No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Inclusive refugee-hosting can improve local development and prevent public backlash
... Host country institutions and local actors often need to read more carefully and pay attention to the needs of newcomers, and instead of helping, they create dependency or exclusion (Ghorashi, 2005). Significant arrivals of refugees can lead to potential tensions with host communities, particularly if refugees are viewed as competing for limited material resources and crowding out public services (Zhou et al., 2023). Migrants' inflow has been associated with increased expenditures spent on asylum policies. ...
... This article raises another issue. Most studies on refugee migration focus on the scale of an entire country, e.g., Uganda (Zhou et al., 2023), Finland (Toivonen, 2023), Ghana (Abdullah et al., 2023), South Korea (Kim et al., 2023), Turkey (Demirci & Kirdar, 2023) or Poland (Górny & Kaczmarczyk, 2018). Comparative studies between countries are also undertaken, e.g., Austria, Germany, and Sweden (Konle-Seidl, 2018), Sweden, and Denmark (Andersson Joona & Datta Gupta, 2023). ...
Motivation: Since the beginning of the war, Poland has welcomed more than 1.5 million Ukrainian refugees. This new reality has put pressure on local authorities, especially those managing less developed, poorer regions with less experience in receiving immigrants, as they faced the sudden urge to accommodate the needs of these new arrivals.Aim: This article aims to present the profile, needs, and potential of people who have found refuge in less developed areas (i.e., Warmia and Mazury). It helps to anticipate and understand Ukrainian migration — as the influx of refugees has long-term effects, requiring local authorities to take action, i.e., to ensure the availability of social services. Integrating thousands of refugees requires careful planning, developed infrastructure, and funds. It is also worth considering the benefits of the potential of new residents. Another purpose is to share objective knowledge on the effects of the ongoing war.Results: Through the research, it has been possible to obtain a great deal of information about people who found refuge in a less attractive area for migration. Profile of the immigrant was created, and the needs in terms of social infrastructure and the set of advantages that immigrants can offer on the labor market were described.
... For instance, Fajth et al. (2019, p. 1) contends that the enduring presence of Congolese refugees in Rwanda has contributed to fostering a 'socially cohesive, inclusive, and peaceful environment, ' countering decades of civil unrest and ethnic divisions. Likewise, Zhou et al. (2023) research on Uganda demonstrates that hosting refugees alongside increased humanitarian aid positively affects the quality of public services, benefiting both refugees and host communities. This approach has helped alleviate social conflicts and tensions between the native and refugee populations. ...
The influx of Syrian refugees into Al Mafraq, Jordan poses complex challenges for the host community. This study, supported by the Faculty of Business and Creative Industries (FBCI) at the University of South Wales, explores how perspectives and experiences of the host community and refugees can help to understand the enablers and challenges of their coexistence. Using a mixed-method approach, it combined qualitative focus group discussions with a quantitative online survey to assess the perspectives and experiences of these groups. The findings are presented around five key issues perceived by the host community and refugees. These include safety, security, community relations, economic conditions, and the role of international organizations. It is argued that the evidence and analysis presented in this paper can help inform policy and practice by emphasizing the importance of understanding both the host and refugee experiences. This underscores the need for inclusive national planning to promote integration, social security, and protection of all individuals in Jordan. This research highlights how recognizing and addressing host community perspectives can enhance refugee integration and foster sustainable development amidst growing tension. By challenging misconceptions and valuing the needs of both Jordanians and refugees, this study advocates a cohesive and resilient society.
... Second, this study considers a case in which migrants are active political agents of change. Previous studies have either considered the impact of interventions and events, such as migrants arrival or economic shocks, on the opinions of natives (Adida, Lo, and Platas 2018;Dancygier and Donnelly 2013;Emeriau 2024;Zhou, Grossman, and Ge 2023) or have considered how migrants are impacted by policies granting or revoking rights, such as the right to access the country, citizenship, and clothing regulations (Abdelgadir and Fouka 2020;Hainmueller, Hangartner, and Pietrantuono, 2017;Masterson and Yasenov 2021). ...
Migrant labor exploitation is widespread in developed countries, which host growing populations of undocumented migrants. While denouncing by migrants is essential to prosecute exploitative employers, an undocumented community actively hiding from the state is unlikely to whistleblow. I consider an intervention providing migrant farmworkers in Italy information and incentives to report on their racketeers. I leverage the staggered rollout of the intervention to study its effects in a difference-in-differences framework. The intervention empowered migrants to whistleblow, increased the prosecution of criminal organizations responsible for racketeering migrants, and raised awareness among natives, who became more favorable toward immigration and parties supporting it. These findings highlight the conditions under which undocumented migrants can take political action for their socioeconomic advancement. Unlike other integration policies which have been shown to backlash, highlighting migrants’ vulnerability to exploitation might foster solidarity and more liberal immigration attitudes among natives.
... The findings extend beyond academic discussion, offering practical guidance for policymakers, public health practitioners, and researchers. From a public health perspective, service providers and healthcare professionals working with refugees can leverage our findings to implement more inclusive and supportive strategies that address the unique health and well-being needs of refugees and their host families [50]. For example, social workers and community organizers can develop tailored programs that promote cultural exchange, language learning, and social integration, all of which are crucial for mental health and social cohesion. ...
Background
Homestay accommodations aim to support a smoother transition for refugees; yet, the intricate nature of relationships between refugees and their hosting families can make this process complex, which, in turn, can affect their health and well-being. It is crucial to grasp the experiences of both refugees and their host families in order to foster effective settlement, integration, and well-being.
Objective
The purpose of this scoping review is to explore the dynamics of homestay or hosting with a focus on understanding the experiences of both refugees and their hosting families to identify gaps in the literature and propose directions for future research.
Methods
We used the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology and followed the PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews) checklist to guide this scoping review. Searches were conducted in MEDLINE via EBSCO, Scopus via OVID, CINAHL, SOCIndex, Web of Science Core Collection, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, the SciELO Citation Index, and APA PsycInfo. Literature written in English and published from 2011 to 2024 that focused on homestay hosting contexts for refugees was included.
Results
The results of this review illuminate the multifaceted and dynamic nature of homestay hosting for refugees. The findings include motivations and barriers for homestay hosting, factors influencing host-refugee relations, and psychological and social outcomes of homestay hosting.
Conclusions
The results of this scoping review demonstrated the need for tailored support for refugees to improve homestay programs for the benefit of both refugees and host families and highlighted the need of more inclusive, supportive, and effective strategies for the hosting, resettlement, and integration of refugees.
International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID)
RR2-10.2196/56242
... Being treated by Arab doctors reduces Israeli Jewish patients' prejudice toward Arabs in general (Weiss 2021). Inclusive refugee-hosting policies in Uganda, such as allowing refugees to selfsettle rather than be segregated into camps, have both increased destination society members' access to public goods and services and generated greater acceptance for migrants (International Rescue Committee 2016;Zhou, Grossman, and Ge 2023). These findings all point to the importance of institutions, public policies, and leadership for tackling migrant social inclusion. ...
Much opposition to migration centers on worries that migrants are too culturally and socially different from the host population, that they will fail to integrate, or that they will change the demographics and culture of a destination society too dramatically. In both public and academic discourse, there is a tendency to assume that the “problem” of sociocultural integration is one of “cultural distance,” understood as an objective and measurable fact, and hence that the “solution” is to reduce cultural distance. This paper offers an alternative
diagnosis and prescription. Whether an immigrant group is perceived as culturally close or culturally distant is not a product of objective differences. Rather, such perceptions arise out of complex boundary-making processes in which certain points of commonality and difference are highlighted while other points of
similarity and difference are ignored or denied. These boundary-making processes are historically contingent, institutionally mediated, and politically constructed in ways that open up paths for certain immigrant groups while putting up barriers to others. The paper also argues that insofar as there are cultural
differences, they are not always a “problem” for integration; successful integration does not require cultural assimilation or cultural convergence. There are a wide range of models of integration that involve various forms and combinations of cultural maintenance, cultural adaptation, and cultural convergence. The paper concludes by discussing a few strategies for improving migrant integration, including interpersonal interventions aimed at changing the attitudes and beliefs of members of destination societies, recasting national narratives to be more inclusive, and promoting policies or programs to enhance migrant minorities’
ability to exercise political agency and voice.
