“Reexamining the Effect of Refugees on Civil Conflict: A Global Subnational Analysis” Prof. Yang-Yang Zhou publishes in APSR

Does the presence of refugee settlements increase the likelihood of conflict and violence in hosting communities? That’s the question answered in a new article by Professor Yang-Yang Zhou in the top journal in Political Science: the American Political Science Review. Using new, global subnational data from the UNHCR on where refugees are located, Zhou and Andrew Shaver find no effects of hosting refugees on conflict or violence. Under certain conditions, refugee-hosting communities can actually experience large reductions in conflict risk and increased development. Given the growing public and political backlash against hosting refugees in many parts of the world, this is timely and important research to challenge fears that refugees increase insecurity.