The Labor Market Impacts of Forced Migration

摘要

One of the key consequences of civil conflict is forced migration. The United Nations Population Division (2013) suggests that from the total global stock of 232 million international migrants in 2013, about 16 million (6.8 percent) were refugees. Just recently, close to 10 million Syrians have been displaced since the conflict started in 2011 (UNHCR 2013). The magnitude and frequency of forced displacement has important economic and humanitarian implications. One frequently overlooked aspect of forced migration is the consequences for host communities. One of these consequences, and the focus of this article, is the impact on labor market outcomes. The academic literature on the labor market impacts of forced migration is small compared to the corresponding literature in the "voluntary" migration context. The scarcity of studies looking at forced migration is surprising given that forced migration situations often have certain characteristics that could facilitate the identification of causal relationships (Ruiz and Vargas-Silva 2013). One of the greatest challenges to identify causal relationships between migration flows and host country labor market conditions is the fact that migrants are typically attracted to locations which are expected to do better in economic terms. Violence is the main driver of emigration in the forced migration context, a factor which in many cases is largely unrelated to the economic conditions of the destination. In these cases, forced migration leads to an exogenous shift in labor supply. This article looks at a situation in which the location of forced migrants was affected by a series of geographical barriers and logistical decisions. These resulted in a natural experiment which enables the exploration of the labor market impacts of forced migration.