... Several of the studies below were also produced through the Social Cohesion and Forced Displacement initiative under the World Bank-UNHCR-FCDO Building Evidence on Forced Displacement Research Programme. 8 Verme and Schuettler (2021) Expanding on this approach, Zhou, Grossman, and Ge (2023) offer a comprehensive analysis of the impact of refugees on host communities in Uganda. By blending geospatial data on refugee settlements and longitudinal data on primary and secondary schools, road density, health clinics, and health service utilization, they present two principal findings. ...
This JDC Digest explores the impacts of forced displacement on host communities in the EHAGL region, as well as opportunities to facilitate opportunities for refugees and other forcibly displaced persons through mobility, assistance and inclusion into national services. Our review unveils how refugee presence can spur development and enhance service infrastructure while reshaping local labor dynamics. Central to our findings is the crucial role of refugee self-reliance and mobility in fostering economic and social integration. However, the review also underscores the need for further research, particularly regarding the inclusion of refugees into national systems and the specific challenges facing returnees and internally displaced persons (IDPs). Offering a comprehensive view, this Digest aims to inform balanced policy decisions in the region.
... Furthermore, hosting arrangements and expectations can limit refugees' control over their surroundings, as they are essentially guests in someone else's domain [4,6,7]. This lack of control over their living situation can potentially hinder their ability to rebuild their lives autonomously, trigger power differences, and add an extra layer of vulnerability [8,9]. This power difference is even more pronounced for refugee women due to the intersection of gender-related disparities [10]. ...
Background: The process of refugee resettlement and integration into new communities is a complex and multifaceted challenge, not only for the refugees themselves but also for the host families involved in homestay housing arrangements. While these homestay arrangements are designed to facilitate smoother transitions and enhance the well-being of refugees, the nuanced
dynamics of these interactions and their overall impact on both refugees and their host families remain underexplored. Understanding the experiences of refugees and their host families is vital for effective refugee settlement, integration, and well-being. However, the intricacies of homestay refugee hosting, their interactions with host families, and the impact on their well-being are still unclear and ambiguous.
Objective: The aim of this scoping review is to examine the breadth of literature on the experiences of refugees living in homestay arrangements with their host families. This review seeks to understand how these dynamics influence refugee well-being, including their integration, social connections, and mental health. Additionally, this scoping review aims to synthesize existing literature on homestay hosting dynamics, focusing on the experiences of refugees and their host families, to identify gaps in knowledge and suggest areas for future research.
Methods: This scoping review follows Joanna Briggs Institute methodology and will search databases such as CINAHL, SOCIndex, MEDLINE through EBSCO; APA PsycInfo, Scopus through OVID; and Web of Science Core Collection, ProQuest
Dissertations, and Theses, and SciELO Citation Index, focusing on literature from 2011 onward, in English, in relation to refugee groups in different host countries, including all types of literature. Literature will be screened by 2 independent reviewers, with disagreements resolved by consensus or a third reviewer. A custom data extraction tool will be created by the research team.
Results: The results will be organized in tables or diagrams, accompanied by a narrative overview, emphasizing the main synthesized findings related to the dynamics of homestay hosting with host families and refugee well-being. No critical appraisal will be conducted. This scoping review is expected to identify research gaps that will inform the development of homestay refugee hosting models, policies, and practices. It will also offer insights into best practices and policy recommendations to improve homestay hosting programs, ultimately contributing to more effective refugee settlement and integration strategies.
Conclusions: Understanding the intricate dynamics of homestay hosting arrangements is crucial for developing policies and programs that support the well-being of refugees and the families that host them. This scoping review will shed light on the current knowledge landscape, identify research gaps, and suggest ways to enhance the homestay hosting experience for all parties involved. Through this work, we aim to contribute to the development of more inclusive, supportive, and effective approaches to refugee hosting, resettlement, and integration.
... The Ugandan authorities provide refugees with access to education and extended the right to work and start a business, among others, to address various underlying social determinants of migration health. 11 With help from international organizations, refugees were integrated into existing village and district health-care systems, which were strengthened to promote UHC. An evaluation showed high sustainability of health-care services beyond the regular life cycle of humanitarian assistance, and after agencies such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees eventually handed over management of several services back to local authorities. ...
... These studies find that the arrival of displaced people has adverse effects on health outcomes (Soazic Wang Sonne and Verme, 2019) and consumption by host-community members (Ayenew, 2021). Other studies find no impact on overall poverty indicators for the host population (Azevedo et al., 2016) but an improvement in access to services and infrastructure due to investments being directed to refugee-hosting areas (Zhou et al., 2023). Still other studies find that hosting refugees can lead to price changes favorable for local producers due to the increase in demand (Alix-Garcia et al., 2018). ...
... Existing piped water schemes within the settlements in Northern Uganda have sufficient water to extend piped water schemes to the host communities, offering an immediate opportunity to improve access to water supply and reduce tensions between hosts and refugees. Doing so will likely also foster the perception that the presence of refugees contributes to an improvement of living conditions, rather than as competition for resources, and may boost economic development in these areas (Zhou, Grossman, and Ge 2022). Although questions about affordability remain, the assessment also revealed an emerging willingness to pay among refugees, with the gradual introduction of user fees through the water boards. ...
... The negative impact on hosts' subjective perceptions may stem from possible prejudices and resentments linked to food aid and generous governmental support for refugees. Zhou et al. (2022) examine another spillover through the expansion of public service delivery and find significant improvements in local hosts' access to education, health care, and road infrastructure. More relevant to this paper's central theme, they also find no association between proximity to refugee settlements and locals' attitudes toward migrants. ...
The Ugandan government has established refugee settlements near local communities. The literature highlights a progressive refugee policy, called the "Uganda Model," that brings economic benefits to host communities. However, geographical proximity may invite resource competition, impeding social integration. Using data from refugee households, this study tests whether population pressure on the resource base drives refugee-host tension. Results show that refugees with limited access to agricultural land and firewood negatively perceive interactions with the host population. This empirical pattern is particularly salient in the West Nile region , where resource scarcity is a mounting concern due to the recent influx of South Sudanese refugees. In contrast, we find no such evidence for water accessibility, except for refugees using public wells in the South West region. Overall, our empirical analyses suggest that refugees' poor access to environmental resources is a potential source of local conflict under the Uganda Model. Thus, the peaceful coexistence of refugees and host communities requires efficient resource sharing and management schemes in refugee-hosting areas.
The refugee self-reliance agenda is marked by tensions and contradictions, echoing wider incoherence in the international refugee regime. We explore these through the philosophical concept of paradoxes. Paradoxes allow for multiple interests and narratives to be simultaneously ‘true’, leading to refugee policy outcomes that are often incoherent by omission instead of commission. To illustrate this, we draw on recent empirical studies to examine how increased access to digital technology can paradoxically lead to less access and agency in relation to health and financial services for refugees and less integration into host community life. We call these the paradox of information overload and the paradox of regulatory systems. We close with discussion of how paradoxes can a conceptual tool for policy makers and researchers to identify root causes of refugee policy incoherence, and how spaces of action can be created to ‘manage the paradox’.
Purpose
With the continued influx of refugees, entrepreneurship is increasingly becoming a viable avenue for refugee socioeconomic integration. The paper examines the effects of mindfulness, refugees’ perceptions of the host community and social capital on refugees’ entrepreneurial abilities, intentions and success.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses data from two studies conducted in refugee settlements in Uganda. Study 1 used a sample of 395 refugees, while Study 2 used a sample of 181 refugee entrepreneurs. Serial mediation analyses were conducted for both studies using the PROCESS Macro.
