, and especially, ecovillages. Though diametrically opposed at first sight, refugee camps and ecovillages are a case in point. Both became widespread after WWII when a humanitarian-humanistic agenda was emerging, following awareness about the plight of displaced and disenfranchised populations and in view of a much sought-after alternative world order. Ever since, both spatial forms mushroomed virtually everywhere in a more or less standardized fashion. Refugee camps, usually fostered by the UNHCR, and ecovillages, usually fostered by the Global Ecovillage Network, follow pre-defined socioeconomic and spatial design principles like any reproducible device. Indeed, design guidelines and handbooks for the deployment of a refugee camp or an ecovillage are part of the resources made available by both organisations and whose overall mission statements curiously meet at times in terms of building bridges of hope and international solidarity, or by promoting human rights, conflict resolution and reconciliation. Arguably, these serve different purposes and populations, and apparently hold distinct political views.

Being often described as extraterritorial and exceptional spaces, governed by international bodies and seemingly detached from a given national Cartesian continuity, refugee camps abide by specific laws and strict rules. In a similar vein, though inserted in the regular framework of the nation-state, ecovillages aim at finding a different socioeconomic and political order to follow their own set of rigid and compulsory rules (in terms of dietary restrictions, stasis, daily rituals, communitarian work, schedules).

It is therefore understandable why refugee camps and ecovillages are deliberately located far from the political and urban centres.

Moreover, both constitute cosmopolitan contexts, hosting populations seeking refuge for substantially different reasons – but refuge nonetheless. If refugees have been portrayed as mere biological life (Agamben 1998), mere human beings facing life with the minimum required for their existence, in ecovillages individuals often enact a discourse of frugality, biological connection with ‘nature’ embodying a sort of contemporary and cosmopolitan version of the noble savage. With both extremes seemingly touching each other/converging, the spectrum goes full circle. Yet, unlike so many refugees, people in ecovillages can do so precisely because of being fully enabled and free to shift the course of their lives.

Last but not least, sharing a set of unusual precepts, at the spatial, economic and political level, refugee camps and ecovillages are living experiments for an unknown future. A future in which it is expected that a growing number of populations will seek refuge, and in which human security - if not merely security - will become more evident in terms of the on-going urbanisation trends. On the one hand the urban world of the undesirable populations stored and controlled in camps. On the other, the privileged, secluded in urbanised sanctuaries. It is with this in mind that I move to a more concrete case study.

The Meheba Refugee Camp, located in the North-Western Province of Zambia was created in 1971 as a response to the influx of refugees fleeing from the Angolan conflict. Meheba was set up as an agricultural settlement in an inhospitable and scarcely populated territory and has remained well beyond the emergency that existed at the period it was established. Over time, the camp has undergone several transformations, namely with regard to its physical and functional outline, but also in terms of its demographics - by hosting a growing number of refugees from different regional conflicts. The camp now covers an area of more than 700km2 and is still expanding.

Established first as a humanitarian response, and more recently with developmental policies and extractive operations taking place in the camp’s surroundings, these inter-related drivers have caused a gradual process of urbanisation of Meheba and the region in which it is located. These drivers, each with its own pace and manner, presented an answer to individuals seeking another – better – life, and the preservation of life itself, and catalysed a great influx of migration to the area. The creation of Meheba and its related humanitarian activities led to the construction and improvement of roads (connecting the region to the rest of the country and to the Angolan border from where the first refugees arrived), to the installation of water pumps, and the building of schools, clinics, marketplaces, police premises and other facilities within the camp. In order to attain self-sufficiency, as desired by the UNHCR, displaced populations gradually transformed forests and scrublands into farming fields. In the 1990s Meheba was the centre of a new regional economic dynamism, boosted by international aid, agriculture, and also by local consumers and other producers that emerged in the process. Indeed, the humanitarian infrastructure attracted individuals other than the refugees themselves and those required for the camp’s management and function. For many of the local rural people that flocked to or established in the vicinity of Meheba, such facilities (namely in terms of health care and schooling), training programmes and economic opportunities were virtually non-existent before the establishment of the camp.

