Refugees and displaced people are increasingly moving to cities around the world, seeking out the social, economic, and political opportunity that urban areas provide. Against this backdrop digital technologies are fundamentally changing how refugees and displaced people engage with urban landscapes and economies where they settle.

Technological change in urban areas

Urban Refugees and Digital Technology draws on contemporary data gathered from refugee communities in Bogotá, Nairobi, and Kuala Lumpur to build a new theoretical understanding of how technological change influences the ways urban refugees contribute to the social, economic, and political networks in their cities of arrival. This data is presented against the broader history of technological change in urban areas since the start of industrialization, showing how displaced people across time have used technologized urban spaces to shape the societies where they settle. The case studies and history demonstrate how refugees’ interactions with environments that are often hostile to their presence spur novel adaptations to idiosyncratic features of a city’s technological landscape.

A wide-ranging study across histories and geographies of urban displacement, Urban Refugees and Digital Technology introduces readers to the myriad ways technological change creates spaces for urban refugees to build rich political, social, and economic lives in cities.

About the speaker

Dr. Charles Martin-Shields is a Senior Researcher at the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS) in Bonn, Germany. His research focuses on the relationship between technological change and economic development, with a focus on urban migration and displacement. Outside academia he has served as a consultant for organizations including UNHCR, the World Bank, and UNDP.

Discussants

• Prof. Koen Leurs (University of Utrecht)
• Prof. Amanda Alencar (Erasmus University)