Displacement Economies in Africa

Large-scale displacement - whether caused by war, state-related political or development projects, different forms of political violence, structural crisis, or even natural disasters - evokes many stereotyped assumptions about those forcibly displaced or emplaced. At the same time there is a problematic lack of attention paid to the diversity of actors, strategies and practices that reshape the world in the face (and chronic aftermath) of dramatic moments of violent dislocation. In this highly original volume, based on empirical case studies from across sub-Saharan Africa, the authors reveal the paradoxical effects, both intended and unexpected, that displacement produces, and that manifest themselves in displacement economies.

An important contribution to a topic of growing scholarly and policy interest.

Amanda Hammar is research professor at the Centre of African Studies, Copenhagen University. She has researched and published on agrarian change, local government, state-making, sovereignty, displacement and crisis in southern Africa, with a special focus on Zimbabwe and, less so, on Mozambique.

She co-edited Zimbabwe’s Unfinished Business: Rethinking Land, State and Nation in the Context of Crisis (2003) and two journal special issues related to political economies of displacement in southern Africa Journal of Contemporary African Studies (2008) and Journal of Southern African Studies (2010). Her current work is focused on changing modes of urban governance and citizenship in times of crisis and displacement.