In the introduction to this volume we highlighted how recent research into displacement economies generally includes elements that go beyond the traditional limits of an economic analysis. In concluding the book, our aim is to bring this together into a more systematic political-economic approach. The book has been organised around chapters focused on each of the five countries involved in the project: the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, Lebanon, Myanmar and Pakistan. Each chapter presents the respective co-authors’ take on the core themes we introduced in the opening chapters. In most cases, there is significant differentiation between the three fieldsite locations in each country (urban, camp and others) as well as between countries: an immediate lesson of the book is that context matters. This is unsurprising but worth highlighting since it remains common for the international refugee regime to overlook fundamental historical and geographical differences. Yet beyond the obvious differences, there are points that emerge that tie together these very different contexts and countries. We conclude the book by focusing on these commonalities in the hope that the principal conclusions will be relevant well beyond the five countries involved in this study. Our aim is to contribute to the beginnings of a new political economy of displacement.

We identify 10 conclusions from the Protracted Displacement Economies research project to structure this chapter. These range from observations of the experiences of those affected by displacement, to the increasing diversity and complexity of actors involved in responding to displacement, and the necessity of recognising non-financial flows in displacement economies. Some are more immediately ‘policy-relevant’, and others are more about recognising and analysing the rich assemblage of factors, actors and networks that shape a displacement economy. All are based on the empirical research that shapes this book. Not all are new, though the project has involved a wider diversity of countries and experiences than recent comparable projects. However, we hope that even where these only offer confirmation of existing perspectives, that is still valuable; our discussion of work and financial exchanges probably falls into this category. Other points offer more significant developments of previous work in this area. The incorporation of non-financial forms of analysis offers a promising starting point for further work and the identification of both advantages and disadvantages of the ‘whole of society’ approach provides useful nuance to this term, which is itself becoming more widespread.

It is the collective impact of these conclusions that we want to emphasise. Together they form constitutive elements of a new political economy of displacement. The changing wider geoeconomic and geopolitical context of humanitarian and development aid, not least including the current swingeing cuts to international aid, requires a new analysis of displacement. The focus on protracted displacement that has structured this research provides a particular perspective that we hope will be more widely applicable.

The ‘whole of society’ approach shifts the focus of analysis from displacement to inequality

One of the main elements that distinguished our approach was the characterisation of the ‘displacement-affected community’, outlined in the introduction. This is an attempt to disrupt the simple binary between ‘host’ and ‘refugee/internally displaced person (IDP)’. Even though it has been common for several decades for policymakers to deliberately include both groups in any development initiatives, they are still widely treated as distinct groups. Previous research has taken a similar approach, often including both groups, but maintaining a distinction between them. The approach that we took throughout the research was to assume that this distinction is much more blurred than a binary presentation suggests. We are not suggesting that there is no distinction, indeed this research has found plenty of evidence that there is. As Bakewell (2008) has famously argued, moving away from categories that are determined by policy can lead to new insights. The important point for a developing political economy of displacement is that the reification of the host/displaced distinction can hide everything that these groups have in common.

Theoretically, we based the work around an approach to ‘community’ that does not take the social networks that form community for granted but rather highlights the continual, collective work that is necessary to build and maintain community. Methodologically, this translated into a place-based sampling strategy, outlined in chapter 2. Rather than focusing on particular groups and sampling to ensure representations of those groups, we identified particular locations. These locations were selected on the basis that people identified as living in protracted displacement formed at least 20% of the population, which helped us select locations beyond camps. In the case of refugee/IDP camps, where such groups make up as much as 100% of the population, we also sampled surrounding areas. We constructed random samples of each of the 15 locations (three per country) that reflected this diverse mix.

This approach is particularly appropriate to situations of long-term displacement. Distinctions between ‘host’ and ‘displaced’ are most acute immediately after displacement and for a relatively short period of time they generate distinct requirements, most obviously access to land, housing or emergency shelter. However, over time these distinctions blur, both groups face similar social and economic challenges, and often respond in similar ways – relations between groups living in proximity to one another inevitably develop, invoking vernacular rights of neighbourliness (Zaman 2020).

