Spurred by wars and a drive to urbanize, Africans are crossing borders and overwhelming cities in unprecedented numbers. At the center of this development are young refugee men who migrate to urban areas. This volume, the first full-length study of urban refugees in hiding, tells the story of Burundi refugee youth who escaped from remote camps in central Tanzania to work in one of Africa's fastest-growing cities, Dar es Salaam. This steamy, rundown capital would seem uninviting to many, particularly for second generation survivors of genocide whose lives are ridden with fear. But these young men nonetheless join migrants in "Bongoland" (meaning "Brainland") where, as the nickname suggests, only the shrewdest and most cunning can survive. Mixing lyrics from church hymns and street vernacular, descriptions of city living in cartoons and popular novels and original photographs, this book creates an ethnographic portrait of urban refugee life, where survival strategies spring from street smarts and pastors' warnings of urban sin, and mastery of popular youth culture is highly valued. Pentecostalism and a secret rift within the seemingly impenetrable Hutu ethnic group are part of the rich texture of this contemporary African story. Written in accessible prose, this book offers an intimate picture of how Africa is changing and how refugee youth are helping to drive that change.

This book is the first study of displaced Mozambican men, women, and children—from refugees and asylum seekers to liberation leaders, students, and migrant workers—during the war for independence from Portugal (1964-1974). Throughout the war, two distinct communities of Mozambicans emerged. On the one hand, a minority of students and liberation leaders, congregated in Dar es Salaam and, on the other, the majority of Mozambicans, who settled in refugee camps. Joanna T. Tague attends to both these groups by juxtaposing the experiences of the two. Using a diverse range of archival materials and oral interviews, she argues that during decolonization the displaced acted as their own agents and strategized their own trajectories in exile. Compelling scholars to reconsider how governments, aid agencies, local citizens, and the displaced themselves defined, debated, and reconstituted what it meant to be a "refugee" in Africa during decolonization, this book ultimately shows how the state of being a refugee could be generative and productive, rather than simply debilitating and destructive. Displaced Mozambicans in Postcolonial Tanzania will be invaluable for students and scholars of African and world contemporary history.

Urban refugees now account for over half the total number of refugees worldwide. Yet to date, far more research has been done on refugees living in camps and settlements set up expressly for them. This book provides crucial insights into the worldwide phenomenon of refugee flows into urban settings, repercussions for those seeking protection, and the agencies and organizations tasked to assist them. It provides a comparative exploration of refugees and asylum seekers in nine urban areas in Africa, Asia and Europe to examine issues such as status recognition, international and national actors, housing, education and integration. The book explores the relationship between refugee policies of international organisations and national governments and on the ground realities and demonstrates both the diverse of circumstances in which refugees live, and their struggle for recognition, protection and livelihoods.

Nationalism has generated violence, bloodshed, and genocide, as well as patriotic sentiments that encourage people to help fellow citizens and place public responsibilities above personal interests. This study explores the contradictory character of African nationalism as it unfolded over decades of Tanzanian history in conflicts over public policies concerning the rights of citizens, foreigners, and the nation's Asian racial minority. These policy debates reflected a history of racial oppression and foreign domination and were shaped by a quest for economic development, racial justice, and national self-reliance.

In the early morning hours of May 18, 1944 the Russian army, under orders from Stalin, deported the entire Crimean Tatar population from their historical homeland. Given only fifteen minutes to gather their belongings, they were herded into cattle cars bound for Soviet Central Asia. Although the official Soviet record was cleansed of this affair and the name of their ethnic group was erased from all records and official documents, Crimean Tatars did not assimilate with other groups or disappear. This is an ethnographic study of the negotiation of social memory and the role this had in the growth of a national repatriation movement among the Crimean Tatars. It examines the recollections of the Crimean Tatars, the techniques by which they are produced and transmitted and the formation of a remarkably uniform social memory in light of their dispersion throughout Central Asia. Through the lens of social memory, the book covers not only the deportation and life in the diaspora but the process by which the children and grandchildren of the deportees 'returned' and anchored themselves in the Crimean Penininsula, a place they had never visited.

Young people are transforming the global landscape. As the human popu­lation today is younger and more urban than ever before, prospects for achieving adulthood dwindle while urban migration soars. Devastated by genocide, hailed as a spectacular success, and critiqued for its human rights record, the Central African nation of Rwanda provides a compelling setting for grasping new challenges to the world's youth. Spotlighting failed masculinity, urban desperation, and forceful governance, Marc Sommers tells the dramatic story of young Rwandans who are “stuck,” striving against near-impossible odds to become adults. In Rwandan culture, female youth must wait, often in vain, for male youth to build a house before they can marry. Only then can male and female youth gain acceptance as adults. However, Rwanda's severe housing crisis means that most male youth are on a treadmill toward failure, unable to build their house yet having no choice but to try. What follows is too often tragic. Rural youth face a future as failed adults, while many who migrate to the capital fail to secure a stable life and turn fatalistic about contracting HIV/AIDS. Featuring insightful interviews with youth, adults, and government officials, Stuck tells the story of an ambitious, controlling government trying to gov­ern an exceptionally young and poor population in a densely populated and rapidly urbanizing country. This pioneering book sheds new light on the struggle to come of age and suggests new pathways toward the attainment of security, development, and coexistence in Africa and beyond. Published in association with the United States Institute of Peace

The Making of the Modern Refugee is a comprehensive history of global population displacement in the twentieth century. It takes a new approach to the subject, exploring its causes, consequences, and meanings. History, the author shows, provides important clues to understanding how the idea of refugees as a 'problem' embedded itself in the minds of policy-makers and the public, and poses a series of fundamental questions about the nature of enforced migration and how it has shaped society throughout the twentieth century across a broad geographical area - from Europe and the Middle East to South Asia, South-East Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Wars, revolutions, and state formation are invoked as the main causal explanations of displacement, and are considered alongside the emergence of a twentieth-century refugee regime linking governmental practices, professional expertise, and humanitarian relief efforts. This new study rests upon scholarship from several disciplines and draws extensively upon oral testimony, eye-witness accounts, and film, as well as unpublished source material in the archives of governments, international organisations, and non-governmental organisations. The Making of the Modern Refugee explores the significance that refugees attached to the places they left behind, to their journeys, and to their destinations - in short, how refugees helped to interpret and fashion their own history.