Working Paper
The resettlement of Vietnamese refugees across Canada over three decades
Welcoming 60,000 Southeast Asian refugees in the 1979–80 period has become a celebrated part of Canada’s history, but the eventual integration of these refugees into Canadian society has received insufficient attention. This study provides a...
Working Paper
Settlement and labour force outcomes for Afghan immigrants and their children in Canada
Past research suggests that Afghan immigrants and their children face challenges in settlement, stemming from the impact of displacement, language barriers, poor health, limited education, limited knowledge of or access to services, and...
Blog
A WIDER perspective on migration
While many WIDER Development Conferences emerge from ongoing projects, our latest conference in October — ‘Migration and mobility: New frontiers for...
Working Paper
Economic integration of Afghan refugees in the US, 1980–2015
Using 1990 5% Census and American Community Survey data, we examine the economic integration of Afghan refugees to the US, focusing on employment rates and income levels. First-wave Afghan refugees (those arriving 1980–90) have made significant...
Working Paper
The impact of educational achievement on the integration and wellbeing of Afghan refugee youth in the UK
Unprecedented numbers of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children have arrived in Europe over the last decade, and young Afghans account for the highest proportion of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children across the UK. Despite research exploring the...
Blog
Successfully integrating refugee populations: What can we learn from the experience of Vietnamese Americans?
by
Carl L. Bankston
June 2018
Policy makers should see integration and upward mobility, and not simply placement and survival, as goals of resettlement of refugees. Our research on...
Blog
Young Afghan refugees and asylum seekers in the UK: Does more education mean better futures?
by
Catherine Gladwell
June 2018
Education is my freedom ... if I have my education, everything is still possible for me in the future. Mohammed grinned, and looked down at his newly...
Working Paper
Following in their footsteps
The decision to migrate is often influenced by the experience of earlier migrants from one’s household. Earlier migrants provide information on likely opportunities and potential risks and can offer support at destination to later migrants. We...
Working Paper
Land tenure security and internal migration in Tanzania
In this paper we study the impact of tenure security on rural to urban migration of household members over the age of 15. Using three waves of the Tanzanian National Panel Survey (NPS) data, we show that tenure security is associated with lower...
Working Paper
The integration of Vietnamese refugees in London and the UK
The Vietnamese refugee experience in the UK has been characteristically different from the broader international flows of Vietnamese ‘boat people’ to the West. With no pre-existing Vietnamese community in the UK, largely composed of the rural poor...
Working Paper
Fiscal pressure of migration and horizontal fiscal inequality
This paper examines the patterns and trends in inter-state migration across Indian states and observes that migration is affected by demographic profile as well as the fiscal profile of states. Econometric estimation suggests that level of vertical...
Working Paper
Involuntary migration, context of reception, and social mobility
In this study, we examine the Vietnamese population of the United States as a case study in the integration of a refugee group in a host country. We approach this case in three parts. We first offer a brief review of Vietnamese refugee resettlement...
Working Paper
Invisible, successful, and divided
Until the 1970s, only 1000 Vietnamese lived in West and East Germany, most of them international students. West Germany, in particular, had not yet been confronted with non-European refugees. This changed after 1978 with the influx of around 35,000...
Working Paper
Settling in motion
Illegal African migration into South Africa is not uniquely a post-apartheid phenomenon. It has its antecedents in the colonial/apartheid period. The South Africa colonial economy relied heavily on cheap African labour from both within and outside...
Working Paper
Climate change, rice production, and migration in Vietnamese households
This paper analyses the relationship between climate and migration in rural households in Vietnam. We propose an instrumental variable approach that controls for the potential endogeneity between crop production and migration using monthly minimum...
Journal Article
The long-term economic legacies of rebel rule in civil war
THIS ARTICLE IS ON EARLY VIEW | A growing literature has documented widespread variation in the extent to which insurgents provide public goods, collect taxes, and regulate civilian conduct. This paper offers what is, to our knowledge, the first...
Working Paper
Migration out of poverty
Internal migration plays an important role in the economic development of individuals, their families, and their country. This study describes Mozambique’s most common migration patterns from 1992 until 2017 using data from three population censuses...
Blog
Migrant workers in the Covid-19 pandemic
Millions of migrant workers around the world provide valuable income for their families and contribute more broadly to the economies of both their...
Working Paper
The legacy of conflict: aggregate evidence from Sierra Leone
This paper studies the general equilibrium impact of civil war in Sierra Leone. I first use an instrumental variable (IV) strategy and geographic conflict variation to estimate reduced-form effects. I show that civil war leads to affected areas...
Working Paper
Securitized reception: revisiting contexts confronting Afghan and Vietnamese forced migrants
In a 2017 UNU-WIDER project, ‘Forced migration and inequality’, one of us collaborated on a comparison of Afghan and Vietnamese refugee resettlement across four Western countries. In the light of the Taliban return to power in August 2021, we revisit...
Journal Article
Temperature shocks, rice production, and migration in Vietnamese households
This study analyses the relationship between temperature shocks and migration in rural households in Vietnam. To control for the potential endogeneity between crop production and migration we use monthly minimum temperatures in the growing season as...
Working Paper
Climate shocks, agriculture, and migration in Nepal
Climate change is expected to increase the risk in agricultural production due to increasing temperatures and rainfall variability. Smallholders can adjust by diversifying income sources, including through migration. Most existing studies investigate...
Working Paper
Migration and the autonomy of women left behind
This paper investigates the impact of migration of male household heads on the autonomy of their spouses. Using panel household survey data from Ethiopia, the methodology mainly relies on an instrumental variables approach that addresses the...
Working Paper
Does migration affect education of girls and young women in Tajikistan?
We study how migration affects education of girls in Tajikistan—the poorest post-Soviet state and one of the most remittance-dependent economies in the world. Using data from a three-wave household panel survey conducted in 2007, 2009, and 2011, we...
Blog
Why migrants need to be factored into responses to unexpected crises
by
Sanjula Weerasinghe, Michele Klein Solomon
November 2016
No country is immune from unexpected crises, such as sudden breakouts of violence, war, or natural disasters. Even if some can be predicted...
Working Paper
The effects of wartime institutions on households’ ability to cope with shocks
This paper studies the legacies of wartime institutions, measured as rebelocracy, on the ability of households to cope with negative income shocks. Rebelocracy is the social order established by non-state armed actors in the communities they control...
Working Paper
Marriage, work, and migration
Traditional gender norms can restrict independent migration by women, preventing them from taking advantage of economic opportunities in urban non-agricultural industries. However, women may be able to circumvent such restrictions by using marriage...
Working Paper
Crop prices and migration in Vietnam
This paper investigates the effect of commodity prices, in particular rice and coffee, on the individual decision of migrating in Vietnam. As most coffee production is sold by households for exports, we would expect that coffee price shocks would...
Working Paper
Involuntary migration, inequality, and integration
Across the world, we observe different experiences in terms of inequality between migrant and ‘host-country’ populations. What factors contribute to such variation? What policies and programmes facilitate ‘better’ economic integration? This paper...