Even in situations of restricted mobility, such as camp locations, mobility still occurs. Even where refugees are officially prevented from accessing the labour market they are able to find work informally. This means they are subject to significant structural disadvantages since they lack the employment protections and labour rights that are available in the more regulated parts of the labour market. Nevertheless, a large proportion – often the majority – of members of the ‘host’ community engage in the labour market in exactly the same way. Clear legal distinctions may be maintained but they are increasingly untenable in a sociological analysis; for example, it is already likely that the majority of the ‘Afghan refugee’ population of Pakistan has been born in Pakistan. The short film ‘Comrade Obaid’ in the Pakistan chapter highlights the inequalities that arise as a result of this. We certainly do not claim that distinctions don’t exist, simply that if we focus on the distinctions, including using them to structure research methodology, we tend to reify them, and it is easy to overlook the many situations in which they do not apply.

In all our research locations there is a clear historical basis to the presence of refugees and displaced people. In the DRC, current patterns of displacement in North Kivu and South Kivu have their origins in the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda; several of our research participants currently living in IDP camps in the eastern DRC were born in Rwanda and would more properly be categorised as refugees. Movement across the Rwanda–DRC border also has origins much earlier than the 1994 genocide and was well-established when the colonial border was drawn. Similarly in Ethiopia, Lebanon and Pakistan refugees involved in our research had crossed colonial borders that bisected linguistic groups. Syrian refugees in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon are following migration patterns established by agricultural labourers in colonial and immediately post-colonial times. As the Ethiopia chapter highlights, often people do not only share history and experiences of vulnerability but also ‘ethnicity, religion, cultural practices and psychological makeup’ that has helped to reinforce social cohesion across the displacement-affected community. One Somali Ethiopian is quoted as saying ‘we are the same people’. These groups share the same challenges and often come together to support each other. In Pakistan, approximately a third of both Pakistanis and Afghans in our survey reported that someone in the household had experienced hunger in the previous month – our proxy measure of extreme poverty. The example of gham khadi, where people support each other in times of joy and sorrow, provides a clear illustration of how community is the product of continual, collective work. The sharing of these events emphasises the bonds created across the displacement-affected community that are more likely to be overlooked in a binary analysis of host/displaced.

Despite these connections it is important not to romanticise the displacement-affected community. In all cases, including sites where displaced people were citizens, there were still structural distinctions between those publicly and politically defined as ‘host’ and ‘displaced’. Even though, in most cases, significant numbers of the ‘host’ community had their own histories of displacement and significant numbers of the ‘displaced’ had not actually been geographically displaced so these categories do not map perfectly onto sociological reality. Nevertheless, the categories themselves perpetuated forms of inequality. In some cases these were legally defined, mostly in the case of refugees. This included ongoing attempts to deport Syrians from Lebanon, or restrictions on the right to work in the formal economy which applied to refugees in Ethiopia, Lebanon and Pakistan. In the case of IDPs, distinctions were reinforced in other ways. Residents of IDP camps in the eastern DRC did not have to pay local tax, which led to an expectation that they would work for lower wages. In Myanmar, groups of IDPs from different origins did not always engage with each other; the Myanmar chapter notes this particularly in the New Mon State Party (NMSP) ceasefire zone. Elsewhere there were distinctions which were established without any legal context. Support from NGOs in Pakistan was mostly received by Pakistanis, for example. In both Lebanon and Pakistan where informal joint ownership of businesses between refugees and nationals was a commonly reported solution to restrictions on refugees’ rights to own property, tensions could arise due to perceived economic competition.

These distinctions between host and displaced, and the resulting challenges, are well covered in the existing literature reviewed in the introduction. The ‘whole of society’ frame of the displacement-affected community is not intended to downplay them. Rather, shifting the focus of the analysis from displacement itself to wider patterns of inequality is a more productive tool for political economic analysis. In many cases, particular patterns of inequality are common to both host and displaced groups, but in some cases the categorisation of ‘refugee’ or ‘IDP’ reinforces particular forms of inequality, and these are areas where additional investigation may be valuable.

