ABSTRACT
Egypt has a long history of receiving migrants of various ethnic backgrounds, such as Armenians, Greeks, Croats, Palestinians and Sudanese. Recently, the country has witnessed large scale immigration of refugees fleeing armed conflicts in the Middle East and Africa. According to UNHCR (2008) there were 23,660 Sudanese, 10, 786 Iraqis and 5,383 Somalis residing in Egypt. There were also small numbers of refugees from Eritrea, Ethiopia and other nations such as Afghanistan, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, the former Yugoslavia and Yemen. In addition, there were between 50,000 and 70,000 Palestinian refugees residing in the country. By 2014, numbers rose to 183,318 refugees, including 120,000 Syrians. Many of the refugees in Egypt, though constituting the largest segment of long-term migrants, are deprived of the resources (legal, economic and social) that would enable them to establish settled communities in Egypt and pursue integration as a durable solution. For this and other reasons it is assumed that many of the refugees, notably Somalis and Sudanese, are transit migrants (Roman 2006). This chapter will first outline the migration history of the main refugee groups in Egypt, with a focus on Sudanese and Somali migrants. Second, it will analyse the policies of the Egyptian government as well as those of the UNHCR and how they have impacted on the daily lives and the future prospects of these refugees. The chapter will conclude with a discussion on the appropriateness of the term ‘transit migrants’ to classify these refugee groups. The analysis in this chapter draws on a review of existing literature and the findings of a field study which the author conducted on the secondary movement of Somali refugees in Egypt in 2004 (Al-Sharmani 2005). 1
