Congolese refugees informing this study interpreted the notion of “protection space”

largely through their various everyday encounters and mundane experiences of urban

space. This article emphasizes an inherently spatial and scalar reading of refugees’ dis- 10

courses of their protection and insecurity in their city of exile Kampala, Uganda.

Conceptually, my examination focuses on physical, imagined, lived, and relational

elements of space. Refugees’ conceptualizations of urban space are, for analytical purposes,

discussed at the micro-, meso-, and macro-scales. It is concluded that the com-

monly held understanding of “protection space” as a largely institutional space between 15

refugees and protection institutions only provides us with a one-sided understanding

of the concept. Thus, when “protection space” is interrogated, refugees’ understandings

of urban space in its multiple forms and scales have to be incorporated into the

analysis.