Interestingly, the process of urbanisation represented more than a physical and structural phenomenon. It also became an anthropological feature. A great number of repatriated Angolans, once rural refugees, preferred to settle in urban areas upon their return to Angola. Certainly other sociopolitical and economic aspects have influenced their decision, but fieldwork accounts show that the time spent in Meheba contributed to a certain urbanisation des esprits.

Today, the refugee population at Meheba is made up of people from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi and Somalia, former refugees from Angola and Rwanda, and local Zambian populations who all live side by side. However, there are plans to separate part of the humanitarian infrastructure (the oldest and more consolidated areas, closer to the main national road) and convert it into a new town. At the same time, recent development efforts set in place by the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) aim to hugely expand Meheba’s agricultural production capacity by utilising more of the forested lands on the periphery of the camp.

Beyond the displaced population of refugees, there are also mining workers, jobseekers and their families who have contributed to this continuous process of urbanisation. This includes Lumwana Mine and the town of Manyama, contiguous to Meheba, and the city of Solwezi, contiguous to Kasenshi Mine. Enclosed compounds have been built for some of the mining workers and, occupying the interstices, widespread shantytowns have also become part of the built landscape. Entrepreneurs and the more wealthy local individuals secluded themselves behind walls and barbed wire, also hiring private security companies. For the so-called expat community, running extractive mining operations sprouted highly fenced resorts and lodges and gated communities. Curiously enough, many of these spaces also include in their premises organic farming areas and private game parks (gathering some of the pre-existing fauna in the extraction sites) even whilst preventing harmless native animals from roaming freely around the golf courses. Expatriate highly securitized spaces respond to more or less tangible fears and seek to hinder any sort of ‘contamination’ from a dreadful and unknown outside. For many, this twisted version of an idyllic, naturalised wild ‘Africa’ represents their sole refuge. Arguably, Meheba and its surroundings condense a broader trend on what concerns current forms of uneven urbanisation and its key concerns. Regardless of any sort of moral legitimacy, and despite the different agents or catalysts, the fact is that one can detect a quest for refuge at the heart of these endeavours.

Many human settlements have been created and/or enlarged as a result of populations seeking refuge. Indeed, the link between displacement and urbanisation processes is indisputable. Inevitably, population displacement, forced or otherwise, leads to emplacement – or else, disappearance. Refuge is a basic need and a scarce one for humans and non-humans alike. However, as I tried to portray, the quest for refuge becomes increasingly present at the level of discourses and practices – implicitly or otherwise - arising even from the most unlikely places.

By considering that refuge is one of the central sources of today’s – differential - urbanisation processes, refuge might constitute a possible analysing and operative lens that deserves attention.

Notes on contributor

Pedro Figueiredo Neto is an architect, anthropologist and filmmaker, currently postdoctoral research fellow at the Instituto de Ciências Sociais, University of Lisbon, Portugal. His research focuses on events of forced displacement, borders, refuge, urbanization and the proliferation of spaces of exception, mainly in the Southern African context. Email: [email protected]

From Capitalist-Urbanisation as Politics-of-Refuge to Planning as Planetary-Politics-of-Care

Simone Tulumello

Instituto de Ciências Sociais, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

In the final episode of the sixth season (July 2018) of Orange Is The New Black, a TV series depicting life in a US women-only federal prison, one of the main characters, Blanca, is handed over to ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) at the moment of her release. At the same time, at an elegant party nearby, the predatory company responsible for the management of the prison announces it will expand its operations to immigration detention. Far beyond a mere anticipation of future developments of a popular show, this episode is indicative of how migration and its discontents have become a central crux of popular imagination – and commercial entertainment – in Trump’s America, and beyond it.

Dedicating a Planning Theory and Practice Interface to spaces of refuge, migration and border enforcement is a very timely decision. The six pieces collected here set out a truly global picture of the nexus of human mobility, politics of citizenship and planning amid turbulent processes of capitalist urbanisation or, to put it with Neil Brenner and Christian Schmid’s contribution, of ‘planetary’ urbanisation (Brenner and Schmid 2012). I particularly appreciate the way the contributors in this Interface are able to open up the ‘immigration and refugee crisis’. For one, the authors indirectly expose the pathetic cry of Western politicians and media for the tiny fraction of the world refugee population their wealthy countries have to deal with. More importantly, the six pieces also provide a clear picture of the real ‘crises’ at stake: crises of housing, urban development, dispossession and extraction, imperialist war – in short, the latest and most hideous crisis of capitalism-as-urbanisation (cf. Rossi, 2017).

