The Global Governed? Refugees as Providers of Protection and Assistance

The global governance of forced migration is generally used to refer to the response of governments and international organisations to displaced populations; rarely do we think of refugees as the providers of protection and assistance. Yet understanding the ways in which refugees themselves engage in forms of refugee-led social protection ways in which offers an opportunity to fundamentally reconceive support for the displaced in more sustainable and empowering ways.

The dominant response to refugees in the developing world is to provide almost indefinite humanitarian assistance in camps in ways that often lead to dependency, and limited assistance in urban areas. Yet alongside these 'top-down' assistance models, refugees often mobilise to help themselves. They are not simply passive victims but often actively engage in the provision of protection and assistance within their own communities. In Uganda, for instance, YARID (Young African for Integral Development) and the Bondeko Refugee Livelihoods Centre are refugee-led community organisations providing a range of services such as trauma counselling, livelihood training, language instruction, and microfinance. However, little is known of the ways that refugee communities mobilise for social protection, nor how refugee-led social protection initiatives benefit the social welfare and economic development of the host countries they reside in.

This proposal aims to carry out inter-disciplinary, mixed methods, comparative research in Kenya and Uganda (across urban and rural areas) on the diverse and neglected ways in which refugees engage in the provision of protection and assistance to their own communities. It seeks to identify the diverse forms, scope, and functions of refugee-led social protection (e.g. refugee community organisations, informal insurance such as Somali aiutos, and religious-based giving such as zaqat); to understand and explain the historical emergence and evolution of particular forms of refugee-led social protection; and to test the degree to which refugees' sources of security are derived from external assistance or from their own community-led initiatives. It also seeks to build the capacity of refugees themselves through training refugees as peer researchers and enumerators.

This research will be the first attempt to systematically and comparatively explore the role of refugee-led social protection in developing countries. It will integrate social science with historical methods in order to build policy-relevant and academically pioneering insights into the capacities of refugees themselves to offer an alternative to 'top-down' humanitarian assistance in contexts of protracted displacement. Our impact will occur in part through academic articles, stakeholder workshops, webinars for practitioners, and a podcast series and public seminar series for the public at the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford. By identifying ways in which international development assistance can better complement the initiative of refugees themselves, we aim to contribute directly improving the welfare of both refugees and host communities in East Africa and around the world.

This project ultimately aims to improve development outcomes for refugees and host communities, particularly in Kenya and Uganda. It will impact a broad range of beneficiaries: host country governments, policymakers in national governments and international organisations, refugees themselves, and the wider public.

Host country governments and international organisations
The primary impact of this project on refugee-hosting developing countries; Uganda and Kenya in particular. Our research will offer insights into how both governments (as well as other host governments around the world) can empower refugees to help themselves, and thus alleviate the perceived burden on host communities. We will share research outputs with national and local governments, as well as policymakers in international and non-governmental organisations (we have partnerships with UNHCR, IRC and the Jesuit Refugee Service). We will do this by convening policy workshops and presenting our findings at stakeholder meetings and in relevant forums in Nairobi, Kampala, Geneva, and New York. We will additionally host two webinars aimed at practitioners, focused on how to engage with refugee-led social protection mechanisms. In our past research in Uganda, a representative of the Office of the Prime Minister wrote: "The research conducted by Oxford on the refugees' economic activities has made a significant contribution to the development of the OPM and joint self-reliance programme in Uganda...The analysis and data provided...have become a significant underpinning of our policy making in the area of refugees' self-reliance and have also enabled us to conduct evidence-based policy-making".

Refugees
Refugees themselves are a key group of beneficiaries for this project, as they will benefit the most from our aim to shift perceptions of refugees as 'burdens' to 'contributors'. This project will involve and support refugees in Uganda and Kenya from the very beginning of the project. In the early stages of the project, we will conduct roundtable discussions with members of refugee-led social protection initiatives (and local host communities) to outline our proposed research and iteratively improve it. We will train refugees as peer researchers and involve refugee communities in our dissemination events, leading to capacity-building among refugee community organisations. We will produce practical evidence-based guides on refugee-led social protection, as well as assist in the development of a peer-to-peer support network for refugees involved in refugee-led social protection initiatives. We have past experience of running dissemination events with refugees in Uganda and South Africa.

Wider public
The current debate on the refugee crisis in Europe has emphasised a common conception of refugees as a 'threat' or a 'burden' to host countries' economies and communities. By investigating and highlighting the ways in which refugees contribute to helping themselves and their communities, we will seek to reframe public narratives relating to refugees. This will be achieved through using the media (our recent research in Uganda has been covered by the Guardian, the Economist, the Independent, the BBC, and CNN), a special supplement of our own in-house periodical 'Forced Migration Review', a series of policy briefs, and an 8-week public seminar series. We will also create a 5-series podcast on our research topic, to share refugee voices, to be hosted on the University of Oxford's award-winning iTunesU channel.