ANASTASIA BOHON

Abstract

     The increase of attention to refugees in the past ten years has brought to question the circumstances surrounding their movements between nations.  The Oxford English Dictionary defines a refugee as “a person who has been forced to leave his or her home and seek refuge elsewhere, especially in a foreign country, from war, religious persecution, political troubles, the effects of a natural disaster, etc.”  In other words, a displaced person. 

     In this paper, the term ‘refugee’ will be used to describe a person displaced outside his or her home country due to a political crisis that induced violence and persecution upon the population.  As refugees flee said conflict, they seek safer locations in other nations so that they can rebuild and heal themselves.  In times of mass migrations, many refugees are placed in refugee camps to await further action from the host government.  The length of stay in these camps varies as greatly as the number of variables that go into finding a more permanent settlement. 

This proves difficult for the government to process in large quantities.  With the combination of the bureaucratic process and the unstable nature of political conflicts, many refugees are stuck in these camps for extended periods of time. 

As a result, some of the camps evolve beyond that of simple tents and basic necessities.  These newer forms of refugee camps may qualify as temporary global cities due to their implementation of organized infrastructure, government, and other such qualifiers. 

     This paper seeks to explore those implementations under the assumption of refugee camps being temporary global cities.