Refugee Spaces and Urban Citizenship in Nairobi

This book sheds light on Africa’s urban refugee spaces and is an expose and critical analysis of state–refugee relations in Nairobi, Kenya. The author employs Henry Lefebvre’s work on “right to the city” to explore and qualify whether the literature on urban citizenship can speak to Nairobi’s context.

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Kenya has been the third major outlet through which hundreds of thousands of refugees from Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and South Sudan flee from political persecution and for better livelihoods. This book is a commentary of Nairobi as an urban refugee space. It provides an in-depth ethnographic account and analysis of state-refugee relations in Nairobi focusing mainly on the lived experience of Ethiopian refugees. In addition, the author employs Henry Lefebvre’s work on “right to the city” to explore and qualify whether the literature in urban citizenship can speak to the Kenyan experience. This book is a timely and remarkable addition into the cannon of scholarship in comparative urban studies, African studies, and refugee studies.