Findings
As hypothesized, mindfulness, perceptions of the host community and social capital were significantly correlated to refugees’ entrepreneurial self-efficacy, alertness and intentions. Mindfulness and perceptions were further correlated with perceived entrepreneurial success. The serial mediation hypothesis of the effects of mindfulness on entrepreneurial self-efficacy, alertness and intentions via refugees’ perception of the host community and social capital was supported. On the other hand, whereas refugees’ perceptions of the host community mediated the effects of mindfulness on entrepreneurial success, social capital did not.
Social implications
The study suggests that socioeconomic integration policies, processes and interventions, especially those promoting refugee entrepreneurship, should pay close attention to the social perceptions between the refugees and the host communities.
Originality/value
The paper provides insights into how mindfulness and perceptions of the host community influence refugees’ social capital and, consequently, their entrepreneurial ability and outcomes. The study suggests that the nature and quality of the social capital of refugees in less developed countries should be given further attention.
While a growing number of refugees is in need of humanitarian protection, most states are reluctant to admit them. For more than two decades, scholars have thought to understand this intricate challenge of international governance through the prism of collective action theory and the concept of refugee protection as an international public good. However, the specific benefits that states gain from refugee protection and that are assumed to constitute the public good remain surprisingly vague and under-specified. In this Reflection, we make three contributions to address this issue. First, we take stock of the literature and assess the evolution of the collective action theory in asylum governance. Second, we identify and conceptualize legitimacy, security, reputation, and development as four types of benefits that states derive from refugee protection. Third, we discuss the limitations of the dominant rational-choice approach and contend that the nature of refugee protection in the international realm is the product of international and domestic politics based on the contestation of interests and norms. These insights result in a series of recommendations for future research of refugee protection as a collective action problem.
This article investigates the nature of refugee journeys by triangulating open‐ended, closed, and spatial survey data collected among South Sudanese refugees in Northern Uganda. While much research focuses on migration pathways across borders into the Global North, knowledge about refugees' journeys within their countries of origin or to neighbouring countries is limited. By targeting refugees' initial journeys out of conflict settings, we shed light on this little‐studied aspect of the refugee experience, with the aim to contribute to a better understanding of refugees' choices en route. We scrutinise the geographies and dynamics of refugee journeys, including the impact of conflict and violence, travel companions, information sources, assistance, and modes of transportation. We further analyse the links between these experiences and the complexity, length, and duration of refugees' journeys, aiming to map the varying significance of what refugees face during their journeys. Drawing on the migration infrastructure literature, we adapt and apply these concepts to refugee journeys, enhancing our understanding of refugees' initial journeys within and out of conflict settings, conceptualised as refugee journey infrastructures.
The significant rise in the number of forcibly displaced people crossing international borders, i.e., refugees, necessitates a thorough examination of the policies implemented by receiving states to manage the arrival of these vulnerable populations. This article reviews the literature on the factors that influence refugee policies, focusing on two dimensions of host state responses: admission and integration. We argue that there may be an inherent tension between refugee admissions and refugee integration policies, as countries attempt to restrict benefits when admission numbers increase. Further, we highlight how refugee policies are influenced by international and domestic constraints and priorities that can at times be conflicting or complementary. The article ultimately advocates for a systematic analysis of the endogenous relationship between refugee policies, public perception of refugees, and migration patterns.
Purpose
This study aims to analyze the factors driving Syrian refugees into the informal labor market in Türkiye despite the existence of regulations and programs to facilitate their integration into the formal labor market.
Design/methodology/approach
This study presents results from a literature review of secondary sources and primary data collection through semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders and Syrian refugees.
Findings
The study shows that the implementation of policies and programs to boost formal employment among refugees has yielded limited results. Many refugees continue to operate within the informal economy. This informality is due to various socio-economic challenges, including anti-refugee sentiments, geographical restrictions and economic crises. The 2023 twin earthquakes have further exacerbated the vulnerable situation of refugees, intensifying the difficulty of achieving self-reliance.
As of September 2023, the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) hosts one million displaced people, including refugees from Syria, Iran, Türkiye, and Palestine, as well as internally displaced persons (IDPs) from elsewhere in Iraq. Syrian refugee numbers in the KRI have surged to more than 260,000, constituting 97% of all Syrians currently residing in Iraq (UNHCR Iraq Factsheet 2023). Additionally, some 40,000 non-Syrian refugees and asylum seekers have registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR) in Iraq. Of these, the KRI hosts 7,860 from Türkiye, 8,241 from Iran, and 615 from Palestine (Joint Crisis Coordination Centre 2023). The KRI also hosts approximately 700,000 Iraqi IDPs who have fled territories occupied by the Islamic State (ISIS) since 2014. Counted together, refugees and IDPs account for a 12% increase in the KRI’s population. Recent statistics (Joint Crisis Coordination Centre 2023) indicate that 1 in 5 people in the KRI was a refugee or IDP, a ratio higher than in Lebanon (1 in 6), Jordan (1 in 11), and Türkiye (1 in 28) (extracted from UNHCR’s Global Trends data). Often, the density of displaced people within the host community of KRI is obscured when statistics provided by the United Nations and other humanitarian actors are given for the whole of Iraq (where displaced people represent less than one in every 33 people).
Displacement is also highly visible within the landscape of the Kurdistan Region, with a total of 35 official camps for refugees and IDPs and many informal settlements in addition to urban displaced people (UNHCR 2020). While it has been noted that the authorities in refugee rentier states sometimes “adopt policies that extract revenue from other state or non-state actors in exchange for retaining refugee groups within [their] borders” (Tsourapas 2019), such dynamics still need to be explored for authorities associated with non-state and/or sub-state entities. The question of how this situation plays out in the context of the autonomous KRI, where the vast majority of Iraq’s refugees are to be found, leads us to reflect on: i) the relationship between humanitarian operations and the ability of de facto states or state-like governance systems to secure their own funding streams that circumvent the central state, and ii) the utility of humanitarian programming for displaced populations (both refugees and IDPs) within the politics of legitimacy for aspirant states. Indeed, analysis of these dynamics became all the more pressing in the context of, and subsequent backlash to, the 2017 independence referendum called by the leadership of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). Adding to the emerging body of work on refugee rentierism, we also consider the parallel case of “IDP rentierism” (a new contribution to the literature) in the context of the
mass internal displacement crisis caused by the 2014 ISIS occupation of significant swathes of Iraqi territory.
This paper’s core research questions consider how the KRI authorities have instrumentalized the presence of refugees and IDPs, and assistance programs responding to their needs, in the pursuit of both financial independence and political legitimacy. Broadly drawing on reflections about refugee rent-seeking strategies (Lynch and Tsourapas 2024), we seek to map out the systematic steps taken by the KRI authorities to benefit from hosting refugeesand IDPs in the Kurdistan Region. With this in mind, we consider: i) how the KRI authorities have sought, and continue to pressure the international community to provide, humanitarian funding to fill their resources gap when hosting large numbers of refugees and IDPs in the post-ISIS context (especially when the KRI struggles to provide employment opportunities for its own, often disgruntled, youth population, many of whom are considering migrating out of Iraq); ii) how, in parallel, the KRI, like many MENA countries, has used the employment sponsorship (Kafala) system to generate a secondary income from refugees; iii) how the KRI has attempted to use “hospitality” for refugees and IDPs to gain legitimacy for its statehood aspirations, with refugees and their electoral votes being used to obtain greater representation in parliament and a larger budget from Iraq’s federal government; and iv) how the dynamics of earmarked funding has also created a hierarchy among refugees, for example by prioritizing Syrian over Iranian and Turkish refugees because of donor attention to their plight, further marginalizing the latter through processes that we elsewhere label as the “othering” of certain refugees (Yassen et al. forthcoming).
