To mark World Refugee Day, McGill-Queen’s University Press published a blog post on informal self-organizations of refugees by Ulrike Krause, Gato Ndabaramiye Joshua, and Hannah Schmidt – drawing on our book Refugee-Led Organizations in Uganda: Agency, Gender, and Politics of Self-Organizing in Exile 

Too often, displaced people are seen merely or mainly through a lense of risk and vulnerability – in policy, media, and also research. While the risks they face are real, they have, and exercise, agency. 

Our book focuses on agency and explores the role of refugee-led organizations, covering a wide spectrum from formalized to informal ones. People in exile come together, join efforts, and self-organize to support each other.

In this blog post, we look at informal self-organizations that receive little attention – although they are everywhere, and often the first to respond in everyday life and in times of emergencies.

Want to read more? https://www.mqup.ca/Recent-News/2026/06/The-Self-Organizations-Nobody-Counts-Friendship-Neighborhood-and-the-Informal-Everyday

Access the book: https://www.mqup.ca/Books/R/Refugee-Led-Organizations-in-Uganda

Krause, Ulrike, Gato Ndabaramiye, Joshua, and Schmidt, Hannah (2026), ‚The Self-Organizations Nobody Counts: Friendship, Neighborhood, and the Informal Everyday‘, McGill-Queen’s University Press, https://www.mqup.ca/Recent–News/2026/2006/The–Self–Organizations–Nobody–Counts–Friendship–Neighborhood–and–the–Informal–Everyday.