Unemployment and Violent Extremism: Evidence from Daesh Foreign Recruits

Mohamed Abdel Jelil, Kartika Bhatia, Anne Brockmeyer, Quy-Toan Do and CleÌ ment Joubert
Additional contact information
Mohamed Abdel Jelil: Poverty Global Practice (World Bank)
Kartika Bhatia: Middle-East and North Africa Regional Unit (World Bank)
Anne Brockmeyer: Macroeconomics, Trade & Investment Global Practice (World Bank) and Institute for Fiscal Studies
CleÌ ment Joubert: Research Department (World Bank)

No 273, HiCN Working Papers from Households in Conflict Network

Abstract: Transnational terrorist organizations such as the Islamic State group (also known as ISIS/ISIL or Daesh) have shown an ability to attract radicalized individuals from many countries to join their ranks. Using a novel data set that reports countries of residence and educational levels of a large sample of Daesh’s foreign recruits, this paper finds that a lack of economic opportunities—measured by unemployment rates disaggregated by country and education level—explains foreign enrollment in the terrorist organization, especially for countries that are geographically closer to the Syrian Arab Republic.

Keywords: transnational terrorism; unemployment; inclusion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E26 F51 Z12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ara
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Unemployment and Violent Extremism: Evidence from Daesh Foreign Recruits (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hic:wpaper:273

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