Refugee Proximity and Support for Citizenship Exclusion in Africa

How does proximity to refugees affect citizens’ preferences towards citizenship inclusion orexclusion? In Africa, host to one-third of the world’s refugees, widespread protracted displacementhas led to calls for pathways to legal membership. Citizens living near refugees may be more supportive of inclusion because they are more likely to be coethnics and experience benefits from humanitarian aid. Conversely, they may fear negative spillovers and become more protective over membership. Using geo-referenced data of over 1,200 refugee communities and 43,000 Afrobarometer respondents across 28 countries, this study finds that citizens who live closer to refugees in their country are more likely to support restrictions on birthright citizenship and naturalization. Placebo tests using distance to future refugee sites assuage concerns around selection bias. Heterogeneous effects analyses show that citizens who are ethnic minorities, economically vulnerable, and live near older and smaller sites tendto be more exclusionary.