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.
JDC Literature Review
Results for: Big Data
Planning sustainable electricity solutions for refugee settlements in sub-Saharan Africa
This paper examines the electricity needs, potential technical solutions and associated costs for almost 300 refugee settlements in sub-Saharan Africa. It is estimated that around 80 percent of refugees in camps burn biomass such as firewood for cooking and around 90 percent have limited or no access to electricity.
The Unseen—An Investigative Analysis of Thematic and Spatial Coverage of News on the Ongoing Refugee Crisis in West Africa
This paper examines the thematic and spatial coverage of media on the refugee crisis in West Africa, and the factors that influence media coverage. The analysis is based on data from: (1) Global Data on Events, Location, and Tone (GDELT) dataset containing news articles categorized by theme, including “refugee”, and containing information about the location and date of the article; and (2) geographical data on the location of refugees from UNHCR’s Geographic Information System. More than 2,000 articles on West African countries published between March 12 and September 15 September 2021 were included in the analysis.
A gravity analysis of refugee mobility using mobile phone data
This paper examines patterns of refugee mobility across provinces in Turkey using mobile phone data. Based on measures of mobility calculated from phone data, the authors use a standard gravity model to estimate the determinants of refugee movements. Gravity models...
A spatial model of internal displacement and forced migration
The authors develop a spatial model of internal and external forced migration due to conflict. Conflict is modeled as a shock in a particular location that causes the displacement of people—some of whom become refugees and others who become Internally Displaced...
The globalization of refugee flows
This article analyzes the spatial distribution of refugees over the period 1987-2017, in order to ascertain whether the burden of hosting refugees falls disproportionately on neighboring countries in the developing world. The empirical analysis is based on data on...
Big Data, Big Promises: Revisiting Migration Statistics in Context of the Datafication of Everything
The authors argue that we are witnessing the “datafication” of mobility and migration management across the world, driven by the digitization of data that can be searched, exchanged, linked, and analyzed with unprecedented scope and efficiency. Big Data is promoted as...
Big Data Solutions in Forced Migration: Innovations in Analytics to Promote Humane, Sustainable Responses to Forced Migration
This report highlights the potential for big data analytics to inform responses to forced migration, by supplying accurate real-time data on forced migration flows and the needs of displaced people. Big data also offer the potential to understand the causes of forced...