From a theoretical vantage point at the interface between political and urban sociology, this study analyzes collective action by urban refugees in Central Africa, focusing on efforts to adjust and adapt collective action to the global humanitarian environment in which it seeks to be embedded. In a context marked by political withdrawal at State level from refugee assistance issues and by the emergence of an international human rights regime as the principal normative framework in Central African host countries, we seek to identify the preconditions for the growth of "cosmopolitical collectives" of refugees. Further, we point up their propensity to call into question the relationship between human rights and the rights of citizens in urban areas where the boundaries between the international and domestic order have never before been as porous and undefined. © 2009 Presses de Sciences Po.

[No Keywords available]

[No Keywords available]