In Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, local communities, including refugees, have been identified as not only recipients of support but also as key providers of humanitarian and other material, spiritual and emotional forms of assistance, including through what the project’s Principal Investigator Prof. Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh has termed ‘refugee-refugee humanitarianism‘. This finding makes a critical contribution to our understanding of the roles that communities themselves play in local displacement-affected contexts. This finding is of significant importance for those working in humanitarian and development policy and practice, demonstrating the vital role of refugee-led and local community-led responses, and how they can be better supported, rather than unintentionally undermined, by different humanitarian and development-based interventions. You can read more about our findings in our Research Note: Understanding Local Responses to Displacement.
Below Prof Alastair Ager shares key insights from the Refugee Hosts project relating to local responses to displacement, and the localisation of aid agenda. If subtitles are unavailable please access the video here.
Below Prof. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh discusses her research into displacement, and the important but often overlooked role established refugees are playing in responding to conflict-induced displacement from Syria.
Below Prof. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh traces the different ways that residents of Baddawi refugee camp in North Lebanon have been affected by COVID-19 since March 2020 and how they have been responding to protect themselves and other conflict-affected people in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.
For more on localisation, read our Contextualising the Localisation of Aid Agenda blog series, as well as the series introduction by PI Prof. Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh. or you can access some key texts and other publications below.
Watch Refugee Hosts International Conference, ‘Without Exception: The Politics and Poetics of Local Responses to Displacement’ here.
Access our Essential Reading on The Localisation Agenda here.
Key Texts on Localisation
Ager, J., Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. and Ager, A. (2015) ‘Local Faith Communities and the Promotion of Resilience in Contexts of Humanitarian Crisis,‘ Journal of Refugee Studies, 28 (2): 202- 221. *Selected by OUP as one of 6 “highly cited articles” to showcase “the impressive body of research” published in the OUP Journal of Refugee Studies.
Ager, A. and El-Nakib, A (2015) Local Faith Community and Related Civil Society Engagement in Humanitarian Response with Syrian Refugees in Irbid, Jordan, A report to the Henry Luce Foundation, New York: Columbia University.
Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. (2016) ‘Palestinian and Syrian Refugees in Lebanon: Sharing Space, Electricity and the Sky,’ Refugee History, 21 Dec. 2016.
Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. (2016) ‘Refugee-Refugee Relations in Contexts of Overlapping Displacement,’International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, ‘Spotlight On’ The Urban Refugee “Crisis”. 25 Nov. 2016.
Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. (2016) ‘Hospitality and Hostility: The roles of established refugees in a crisis.’ YouTube video of Elena’s UCL Lunch Hour Lecture, 1 Nov. 2016. Watch it here.
Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. (2016) ‘Refugees Hosting Refugees‘, Forced Migration Review, 53: 25-27. 28 September 2016. Read here or listen to audio here.
Refugee Hosts (2018), Local Faith Community Responses to Displacement in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey: Emerging Evidence and New Approaches, (UCL Migration Research Unit, authored by Greatrick, A., Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E., Ager, A., Rowlands, A. and Stonebridge, L.)
We will be updating this page with more resources in due course.
Refugee Hosts 