Refugee camps are used worldwide to accommodate displaced people. Although camps are intended to be temporary and bounded spaces, in practice boundaries of time and geography are often crossed.

The new open-access book, Refugee Reception and Camps, provides insights into refugee reception and camps by focusing on the overlap between local and global dynamics in the governance of camps.

Dr. Evan Easton-Calabria authors a chapter on “How Do Camps Affect Cities? The Political Economy of Refugee Camps and Arua, Uganda.” Arua is located between multiple refugee camps, and its population has tripled due to urban refugees.

Using the case of Arua, the chapter examines how the existence of refugee camps affects neighboring cities and vice versa, particularly when refugees leave camps for cities or engage in urban–camp circular migration. It draws on political economy and Foucauldian theory to increase understanding of camp-city interactions.

The chapter also explores camps and cities as distinct yet connected spaces, linked not only by the movement of refugees between them but also by the policies, practices, and events in each.

The book is available from Bristol University Press and edited by Dr. Lucas Oesch and Dr. Léa Lemaire.