ABSTRACT
This chapter describes Henri Lefebvre’s 1968 concept, the ‘right to the city’, as a theoretical guide in its critique of the current understanding of the meaning of the term ‘right’, particularly in relation to the ‘right to drift’. It focuses on the type of urban displacement, however, is of the sudden, violent and forced kind. The word ‘drift’ replaces ‘city’ in the conceptual term, ‘the right to the city’, as it offers a flexible dimension that crosses and meanders between multiple fields, including the three identified by Henri Lefebvre. Migration, mobility and drifting are processes that are instrumental for urban renewal, future planning and urban policy; these disciplines could be facilitated and enhanced by a greater understanding of the creative drifting of refugees and migrants. There is an inherent complexity in the disrupted spatial mobility of displaced people.