Intersectional analysis must be part of a ‘displacement-affected’ approach for it to transform the way we see the economy

A gendered analysis of the displacement economy emerges very clearly from all of the country chapters, but all of them go further than this to examine the intersection of additional structures of power and difference. The ways in which displacement impacts individuals is part of this, though as we argued in the first section, that has more to do with the classification of individuals as displaced/refugees or not rather than the ongoing process of displacement itself. Beyond displacement and gender, the importance of class, clan, ethnicity, age, nationality, religion and disability have all been recognised in different contexts, particularly the ways they intersect to create multiple forms of marginalisation. In each context we set out to produce a differentiated analysis of needs and vulnerabilities, capacities and aspirations taking these intersecting factors into account.

Our research reconfirms the key insight from Crenshaw’s conceptualisation of intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1991, 2013). That is, multiple forms of marginalisation are not additive, experienced one of top of the other, but are compounded, creating new forms of marginalisation in the process. For example, the marginalisation experienced by a displaced woman is not simply the disadvantages faced by women in any particular context added to the disadvantages faced by displaced people. Rather, ‘displaced women’ are likely to face forms of marginalisation that are different from both non-displaced women and displaced men. This is illustrated by information from interviews: in all country contexts interviewees reported that displacement provoked changes in roles of women in the household.

Changes in gender roles created new tensions and continuities between unpaid work in the home, primarily performed by women and (usually paid) work outside the home that was disproportionately done by men. This must be interpreted through cultural, gendered or religious understandings of who needs help, what kinds of help, and who is responsible for providing it, which may not align with international humanitarian norms. In some cases, like the MGN site in Myanmar, women had greater access to income generating opportunities and had some entrepreneurial success. In other areas with strict social norms restricting women’s work outside the home, they had to take on additional income earning work within the home only, such as garment stitching piece-work, or preparation of food to be sold by male relatives. In Ethiopia women performed additional unpaid care work, typically seen as women’s work, for neighbours such as looking after children and washing. Much of this additional work taken on by women is hidden. It is therefore easy to overlook in political-economic analysis. Yet it was also clear, across contexts, that the majority of debts (both financial and non-financial) are owed by women since debts are often incurred in the running of the household and in relation to health and medical care, which typically falls to women. To incorporate the hidden and less-hidden aspects of these roles into a political economy of displacement requires a more detailed analysis of intra-household dynamics, and attention to care economies, which we consider in the following section.

Non-financial exchanges are more important than financial exchanges in the displacement economy

The incorporation of non-financial elements of the displacement economy was a key part of the research design of the Protracted Displacement Economies project. Although some of the more recent analysis considered in the introduction has recognised the necessity of including forms of collaboration or social support as part of a more holistic economic analysis, our project has made an explicit connection with feminist economic theory, particularly the centrality of social provisioning. In doing so we have collected a vast amount of data on the relationships between paid work and unpaid care labour. We have also documented the tremendous reliance of displaced people in all five countries on forms of non-financial support. One of the most surprising findings of the research was how few people relied on institutionalised social assistance actors. In Pakistan, the DRC and Myanmar, no more than 1 or 2% of respondents said that their household received any support at all from UN organisations, NGOs or national governments. They were genuinely living without aid. Even in locations with large-scale social assistance programmes, such as the Dollo Ado camps in Ethiopia or the Bekaa Valley camps in Lebanon, many people did not consider these their most important source of support. In contrast, very large proportions of people in all five countries reported giving or receiving non-financial support to neighbours, from a low of 40% in Pakistan to a high of 83% in the DRC.

Beyond the tremendous significance of non-financial support to our research participants, a number of other points are relevant to its incorporation into a political economy of displacement (see also Ali et al., 2025). Given the wide range of economic exchanges that we observed in this project, it is difficult to draw a clear line between what would reasonably be considered care and what can easily become exploitation. For example, in Myanmar, as chapter 6 outlined, Buddhist monks provided food and shelter for displaced people but required unpaid ‘merit work’ in the form of agricultural labour in return. In the DRC, more secure individuals may offer domestic labour or commercial positions to IDPs in return for shelter and food, but not always for financial payment. There is an element of this which involves recognising the dignity of the individual and offering work, rather than handouts, but the point at which it may become exploitation is not always clear. As the DRC chapter (chapter 3) described, situations of survival sex are not uncommon. There is a continuum here with activities that are obviously mutual aid at one end and obvious forms of exploitation at the other but a degree of blurring in between. The point at which non-financial exchanges are recognised as exploitative can only be considered in the light of intentionality and solidarity.

