Abandoned airports. Shipping containers. Squatted hotels. These are just three of the many unusual places that have housed refugees in the past decade. The story of international migration is often told through personal odysseys and dangerous journeys, but when people arrive at their destinations a more mundane task begins: refugees need a place to stay. Governments and charities have adopted a range of strategies in response to this need. Some have sequestered refugees in massive camps of glinting metal. Others have hosted them in renovated office blocks and disused warehouses. They often end up in prefabricated shelters flown in from abroad. This book focuses on seven examples of emergency shelter, from Germany to Jordan, which emerged after the great "summer of migration" in 2015. Drawing on detailed ethnographic research into these shelters, the book reflects on their political implications and opens up much bigger questions about humanitarian action. By exploring how aid agencies and architects approached this basic human need, Tom Scott-Smith demonstrates how shelter has many elements that are hard to reconcile or combine; shelter is always partial and incomplete, producing mere fragments of home. Ultimately, he argues that current approaches to emergency shelter have led to destructive forms of paternalism and concludes that the principle of autonomy can offer a more fruitful approach to sensitive and inclusive housing.

"This book is about involving and engaging urban poor communities in one of the first steps of any participatory planning or upgrading initiative. It describes how we can use 'participatory enumerations, ' a surveying method used to gain better knowledge of the needs and priorities of the community. It presents and analyses existing and novel applications of participatory enumerations to enhance tenure security and improve urban land management."--Publisher's description.

Environmental problems ignore international boundaries. Toxic wastes travel by water and air, sometimes displacing the effects of an environmental disaster entirely outside of its country of origin. It is now understood that to overcome the problems that face us international co-operation is required. This important work is designed to assist in that process, by helping to break down the language barriers that stand between countries. The manual, written in parallel English, German, French and Russian texts, provides the basic tools of communication in the specialized fields of environmental sciences between speakers of these languages. Each chapter has been revised in each separate language by specialists in the field to guarantee the authenticity of the information presented. The author is unique in his approach, presenting the key-words in context, as opposed to simple glossary entries, allowing the reader to fully understand the complex relations between the word and the concepts involved. A comprehensive index written in all four languages guides the reader through the text, providing references to the words as they are used in different disciplines.