JDC Literature Review
The JDC literature review highlights recent publications, academic scholarship, and thought leadership on issues relating to forced displacement. Our intention is to stimulate discussion, encourage the exchange of ideas, and support a ‘Community of Practice’.
Migration Is What You Make It: Seven Policy Decisions that Turned Challenges into Opportunities
The impact of immigration (including refugee flows) can vary across contexts depending on the characteristics of migrants and the local communities in which they settle, as well as the policy environment that regulates the integration of migrants and responses of...
“Yes” in my backyard? The economics of refugees and their social dynamics in Kakuma, Kenya
In 2016, Kenya hosted more than half a million registered refugees, roughly a third of whom (more than 190,000 people) were living in the Kakuma refugee camp, located in in Kenya’s northwestern Turkana County. Turkana County is one of Kenya’s most impoverished and...
Cost-Effectiveness of Jobs Projects in Conflict and Forced Displacement Contexts
This working paper examines the cost and results of jobs support projects financed by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and the World Bank in six low- and middle-income countries, with a...
An Adaptive Targeted Field Experiment: Job Search Assistance for Refugees in Jordan
The Government of Jordan estimates that around 1.3 million Syrian refugees have arrived in the country since the beginning of the Syrian crisis, of whom 660,000 have registered with UNHCR. This paper estimates the effect of a program to assist Syrian refugees and...
Immigration and Occupational Downgrading in Colombia
Between 2015 and 2019, political and economic turmoil in Venezuela forced about 1.8 million people to migrate to Colombia, increasing the country’s population by almost 4 percent. Venezuelan migrants disproportionately found employment in occupations that employ less...
Life out of the Shadows: Impacts of Amnesties in the Lives of Refugees
This paper estimates the causal effects on wellbeing of a regularization program offered to half a million undocumented Venezuelan migrants in Colombia. Colombia hosts almost two million Venezuelans displaced abroad. The Permiso Especial de Permanencia (PEP) grants...
The Economic Effects of Immigration Pardons: Evidence from Venezuelan Entrepreneurs
This paper analyzes the effect of an immigration pardon on immigrant entrepreneurship, by examining the effect of a pardon granted to about 300,000 undocumented Venezuelan immigrants in Colombia in 2018. Colombia hosts nearly two million Venezuelans, representing...
Attitudes and Policies toward Refugees: Evidence from Low- and Middle-Income Countries
This paper examines the effect of refugee arrivals on attitudes toward immigrants in a global sample of low- and middle-income countries. The authors also explore whether these effects vary across camp and non-camp settings or across situations with progressive and...
Forced Displacement and Asylum Policy in the Developing World
This paper analyzes the correlates of asylum policymaking in low- and middle-income countries, which host more than 85 percent of refugees and asylum seekers globally. The authors also examine the role of de jure policies as pull factors in flows of forced migration....
Global Refugee Work Rights Report
This report assesses refugees’ work rights both in law (de jure) and in practice (de facto) across 51 countries, which together hosted 87 percent of the world’s refugees at the end of 2021. The report also analyses additional factors that are critical to refugees’...
