Is it possible to grasp the situation of refugees in a Czech refugee camp with the help of theoretical concepts that have been developed in research among refugees from Burundi living in Tanzania? - asks Alice Szczepanikova, a doctoral student at Central European University, in her article. It seems unlikely – what can a Czech “residential center” have in common with a refugee camp in the African country? One of the aims of this article is to demonstrate that although conditions of refugees in Africa are in many aspects different from the situation of refugees coming to a Central European country such as the Czech Republic, some mechanisms of managing “the refugee problem” are identical – in so called Third world countries as well as in Europe.