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Does Aid Reduce Anti-refugee Violence? Evidence from Syrian Refugees in Lebanon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 June 2020

M. CHRISTIAN LEHMANN Open the ORCID record for M. CHRISTIAN LEHMANN [Opens in a new window]  and
DANIEL T. R. MASTERSON Open the ORCID record for DANIEL T. R. MASTERSON [Opens in a new window]
M. CHRISTIAN LEHMANN*
Affiliation:
University of Brasilia
DANIEL T. R. MASTERSON*
Affiliation:
Stanford University
*
M. Christian Lehmann Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, University of Brasilia, [email protected].
Daniel T. R. Masterson Postdoctoral Fellow, Immigration Policy Lab, Department of Political Science, Stanford University, [email protected].
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Abstract

Anti-refugee violence often accompanies refugee migration, but the factors that fuel or mitigate that violence remain poorly understood, including the common policy response in such settings of humanitarian aid. Existing theory and policy debates predict that aid to refugees exacerbates anti-refugee violence by increasing hosts’ resentment toward refugees. In contrast, however, aid may reduce violence in ways such as increasing host communities’ well-being through more demand for local goods and services and refugees sharing aid. We test for the sign and mechanisms of this relationship. Evidence from original survey data and a regression discontinuity design suggests that cash transfers to Syrian refugees in Lebanon did not increase anti-refugee violence, and if anything they reduced violence. Exploring why aid does not increase hostility, we find evidence that aid allows recipients to indirectly compensate locals through higher demand for local goods and services, directly benefit locals by offering help and sharing aid, and reduce contact with potential aggressors.

Type
Letter
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 114 , Issue 4 , November 2020 , pp. 1335 - 1342
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

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Footnotes

We benefited from conversations, comments, and suggestions of Peter Aronow, Dominik Hangartner, Dean Karlan, David Laitin, Jason Lyall, Chris Udry, Elisabeth J. Wood, and several anonymous referees. We thank the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) for collaboration and Chris Blattman and Juliette Seban for their support in the early stages of this project. Part of this work was completed while Lehmann was visiting the Yale Economic Growth Center and while Masterson was visiting the American University of Beirut Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy, which the authors thank for their hospitality. We are grateful for funding through DFID grant agreement number 204007-111. We declare that we have no relevant or material financial interests that relate to the research described in this paper. Replication files are available at the American Political Science Review Dataverse: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/5LAZ54.

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