Refugees confront restrictions in every area of life, from the rules governing their stay in a specific territory to where, when, and how much they are able to work. Legal and de facto restrictions make it more difficult for them to achieve their aspiration of either settling down in a certain place or moving on.
However, many refugees have found creative ways to cope with the hostile environments surrounding them. Some of these coping mechanisms are unsafe or entail risk, but they allow individuals to adapt to their surroundings – to eat, improve their financial resources, cross checkpoints, and build up solidarity networks, etc.
In this last question, we have asked our contributors to explain which coping strategies refugees, asylum seekers, and irregular migrants use to realise their aspiration to stay or move on, and when and how they have failed.
