Chapter 12. The Refugee/Asylum Seeker

This chapter discusses the research in economics on refugees and asylum seekers. Section 1 describes the trends in asylum seeking by source and host country. Section 2 presents a conceptual framework on why refugees might differ from other types of immigrants, and provides a new analysis comparing refugees to other immigrants in the United States using a sample of immigrants recently granted legal permanent residency. Section 3 describes a conceptual framework on why investments in host-country-specific human capital might differ between refugees and other immigrants, and presents a new analysis of refugee economic integration in the United States using synthetic panel data. Section 4 synthesizes the literature on the impact of refugees on sending and receiving communities. Section 5 discusses some political economy issues surrounding refugees, and their implications for modeling host nations’ asylum policy choices. The chapter closes in Section 6 with suggestions for further research.