Precarious labor and migrant flows in the shadow of humanitarian urbanism.
We know that complex emergencies bring influxes of skilled professionals and foreign currency to areas in crisis. But less well documented are the ways in which these efforts restructure imaginaries of risk and opportunity for migrants within the region. Together, these coupled but distinct flows of people radically reshape the urban fabric, in terms of both the built environment and the social relations of the city. Characterized by rapid and uneven growth, humanitarian boomtowns are unique and contradictory spaces. These cities built on aid are diverse and fragmented urban spaces—drawing together hyper-mobile global professionals, entrepreneurial opportunists, regional migrants, and local communities (often in acute distress). So what are we to make of the contradictions of proximity, interaction and exclusion that characterize humanitarian urbanism?
The research documents and analyzes the critical, but often unrecognized, social and economic roles played by regional migrants in cities in conflict, and explores the imaginaries of both risk and opportunity that drive this migration process.
Interested in learning more? Here are links to my published work on this topic:
- Other paths, other destinations: toward a manifold reading of mobility across borders.
- Uncertain futures and everyday hedging in a humanitarian city
- The Corridor: How the East African Corridor Spanning the Indian Ocean from Somalia to South Africa is being Radically reshaped [pdf].