Syrian Refugee Integration in Turkey: Evidence from Call Detail Records

Abstract

Over the past 7 years, the needs of the three and a half million Syrian refugees have shifted from emergency response to programs focused on their inte- gration. Using D4R call detail records (CDRs), this chapter focuses on questions derived from the relevant academic literature and explores whether and how local context and service provision affect refugee integration. Unlike existing studies, we addressmultiple factors in a single analysis, accounting for potential confoundedness between different factors that might otherwise bias results. Our analysis supplements D4R with an array of original data sources related to refugee integration and service provision and employs linear regression and regularization techniques. We find that social integration is affected by multiple socioeconomic, welfare, and geography- related factors such as economic activity, availability of health facilities and charity foundations, network centrality, and district location. In terms of mobility, long- term over-time movement of refugees appears to be motivated by the availability of scarce welfare resources such as health clinics, as well as economic activity and the availability of religious facilities in a district. Our results suggest that policy-makers concerned with social integration of refugees must readily take into account the role of service provision in that process.