JDC Literature Review
The JDC literature review contains summaries of recent publications and academic scholarship on issues relating to forced displacement.
The Impact of Internal Displacement on Destination Communities: Evidence from the Colombian Conflict
The paper examines the impact of internal displacement in Colombia between 1998 and 2005 on wages in destination municipalities. The analysis suggests that influxes of IDPs lead to a short-run negative impact on wages, i.e. a one percent increase in population due 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...
Assessing the Direct and Spillover Effects of Shocks to Refugee Remittances
Over 60 percent of refugees in Kenya’s Kakuma refugee camp receive remittances, over half through informal money transfer services. On average, remittances comprise half of the income of families that receive them. In April 2015, in response to an Al Shabaab terrorist...
Are Refugees a Burden? Impacts of Refugee Inflows on Host’s Consumption Expenditures
This paper examines the impacts of Syrian refugee inflows on consumption expenditures and incomes of Jordanian nationals. The 2015 Housing and Population Census identifies 1.3 million Syrian refugees in Jordan; approximately 650,000 have registered as refugees....
The Development Push of Refugees: Evidence from Tanzania
This paper assesses the long-term effects of temporary refugee inflows from Burundi (1993) and Rwanda (1994) on the welfare of the host population in Tanzania. The authors are particularly interested in whether the changes in the host economy after the departure of...
A Call to Action: Mobilising Local Resources in Ethiopia for Urban IDPs
In 2018, about 1,300 registered IDP households and many unregistered IDPs fled ethnic conflict in the Somali region of Ethiopia to seek safety in Adama, the capital of the Oromia region. The city government led a successful multi-level response that included action by...
Places of Refuge and Risk: Lessons from San Pedro Sula
The metropolitan area of San Pedro Sula hosts approximately 40 percent of Honduras’ IDPs, with the city itself hosting around 22 percent of IDPs. 81 percent of IDPs have been displaced from elsewhere in the city. IDPs tend to seek refuge in the most marginalized or...
Contested Public Authority in Marginal Urban Areas: Challenges for Humanitarians
In Lebanon and Jordan, the international community is increasingly shifting support from national governments to municipalities, in recognition of the critical role they play in responding to forced displacement, and as part of a broader localization agenda. Large...
Pakistan’s Urban Refugees: Steps towards Self-reliance
Sixty-eight percent of Afghan refugees in Pakistan live outside of camps, mostly in and around major urban centers. Almost all urban refugees in Pakistan are engaged in livelihood activities (transport business, gemstone trading, carpet production), making a...
Improving Information and Communication to Boost Inclusion and Self-reliance for Urban Refugees
A major obstacle to urban refugees’ self-reliance is that information and refugees do not easily ‘find’ each other. Refugees can become isolated and ‘lost’ in the urban environment, partly because they relocate frequently, making contact difficult to maintain, and...