Collaborative Research: Dignity and the Movement of Displaced Populations

Collaborative Research: Dignity and the Movement of Displaced Populations Co-PIs: Margaret E. Peters & Yang-Yang Zhou Abstract

This project examines how civilians facing high levels of insecurity due to conditions of armed conflict and economic crisis make decisions whether to leave their country of origin, where to settle if they decide to leave, and when to return home. This project focuses on internal values, such as dignity concerns and nationalism, that may influence this decision-making process in the context of multiple countries where crises of population displacement are present.

The findings of this project will be of importance to U.S. national security as displacement events have become increasingly common in the last decade and can destabilize neighboring countries, including key U.S. allies, and pose complex challenges for humanitarian aid policies to affected populations.

While existing scholarship focuses largely on how economic and security factors shape displacement decisions, this project theorizes that civilians seek to restore a sense of dignity regarding their family and professional life when making such decisions. As a result, they will compare the prospects of restoring dignity by leaving their home and locating in a new country with the prospects of rebuilding dignity at home.

To test this argument, the project will conduct statistical analyses of original data collected from a series of survey studies of civilians in different countries along with behavioral games. This research will make significant contributions to scholarly literatures on individual and household crisis decision making in situations of displacement as well as research on humanitarian aid and response policy spanning multiple social science disciplines.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.