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Journal of Refugee Studies Advance Access published online on August 10, 2006
Journal of Refugee Studies, doi:10.1093/jrs/fel010
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© The Author [2006]. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Article

‘I Find Myself as Someone Who is in the Forest’: Urban Refugees as Agents of Social Change in Kampala, Uganda

SARAH DRYDEN-PETERSON 1 *

1 Refugee Law Project, Makerere University, Uganda and Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
SARAH DRYDEN-PETERSON, E-mail: sarah_dryden{at}post.harvard.edu


  Abstract

An in-depth investigation of the Kampala Urban Refugee Children's Education Centre (KURCEC), a refugee-initiated community-based organization in Uganda, allows for detailed exploration of the livelihood strategies employed by urban refugees in the sphere of education and of the ways in which these strategies can promote self-reliance and individual and community development in urban situations. Urban refugees' development of KURCEC challenges perceived notions of refugees as burdens or as passive recipients in a system that fosters dependency and shows that they are agents of social change within their own and their host communities. The focus on what works in the midst of crisis, desperation, and uncertainty is a deliberate attempt to promote research and policy-setting that is forward-looking and productive rather than reactionary and regressive in the context of new developments in policy and practice relating to urban refugees worldwide.

Keywords: urban refugees; refugee education; refugee agency.
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