Back to All Events

The Consequences of Refugee Repatriation for Stayees: A Threat to Stability and Sustainable Development?

  • Seminar Room G, Manor Road Building Oxford OX1 3UQ United Kingdom (map)

Tuesday Lunchtime Seminar Series
Hilary Term 2019: Week 3

Seminars at 1.00pm, Seminar Room G, Manor Road Building, Oxford. A light sandwich lunch is served at 12.40pm. All are welcome.


The Consequences of Refugee Repatriation for Stayees: A Threat to Stability and Sustainable Development?

Dr Isabel Ruiz and Dr Carlos Vargas-Silva

Large-scale refugee repatriation is sometimes considered a threat to stability and sustainable development because of the burden it could impose on receiving communities. Yet the empirical evidence on the impacts of refugee return is limited. Using longitudinal data from Burundi collected in 2011 and 2015, this paper explores the consequences of repatriation for stayee households (i.e. those who never left the country during the conflict). Burundi experienced large-scale repatriation during the 2000s, with the returning refugees unevenly spread across the country. We use geographical features of the communities of origin, including altitude and proximity to the border, for identification purposes. The results suggest that a higher share of returnees in a community is associated with less livestock ownership, the principal form of capital accumulation in the country, and worse subjective economic conditions for stayee households. Additional analysis suggests that refugee return had a negative impact on food security and land access for stayees. The negative impact on food security largely disappears between rounds of the survey. Refugee return had no significant effect on the health outcomes of stayees. The article finishes with a discussion of the implications of the results for policies that aim to support refugee repatriation and long-term sustainable development in post conflict societies.

Dr Isabel Ruiz is Associate Professor of Political Economy at the University of Oxford, where she is also Director of Studies in Economics at the Department for Continuing Education (OUDCE). Isabel is a Fellow of Kellogg College and an Associate Member of the Department of Economics, the Oxford Department of International Development (ODID) and the Latin American Centre at the University.

Dr Carlos Vargas-Silva is Research Director and Associate Professor at COMPAS. He is also the Director of the DPhil in Migration Studies and a member of Kellogg College. Carlos is also co-founder and current Associate Editor of the journal Migration Studies. He was also one of the researchers that developed the Migration Observatory in 2010, and acted as Director of the Observatory in 2014 and 2017.