This article explores the potential contributions of governments, development actors, the private sector, and humanitarian actors to support refugee livelihoods. The authors begin by making the case for the early economic inclusion of refugees in order not to prevent...
JDC Literature Review
Results for: Multiple Countries
Expanding Economic Opportunities in Protracted Displacement
The ‘Supporting Syria and the Region’ conference in London in 2016 set an ambitious target to create up to 1.1 million new jobs for refugees and host communities by 2018—but there was no clarity around how, where, and for whom these jobs would be created. A 2016 joint...
Refugees’ Right to Work and Access to Labour Markets: Constraints, Challenges and Ways Forward
While the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (1951 Convention) provides for a refugee’s right to work, most countries are reluctant to give refugees access to the labor market and impose restrictions on legal entitlements to work. Restrictive...
Beyond Conflict: Long-Term Labour Market Integration of Internally Displaced Persons in Post-Socialist Countries
This paper analyzes how IDPs fare after displacement in terms of their labor market outcomes, focusing on the long-term labor market disadvantage of IDPs (10 to 15 years after conflict). The conceptual framework draws on the theory of cumulative disadvantage and...
Macroeconomic Evidence Suggests that Asylum Seekers are Not a “Burden” for Western European Countries
This paper aims to quantify the economic and fiscal effects of inflows of asylum seekers into Western European countries from 1985 to 2015. Using an empirical methodology to estimate the macroeconomic effects of structural shocks and policies, the authors examine...
Blame the Victims? Refugees, State Capacity, and Non-State Actor Violence
This article looks beyond the effects of refugees on conventional conflict and considers how refugee flows may affect the risk of non-state actor violence, i.e. conflict between groups outside of and not affiliated with the state that are identified by shared communal...
Refugees, Ethnic Power Relations, and Civil Conflict in the Country of Asylum
Past research indicates that refugees from neighboring states increase the risk of armed conflict in asylum countries by upsetting the ethnic balance. (The paper includes a review of the literature on forced displacement and political violence.) However, previous...
Brothers or Invaders? How Crises-driven Migrants Shape Voting Behavior
This paper explores the motivations driving negative political attitudes of local voters towards immigration, specifically whether these attitudes can be explained by self-interest or sociotropic motives. Self-interested voters predominantly care about the impact of...
The Economic and Fiscal Effects of Granting Refugees Formal Labor Market Access
Most refugees, especially in developing countries, do not have formal labor market access. Even when permitted by law, administrative and practical barriers often limit access. The authors argue that granting refugees formal labor market access has the potential to...
The Labor Market Effects of Refugee Waves: Reconciling Conflicting Results
Recent research has challenged the consensus that sudden inflows of refugees have little or no impact on natives’ wages and employment, claiming instead that there are uniformly large detrimental effects on natives without school qualifications. The authors offer two...