This article reevaluates and extends 28 multi-country studies investigating the causes and consequences of refugee flows. The authors leverage newly released flow data from the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) to provide a contemporary reanalysis of these studies. Prior to the release of these data, researchers estimated flows based on the first difference between annual stocks, with years of “negative” flow set to zero.
Previous estimates of refugee flows based on stock data suffer from several significant methodological flaws:
- These estimates do not account for returns, naturalizations, resettlements, births, deaths, or adjustments to stock values due to methodological revisions or legislative changes.
- Estimates may capture preexisting populations as flows in the first year in which a positive value is reported.
- Until 2007, stock data included population values for third-country resettlements, incorrectly reflecting these as flows, sometimes years after displacement.
- Stock-based flows lag actual flows in countries that use their asylum systems to grant refugee status, as asylum seekers are only included in stock data after their applications are processed and approved.
- Prior to 2000, many countries’ data do not appear in centralized records until long after statistics began to be collected, and in the absence of positive stock data, flows were assumed to be zero.
- Prior to 2000, stocks were based on information provided by countries of asylum, and so origin-country panel data missed some (potentially large) flows if these were not reported in countries of asylum.
- Prior to 2000, a significant proportion of UNHCR flow data is missing information on country of origin.
The authors replicate the existing literature by replacing stock-based data with new flow data beginning in 2000, correcting the treatment of missing historical values, and temporally extending the studies.
Main findings:
- The new flow data reveal a significantly higher number of refugee flows than previously estimated using stock-based data. The new data capture 14,227,372 more flows from 1962 to 2022, indicating that for every five flows reported using the stock-based approach, the new data report one additional flow.
- The new flow data significantly alter the results of previous studies. In 19 articles on flow causes, around 74 percent of findings could be replicated; in 9 articles focused on flow consequences, only 50 percent could be replicated.
- With respect to the causes of flows, updated study results rarely overturned original findings; however, they frequently supported hypotheses discarded by the original authors as statistically unsupported. The “push factors” of political violence and state repression remain central drivers of international displacement. However, there is limited evidence to support the idea that refugees are motivated by economic opportunity or democratic institutions in destination countries. Further research is needed to explore factors that discourage or restrict individuals from seeking refuge abroad.
- With respect to the consequences of flows, the replication results differ from the original studies. Replications of studies on the consequences of refugee flows suggest that the literature may have overstated the link between refugee arrivals and violent instability in host countries. Refugees are only infrequently conduits of violence, and the conditions under which forced displacement poses a risk to host countries appear to be specific.
The new data reveal significant inconsistencies in previously used stock-based estimates, indicating that forced displacement is far more common than previously reported. The new flow data significantly alter the results of previous studies. In particular, the relationship between refugee inflows and violent instability in host countries is attenuated, suggesting that the literature’s identification of refugees as sources of violent instability may be overstated. This finding challenges the “new politics of fear” narrative that often frames refugees as security threats.