Refugee Livelihoods in Urban Areas: Identifying Program Opportunities

Project Team

This project analyzes the livelihoods context of refugees and identifies programming opportunities in urban settings in Egypt, Israel, and Ecuador.

For refugees in urban areas, there is little evidence about which humanitarian programs work, what livelihoods initiatives refugees undertake themselves, and where opportunities for programming interventions lie. Our research seeks to address this knowledge gap. Working with local research partners in each country, we explore new approaches to supporting refugee livelihoods, drawing on related fields of inquiry, such as low-income urban (slum) development and youth employment and entrepreneurial initiatives, which could be adapted for refugees.

livelihood opportunities

This report outlines the types of livelihood efforts that aid agencies have undertaken in countries of first asylum and explores the challenges they face in realizing the full promise of these approaches. The authors offer recommendations to improve effectiveness.

Karen Jacobsen, Susan Fratzke

• September 2016

Refugees in urban areas face a specific set of livelihoods problems, and in recent years many aid agencies have begun to try to address these problems by supporting refugees through...

Rebecca Furst Nichols, Karen Jacobsen

• October 2012

Refugees in urban areas face a specific set of livelihoods problems, and in recent years many aid agencies have begun to try to address these problems by supporting refugees through...

Rebecca Furst Nichols, Karen Jacobsen

• October 2012

Refugees in urban areas face a specific set of livelihoods problems, and in recent years many aid agencies have begun to try to address these problems by supporting refugees through...

Rebecca Furst Nichols, Karen Jacobsen

• October 2012

Refugees in urban areas face a specific set of livelihoods problems, and in recent years many aid agencies have begun to try to address these problems by supporting refugees through...

Rebecca Furst Nichols, Karen Jacobsen

• October 2012

This report details the migration experience and livelihood choices of Sudanese and Eritrean asylum seekers and migrants in Tel Aviv. The research is based on a scoping study conducted by...

Rebecca Furst Nichols, Karen Jacobsen

• January 2011