Much of this is culturally proscribed, and so contextually dependent. Well-established forms of Islamic solidarity, such as zakat or sadaqa, were widely reported and became fundamentally important as (usually very local) forms of mutual aid. In the DRC, churches were widely cited as sources of support, though this was less institutionalised than in Muslim countries. In Ethiopia, shahad was widely reported as a non-religious form of collective support. In the DRC, kukopeshana, collective agricultural work was based around exchange for ploughing, weeding or harvesting. In Myanmar, collective support often involved shared labour for repairing roofs, building houses or lending motorbikes. We have already considered gham khadi, the practice of community support and sharing of food that is common in Pakistan. Participation in these events is considered indicative of being a good neighbour. Across these diverse examples of exchange and support, it is clear that forms of community solidarity are deeply engrained and widely depended on. They are all forms of pre-capitalist exchange and with the exception of zakat or sadaqa, which are partially subject to state control, they are regulated at a community level. Nonetheless, there are indications here of what Gibson-Graham (2006) call a post-capitalist politics.

We do not want to idealise these forms of support. Greater dependence on community support, as in the DRC, correlates closely with higher levels of absolute poverty. Asking for help is difficult and undermines dignity. These requests often fall to women, and during interviews in all countries, some women described feelings of humiliation in having to ask neighbours for food to feed their children. In some cases, the asymmetries of such relationships are engrained in cultural practices of solidarity, such as shahad, described in the Ethiopia chapter in which an individual, typically a man, says to another man simply ‘give me shahad’. Such practices reinscribe hierarchies of power. There are echoes here of the rich anthropological literature around gift giving and more directly to humanitarian aid, famously described by Fassin as ‘those gifts that call for no counter gift’ (2011, 3). What distinguishes genuinely mutual forms of aid is the formal expectation of reciprocity. Many of these cultural practices, such as gham khadi or kukopeshana are based in reciprocity yet not in exact or formally measured ways. Inequalities within the community do not need to become explicit in these exchanges and dignity can be maintained more easily. In incorporating these significant non-financial exchanges into a wider political economy of displacement, questions of intention, solidarity, mutuality and power hierarchies are all important.

Lifting restrictions on work will have a greater impact on displaced people than any other single change

A key question in the baseline household survey asked participants to rank different means of supporting themselves in order of significance. This was a closed question, with options for inter alia different sources of humanitarian aid or social assistance, community assistance and, crucially, work. In all countries except Ethiopia, work was ranked as the most significant source of support, from 54% in Pakistan to 78% in the DRC. Even in Lebanon where significant numbers of people received regular payments from the World Food Programme (WFP), only 17% of people cited these as their most important source of support, compared to 60% who cited income from work: social assistance was just not large enough or regular enough to be relied on. Unsurprisingly, the dominant employment sector varied between countries: overwhelming agricultural work in the DRC, daily wage labour in agriculture and construction in Pakistan and entrepreneurial business activities (such as small shops) in Lebanon with a mix of all sectors in Ethiopia and Myanmar. The significance of work is unsurprising, work is universally recognised as a more dignified means of support than charity and decades of livelihood programmes for refugees in many different countries have sought to support refugees into the labour market. Yet refugees do not enter the labour market on an equal basis, and even IDPs in the DRC faced significant labour market disadvantages.

In Ethiopia, Lebanon and Pakistan, refugees are not officially allowed to work in the formal sector. This is also the case for refugees in the DRC, although in the context of this study the small number of refugees were administratively indistinguishable from the larger population of IDPs amongst whom they lived. Since such a small proportion of the labour market is regulated in all five countries, it was only government employment which was effectively off-limits to refugees. The vast majority of both displaced and non-displaced populations in our fieldsites worked in the unregulated informal sector. Yet even here, there is a disparity. Syrians working in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon reported that they received systematically lower wages than Lebanese working in the same jobs. Similarly in Pakistan, lack of citizenship puts Afghans at a disadvantage in many employment areas. Interestingly, very similar patterns were reported in the DRC for the majority IDP groups, despite having the benefit of formal citizenship. Those who lived in camps for displaced people were paid lower wages than the non-displaced. In these cases, removing formal restrictions on access to the labour market would cost national governments relatively little, since they are engaged in the informal part of the labour market, but it would significantly rebalance displaced people’s bargaining power.

