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More than one hundred million people are displaced worldwide today, and political backlash against refugees has slashed vital humanitarian aid. When given the chance, however, many displaced people have proved themselves to be resourceful entrepreneurs who can drive growth. Investing in refugee-led enterprises, companies supporting refugees, and the communities welcoming them transforms tragedy into economic and social gain for all.
Banking on Belonging offers a visionary roadmap that shows how investing in refugees not only empowers displaced communities but also builds more prosperous and resilient economies worldwide. John Kluge Jr., a social entrepreneur, and Christine Mahoney, a public policy expert, demonstrate that refugees are not burdens but instead benefit host societies through job creation, tax revenue, and innovation. They tell the powerful stories of resilient entrepreneurs displaced from places such as Iraq, South Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, and Venezuela, exploring their contributions from New York to North Dakota, Poland to Jordan, Mexico to Uganda.
Banking on Belonging presents the Refugee Lens Investing framework, a pioneering system for classifying opportunities such as refugee-owned businesses and funds targeting displaced talent. Blending on-the-ground narratives and case studies with empirical data and concrete tools, it makes the moral and practical case for private investment as a sustainable alternative to humanitarian aid. At once a hands-on guide and an inspiring global saga, this book delivers a fresh, hopeful vision of inclusion and prosperity.
— Jacqueline Novogratz, founder and CEO, Acumen
With the right policies and investments, refugees are assets, not liabilities. In Banking on Belonging, Kluge and Mahoney offer a compelling blueprint for how capital, strategically deployed in stable, emerging markets, can make refugees investable, employable, and economically integral at scale. Their argument is both practical and urgent: Economic inclusion is not an alternative to humanitarian aid but the way to make it sustainable.
— The Rt. Hon. David Miliband, president and CEO, International Rescue Committee
Banking on Belonging presents a rigorous, realistic, and timely blueprint for how the private sector can step up and engage economically with refugee communities and, in doing so, build shared prosperity and lessen human suffering the world over.
— U.S. Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia
In a world marked by fracture, Banking on Belonging offers a compelling thesis: Prosperity grows where belonging is financed. John Kluge Jr. and Christine Mahoney reframe refugees as economic catalysts and show how enabling their participation in markets leads to durable solutions.
— Hau Thai-Tang, retired chief operations officer, Ford Motor Company, and Vietnamese refugee
Banking on Belonging is a groundbreaking and urgently needed book. Forced migration will be a headline issue for the rest of our lives—driven by conflict, climate change, and instability. John Kluge and Christine Mahoney offer an astonishingly simple yet powerful answer: refugees can be a source of economic growth, stability, and prosperity in their new communities. Beyond entrepreneurship, the book illuminates pathways for employment, workforce development, and social infrastructure that create dignity, opportunity, and agency for refugees and host communities alike. As humanitarian budgets shrink, refugee-lens investing is essential for a stable, inclusive future. This is essential reading for anyone committed to turning a crisis into a shared possibility.
— Sasha Chanoff, executive director, RefugePoint, and cofounder, Refugee Self-Reliance Initiative
Global Citizen was founded on the belief that ordinary people, acting together, can move the power and capital that shape the world. Banking on Belonging applies that logic to one of the most overlooked opportunities of our time. Kluge and Mahoney show that investing in refugee entrepreneurs isn’t charity. It’s economic, strategic, and winnable. What's needed now is the citizen pressure, institutional will, and financial imagination to act on it. This book gives all three a vocabulary.
— Michael Sheldrick, cofounder, Global Citizen, and author of From Ideas to Impact: A Playbook For Influencing and Implementing Change in a Divided World
John Kluge Jr. is the founder of the Refugee Investment Network, the first blended finance investment collaborative dedicated to creating long-term solutions to global forced migration. He is also the founder or cofounder of other investment funds and social enterprises, including Thistlerock Mead Company, a refugee-lens venture that combines ancient honey wine fermentation practices with modern regenerative agriculture.
Christine Mahoney is chief innovation officer and professor of public policy and politics at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia. Her books include Brussels Versus the Beltway: Advocacy in the United States and the European Union (2008) and Failure and Hope: Fighting for the Rights of the Forcibly Displaced (2016), which inspired the Refugee Investment Network.