Refugee Networks, Cooperation, and Resource Access

Abstract

Without means refugeeformal of communities securing avenues services areformoreclaims-making from effective state than and or politicalothers non-state inparticipation,mitigating providers. community This refugees article mustproblems. asks find why theirI present some own a framework for understanding how refugees’ social networks shape the constraints and capabilities for collective action. I analyze a field experiment where I organized community meetings with Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan, randomly assigning the recruitment method for meetings to introduce exogenous variation in network structure. During meetings, participants were tasked with resolving collective action problems. I examine the dynamics of subsequent group discussion. Results show that although densely networked refugee groups exhibit more cooperation, they suffer from a resource diversity disadvantage. Group diversity facilitates access to resources that may help refugee communities confront community problems. The novel experimental design allows for separately identifying group-level and individual-level mechanisms.