Cities of refuge in an age of displacements
Romola Sanyal (Associate Professor of Urban Geography at the London School of Economics)
Wednesday, 12 November 2025, 5pm to 6pm
Seminar Room 1, Oxford Department of International Development, 3 Mansfield Road, Oxford OX1 3TB
RSC Public Seminar Series, Michaelmas term 2025
Series convened by Professor Tom Scott-Smith and Professor Catherine Briddick
About this talk
Displacement is a key driving force of urbanisation and development in the world. It is structural, pervasive, and generational. Displacement drives development, land speculation, urbanisation and imperialism, pushing people off land, be that urban or rural. It feeds on inequality and social abandonment as much as it exacerbates it. Thus, some are subject to continuous rounds of displacement from spaces that they attempt to occupy and secure. For many then, displacement becomes part of their lives and their identities. The displaceability of subjects ultimately highlights their social and political marginalisation, their relegation to the edges of nations and cities.
What does it mean to offer refuge in this age of displacement? To whom is this unstable protection offered and under what logics? These are particularly salient questions to explore within southern contexts, but also globally as we see the rise of anti-immigrant and anti-asylum politics. This talk explores some aspects of these questions, unpacking the ways in which displacement comes to shape southern urbanism drawing urban poverty, informality and forced migration scholarship into conversation with each other.
About the speaker
Romola Sanyal is Associate Professor of Urban Geography at the London School of Economics. Her work has appeared in a number of journals including Urban Studies, Political Geography, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Geoforum, Urban Geography, and Refugee Survey Quarterly. She is also co-editor of Urbanizing Citizenship: Contested Spaces in Indian Cities (with Dr Renu Desai, Sage Publishers, India) and Displacement: Global Conversations on Refuge (with Dr Silvia Pasquetti, Manchester University Press).
The seminar will be followed by drinks in the Hall.
Registration not required.
All enquiries should be directed to rsc-outreach@qeh.ox.ac.uk.