JDC Literature Review
The JDC literature review contains summaries of recent publications and academic scholarship on issues relating to forced displacement.
Cities as a Refuge, Cities as a Home: The Relationship between Place and Perceptions of Integration among Urban Displaced Populations in Iraq
Cities in Iraq have absorbed the majority of IDPs since the beginning of the ISIL conflict in early 2014—at the peak of the conflict only 12 percent of the 3.4 million IDPs settled in camps while 88 percent settled in urban areas. By the end of 2018 there were 1.8...
The Labor Market Integration of Refugees to the United States: Do Entrepreneurs in the Network Help?
The paper examines whether entrepreneurs in the social network of refugees, from the same country of origin, facilitate refugees’ labor-market integration by hiring them in their businesses. The authors analyze the universe of refugee cases without ties to the United...
Obstacles to Refugees’ Self-Reliance in Germany
This article discusses the impediments to refugees’ employment and self-reliance in Germany. The majority of refugees and asylum seekers in Germany rely on government welfare. There are many practical barriers to work including: (a) access to government language...
Refugees and Host Communities in the Rwandan Labour Market
This article highlights findings from household surveys of Congolese refugees in three of the largest refugee camps in Rwanda (Gihembe, Kiziba and Kigeme) and of locals living nearby. The authors find that although Congolese refugees officially have the right to work,...
Integrating Refugees into the Turkish Labour Market
Turkey hosts nearly 3.3 million registered refugees, mostly from Syria, concentrated in provinces with lower labor force participation and higher unemployment rates than the national average. In 2016 the Turkish government passed a regulation to allow Syrian refugees...
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...
Refugee Economies in Kenya
Drawing on qualitative and quantitative data collected in and around Kakuma refugee camps and Nairobi, this report examines variations in economic outcomes within the refugee population, and between refugee and host communities in Kenya in terms of livelihoods, living...
Thrive or Survive? Explaining Variation in Economic Outcomes for Refugees
The paper focuses on three questions: (1) what makes the economic lives of refugees distinctive from other populations; (2) what explains variation in refugees’ income levels; and (3) what role does entrepreneurship play in shaping refugees’ economic outcomes? In...
Estimating Poverty for Refugee Populations: Can Cross-Survey Imputation Methods Substitute for Data Scarcity?
Refugees are, for the most part, excluded from global poverty statistics, due to the lack of micro survey data on displaced populations. This paper presents the first application of recent advances in cross-survey imputations to estimate poverty among Syrian refugees...
Arrested Development: Conflict, Displacement, and Welfare in Iraq
In 2014, Iraq suffered two simultaneous crises: an economic crisis driven by a sharp decline in oil prices, and a security crisis caused by the war against the Islamic State. This paper provides the first estimates of monetary poverty and non-income dimensions of...