Determinants of Refugee Children’s Social Integration: Evidence from Lebanon, Turkey, and Australia

Abstract

This paper investigates the determinants of refugee students’ social integration in Lebanon, Turkey, and Australia. This paper seeks to understand how legal status and the corresponding length of refugee asylum shape refugee children’s social integration. The three host countries offer refugees different legal statuses ranging from short-term in Lebanon, medium-term in Turkey, and long-term in Australia. Therefore, our data collection covers a sample of 1298 middle school refugee students from all three countries. Our probit regression analysis sheds light on the importance of micro-level factors related to individual and household characteristics and meso-level factors related to school factors shaping refugee students’ social integration. The statistical dominance of meso-level factors indicates that the within-country differences are stronger than the between-country differences, yet it does not rule out the importance of macro policies that indirectly influence refugee students’ social integration by shaping provisions at the micro and meso levels.