 

Although the unregulated sectors of the labour market allow easier access to refugees and IDPs, exploitation is more widespread. This is most apparent in the form of child labour, which was reported in the DRC and is recorded in the film ‘Cycles’ from Lebanon (see chapter 5). The need for children to contribute to the household economy is a further sign of the widespread marginalisation experienced by displaced people. In contrast, in some areas, refugees were able to develop a competitive advantage in certain ways. In Ethiopia, informal cross-border trade is an important livelihood strategy for those living near the Somali border in Dollo Ado and Kebribeyah. The border is relatively uncontrolled and refugees with established commercial and social networks in Somalia are best placed to exploit the resulting business opportunities. The Afghanistan–Pakistan border in contrast is effectively closed due to the construction of a fortified border fence, which severely limits cross-border trade to all but the few. The dominance of work as the key source of support by our research participants highlights how even relatively small changes in the regulations surrounding work would have a dramatic impact on the displacement economy.

Financial flows are less significant than the non-financial in structuring socioeconomic relations but finance, credit and debt are still important for everyday and crisis survival

It is difficult to evaluate the comparative significance of the financial and non-financial components of any economy since a common unit of measurement is difficult to identify. To be described in economic terms, an exchange, even a non-financial one, must be in some way reducible to measurement in financial terms. Childcare by a neighbour could be expressed in terms of the cost of childcare in the wider economy, even if such an expression would make little sense in contexts where absolutely no one would or could pay for childcare. Yet how to measure the value of the myriad smaller exchanges that build the mutual trust that is necessary to reach the point where the neighbour can even be asked to provide childcare? Social networks and the broader effort of building community takes work, over time. All of this work should properly be included in the consideration of the economy, since it all contributes to the economic functioning of any place-based economy.

On this basis, in terms of the frequency and regularity of exchanges there is no doubt that the non-financial economy significantly outweighs the financial. Any economy depends on the vast reserves of unpaid household care and reproductive labour, disproportionately undertaken by women, that we have tried to include in economic calculations here. Even a lot of work that would normally be paid is removed from the financial economy and performed in exchange for non-financial rewards such as shelter or food. Large majorities of respondents (displaced and non-displaced alike) report non-financial exchanges with their neighbours, always significantly more than those reporting financial support. For most respondents, this is already a post-aid world. Under section 3, on non-financial exchanges, we highlighted the tiny minorities of people in most countries who report a reliance on financial assistance from the United Nations (UN), non-governmental organisations (NGOs) or government.

Yet, despite the significance of the non-financial elements of the economy, the financial remains absolutely vital. Money is needed to pay for food, clothing and essential communications such as mobile phones, which are increasingly necessary to manage financial exchanges. Basic utilities, rent and transport are more significant in urban areas, though in rural areas and even in some camps rent must be paid. Yet for the large majority of people in displacement-affected localities this all takes place beyond the formalised financial sector. In the DRC, only 0.5% of all respondents reported that they had a bank account. This rose to just under 20% of respondents in Lebanon but in all other countries fewer than 5% of people had bank accounts. Remittances from family and friends living in wealthier countries can be an important source of financial support and has even been suggested as a potential durable solution to refugee movement (Van Hear, 2003). Yet for IDPs in the DRC and Myanmar, there is little access to international networks; only 2% of respondents in the DRC reported receipt of remittances. The proportion was slightly higher in Pakistan and Ethiopia, rising to 19% in Lebanon. Slightly more people have received one-off (as opposed to regular) support from friends and relatives, for example, a single payment to open a shop, but this remains very low. Most people in the displacement-affected community, displaced and non-displaced alike, have little financial contact with the government and most businesses operate exclusively beyond the formal financial regulation and taxation systems of national states.

