Introduction: Why Refugee Self-Reliance?

This chapter introduces the concept of refugee self-reliance through a discussion of its current usage in contemporary policy and practice and an overview of literature on the subject in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies and Development Studies. It presents an overview of the book and the concept of instrumentalization, and provides a brief chronology of changing understandings of self-reliance in relation to humanitarianism, development, conflict, and nation-building in the 20th and 21st centuries. The chapter concludes with the book’s main findings and arguments, notably how refugee self-reliance assistance has changed over the last century, and the implications of this for refugee protection today.