What a refugee camp reveals about economics

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/04/03/what-a-refugee-camp-reveals-about-economics

by furrowedbrow • 1 year ago

59 20 1 year ago

ggm2• 1 year ago

Hard not to believe Malawi would have a bigger economic upside from liberalising working rights and providing a pathway to citizenship.

trollbridge2• 1 year ago

From my experience with people who’ve spent years over there, there isn’t much desire for refugees to stay and become citizens. They are perceived by the voting public as competing for jobs. Jobs are perceived as scarce.

It is politically far more popular to run on a platform of getting rid of refugees and refugee camps.

There is also a very widespread perception that refugee camps are about making money for corrupt politicians and contractors, and that the UN or America or the EU or something is paying a lot of money and pays per head. So the public feels that more refugees = more corrupt money lining politicians’ pockets.

Against this context, there is no political future for “liberalising working rights” and “providing a path to citizenship”.

pjc50• 1 year ago

Same story everywhere, sadly.

bluGill• 1 year ago

Even though making refuges citizens would mean that money dries up. Of course I've long been in the minority that thinks the US should have unlimited immigration.

HideousKojima• 1 year ago

There is also a very widespread perception that refugee camps are about making money for corrupt politicians and contractors

Even though that isn't what refugee camps are "about" it's something that happens pretty regularly.

MPSFounder• 1 year ago

Same story everywhere. Intel was founded by Andy Grove, a refugee. I recently saw a comment opposing refugees mention that refugees in the old days were Eastern Europeans, whereas nowadays it is people from backwards countries (whatever that means). Anti-refugee sentiment is often racism that just happens to be accepted. Sbux once offered 10,000 refugees jobs, and had to rescind them in favor of veterans because Americans were offended. My personal view is refugees are often the hardest working and most honest people, given they experienced extreme hardships (similar to how holocaust survivors went on to dominate business and finance in America). It is such a shame America turned its back on many (particularly from Syria and Ukraine in recent years, although many churches sponsored Ukrainian families because they are Christian. Funny enough, I believe 10% of Syria are Christians too, but suburban churches did not sponsor them, with a minister saying they do not blend in, whatever that means).

atoav2• 1 year ago

A dynamic that surprised me when years ago I learned about it was that consistently the most anti-migration electorate is from areas with next to no migration, while areas with the most migration are generally supportive of it. I watched out for this since and it appears to be a general dynamic accross many different wildly different nations.

This disparity is usually showing up as a rural-urban divide, with the cities being more migrant friendly.

Whether migration is good or bad in pure economic terms is mostly a function of the demography of a country/region. For most industrialized nations more migrations would be economically benefitial, since the own birth rates are too low to even cover the retirement of their own population.

But of course for many people migration isn't just a rational economic question, is a much more loaded, symbolic issue —interwoven with questions of identity, self-worth, self-perception, self-confidence and mythological narratives of the own nation. Which is why identity politics is so effective in getting people to vote against their own economic interests.

jdietrich• 1 year ago

Malawi doesn't have a functioning economy. It has a nominal GDP per capita of $464. It is heavily indebted and reliant on international aid. 80% of the population rely on subsistence farming and 70% live on less than $1.90 per day.

Giving those refugees citizenship just means more mouths to feed; if they remain as refugees, then they're the UN's problem.

trollbridge2• 1 year ago

I will add that they are also a quite self reliant people; many of them live in areas where the government doesn’t provide much services at all (other than an occasional shakedown for a bribe). They are very good farmers. Their main opinion as I heard it expressed on foreign affairs is that they’d just like to be left alone and deal with less corruption.

One of the most amazing things was craftsmen who machine parts out of ebony wood or other tropical hardwoods - and use these to keep engines running. (I remain perplexed how they handle high heat, temperature changes, etc., but it works). I have never met a people more able to keep an ancient motorbike running.

Not everything gets counted in GDP… I am not sure the country would be improved if it somehow got replaced with a lifestyle of living like Europeans or Americans.

AStonesThrow• 1 year ago

My friend, since 1964 it would seem that the 80% farmers feeding their own families is an exceedingly attractive deal, and many Traditional Catholics would totally go for that lifestyle, provided that they can continue homeschooling...

gwern• 1 year ago

The WWII POW camp paper discussed is a lot more interesting and worth reading than this article winds up being: https://gwern.net/doc/economics/1945-radford.pdf

shove• 1 year ago

Author attempts to use this paper to dunk on Marx’ labor theory of value, but Marx discusses this extensively in Capital: price and value are often interchangeable, but not always.

atoav2• 1 year ago

Isn't the selling strategy of "you can get these 5 things who all have a fantasy price of 1000 each for 2500 as a bundle (value 5000!)" a similar detachment?

HDThoreaun• 1 year ago

Labor theory of value is one of the dumbest ideas ever thought of, not so hard to dunk on.

Noumenon72• 1 year ago

Could you excerpt which part of the paper constitutes said dunk? I searched "Marx" and "labor" unsuccessfully. Also it would be helpful to use your knowledge of Marx to explain how price and value are not interchangeable in this case.

What a refugee camp reveals about economics

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