The need for money combined with the tremendously limited means of accessing money for most people creates an economy that runs significantly on credit and debt. The extent of debts across the displacement economy is a key finding of this research. The least indebted groups are in Ethiopia, where 37% of people reported existing debts, rising to 90% in Lebanon. For those that have debts, repayments constitute a mean of just over a third of their regular monthly expenditure – the largest single cost for that group. The rarity of formal banking membership means that debts are mostly informal and, as discussed above, a majority of debts are held by women. These debts are often to shopkeepers, and in all our fieldsites shopkeepers provide credit for goods bought in their shops. In many cases they are able to extend credit for long periods of time and in Islamic countries they do not charge interest. This often constitutes a valuable source of local solidarity. In the DRC, where the practice of charging interest is acceptable, community savings schemes, such as the AVECs described in chapter 3, provide cheaper credit and the possibility of a lump sum amount at the end of the savings period. The key issue in relation to debt is the point at which it becomes unmanageable. Large proportions of respondents in all countries rely on debts to store owners which can usually be managed as part of regular monthly expenditure. Major shocks require a different response, and this was often the case with health-related expenditure, where the sudden need to borrow large amounts meant that repayments were not sustainable. Sustainability is the key to incorporating self-reliance into a wider political economy. We turn to that now.

Self-reliance must be situated and supported within a broader framework of sustainability

This research has provided considerable support to the arguments reviewed in the introduction, which reject the notion of self-reliance as a measure of individual performance and focus instead on a much more collective or relational understanding of self-reliance. This is supported by discussions of non-financial assistance, mutual aid and the wider sense of social provisioning which emphasise the significance of the wider social context.

The Refugee Self-Reliance Initiative has made important steps in operationalising much of this work (Leeson, Slaughter and Buscher, 2022). Had this been published when we planned the research, we would have used it explicitly in the research design. Nonetheless, the analysis that emerges from the Research Self-Reliance Initiative is an important part of any wider conceptualisation of a political economy of displacement and our findings align closely with it. The key to this is the overall focus on sustainability. The central ‘self-reliance framework’ considers three levels, each containing four ‘domains’:

• Basic needs: housing, food, education, healthcare.
• Resources: employment, financial resources, assistance, debt.
• Sustainability: savings, safety, social capital, health status.

These are conceptualised in a systematic way considering whether basic needs are being met, how they are being met and how far they will be met in the future (Leeson, Slaughter and Buscher, 2022, 7).

The key change we would suggest to this framework, based on this research, is to link it more closely to a social provisioning framework, drawing on work in feminist economics. At present, the non-financial elements of the economy are captured through ‘social capital’ and possibly ‘assistance’ but they are not sufficiently explicit. Still, the key contribution that the framework makes is to separate self-reliance from sustainability – since the connection is not inevitable, as it is sometimes presented in policy frameworks, such as the 2018 Global Compact on Refugees. Yet the framework also emphasises that the only way in which self-reliance will be successful is in connection with sustainability. Where interventions are still managed by external aid agencies, this provides a useful tool to help plan how early interventions can support, rather than undermine, the longer-term objective of sustainability. This also provides a useful framework for analysis, to highlight which elements of social provisioning are functioning and where there are obvious gaps.

Governance of the protracted displacement economy involves a complex relationship between multiple actors

For most of the last 50 years, the governance of the displacement economy, the ‘political’ element of the political economy, could be captured in relatively simple terms. The main actor would be the UN system, principally the UNHCR, which would coordinate with the national state but largely replace it, to the extent that UNHCR often acted as a ‘surrogate state’ (Kagan, 2011). There were a range of minor actors, NGOs, community organisations and occasionally armed groups, but there was no doubt that regulation came from UNHCR and the primarily wealthy states that funded UNHCR. Although there are displacement crises in which UNHCR continues to play a dominant role, this is becoming less and less common and does not apply to any of the 15 research locations in this research.

The simplified picture of UNHCR stepping in for the national state to manage displacement has now significantly changed. Especially in contexts of protracted displacement, the UN system is now a relatively marginal actor, in many cases. This is partly due to a strategic decision to withdraw from situations of long-term displacement wherever possible – a decision that the Global Compact on Refugees provided support for. But it is also, and increasingly, the result of a growing shortfall in funding from wealthy donor states, a trend that looks likely to deepen as discussed in the introduction. In many cases the national state has also been unable, or unwilling, to step into this gap. Political scientists in the DRC have popularised the notion of l’état fantôme or ‘ghost state’ to describe the workings of states which are unable to perform basic state functions across significant parts of the state territory (Bennafla, 2002). This applies particularly well to the DRC, Myanmar and increasingly Lebanon where the state is either entirely absent (the DRC) or provides a regular source of insecurity for refugees/IDPs (Myanmar, Lebanon). It is less appropriate for Ethiopia and certainly centralised military states such as Pakistan, which retain a security presence in relation to refugees but lack the financial resources and the political will to replace the UN’s wider social assistance role.

