Social Cohesion and Refugee-Host Interactions : Evidence from East Africa

Building upon the literature on contact theory, this paper explores the role of inter-group interaction in shaping social cohesion between refugees and host communities in East Africa. It draws upon ﬁrst-hand quantitative (n=16,608) and qualitative...

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Main Authors:	Betts, Alexander, Stierna, Maria Flinder, Omata, Naohiko, Sterck, Olivier
Format:	Working Paper
Language:	English
Published:	World Bank, Washington, DC 2022
Subjects:	SOCIAL COHESION REFUGEES HOST COMMUNITY CONTRACT THEORY MIGRATION FORCED DISPLACEMENT
Online Access:	http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/598681643291911822/Social-Cohesion-and-Refugee-Host-Interactions-Evidence-from-East-Africa http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36918

id	okr-10986-36918
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-369182022-02-04T05:10:37Z Social Cohesion and Refugee-Host Interactions : Evidence from East Africa Betts, Alexander Stierna, Maria Flinder Omata, Naohiko Sterck, Olivier SOCIAL COHESION REFUGEES HOST COMMUNITY CONTRACT THEORY MIGRATION FORCED DISPLACEMENT Building upon the literature on contact theory, this paper explores the role of inter-group interaction in shaping social cohesion between refugees and host communities in East Africa. It draws upon ﬁrst-hand quantitative (n=16,608) and qualitative data collected from refugees and nearby host communities in urban and camp-like contexts in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda. Focusing on the Uganda data, OLS regressions reveal a positive and signiﬁcant correlation between refugee-host interaction and the perception of hosts towards refugees. This association disappears when an instrumental variable (IV) approach is used to address endogeneity issues, except when only data from the urban context is used. The analysis of cross-country data highlights further diﬀerences in the types of interaction and perception that matter between urban and camp-like contexts. It also suggests that ethno-linguistic proximity between refugee and host populations is associated with more positive attitudes. In all contexts, an important part of attitude formation appears to take place at the intra-group level, within households and immediate neighbourhoods, independently of individual interaction with the out-group. The paper proposes a series of policy recommendations to improve refugee-host social cohesion, with diﬀerent approaches required in urban and camp-like contexts. 2022-02-03T15:14:54Z 2022-02-03T15:14:54Z 2022-01 Working Paper http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/598681643291911822/Social-Cohesion-and-Refugee-Host-Interactions-Evidence-from-East-Africa http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36918 English Policy Research Working Paper;No. 9917 CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo World Bank World Bank, Washington, DC Publications & Research Publications & Research :: Policy Research Working Paper Africa Africa Eastern and Southern (AFE) East Africa Uganda
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	English
topic	SOCIAL COHESION REFUGEES HOST COMMUNITY CONTRACT THEORY MIGRATION FORCED DISPLACEMENT
spellingShingle	SOCIAL COHESION REFUGEES HOST COMMUNITY CONTRACT THEORY MIGRATION FORCED DISPLACEMENT Betts, Alexander Stierna, Maria Flinder Omata, Naohiko Sterck, Olivier Social Cohesion and Refugee-Host Interactions : Evidence from East Africa
geographic_facet	Africa Africa Eastern and Southern (AFE) East Africa Uganda
relation	Policy Research Working Paper;No. 9917
description	Building upon the literature on contact theory, this paper explores the role of inter-group interaction in shaping social cohesion between refugees and host communities in East Africa. It draws upon ﬁrst-hand quantitative (n=16,608) and qualitative data collected from refugees and nearby host communities in urban and camp-like contexts in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda. Focusing on the Uganda data, OLS regressions reveal a positive and signiﬁcant correlation between refugee-host interaction and the perception of hosts towards refugees. This association disappears when an instrumental variable (IV) approach is used to address endogeneity issues, except when only data from the urban context is used. The analysis of cross-country data highlights further diﬀerences in the types of interaction and perception that matter between urban and camp-like contexts. It also suggests that ethno-linguistic proximity between refugee and host populations is associated with more positive attitudes. In all contexts, an important part of attitude formation appears to take place at the intra-group level, within households and immediate neighbourhoods, independently of individual interaction with the out-group. The paper proposes a series of policy recommendations to improve refugee-host social cohesion, with diﬀerent approaches required in urban and camp-like contexts.
format	Working Paper
author	Betts, Alexander Stierna, Maria Flinder Omata, Naohiko Sterck, Olivier
author_facet	Betts, Alexander Stierna, Maria Flinder Omata, Naohiko Sterck, Olivier
author_sort	Betts, Alexander
title	Social Cohesion and Refugee-Host Interactions : Evidence from East Africa
title_short	Social Cohesion and Refugee-Host Interactions : Evidence from East Africa
title_full	Social Cohesion and Refugee-Host Interactions : Evidence from East Africa
title_fullStr	Social Cohesion and Refugee-Host Interactions : Evidence from East Africa
title_full_unstemmed	Social Cohesion and Refugee-Host Interactions : Evidence from East Africa
title_sort	social cohesion and refugee-host interactions : evidence from east africa
publisher	World Bank, Washington, DC
publishDate	2022
url	http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/598681643291911822/Social-Cohesion-and-Refugee-Host-Interactions-Evidence-from-East-Africa http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36918
_version_	1764486161943756800

Social Cohesion and Refugee-Host Interactions : Evidence from East Africa

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