Contributors or competitors? Complexity and variability of refugees’ economic ‘impacts’ within a Kenyan host community

Naohiko Omata
Additional contact information
Naohiko Omata: Refugee Studies Centre, Department of International Development, University of Oxford, United Kingdom

Migration Letters, 2019, vol. 16, issue 2, 135-144

Abstract: Drawing upon in-depth qualitative research with refugees and host populations in Kenya, this article offers a diverging viewpoint towards refugees’ economic impacts within a hosting area and sheds light on the complexity and variability of such impacts perceived by different members of a host community. Due to the unprecedented numbers of refugees worldwide, assessing the impacts of hosting refugees is currently a ‘hot topic’ in the international community. However, the primary complication for studies that attempt to measure economic impacts are the complex patterns of economic interactions that refugees have with host communities. This means that refugees’ economic impacts may be viewed, experienced and distributed unequally amongst the members of receiving society. Through a case-study in Nairobi’s outskirts, this article demonstrates different patterns of engagement between refugees and the local population in the context of a labour market, and reveals contrasting views towards refugees’ economic impacts within the host community.

Keywords: Kenya; economic impact; host community; refugees (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.tplondon.com/index.php/ml/article/view/608/610 (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:mig:journl:v:16:y:2019:i:2:p:135-144

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://migrationletters.com/

Access Statistics for this article

Migration Letters is currently edited by Kittisak Jermsittiparsert

More articles in Migration Letters from Migration Letters
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ML ().