Cities As Home

What does belonging and acceptance look like in cities affected by internal displacement? Which societal, institutional, cultural, and socioeconomic factors matter (and by how much) for this to occur? These questions are central to establishing a more holistic understanding of local integration as a two-way street, predicated on the internally displaced persons’ (IDPs’) feelings of belonging to the hosting location as well as host community members’ acceptance of them over the long-term and the regulatory landscape that surrounds them both. This is critical to explore in more detail now in Iraq as around 1.4 million people remain displaced, most for more than four years in urban areas of the country.

The Cities as Home research project seeks to contribute to answering these questions by exploring both the drivers and deterrents of integration across 14 urban locations that still host the largest share of IDPs in Iraq, utilizing data collected on IDPs’ perceptions and living conditions in displacement (1,382 respondents) and on those of host community residents (1,437 respondents) in the same neighborhoods as well as key informant interviews with local authorities and policy-implementers (40 interviews) in these areas.

Program: SOCIAL COHESION AND FRAGILITY

Cities as Home: Understanding Belonging and Acceptance Among IDPs and Host Communities in Iraq

This report explores local integration through innovative multi-level analysis to detail overall drivers and deterrents that matter for it for IDP and host communities in urban settings, while also providing an overview of the regulatory landscape in which they are embedded.

Download the Main Report on Local Integration (October 2020) here.

Download the Main Report on Local Integration in Arabic here.

Cities as Home: Describing the Regulatory Landscape Around COVID and its implications for the local integration of IDPS in Urban Areas of Iraq

This brief focuses specifically on localized regulations in response to COVID-19 as they relate to IDPs’ movement, healthcare, employment, housing, and education. 

Download the Brief on COVID-19 and Local Integration (October 2020) here.

Cities as Home: Location Factsheets and Case Studies of Local Integration

This set of factsheets analyses the most prominent barriers and contributors to local integration in relation to IDP belonging and to host community acceptance at the location level, and provides a description of the specific regulatory landscape in each. Four case studies are interspersed throughout the report offering an in-depth analysis on specific location typologies and IDP-host community dynamics.

Download the Factsheets and Case Studies Report (January 2021) here.