SDP and Forced Displacement

The global attention on refugees and internally displaced persons is reflected in the SDP sector’s variegated attempts to engage and support this target population through its programs. This chapter critically examines contemporary SDP programs and research in this area. The authors first provide an overview of SDP initiatives that work with refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs). They then critically discuss some of the underlying assumptions on which SDP initiatives that work with refugees and IDPs are built, with specific reference to the existence of a deficit-based paradigm that associates refugee difference and marginality with deficit and lack, as well as threat and security risk. Following this discussion, the chapter presents an illustrative case study based on the second author’s ethnographic fieldwork with a development program in Colombia that seeks to engage IDPs through sport.