The effects of refugees’ camps on hosting areas: Social conflicts and economic growth

In this paper we study the effects of the establishment of refugees’ camps in Africa on the occurrence of protests and social conflicts by using geo-referenced panel data (2000–2014). We use 50x50 km cells as units of analysis and match data on the frequency of protests, armed conflicts and other organized violence events (based on GDELT and GED databases) with information on the location of camps contained in the UNHCR Camp Mapping Database. By using a counterfactual empirical strategy, we find that refugee camps significantly increase the occurrence of protests only in the initial period (2 years) while no statistically significant effect is detected in subsequent years. We interpret these findings as the asynchronous effect of two shocks associated with the presence of refugee camps: a sudden population shock which initially increases social tensions with the host-communities and a growth effect spurred by the increase in aggregate demand due to a public-spending shock and the progressive participation of refugees in the host socio-economic system. To support this hypothesis, we analyze the effect of hosting a camp on economic growth in the surrounding area (within 10 km from the camp). We find evidence that, on average, camps positively affect economic growth.