Displacement-affectedness: a moral economy lens to examine protracted displacement

Surface-level descriptions of humanitarian responses to protracted displacement often obfuscate displaced people’s agency and conceal the role and significance of the ‘host community’. We suggest that responses are situated in socially and geographically embedded relational ontologies and ethics of care while recognizing that a need for protection, and exhibiting resilience, are not mutually exclusive. This article posits an alternative conceptual framing device to think through economic relations and practices generated by displacement: ‘displacement-affectedness’—for populations, localities, and communities. We illustrate this via research in Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Lebanon, and Pakistan (a locality-based survey of n = 14,024 and qualitative interviews, n ≈ 300). Our research confirms that displacement and refugee economies are more than how those affected by displacement relate to market structures, access to humanitarian assistance and financial services; they also encompass economies of care and responsibility, practices and networks of solidarity and mutual aid, that is, moral economies.