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  5. Refugee Return and Conflict: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

American Economic Review

ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)

Refugee Return and Conflict: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

  • Christopher W. Blair
  • David Van Dijcke
  • Austin L. Wright
American Economic Review (Forthcoming)

Abstract

We estimate the causal effect of a large-scale cash assistance program for refugee returnees on conflict in Afghanistan. Leveraging historical returnee settlement patterns and novel combat records, we find that policy-induced return had cross-cutting effects, reducing insurgent violence but increasing social conflict. Cash assistance may have raised reservation wages in returnee-receiving communities, reducing labor-intensive combat, increasing lethality of capital-intensive attacks, and reducing counterinsurgent effectiveness. Social capital and local institutions significantly offset risks of communal violence after repatriation. Together, these results highlight unintended consequences of repatriation assistance programs, and clarify conditions under which refugee return affects conflict.

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