As UN actors and national state agencies fade, other governance actors have risen to take their place, changing the political dynamic of the political economy of displacement. At the international level, other national donors are becoming more significant, most obviously China and the Gulf states, but a range of different regional actors are also able to exert greater influence, and the wider role of southern states in providing humanitarian assistance is likely to become more important. Non-state armed groups have also become more significant actors, not only in provoking displacement and controlling land (as in the east of the DRC) but also as sources of social assistance, as in Myanmar and even Lebanon. The role of religious organisations and other more local community groups is increasingly recognised as the localisation agenda in development and humanitarianism finally begins to develop. Perhaps most significantly for our research, which has highlighted community forms of mutual aid and solidarity, is the significance of regulation of cultural practices such as gham khadi that we have already considered in some detail.

 

In common with much recent research, this project has paid particular attention to displaced people in urban areas. This requires an acknowledgment of the role of municipal actors, including local government, police, and employers and landlord organisations. In western Europe and north America, where analysis of municipal policies towards migration is more developed, it is clear that in many circumstances, municipal actors are more pragmatic and often more inclusive in their response to urban displacement (Kraal et al., 2017). Our research has found broadly similar patterns, and in cities like Addis Ababa, Beirut and Peshawar, refugees have in some ways benefited from a more permissive environment than that found outside cities. Yet, in general, cities in the Global South have responded to the arrival of refugees in much greater numbers than cities in the Global North so it would be surprising if patterns were not different. We need to pay attention not just to how cities have changed the lives of refugees, but to how refugees have changed the lives of cities (Alimia, 2022).

One group of actors that we have been particularly interested in in this research are ‘intermediaries’. In both urban and rural contexts, those individuals who provide an interface between displaced people and wider forms of political authority serve vital gatekeeping roles that can smooth the difficulties faced by newly arrived and long-term residents alike. In some cases, these are traditional actors whose role has taken on particular significance, or new forms, in relation to displacement. In Pakistan, this includes mesharan and maliks, both forms of community leaders. In Lebanon, shaweesh were effectively gangmasters for agricultural labourers in the pre-conflict era but have become important intermediaries in the Bekaa Valley in relation to refugee housing. In Myanmar, monks have always had an important advisory role, but since displacement, particularly in the Myaing Gyi Ngu area, they have become key intermediaries distributing forms of assistance. Beyond changed roles for established authority figures, displacement and particularly urban displacement also introduces a new range of intermediary actors including elected representatives, social welfare actors, community mobilisers and landlords, who may hold more or less significance in relation to the actors traditionally associated with the international refugee regime.

This greater complexity of actors beyond the straightforward combination of UNHCR and national governments introduces a similar range of complexities to the governance of the displacement economy. These complexities affect any conceptualisation of a political economy of displacement.

Displacement is a process not an event

The term ‘protracted displacement’ that is central to our research highlights the ways in which displacement can continue, almost indefinitely in some contexts. Yet it is not always clear that displacement in these situations should be imagined as a continuing process rather than as a one-time event with its associated and ongoing repercussions. The event that commonly represents displacement is forced migration. Yet, as we discussed in the introduction, the separation of the relational from the spatial allows a conceptualisation of ‘displacement in place’ that may also extend to those who have not experienced forced migration themselves, including children of refugees who are born into exile.

As a process, the obvious question is when does displacement end. The traditional UN response is that displacement ends when a durable solution has been found: voluntary return, resettlement or local integration. It is the last of these – local integration – that seems the most viable for the majority of displaced research participants in this research. However, it is also the least well-defined of the durable solutions. At a minimum, local integration must mean equality of opportunity with those who have not been displaced. Unfortunately, given the similar economic challenges faced by both displaced and non-displaced people in our research, equality of opportunity is a low bar, and would even involve accepting a degree of extreme poverty which would not be acceptable. UNHCR has often found itself in a difficult position of having to advocate for internationally acceptable standards for refugees, in terms of health, education and socio-economic status, even when conditions for the wider population fall far short of those standards. A more pragmatic, development-related set of aspirations should be better opportunities for all in displacement-affected communities that can be sustained.

