Managing Refugee Protection Crises: Policy Lessons from Economics and Political Science

Dominik Hangartner, Matti Sarvimäki () and Judith Spirig
Additional contact information
Dominik Hangartner: Stanford University
Judith Spirig: Stanford University

No 14821, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We review and interpret research on the economic and political effects of receiving asylum seekers and refugees in developed countries, with a particular focus on the 2015 European refugee protection crisis and its aftermath. In the first part of the paper, we examine the consequences of receiving asylum seekers and refugees and identify two main findings. First, the reception of refugees is unlikely to generate large direct economic effects. Both labor market and fiscal consequences for host countries are likely to be relatively modest. Second, however, the broader political processes accompanying the reception and integration of refugees may give rise to indirect yet larger economic effects. Specifically, a growing body of work suggests that the arrival of asylum seekers and refugees can fuel the rise of anti-immigrant populist parties, which may lead to the adoption of economically and politically isolationist policies. Yet, these political effects are not inevitable and occur only under certain conditions. In the second part of the paper, we discuss the conditions under which these effects are less likely to occur. We argue that refugees' effective integration along relevant linguistic, economic, and legal dimensions, an allocation of asylum seekers that is perceived as 'fair' by the host society, and meaningful contact between locals and newly arrived refugees have the potential to mitigate the political and indirect economic risks.

Keywords: integration policies; populism; asylum seekers; refugees (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2021-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int, nep-lab and nep-law
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published - published in: Journal of the Finnish Economic Association, 2021, 2(1), 1-24

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp14821.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Managing Refugee Protection Crises: Policy Lessons from Economics and Political Science (2021)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp14821

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().