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Recent research on the return of forcibly displaced populations has largely focused on return intentions, often using cross-sectional data that fails to capture actual return behavior. Additionally, studies on return behavior tend to rely on aggregate data, overlooking microlevel factors that may influence return decisions. This paper addresses these issues by using a 5-year panel study of 3,000 Syrian refugees in Lebanon to explore what drives return behavior and when intentions translate into actual behavior. Our findings highlight the importance of improved expectations about safety conditions in motivating return, yet we observe a weak correlation between intentions and actual returns. We argue for the importance of information--especially how confident refugees are in the information they receive about safety in Syria. Refugees who have high confidence in this information are more likely to follow through on their intentions to return. Our study also reveals that safety involves not just the absence of violence, but also factors like stability, control over local areas, and the absence of coercive measures such as conscription. 

About the Speaker

Ala Alrababah is Assistant Professor in the Department of Social and Political Sciences at Bocconi University, Italy. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Immigration Policy Lab, ETH Zurich. His research spans topics related to immigrants, refugees, and political violence. Alrababah is currently involved in a research project on celebrities and Islamophobia that is part of the Islamophobia research hub housed in UCLA Initiative to Study Hate. He earned his Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University in 2021.

Sponsor(s): Center for Near Eastern Studies, Department of Political Science