The six pieces contribute to two main threads: Synne Bergby, Romola Sanyal and Kelly Yotebieng discuss the urbanisation of refuge in the Global South; M.M. Ramírez and Henrik Lebuhn focus on the multiplication of borders in the West and the contradictions of local ‘liberal/progressive’ politics/policies. In my view, Pedro Neto’s piece constitutes a sort of rejoinder to the other contributions. The contribution provocatively compares emerging spaces of refuge/seclusion for the displaced and for the wealthy,¹ showing the centrality of neo-extractionism in this process. On the one hand, Pedro’s suggestion that spaces of refuge and enclosure constitute a disturbing prototype for our urbanised future, remind and update Davis (1991) classical reflections on Los Angeles. Moreover, it opens up a possible theorisation of what we may call ‘capitalist-urbanisation-as-politics-of-refuge’, a concept that may help us chart the links between the urbanisation of refuge in the Global South, on the one hand, and racial banishment in liberal democracies and Western cities, on the other.

If one takes this opening seriously, and uses it to rethink the various contributions to this Interface, a number of theoretical points emerge. First, at the intersection of planetary urbanisation with the global politics of human mobility, the very West/South distinction seems to fade out. If decades of post-colonial thinking have been crucial in opening up fields of vision that urban and social theory have long marginalised, it seems to me that it is time to reconsider the idea of geographically stable ‘abyssal lines’, in the words of de Sousa Santos (2007). In a way, Jean and John Comaroff’s call for theorising from the south (2012) – that is, looking at the Global South as the new forefront of socio-economic transformation – has been an important step in this direction. And yet, the multiplication of borders depicted by this Interface shows that there are as many ‘souths’ and ‘wests’ as there are walls, lines of segregation, and racialised and class cleavages. In my opinion, a truly global and post-colonial thinking should aim at unravelling the relational characteristics that adjoin and separate places and social groups at many scales, from the local to the global.

Second, and directly stemming from the former, the very multi-scalar nature of capitalist-urbanisation-as-politics-of-refuge puts into crisis many long-held understandings of vertical relations. In particular, I am increasingly concerned by the tendency of many on the left² to retreat to, indeed to seek ‘refuge’ in the ‘local’ in the face of increasingly despairing global and national politics. This is the case, for instance, in the very dichotomy between xenophobic nations versus progressive cities suggested by Henrik Lebuhn and problematised by M.M. Ramírez. This dichotomy downplays the role of uneven developmental relations between ‘progressive’ cities and ‘regressive’ rural/suburban areas in creating the roots of the current xenophobic backlashes (Rodríguez-Pose, 2018). Moreover, I wonder what is the ‘local’, as ICE waits outside city jails for deporting people detained for minor misdemeanours (see Armenta, 2017); as the calls of Italian mayors for opening their ports to rescue boats have no practical effect whatsoever; and as social movements increasingly understand that they need to become transnational if they are to make any change.³

Third, the contrast between Synne Bergby’s call for the need to intersect humanitarian and planning perspectives, and Romola Sanyal’s concern about the emergence of the ‘humanitarian city’ seems to me to be symptomatic of the present troubles for defining transformative politics and the role of planning therein. Didier Fassin’s account of the tensions and contradictions of the ‘humanitarian reason’ (2010) perfectly fits here, reminding us of the way humanitarian logics can – and indeed do – legitimise structurally unjust systems. This seems to me to resonate with the contradictions and tensions of the current progressive/liberal hegemony in normatively-oriented planning theory/research/practice. As climate change hits with the multiplication of environmental crises – and their effects in terms of forced mobility –, planning seems to be above all pragmatically concerned with increasing resilience, indeed adapting to the changes to come. In so doing, we may indeed provide some relief, but possibly at the same time as legitimising and stabilising those very forces that push our urbanised/urbanising planet toward crisis and catastrophe. Indeed, if we accept that capitalist-urbanisation-as-politics-of-refuge is to shape our common future, planning and humanitarian logics will have to increasingly converge as urban development and displacement/refuge will.

