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Much writing and popular media coverage of forced migration portrays refugees in a frame of helplessness and vulnerability. Focusing on the ‘suffering refugee’ obscures our ability to recognize the collective strength of refugee communities and how these strengths allow displaced persons to reorganize their lives in informal settlements in growing cities of the developing world. This book sheds light on how a growing population of urban refugees from Rwanda rebuilt their lives and communities after conflict and displacement in Cameroon, and how quickly things can change when their legal situation is called into question. Turmoil in the Central Africa region has led to over 500,000 refugees and asylum seekers arriving over the past several decades in Cameroon, the safe haven of the Central Africa region. This book aims to present human faces to the sea of refugees dominating our television screens, illustrate the range of their experiences rather than boiling the trajectories down to simple flight and displacement, and underline how their situations demonstrate resilience and hope in their ability to endure extreme hardship in chaotic urban environments. Indeed, even under the guise of rapidly changing and exclusive immigration policy, displaced persons try to keep their lives moving forward. A better understanding of hope and practice that lead to desired outcomes of refugees within growing urban centers in developing countries is imperative to inform these resilience building programs that humanitarian agencies are still grappling to design.