This paper contains a review of the available data from the KRG, including from the Joint Crisis Coordination Centre (JCC), which is the governmental entity responsible for humanitarian affairs and displacement policy under the KRG’s Ministry of Interior. We also studied media and financial reports produced by the KRG and donor agencies with a view to understanding the motivations behind programmatic and funding decisions. This methodology is complemented by semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders and individuals affected by funding and political contestation. We combined interviews with desk research to improve our understanding of the complex legal framework and procedures in place.
Motives: The war in Ukraine has led to the need to help millions of refugees. Poland has issued the highest number of first residence permits to Ukrainian refugees, and it is the second most popular destination country for the Ukrainians taking long-term refuge. Polish society has shown commendable solidarity – individuals have hosted Ukrainian refugees in their homes, businesses provided shelter in tourist sites, and other organizations – in their facilities. This study highlights an important issue that is usually overlooked in academic studies. Many refugees benefited from the assistance of reception points for accommodation and were directed to places where accommodation was arranged. As a result, thousands of refugees were directed to less developed regions with higher unemployment rates and lower income levels.Aim: The study aimed to present the spatial distribution of the currently used accommodation financed by the Polish state in a less developed region against its socio-economic characteristics. The study focused on powiats (counties), the second-level unit of administration in Poland.Results: The spatial distribution of accommodation facilities was not based on the favorablesocio-economic attributes of the area but solely on the availability of premises that could be promptly adapted for shelter purposes.
The war in Ukraine has led to the largest migration crisis in Europe since World War II. Over 14.5 million citizens have left Ukraine after February 24, 2022, with 11.7 million of them heading to European Union countries. The scale of forced migration by Ukrainians has compelled EU countries to take unprecedented measures to provide protection to our citizens against russian military aggression. This article analyzes and identifies key models and mechanisms of social adaptation for forced migrants from Ukraine in Eastern European countries, using examples from aspects in Poland and the Czech Republic. It is noted that the phenomenon of social adaptation of forced migrants from Ukraine in Eastern European countries, primarily in Poland and the Czech Republic, is based on a complex of objective and subjective factors. The determining factors include ethnic roots, historical and cultural heritage, previous rich interconnections, and practices of socio-economic interaction. The implemented temporary protection regulations for forced migrants in EU countries, as well as the models and mechanisms of social adaptation for Ukrainians who have obtained such status, testify to their systematic nature and effectiveness. However, the 30% indicator of those unwilling to return to Ukraine exacerbates the problem of catastrophic consequences of mass migration for Ukraine's most valuable capital – its human and intellectual resources. The article suggests directions for further research on the issues of studying European models and mechanisms of social adaptation for Ukrainian migrants, particularly in countries with potentially similar cultural-ethical identities in Eastern Europe, in terms of creating optimal conditions and principles for their reverse migration and reintegration, as well as the applicability of the phenomenon of social adaptation for forced migrants in realizing Ukraine's European aspirations and its accession to the EU. Key words: temporary protection; forced migration; refugees; social adaptation
Reforms striving to bridge the humanitarian–development divide in refugee-hosting countries can alter the status quo related to refugee management and service provision. Such changes can result in obstacles to sustainable refugee inclusion when they challenge vested interests. In this paper, we propose a theoretical framework outlining the conditions under which government bureaucracies are likely to cooperate in donor-initiated refugee integration reforms as well as when and how they resist with a focus on the role of governance structures. We draw on archival data, observation, and key informant interviews to apply our framework to the case of Ethiopia as the government and international partners engage in reform efforts to include refugees in the national education system and to move from a humanitarian- to development-oriented model of financing. In this case, we find that reforms backed by international donors fundamentally challenged the vested interests of existing bureaucracies and that the resulting resistance substantially narrowed the original policy goals and will likely have implications for bridging the humanitarian–development divide going forward.
Large migrant inflows have spurred anti-immigrant sentiment, but can small inflows have a different impact? We exploit the redistribution of migrants after the dismantling of the “Calais Jungle” in France to study the impact of the exposure to few migrants, which we estimate using difference-in-differences and instrumental variables. We find that in the presence of a migrant center (CAO), the growth rate of vote shares for the main far-right party (Front National (FN), our proxy for anti-immigrant sentiment) between 2012 and 2017 is reduced by about 12 percentage points. This effect, which crucially depends on the inflow's size, points toward the contact hypothesis (Allport, 1954).
A large literature suggests that the presence of refugees is associated with greater risk of conflict. We argue that the positive effects of hosting refugees on local conditions have been overlooked. Using global data from 1990 to 2018 on locations of refugee communities and civil conflict at the subnational level, we find no evidence that hosting refugees increases the likelihood of new conflict, prolongs existing conflict, or raises the number of violent events or casualties. Furthermore, we explore conditions where provinces are likely to experience substantively large decreases in conflict risk due to increased development. Analysis examining nighttime lights as a measure of development, coupled with expert interviews, support our claim. To address the possibility of selection bias, we use placebo tests and matching. Our research challenges assertions that refugees are security risks. Instead, we show that in many cases, hosting refugees can encourage local development and even conflict reduction.
As the number of refugees rises across the world, anti‐refugee violence has become a pressing concern. What explains the incidence and support of such hate crime? We argue that fears among native men that refugees pose a threat in the competition for female partners are a critical but understudied factor driving hate crime. Employing a comprehensive data set on the incidence of hate crime across Germany, we first demonstrate that hate crime rises where men face disadvantages in local mating markets. Next, we complement this ecological evidence with original survey measures and confirm that individual‐level support for hate crime increases when men fear that the inflow of refugees makes it more difficult to find female partners. Mate competition concerns remain a robust predictor even when controlling for anti‐refugee views, perceived job competition, general frustration, and aggressiveness. We conclude that a more complete understanding of hate crime and immigrant conflict must incorporate marriage markets and mate competition.
Existing evidence suggests that low-skilled refugee influx may increase educational attainment among native adolescents due to reduced opportunities and returns in the lower segment of the labor market. In this paper, I test whether refugee influx can also increase the intensity of human capital accumulation among native adolescents who are enrolled in school. Using the PISA micro data and implementing a quasi-experimental empirical strategy designed to exploit (i) the time variation in regional refugee intensity and (ii) institutional setting in the Turkish public education system, I show that the Math, Science, and Reading scores of Turkish adolescents increased following the Syrian refugee influx. The increase in test scores mostly comes from the lower half of the test score distribution and from native adolescents with lower maternal education. The empirical design embeds a framework where the estimated refugee impact can solely be attributed to the labor market mechanism. In particular, I use the observation that refugee adolescents are enrolled more systematically into the Turkish education system after 2016, which gave me the opportunity to use 2015 and 2018 PISA waves in a way to isolate the effect of the labor market mechanism from the potentially negating force coming from the education experience mechanism. I conclude that the labor market forces that emerged in the aftermath of the refugee crisis have led native adolescents, who would normally perform worse in school, to take their high school education more seriously.
The paper reviews 59 empirical studies that estimated the economic impact of forced displacement on host communities. A review of the empirical models used by these studies and a meta-analysis of 972 separate results collected from these studies are the main contributions of the paper. Coverage extends to 19 major forced displacement crises that occurred between 1922 and 2018, to host countries at different levels of economic development and different types of forced migrants. Results refer to outcomes related to employment, wages, prices and household well-being. All studies can be classified as ex-post quasi-natural experiments. The analysis on empirical modeling shows a preference for partial equilibrium modeling, differences-in-differences evaluation methods, and cross-section econometrics, with all these choices largely dependent on the type of data available. The meta-analysis finds that most results on employment and wages are non-significant. When significant, decreases in employment and wages are more likely to occur than increases with decreases strongly associated with the short-term, middle-income countries, females, young and informal workers. Food and rent prices tend to increase in the short-term but other prices may decrease. The probability of observing a decrease in household well-being among hosts is lower than 1 in 5.
