Displacement, host governments' policies, and constraints on the construction of sustainable livelihoods

After brief discussion of the general losses refugees incur in connection with displacement, the paper examines empirically the structural and institutional factors that discourage refugees from taking initiatives to recoup their losses and to construct sustainable livelihoods in countries of asylum, as well as the conditions that perpetuate poverty, vulnerability, and marginalisation. The paper argues that in developing countries refugee status, regardless of duration, leads to the acquisition of neither nationality nor denizenship. Basic rights and sources of. livelihoods are apportioned on the basis of nationality and not residence. Lack of belonging to a spatially bounded community of geo-political state entity is therefore the single most important factor that prevents formulation and implementation of long-term development programmes.