ABSTRACT
“Crisis migrants,” that is people for whom flight is the only option in the face of events and processes over which they have no control, have been altering demographic balances both within and beyond the borders of affected nations for centuries. The current crises likely to force people to leave their homes and regions are triggered by conflict, violence and repression, natural and man-made disasters, environmental degradation, climate change, loss of land and resources. A growing number of crisis migrants produced by all these factors, as this chapter will elaborate, are finding their way to cities in their own and in other countries. They are settling into the poorest segments of large and smaller cities, often outside the urban core, in informal settlements in peripheral areas where municipal authorities are only nominally in control, services are lacking, and conditions are precarious.
