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...
JDC Literature Review
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...
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’...
The Psychosocial Value of Employment: Evidence from a Refugee Camp
This paper presents a causal estimate of the psychosocial benefits of employment among Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. Formal employment in Bangladesh is illegal for Rohingya refugees and restrictions on movement limit their access to informal work in nearby urban...
Rival guests or defiant hosts? The local economic impact of hosting refugees
This article estimates the local economic cost of hosting humanitarian migrants (refugees, asylum seekers and subsidiary protection recipients) and the impact of refugee dispersal policies in France. Refugee dispersal policies—spreading the settlement of refugees...
Living with the Neighbors: The Effect of Venezuelan Forced Migration on Wages in Colombia
This paper investigates the impact of Venezuelan migration on the labor market in Colombia between 2013 and 2019. By 2019, there were nearly 1.8 million Venezuelan migrants living in Colombia, increasing the share of Venezuelans living in Colombia relative to the...
The Labor Market Effects of Venezuelan Migration in Ecuador
This paper analyzes the determinants of the location decisions of Venezuelan migrants and the effect of Venezuelan migrants on the labor market outcomes of Ecuadorian natives. In the first quarter of 2019, when this analysis was undertaken, more than 470,000...