Little is known about the political consequences of immigration in Sub-Saharan Africa. In this paper, we estimate the effect of exposure to immigration on election outcomes in South Africa. Our analysis is based on municipality panel data and an instrumental variable (IV) strategy exploiting historical migrant settlement patterns. We find that local immigration concentration has a negative impact on the performance of the incumbent African National Congress, whereas support for the main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, is found to increase in municipalities with a larger immigrant presence. These effects hold regardless of the skill levels of immigrants in a municipality. In terms of mechanisms, competition over jobs and local public services as well as ethnic diversity and cultural factors influence how immigration affects election outcomes. These findings are robust to a broad range of sensitivity checks. They provide evidence that immigration can be a politically salient issue in migrant-destination Sub-Saharan African countries. They also show that immigration can affect election results even in contexts where there is no single issue anti-migrant party.
Does local exposure to refugees increase right-wing support? This paper studies a case uniquely suited to address this question: the allocation of refugees to the rural hinterlands of eastern Germany during the European refugee crisis. Similar to non-urban regions elsewhere, the area has had minimal previous exposure to foreigners, but distinctively leans towards the political right. Our data comprise electoral outcomes, and individual-level survey and behavioral measures. A policy allocating refugees following strict administrative rules and a matching procedure allow for causal identification. Our measurements confirm the presence of widespread anti-immigrant sentiments. However, these are unaffected by the presence of refugees in respondents' hometowns: on average, we record null effects for all outcomes, which we interpret as supporting a sociotropic perspective on immigration attitudes. Masked by these overall null findings, we observe convergence: local exposure to refugees appears to have pulled both right-and left-leaning individuals more towards the center.
Anti-refugee violence often accompanies refugee migration, but the factors that fuel or mitigate that violence remain poorly understood, including the common policy response in such settings of humanitarian aid. Existing theory and policy debates predict that aid to refugees exacerbates anti-refugee violence by increasing hosts’ resentment toward refugees. In contrast, however, aid may reduce violence in ways such as increasing host communities’ well-being through more demand for local goods and services and refugees sharing aid. We test for the sign and mechanisms of this relationship. Evidence from original survey data and a regression discontinuity design suggests that cash transfers to Syrian refugees in Lebanon did not increase anti-refugee violence, and if anything they reduced violence. Exploring why aid does not increase hostility, we find evidence that aid allows recipients to indirectly compensate locals through higher demand for local goods and services, directly benefit locals by offering help and sharing aid, and reduce contact with potential aggressors.
A considerable portion of European citizens are in favour of limited or conditional access for migrants to welfare provisions. Previous studies found that this welfare chauvinism is stronger among citizens with less favourable economic positions. This study seeks to explain the relationship between economic risk, both objective and subjective, and welfare chauvinism by looking at two distinct mechanisms: the traditional economic explanation of economic egalitarianism and the cultural explanation of ethnic threat. Given the lack of longitudinal studies, we also examine whether changes in economic risk, economic egalitarianism and threat can explain changes in welfare chauvinism over time. Using a four-wave panel-study (2013–2015) collected in Great Britain and the Netherlands, these relationships were studied both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. The longitudinal mediation model was tested by making use of parallel process latent growth curve modelling. In both Great Britain and the Netherlands, economic egalitarianism and ethnic threat explained the link between economic risk and welfare chauvinism. Furthermore, in both countries, an increase over time in perceptions of ethnic threat was found to be the driving force behind an increase in welfare chauvinism, irrespective of changes in economic egalitarianism.
We study how individual political preferences changed in response to the influx of over 3.5 million Syrian refugees to Turkey during 2012–2016. Using a difference-in-differences research design, we compare the political outcomes in geographic areas with high versus low intensities of refugee presence before and after the beginning of the Syrian Civil War. To address the endogeneity of refugees’ location choices, we adopt an instrumental variables approach that relies on (1) historical dispersion of Arabic speakers in Turkish provinces and (2) driving distances between Turkish and Syrian residential areas to predict the flows of refugees across Turkish provinces during the study period. We find strong polarization in attitudes towards refugees between the supporters and opponents of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). However, regression analyses of monthly survey data suggest that the massive inflow of refugees induced only a modest net drop in support for the AKP. Refugee inflows did not have a significant impact on election outcomes during the study period.
Immigration is one of the most divisive political issues in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and several other Western countries. We estimate the impact of immigration on voting for far-left and far-right candidates in France, using panel data on presidential elections from 1988 to 2017. To derive causal estimates, we instrument more recent immigration flows by settlement patterns in 1968. We find that immigration increases support for far-right candidates. This is driven by low-educated immigrants from non-Western countries. We also find that immigration has a weak negative effect on support for far-left candidates, which could be explained by a reduced support for redistribution. We corroborate our analysis with a multinomial choice analysis using survey data.
Does exposure to the refugee crisis fuel support for extreme-right parties? Despite heated debates about the political repercussions of the refugee crisis in Europe, there exists very little—and sometimes conflicting—evidence with which to assess the impact of a large influx of refugees on natives’ political attitudes and behavior. We provide causal evidence from a natural experiment in Greece, where some Aegean islands close to the Turkish border experienced sudden and drastic increases in the number of Syrian refugees while other islands slightly farther away—but with otherwise similar institutional and socioeconomic characteristics—did not. Placebo tests suggest that precrisis trends in vote shares for exposed and nonexposed islands were virtually identical. This allows us to obtain unbiased estimates of the electoral consequences of the refugee crisis. Our study shows that among islands that faced a massive but transient inflow of refugees passing through just before the September 2015 election, vote shares for Golden Dawn, the most extreme-right party in Europe, moderately increased by 2 percentage points (a 44 percent increase at the average). The finding that mere exposure to the refugee crisis is sufficient to fuel support for extreme-right parties has important implications for our theoretical understanding of the drivers of antirefugee backlash.
Although Europe has experienced unprecedented numbers of refugee arrivals in recent years, there exists almost no causal evidence regarding the impact of the refugee crisis on natives’ attitudes, policy preferences, and political engagement. We exploit a natural experiment in the Aegean Sea, where Greek islands close to the Turkish coast experienced a sudden and massive increase in refugee arrivals, while similar islands slightly farther away did not. Leveraging a targeted survey of 2,070 island residents and distance to Turkey as an instrument, we find that direct exposure to refugee arrivals induces sizable and lasting increases in natives’ hostility toward refugees, immigrants, and Muslim minorities; support for restrictive asylum and immigration policies; and political engagement to effect such exclusionary policies. Since refugees only passed through these islands, our findings challenge both standard economic and cultural explanations of anti-immigrant sentiment and show that mere exposure suffices in generating lasting increases in hostility.
Existing research argues that refugee inflows may increase the risk of domestic conflict, particularly civil war that, by definition, involves the state as an actor. However, many of the postulated mechanisms linking refugees to a higher risk of such conflict pertain to tensions with locals, which do not necessarily involve any grievances against government authorities. We contend that it is more likely to identify an association between refugees and non-state actor violence, i.e., armed violence between organized non-state groups, neither of which pertains to the state. We also claim that the extent to which refugees are associated with a higher likelihood of non-state conflict depends on the capacity of governments to manage and mitigate risks. We report evidence that refugee populations can be linked to an increased risk of non-state conflict, as well as for a mitigating effect of state capacity on the risk of non-state conflicts in the presence of refugees. We do not find a clear effect of refugee populations on civil war, suggesting that the link depends on existing conflict cleavages relevant to mobilizing refugees or locals. Our research helps to shed light on the relevant security consequences of managing refugee populations. Despite the common arguments portraying refugees as security risks in developed countries, the risk of non-state conflict applies primarily to weak states that have been forced to shoulder a disproportionate burden in hosting refugees.