Political and environmental shocks are perceived as external and unalterable

External crises significantly erode the capacities of the displacement-affected community to cope with the pressures of displacement. When we started discussing the initial project application with partners from each of the five countries in 2019 the potential risks of instability were clear but there was no basis for suspecting that the subsequent five years would be as challenging for the populations of each country as they have been. Quite apart from Covid-19, which had particular impacts on each country that were distinct from impacts in wealthier parts of the world, incidents of conflict and major environmental and economic crises highlight the ongoing challenges faced by those living in protracted displacement. The DRC, Ethiopia and Myanmar have undergone major civil conflict with tens of thousands of civilians killed. Lebanon has experienced multiple political crises, from the massive explosion in Beirut port in 2020 to Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon and Beirut, in addition to a debilitating financial crisis. From June to November 2022, devastating floods in Pakistan affected the whole country, and periodic terrorist attacks have undermined political stability.

Displaced people, already amongst the most marginalised, have been at the forefront of the harm caused by these ongoing crises. Millions more people have been displaced in all five countries, and large numbers of displaced people involved in the research have been displaced further. In the DRC, Lebanon and Myanmar, members of the research team were also displaced, though thankfully none has been physically harmed. The fragile stability achieved by displaced people often after many years in displacement has been quickly destroyed, setting entire communities back to near-zero. Although some groups of participants in the research have been receiving regular support from humanitarian actors they have been in a small minority. As this book has continually emphasised, communities are largely getting on with their lives, self-provisioning however they can. This period of tremendous instability has ended with the drastic reductions of humanitarian aid budgets from some of the wealthiest countries in the world that we began the book with. From the perspective of the displacement-affected communities engaged in this research, these political, environmental and economic shocks were seen as totally out of control, events that they just had to respond to.

Context is important but patterns are discernible

We began the conclusion by highlighting the differences between each of the five country chapters in this volume, emphasising the significance of context. This chapter has drawn together commonalities, points on which a general political economy of displacement can be built. In multiple respects it is clear that such a political economy has experienced multiple changes in recent decades and must now look very different, as a conceptual framework, from a picture that would have emerged in 1967, when the New York Protocol broadened the scope of the 1951 Geneva Convention so that it applied beyond Europe for the first time. The current situation has even changed substantially since the signature of the Global Compact on Refugees in 2018, the latest global expression of political intentions in this field. Despite these commonalities between research locations in this project, an important final step is to return to a close examination of context since any attempt at a more widely applicable conceptualisation of political economy must respond to multiple contextual differences.

The significance of context necessitates the kind of wide-ranging comparative research that we have presented in this book. Commonalities that have emerged between countries and contexts as different as those we have examined here should have a wider applicability. In each chapter, elements of historical background have emerged as significant. Protracted displacement has an automatic historical significance, but many of the economic connections that we have traced here predate the current patterns of displacement, from Syrian agricultural labourers in the Bekaa Valley to refugees and displaced people moving back and forth across the Ethiopia–Somali border. These histories are vitally important for the people engaged in them, they shape their social networks and their life chances, and they should therefore be incorporated into any analysis.

Overall, we hope that the new political economy of displacement that we have outlined here provides a basis to question widespread neoliberal narratives around self-sufficiency and resilience. The focus on self-provisioning provides an important contribution to ongoing economic analysis of displacement. The collective, relational understanding of economic life, in which displaced people are continually strategising how to make the most of an extremely limited set of options they have reflects the reality of displacement much more closely than the exclusive focus on international actors that characterised much policy analysis. Refugees are largely doing it for themselves and for most refugees, this has always been the case.

For most of those living through protracted displacement, a world without aid is not a new thing. External assistance, when it has come is welcome, but brief, insufficient and unpredictable. The ways that displaced people have developed for coping are far from ideal. They generate their own inequalities and asymmetries of power, and they are far from sufficient to meet complex needs. Still, at their best they offer a means of more dignified, more caring, collective action that helps to build community. They are unlikely to make a dramatic impact on the widespread human misery that displacement provokes, but nor is humanitarian aid. If international aid were to increase again in the coming years, we hope that the information we have presented here will enable an approach that builds on, rather than replicates what is being done already within and between communities and is characterised by a greater degree of humility about what is possible.

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