Paper short abstract:

This paper draws on research with refugee communities in Addis Ababa, examining the contribution of these ‘strangers in the city’ to the host economy. The paper argues that impact of such ‘refugee economies’ and contribution to market development within the host community is underestimated.

Paper long abstract:

Forced displacement affected an estimated 65.3 million people in 2015, including 21.3 million refugees, and 40.8 million internally displaced people. Despite UNHCR policy, host governments often do not provide refugees with the right to work or a resident's permit, limiting their ability to work or achieve stability in their new environment. Thus many refugees remain in 'grey space' (Yiftachel, 2009), positioned between legality and illegality and marginalised in urban policy.

This paper draws on research with refugee communities in Addis Ababa, for the IIED programme on Local Markets in the Context of Urban Humanitarian Response. Ethiopia has one of the largest refugee populations in sub-Saharan Africa, with about 650,000 people in camps and the rest in urban areas, mainly in Addis Ababa. Refugees in Ethiopia are restricted in working. Most studies on refugee livelihoods look at the role of work in household survival and wellbeing, but this paper adopts a novel approach to examine the contribution of these 'strangers in the city' to the host economy.

Urban refugees engage in a wide variety of work. Men often work as day labourers in construction, women in domestic work, while those from similar places cluster in similar work. Refugees bring skills and labour to host communities, but there relatively is little research on the operation of refugee economies and their relationship with the wider urban economy. The paper argues that the wider impact of such refugee economies' and their contribution to market development within the host community is significantly underestimated. (this paper was developed in collaboration with Alison Brown and Peter Mackie)