Uganda is one of the top refugee hosting countries in Africa and the world. It has been praised as a generous country with progressive refugee policies and laws that reflect the country’s national, regional and international obligations. However, a number of challenges ranging from increasing refugee numbers, protracted refugee situations, the burden of hosting of refugees, to limited resources and little international support threaten Uganda’s hospitality. This article looks at the major refugee protection challenges that confront Uganda. It further addresses some of the emerging opportunities which if seized could provide effective protection to the refugees. Finally, the paper concludes with policy implications.
This paper studies to what extent and in what ways access to educational services and schooling outcomes of local children are influenced by the presence of a refugee camp in or around their community. Taking the case of Congolese refugees in Rwanda and relying on household survey data collected in 2016, we investigate the availability of schools, schooling rates and access to school-based feeding programs in communities closer to and further away from three refugee camps: Gihembe, Kiziba and Kigeme. Furthermore, we conduct a cohort analysis to compare the years of schooling and primary school completion of Rwandans residing at different distances from each of these camps. Finally, on the basis of focus group discussions conducted among locals, we provide further insights into the ways in which locals perceive the effects of the refugee camp's presence on their children's access to schooling and educational outcomes. Our results highlight that living nearby a refugee camp does not have a negative influence on the education of local children. On the contrary, children residing closer to the camps have better schooling outcomes, and locals residing closer to the camps have a wide array of mostly positive views regarding the effects of refugees on local education. These results contribute to the body of literature on the effects of refugees on host communities and inform policies on how refugees need not be a 'burden' if long-term investments are made and the voice of the locals are heard to address their needs.
The use of the categories ‘refugee’ and ‘migrant’ to differentiate between those on the move and the legitimacy, or otherwise, of their claims to international protection has featured strongly during Europe’s ‘migration crisis’ and has been used to justify policies of exclusion and containment. Drawing on interviews with 215 people who crossed the Mediterranean to Greece in 2015, our paper challenges this ‘categorical fetishism’, arguing that the dominant categories fail to capture adequately the complex relationship between political, social and economic drivers of migration or their shifting significance for individuals over time and space. As such it builds upon a substantial body of academic literature demonstrating a disjuncture between conceptual and policy categories and the lived experiences of those on the move. However, the paper is also critical of efforts to foreground or privilege ‘refugees’ over ‘migrants’ arguing that this reinforces rather than challenges the dichotomy’s faulty foundations. Rather those concerned about the use of categories to marginalise and exclude should explicitly engage with the politics of bounding, that is to say, the process by which categories are constructed, the purpose they serve and their consequences, in order to denaturalise their use as a mechanism to distinguish, divide and discriminate.
Civil conflict in Syria, started in March 2011, led to a massive wave of forced immigration from Northern Syria to the Southeastern regions of Turkey, which later had serious economic/political repercussions on the MENA region and most of Europe. This paper exploits this natural experiment to estimate the impact of Syrian refugees on the labor market outcomes of natives in Turkey. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, we find that immigration has considerably affected the employment outcomes of natives, while its impact on wage outcomes has been negligible. We document notable employment losses among informal workers as a consequence of refugee inflows. Formal employment increased slightly potentially due to increased social services in the region. The majority of those who lost their informal jobs have either left the labor force or remained unemployed. Formal employment and unemployment rates have increased, while labor force participation, informal employment, and job finding rates have declined among natives. Disadvantaged groups, i.e., women, younger workers, and less-educated workers, have been affected the worst. The prevalence of informal employment in the Turkish labor markets has amplified the negative impact of Syrian refugee inflows on natives’ labor market outcomes. Overall, the impact of Syrian refugee inflows on the Turkish labor markets has been limited, which suggests that the potential costs on the European and other affected labor markets might also be limited.
Previous research demonstrates that refugee populations can threaten the security of receiving countries. This study, in contrast, seeks to examine the physical security challenges refugees face in host states. It utilizes a new, geographically referenced data set on subcountry refugee demographics to test the hypothesis that locations home to larger refugee populations are more likely to experience one-sided attacks by conflict actors. Results demonstrate that refugee accommodation is a significant predictor of one-sided violence in Africa. In particular, combatants commit significantly more acts of violence against civilians in locations home to larger numbers of self-settled refugees compared to other locations. These findings suggest that scholars and practitioners account for possible dangers presented by refugee flows and threats to refugees simultaneously.
Significance
The number of refugees displaced by civil conflict or natural disasters is on the rise. Economic impacts of refugees on host countries are controversial and little understood, because data have not been available and the question of refugee impacts does not lend itself to conventional impact evaluation methods. We use a unique Monte Carlo simulation approach with microdata from refugee and host-country surveys to obtain the first estimates of refugee camps’ impacts on surrounding host-country economies and to compare impacts of cash versus in-kind refugee aid. An additional refugee increases total real income within a 10-km radius around two cash camps by significantly more than the aid the refugee receives. Impacts around a camp receiving in-kind (food) aid are smaller.
Most forced migrants around the world are displaced within the Global South. We study whether and how de jure policies on forced displacement affect where forced migrants flee in the developing world. Recent evidence from the Global North suggests migrants gravitate toward liberal policy environments. However, existing analyses expect de jure policies to have little effect in the developing world, given strong presumptions that policy enforcement is poor and policy knowledge is low. Using original data on de jure displacement policies for 92 developing countries and interviews with 126 refugees and policy makers, we document a robust association between liberal de jure policies and forced migrant flows. Gravitation toward liberal environments is conditional on factors that facilitate the diffusion of policy knowledge, such as transnational ethnic kin. Policies for free movement, services, and livelihoods are especially attractive. Utility-maximizing models of migrant decision making must take de jure policy provisions into account.
This paper examines the impact of massive refugee inflows on the internal mobility of the host’s country population. We rely on panel data from before and after the Syrian war and exploit the geographical distribution of Syrians across Jordanian sub-districts. Using Difference-in-Differences, we find that the Syrian inflows increased Jordanian residential mobility. In particular, native outflows of the camp hosting areas increased by 27%. The increased residential mobility out of the camp areas seems to be triggered by an increase in rents and a crowding out of Jordanian students by Syrians in schools. Our results also show that the Syrian presence increased Jordanians’ job location mobility into the camp areas. These findings are robust to controlling for refugees’ locational sorting using instrumental variables, while auxiliary placebo regressions confirm that pre-existing trends in outcomes are not driving the results. We also provide a thorough discussion on the impact of refugees versus broader impacts of the Syrian war.
As of the end of 2017, 3.4 million Syrian refugees lived in Turkey. These refugees left a country where the health system was utterly broken. Several studies report that Syrian refugees faced numerous diseases during their exodus, brought certain infectious diseases to the hosting communities, and have a high incidence of health care utilization. Moreover, they have much higher fertility rates than natives. We examine the effect of Syrian refugees on the health care resources in Turkey and on natives' mortality-with a focus on infant, child, and elderly mortality. Our OLS results yield suggestive evidence of an adverse effect of the refugee shock on infant and child mortality. However, we find that this is a result of endogenous settlement patterns of refugees. Once we account for the endogeneity using a plausibly exogenous instrument, we find no evidence of an effect on native mortality for any age group. We also analyze the refugees' pressure on the health care services in Turkey and the government's response to understand our findings on mortality outcomes.
Little theoretical or empirical work examines migration policy in the developing world. We develop and test a theory that distinguishes the drivers of policy reform and factors influencing the direction of reform. We introduce an original data set of de jure asylum and refugee policies covering more than ninety developing countries that are presently excluded from existing indices of migration policy. Examining descriptive trends in the data, we find that unlike in the global North, forced displacement policies in the global South have become more liberal over time. Empirically, we test the determinants of asylum policymaking, bolstering our quantitative results with qualitative evidence from interviews in Uganda. A number of key findings emerge. Intense, proximate civil wars are the primary impetus for asylum policy change in the global South. Liberalizing changes are made by regimes led by political elites whose ethnic kin confront discrimination or violence in neighboring countries. There is no generalizable evidence that developing countries liberalize asylum policy in exchange for economic assistance from Western actors. Distinct frameworks are needed to understand migration policymaking in developing versus developed countries.