But maybe there is also the space to challenge the seemingly inevitable path toward socio-environmental crisis and authoritarianism actually-existing-capitalism is pushing us toward; and to envision an urbanisation-as-politics-of-care for our shared future, be it in a post-environmental catastrophe planet (cf. Frase, 2016) or not. If we wish to do so – indeed, it is high time to do so – we should seek a radically different planning theory/research/practice. Inspirations and examples are not missing, for instance in the experience of Black reconstruction after the US Civil War, in the feminist politics of care, in the transnational networks of Poor People’s Movements and insurgent planning experiences in slums around the world. Can planning become truly abolitionist in its understanding of borders, from the national to the urban level? Can planning become normatively oriented toward the construction of a common planetary shelter? If, as this Interface suggests, these questions will increasingly become decisive for the capacity of planning to actually make a change, it seems to me that we should start exactly by abandoning the comfort of local resistance and progress, and assuming the global as the only meaningful – indeed hopeful – scale for thinking and acting, as late capitalism and neoliberalism decline and uncharted territory awaits.

Notes on contributor

Simone Tulumello is a research fellow at the University of Lisbon, Institute of Social Science and previously Fulbright Research Scholar at the University of Memphis and then Policy Fellow at the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change. Simone’s research interests lie at the border between planning research, human geography and critical urban studies: urban security and safety; fear and urban violence; housing policy; austerity and neoliberal urban policy; urban futures; Southern European and Southern US cities. Email: [email protected]

Notes

1. http://www.unhcr.org/uk/figures-at-a-glance.html.

2. See for example the One Neighborhood Approach by Care International. https://www.careevaluations.org/wp-content/uploads/201807-CAREs-One-Neighbourhood-Approach-in-Lebanon_Summary-final.pdf.

3. See CARE report as above.

1. See http://www.unhcr.org/news/briefing/2018/7/5b3f270a4/mediterranean-sea-arrivals-decline-death-rates-rise-unhcr-calls-strengthening.html (accessed 14 August 2018).

2. See http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2014/22/pdfs/ukpga_20140022_en.pdf for a complete documentation of the law (accessed 10 February 2017).

3. See https://solidaritycities.eu (accessed 9 October 2018).

4. See https://solidarity-city.eu/en/ (accessed 9 October 2018).

5. See https://www1.nyc.gov/site/idnyc/index.page (accessed 9 October 2018).

1. Here I borrow from Roy’s (2003) writings on propertied citizenship, considering how white propertied liberals support ‘progressive’ issues but continue to uphold white supremacist notions of property.

2. Oakland’s median home price rising from $309,000 in January 2012 to $738,000 as of October 2018 (Zillow, 2018), and median rental prices for a one-bedroom in Oakland rising from $1,264 in January 2011 to $2,506 as of October 2018 (Rent Jungle, 2018).

3. https://www.citylab.com/life/2017/10/venture-capital-concentration/539775/.

4. As the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project (2016) has found, it is Oakland’s low-income Black population that has suffered the highest rates of displacement in the city since the year 2000, the disproportionate number of unhoused Black peoples make sense.

5. Facebook page, The Village in Oakland. Accessed 11/6/18: https://www.facebook.com/pg/The-Village-in-Oakland-feedthepeople-731643677003021/about/?ref=page_internal.

1. I am particularly emphatic to this point as I have come across this paradox when exploring spaces and exclusion and gated communities in my research on the urban spaces of fear in Southern Europe (Tulumello, 2017, ch. 4).

2. To be honest, I am sceptical of the possibility to consider liberal and progressive perspectives as ‘left’ to begin with.

3. The latter reflection is inspired by Ananya Roy’s works on Poor People’s Movements, and a conversation we had in 2018 and forthcoming as interview (Tulumello & Pozzi, forthcoming).