The labor market reintegration of returned refugees in Afghanistan

Abstract

Even though Afghanistan remains one of the top origin countries of refugees around the world, a considerable number of refugees have also returned over the last three decades. This paper investigates the labor market outcomes of those returned refugees from Iran and Pakistan, motivated by the fact that their reintegration greatly depends on the ability to access sustainable income-generating activities as a basis of their livelihood. The analysis relies on cross-sectional data from an original household survey collected in five provinces of Afghanistan in 2011. The analytical approach is twofold: first, to compare returned refugees to non-migrants in regard to what influences their respective labor market outcomes; and second, to investigate the influence of the returnees' migration and return experience on those outcomes. We find evidence that returned refugees are less likely to be wage employed in comparison to nonmigrants and that those factors related to socioeconomic status including educational attainment, and the strength of social networks plays an influential role in labor market outcomes. When it comes to the migration and return experience of returnees, a few key factors are found to be of particular consequence for current employment status including employment prior to migration, time abroad, amount of savings brought back upon return, return assistance, and intentions to re-migrate.These findings help to shed light on the reintegration process of returned refugees in Afghanistan, an issue of growing concern for policymakers taking into consideration the recent increase in return flows.

Conflict, displacement, and economic revival: The case of the internally displaced minority entrepreneurs in Pakistan

“…A key limitation of displacement and entrepreneurship in the literature is the inadequacy of data (Loschmann & Marchand, 2020), for example, due to difficult‐to‐count IDPs and the informality of their economic activities (Kwong et al, 2019; Williams & Efendic, 2019). Invisibility is one of the greatest data constraints (Zetter et al, 2014) which have prevented research on these vulnerable groups from being conducted (Branzei & Abdelnour, 2010).…”

“…A key limitation of displacement and entrepreneurship in the literature is the inadequacy of data (Loschmann & Marchand, 2020), for example, due to difficult-to-count IDPs and the informality of their economic activities (Kwong et al, 2019;Williams & Efendic, 2019).…”

“…This neglect of SC's determinants is one of the classic problems in the bottom-up, resource view of SC that treats good governance and economic development as outcomes of social capital "in action" (Putnam et al, 1993). Conversely, it has been argued that the role of SC depends on the level of economic inequality and the type of employment activities in question, for example, formal employment or informal self-employment activities (Loschmann & Marchand, 2020). It is within this context that SC can facilitate the establishment, survival, and success of the entrepreneurial activities of conflict-affected IDPs.…”

Return migration and entrepreneurship in Cameroon

“…Second, other studies put forward the optimal length of time for migrants to accumulate sufficient resources and be productive upon return (Djajić and Milbourne 1988;Dustmann 1995Dustmann , 1999Dustmann and Kirchkamp 2002;Mesnard 2004). Finally, some authors go further by comparing the entrepreneurial activity of returned migrants with that of non-migrants (Batista et al 2017;Loschmann and Marchand 2020;Naudé et al 2017). Overall, on one hand, empirical work shows that migrants are more entrepreneurial than non-migrants (Démurger and Xu 2011;Batista et al 2017), and on the other hand, individual and demographic characteristics are determinants of entrepreneurship among return migrants (Démurger and Xu 2011;Hamdouch and Wahba 2015;Wassink 2020).…”

“…1 Second, the literature does not distinguish migrant entrepreneurship by activity sector. Most often, authors focus either on a global binary indicator (Black and Castaldo 2009;Wahba and Zenou 2012;Marchetta 2012;Hamdouch and Wahba 2015;Wassink 2020) or on a binary indicator focusing only on agriculture (Démurger and Xu 2011;Loschmann and Marchand 2020). Third, despite the impressive migration waves from sub-Saharan African countries, very few studies focus on these countries (Tabutin et al 2020).…”