Many refugees remain for long time in host countries and to assess their impact on the welfare of local communities is essential for policy design. We focus on Uganda, a country that hosts the largest number of refugees in SSA. We analyse whether and to what extent the proximity to refugees increases the welfare and the level of economic activity of hosting-community households by generating incentives for economic exchanges. To measure the potential of interaction we use the distance between hosting-community and refugee households and we test the robustness of our results by implementing different approaches. We conclude that, beyond the possible effects due to the benefits provided by the agencies caring for refugees, the direct interaction between them and the hosts generates an increase in both the level and the types of the economic activity carried out by the hosts. However, the market creation is limited to a radius of approximately 5 kilometres.
The canonical difference-in-differences (DD) estimator contains two time periods, ”pre” and ”post”, and two groups, ”treatment” and ”control”. Most DD applications, however, exploit variation across groups of units that receive treatment at different times. This paper shows that the two-way fixed effects estimator equals a weighted average of all possible two-group/two-period DD estimators in the data. A causal interpretation of two-way fixed effects DD estimates requires both a parallel trends assumption and treatment effects that are constant over time. I show how to decompose the difference between two specifications, and provide a new analysis of models that include time-varying controls.
What are the impacts of large inflows of refugees on refugee-hosting housing markets? We examine the effects of the arrival of 1.3 million Syrian refugees on the housing expenditures and income of Jordanian nationals. For this purpose, we exploit that refugees disproportionately locate around the three largest refugee camps after the beginning of the Syrian conflict in 2011. Larger refugee inflows are reflected in two main trends: higher housing expenditures of all Jordanians and increments in rental income of individuals that own real estate property. The effects are explained by the large spike in rental prices that resulted from the higher demand for housing units and the unresponsive housing supply in refugee-hosting areas.
To estimate the dynamic effects of an absorbing treatment, researchers often use two-way fixed effects regressions that include leads and lags of the treatment. We show that in settings with variation in treatment timing across units, the coefficient on a given lead or lag can be contaminated by effects from other periods, and apparent pretrends can arise solely from treatment effects heterogeneity. We propose an alternative estimator that is free of contamination, and illustrate the relative shortcomings of two-way fixed effects regressions with leads and lags through an empirical application.
Linear regressions with period and group fixed effects are widely used to estimate treatment effects. We show that they estimate weighted sums of the average treatment effects (ATE ) in each group and period, with weights that may be negative. Due to the negative weights, the linear regression coefficient may for instance be negative while all the ATEs are positive. We propose another estimator that solves this issue. In the two applications we revisit, it is significantly different from the linear regression estimator. (JEL C21, C23, D72, J31, J51, L82)
Uganda is one of the leading host countries for refugees in the East and Horn of Africa. Uganda’s location among instable neighbouring countries and its open door policy to refugees has seen a big number of refugees flowing into the country from Southern Sudan, Rwanda, Somalia, Burundi, Eritrea, Kenya, Ethiopia and Democratic Republic of Congo. Some of the refugees are hosted in Nakivale one of the biggest refugee camps in the country located in South Western Uganda. This paper documents the economic and environmental impacts of refugees in Nakivale refugee camp. Data were generated through Focus Group Discussion and interviewing camp leaders, government officials, local leaders, the refugees and community members. This paper contends that the establishment and dense occupancy of Nakivale refugee camp have exerted pressure on the environment as the refugees’ endeavor to revitalize their livelihoods. The increasing numbers of refugees and their active involvement in the production systems has had an impact on the economy. The government should harmonize the interpretation of the 2006 Refugee Act on the right of refugees to employment so that they can increasingly be engaged in production systems, sizes of land allocations should be increased to facilitate expansion in economic activities; and scale up the environment management aspects that has been rolled out in new Uganda Development Response to Displacement Project.
How do migrants decide when to leave? Conventional wisdom is that violence and economic deprivation force migrants to leave their homes. However, long-standing problems of violence and poverty often cannot explain sudden spikes in migration. We study the timing of migration decisions in the critical case of Syrian and Iraqi migration to Europe using an original survey and embedded experiment, as well as interviews, focus groups, and Internet search data. We find that violence and poverty lead individuals to invest in learning about the migration environment. Political shifts in receiving countries then can unleash migratory flows. The findings underscore the need for further research on what migrants know about law and politics, when policy changes create and end migrant waves, and whether politicians anticipate migratory responses when crafting policy.
This paper investigates how different forms of exposure to refugees affect voting for far-right parties. I study the state of Upper Austria where many municipalities hosted asylum seekers and also experienced a massive flow of refugees crossing into Germany in 2015. Exposure to refugees passing through border municipalities increased farright votes by about 1.5 pp., which suggests that mere exposure can increase far-right support. Conversely, contact and sustained interactions between natives and asylum seekers in hosting municipalities decreased far-right votes by about 4 pp., which is in line with the intergroup contact theory.
The European migration crisis of 2015–2016 and the migrants from Central America gathering on the US border since 2017 have created headlines and presented challenges for Western governments. In this paper, I examine the trends in, and determinants of, the number of asylum seekers applying for refugee status in the developed world. This must be understood against the background of an international policy regime that evolved in response to refugee crises and geopolitical imperatives. While policy has drawn a sharp distinction between refugees and other immigrants, that difference has become increasingly blurred among asylum migrants. In this light, I examine the interplay between migration pressures, public opinion, and asylum policies in recent decades.
Since the 2015 refugee “crisis,” much has been made of the distinction between the legal category of refugee and migrant. While migration scholars have accounted for the increased blurring of these two categories through explanations of institutional drift and policy layering, we argue that the intentional policies utilized by states and international organizations to minimize legal avenues for refugees to seek protection should also be considered. We identify four practices of policy “conversion” that have also led to the increasingly problematic distinction between migrants and refugees: (1) limiting access to territory through burden-shifting and other practices of extraterritorialization; (2) limiting access to asylum and local integration through procedural and administrative hindrances; (3) the use of group-based criteria as a basis of exclusion; (4) the inclusion of non-Convention criteria within resettlement schemes. Drawing upon a historical institutionalist approach and a wide array of empirical sources—including 3 years of combined primary field research conducted in Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, and Turkey between 2013 and 2016—we demonstrate that states are actively pursuing a greater degree of control over the selection of refugees, in practice making refugee resettlement closer to another immigration track rather than a unique status that compels state responsibility.
Most of the world's displaced people are hosted in low-income countries. Focusing on evidence from poor countries, we review the literature on the economic consequences of hosting refugees or internally displaced people. In the short run, violence, environmental degradation, and disease propagation are major risks to the host populations. In the long run, infrastructure, trade, and labor markets are key channels that determine the impacts on host communities. These impacts can be positive or negative and often unequally distributed among different hosts. We discuss policy options for building resilience in the light of this evidence. Investments in road infrastructure and deepening trade with refugees’ countries of origin are strategies worth exploring for enhancing resilience and transitioning from humanitarian assistance toward development. Finally, we identify key knowledge gaps in this literature and formulate a research agenda for the near future.
Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Resource Economics Volume 11 is October 4, 2019. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
Starting in 2011, the Syrian conflict caused a large influx of refugees into Jordan. In 2015, there were an estimated 1.3 million Syrians in a country with just 6.6 million Jordanians. This paper investigates the impact of the Syrian refugee influx on the Jordanian labor market. Panel data from 2010 to 2016 combined with information on where the refugee influx was concentrated allow us to identify the impact of refugees on Jordanians’ labor market outcomes. Overall, we find that Jordanians living in areas with a high concentration of refugees have had no worse labor market outcomes than Jordanians with less exposure to the refugee influx.
