Settlement Elsewhere as a Solution for IDPs

Abstract Settlement elsewhere is a third, often less utilized and researched category of durable solutions of internally displaced persons. It is distinguished by the lack of geographic or contextual limitations that define solutions of local integration and return—creating both a wealth of possibilities for its implementation and a level of complexity that this variability brings with it. Two key tensions created by this complexity are particularly highlighted here: how the right to return affects the implementation of settlement elsewhere as a durable solution and how the sedentary-bias of the solutions paradigm meshes with less binary and discrete forms of (im)mobilities that people engage in. The chapter then shifts to examining how resettlement works in practice, looking at examples that have been divided temporally between solutions that occur pre-emptively, reactively, and in response to protracted situations. The chapter culminates with a forward-looking assessment of the role relocations have to play in the context of climate mobilities. It concludes that as more people face climate-related mobilities and other displaced persons struggle to find solutions through methods of return or local integration, policymakers and practitioners should turn their attention not just to how to implement resettlement programs, but also to which type of resettlement is most applicable to a given situation.