"Kupata Riziki" or How Refugees Make Ends Meet in Urban Tanzania

Contrary to encamped refugees, who have access to humanitarian aid, and self-settled rural refugees, who may be able to rely upon their co-ethnics across the border for support (particularly in Africa), refugees in urban centers must find ways to survive without legal status and without humanitarian assistance in a different socio-cultural.environment. This study among Congolese, Burundese and Rwandese forced migrants in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, illustrates the economic resilience and determined resistance of these urban refugees against official policies requiring them to depend on humanitarian aid provided solely in the rural refugee camps. Despite the lack of documents legalizing their residence in Dar es Salaam (even as they are eligible to a status as prima facie refugees), and of any form of institutional assistance, many of these urban refugees have obtained a certain level of economic self-sufficiency by deploying their social networks and other coping strategies. Living scattered among the Tanzanian population and running the permanent risk of being arrested by the immigration authorities, Dar es Salaam’s urban refugees have managed to express their power through persisting in their economic endeavors. Relying on their pre-flight social and cultural abilities, they survive by performing a wide variety of jobs, mostly in the informal sector, based on individual negotiations and arrangements with Dar es Salaam’s Tanzanian residents. In conclusion, the paper recommends that, following the official position of international refugee agencies, namely that refugees should rightly be considered potential economic assets to their country of asylum instead of just a burden, steps should be undertaken to lobby at the international level with the relevant state authorities and advocate more flexible and humane urban refugee policies.status: publishe