To estimate the causal effect of refugee migration on voting outcomes in parliamentary and municipal elections in Denmark, our study is the first that addresses the key problem of immigrant sorting by exploiting a policy that assigned refugee immigrants to municipalities on a quasi-random basis. We find that in all but the most urban municipalities, allocation of larger refugee shares between electoral cycles leads to an increase in the vote share for right-leaning parties with an anti-immigration agenda, and we show large differences in voters’ responses to refugee allocation according to pre-policy municipal characteristics. However, in the largest and urban municipalities, refugee allocation has—if anything—the opposite effect on vote shares for anti-immigration parties. This coincides with a sharp divide in attitudes to refugees between urban and rural populations, which may be partly explained by distinctive interactions between natives and those with different background in cities and rural areas. Refugee allocation also has a large impact on the anti-immigration parties’ choice of where to stand for municipal election, and we provide some evidence that it influences voter turnout.
The security consequences associated with refugee flows are among the most widely studied aspects of forced migration. While the majority of this research program has focused on how refugee movements affect the risk of political violence, scant scholarly attention has been paid to violence perpetrated against refugees. Building upon the state repression literature, we argue that refugees are particularly vulnerable to the violation of their physical integrity rights in the wake of terrorist attacks in host states. Governments are pressured to respond to security crises but prefer to take actions without jeopardizing public support. In this context, refugee groups can be strategically attractive targets of repression because they lack electoral power and citizens are often supportive of government crackdown against foreigners in times of security crises. Given that leaders have stronger incentives to respond to voters’ demands quickly in democracies, we expect the effect of terror attacks on violence against refugees to be stronger in democratic host states. Using a novel global dataset on anti-refugee violence between 1996 and 2015, we show that refugees are more likely to be exposed to violence by the coercive agents of the state in the wake of security crises. We provide suggestive evidence that the repression of refugees is more consistent with a scapegoating mechanism than the actual ties and involvement of refugees in terrorism. The findings reveal that the well-being of uprooted populations is particularly at risk when host countries face a security threat.
This thesis consists of three chapters on the economic and political effects of in-migration. In the first chapter, I show that political opposition to immigration can arise even when immigrants bring significant economic prosperity to receiving areas. I exploit exogenous variation in European immigration to US cities between 1910 and 1930 induced by World War I and the Immigration Acts of the 1920s, and instrument immigrants' location decision relying on pre-existing settlement patterns. Immigration increased natives' employment and occupational standing, and fostered industrial production and capital utilization. However, despite these economic benefits, it triggered hostile political reactions, such as the election of more conservative legislators, higher support for anti-immigration legislation, and lower public goods provision. Stitching the economic and the political results together, I provide evidence that natives' backlash was, at least in part, due to cultural differences between immigrants and natives, suggesting that diversity might be economically beneficial but politically hard to manage. The second chapter asks the following question: is racial heterogeneity responsible for the distressed financial conditions of US central cities and for their limited ability to provide even basic public goods? If so, why? I study these questions exploiting the movement of more than 1.5 million African Americans from the South to the North of the United States during the first wave of the Great Migration (1915-1930). Black immigration and the induced white outmigration ("white flight") are both instrumented for using, respectively, pre-migration settlements and their interaction with MSA geographic characteristics that affect the cost of moving to the suburbs. The inflow of African Americans imposed a strong, negative fiscal externality on receiving places by lowering property values and, mechanically, reducing tax revenues. Unable or unwilling to raise tax rates, cities cut public spending, especially in education, to meet a tighter budget constraint. While the fall in tax revenues was partly offset by higher debt, this strategy may, in the long run, have proven unsustainable, contributing to the financially distressed conditions of several US central cities today. The third chapter, coauthored with Michela Carlana, studies the effects of immigration on natives' marriage, fertility, and family formation across US cities between 1910 and 1930. Instrumenting immigrants' location decision by interacting pre-existing ethnic settlements with aggregate migration flows, we find that immigration raised marriage rates, fertility, and the propensity to leave the parental house for young native men and women. We show that these effects were driven by the large and positive impact of immigration on native men's employment and occupational standing, which increased the supply of "marriageable men". We also explore alternative mechanisms - changes in sex ratios, natives' cultural responses, and displacement effects of immigrants on female employment - and provide evidence that none of them can account for a quantitatively relevant fraction of our results.
We combine community-level outcomes of 27 votes about immigration issues in Switzerland with census data to estimate the effect of immigration on natives' attitudes towards immigrants. We apply an instrumental variable approach to take potentially endogenous locational choices into account, and we categorize immigrants into two groups according to the cultural values and beliefs of their country of origin to understand how the cultural distance between natives and immigrants affects this relationship. We find that the share of culturally different immigrants is a significant and sizable determinant of anti-immigration votes, while the presence of culturally similar immigrants does not affect natives' voting behavior at all in most specifications. We argue that the differential impact of the two groups of immigrants is, at least in part, driven by natives' concerns about compositional amenities. We finally find that the share of right-wing votes in favor of the Swiss People's Party appears to be more elastic with respect to the share of culturally different immigrants than natives' attitudes themselves, suggesting that the party has gained a disproportionate vote share from attitudinal changes caused by immigrant inflows.
Does the presence of immigrants in one's neighborhood affect voting for far right-wing parties? We study the case of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) that, under the leadership of Jörg Haider, increased its vote share from less than 5% in the early 1980s to 27% by the end of the 1990s and continued to attract more than 20% of voters in the 2013 national election. We find that the inflow of immigrants into a community has a significant impact on the increase in the community's voting share for the FPÖ, explaining roughly a tenth of the regional variation in vote changes. Our results suggest that voters worry about adverse labor market effects of immigration, as well as about the quality of their neighborhood. In fact, we find evidence of a negative impact of immigration on “compositional amenities”. In communities with larger immigration influx, Austrian children commute longer distances to school, and fewer daycare resources are provided. We do not find evidence that Austrians move out of communities with increasing immigrant presence. (JEL: P16, J61)
Using Italian municipality-level data on national elections and IV estimation strategy, we find that immigration generates a sizable causal increase in votes for the centre-right coalition, which has a political platform less favorable to immigrants. Additional findings are: (i) the effect is heterogeneous across municipalities with different sizes; (ii) the gain in votes for the centre-right coalition corresponds to a loss of votes for the centre and centre-left parties, a decrease in voter turnout, and a rise in protest votes; (iii) the relationship between immigration and electoral gains percolates to mayoral election at the municipality level; (iv) cultural diversity, competition in the labor market and for public services, and political competition are the most relevant channels at work.
In 2006 Uganda passed new domestic legislation relating to refugees, replacing the antiquated Control of Alien Refugees Act
of 1964. The Refugees Act 2006, which represents a significant improvement on its predecessor, entered into force in 2008
and regulations to operationalize it were passed in 2010. This article describes the Act’s rights framework and the process
of refugee status determination under it, and analyses those rights guaranteed by the Act to recognized refugees that fall
below regional and international benchmarks. It argues that the guarantees regarding freedom of movement and residence, freedom
of association and expression, and the right to work are insufficient when measured against the standards guaranteed by regional
and international refugee and human rights instruments to which Uganda has acceded.
The Syrian Conflict generated forced immigration from northern Syria to southeastern Turkey. Arrival of refugees resembles a natural experiment, which offers good opportunities to study the economic impact of immigration. I study three main outcomes: labor markets, consumer prices, and housing rents. I document moderate employment losses among native informal workers, which suggests that they are partly substituted by refugees. Prices of the items produced in informal labor intensive sectors declined due to labor cost advantages generated by refugee inflows. Finally, refugee inflows increased the rents of higher quality housing units, while there is no effect on lower quality units.