Henry J. Leir Institute for Migration and Human Security

Latest Updates

• Tech-Led Listening: How we Learned to Listen for Evidence of Changing Gender Norms

  By Dr. Daryl Collins, Derry Moore, Pravarkya Reddy, and Marcia Almeida-Mendes Leir Senior Fellow Dr. Daryl Collins is the CEO and founder of Decodis, a social research firm that creates tech-led, customized data capture and analysis to elevate the voices of vulnerable populations. This brief offers a case study of the innovative, tech-led methods pioneered by Dr. Collins which are currently used in the Digital Portfolios of the Poor program, co-led by the Leir Institute and Decodis. As social science researchers, we seek to understand human behavior and interactions. However, the act of studying people itself is an engagement be- tween two people and there is a small but growing literature on interview modes and social acceptance biases. Literature on social acceptance bias draws out some of the limitations of traditional social research interview modes between individuals, with data largely reliant on self-reporting by respondents. The propensity for respondents to represent themselves in a socially acceptable or desirable light potentially hampers the quality of the data elicited. This is especially so, as many papers argue, when researching subjects considered taboo like sexually transmitted diseases, domestic violence, and other sensitive topics in certain sociocultural contexts. For instance, the need for social desirability is said to affect consistency in responses, which in turn affects the quality of the data. Social scientists, especially at the intersection of psychology, have used techniques like ‘cognitive loading’ or the process of ‘giving subjects more to think about or focus on as they perform a task, which therefore occupies some of their cognitive power’ as a means to offset social acceptance bias. This article explores how tools such as Interactive Voice Recording (IVR) could both offer anonymity and reduce the power imbalances brought on by an in-person researcher-respondent dynamic, thus eliciting information free of the limitations posed by social acceptance bias. In this paper, we explore using a form of open-ended, IVR surveys to ask respondents in economic inclusion programs with a gender transformative approach in Paraguay and Colombia about attitudes towards gender issues as a means to not only in- crease our ability as researchers to accurately understand their thoughts, but also to assess whether the program had an effect on a comparison group of women not in the program. Read the Report

• RIT Case Report: From Refugees to Citizens–A Report on Integration from Dhaka, Bangladesh

  By Khalid Hussain and Maliha Khan In 2008, Bangladesh’s High Court recognized Bihari refugees’ right to citizenship and requested that their names be added to the voter list as citizens. In doing so, a stateless Urdu-speaking linguistic minority living in refugee camps in the heart of Dhaka city and elsewhere in the country gained citizenship rights 37 years after the war between West and East Pakistan (today Bangladesh) left them stranded. They were no longer refugees, having fought for and won their legal rights largely through the efforts of the community. This case study provides an overview of how the refugee camps in Dhaka came to be and their conditions five decades on, and examines the legal battle from the perspective of one of the authors, who was a member of the Geneva Camp youth group that initiated the case, as well as the barriers that the Urdu-speaking community continues to face in their integration in Dhaka. The Biharis have been identified locally and officially over the years by various labels, such as stranded Pakistanis, non-Bengalis, Biharis, and as Urdu speakers. The 2003 and 2008 judgments by the High Court confirmed their citizenship and officially recognized them as Urdu-speaking Bangladeshis. However, they and their descendants are still referred to colloquially as “Biharis,” and are seen by many as separate from Bangla-speaking citizens. In December 1971, Bengalis in East Pakistan won independence after fighting a nine-month war against the Pakistan army. During the war, much of the Urdu-speaking Bihari community sided with West Pakistan with some directly supporting the Pakistan army in attacks against Bengalis. This, in return, led to violence by Bengalis causing several thousand Bihari deaths, according to community estimates. Many Biharis had their homes and property looted and/or seized and were forced to take refuge in temporary settlements, while other more prominent West Pakistani civilians were evacuated alongside the army. Episodic violence against Biharis continued after the war. Despite steady calls for their repatriation, the Pakistani government denied the minority citizenship and did not facilitate full-scale return after a few repatriation efforts in the subsequent decades. This rendered them essentially stateless and left the Biharis stranded. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) set up Geneva Camp and other settlements developed following the war. Conditions in the camps became increasingly deplorable as the population grew and the camps became “permanent”. Five decades on, living conditions in the camps have only worsened. Approximately 400,000 Urdu-speaking Biharis live in 116 refugee camps across Bangladesh today, with Dhaka city hosting 32 settlements and camps scattered around 12 districts. Geneva Camp, the largest camp in Bangladesh, is in Mohammadpur in central Dhaka. Another large Bihari settlement is in Mirpur, a northern suburb of Dhaka, which is more deprived than Geneva Camp, with fewer economic opportunities for residents. There are also Bihari settlements in major cities such as Chattogram, Khulna, Mymensingh, Rangpur, and Saidpur. The Bangladesh government has repeatedly mentioned efforts to rehabilitate Biharis, particularly with regard to providing housing outside the overcrowded camps, but these have not been implemented. Despite gaining mainstream legal recognition, Biharis have been unable to fully integrate into Bangladeshi society and economy—facing barriers to access legal documentation, education and employment opportunities, and insecure land and housing rights. Socially, they remain marginalized in Bangladesh—primarily due to discrimination based on perceived allegiance to Pakistan during and since the war, memories of which still stir strong sentiment in the country. This case report aims to detail from a firsthand perspective some of the successful advocacy leading to legal rulings which benefited the Urdu-speaking community’s legal standing in Bangladesh as well as highlight continued barriers to integration for residents who have now lived in Geneva Camp in Dhaka city for over five decades. Read the Report

• When do anti-corruption messages work, and with whom?

  By Jean-Benoit Falisse, Senior Lecturer, University of Edinburgh This blog post originally appeared on the Corruption in Fragile States Blog. Subscribe here to receive blog updates via email. Anti-corruption sensitization messages are probably the most ubiquitous of all anti-corruption tools. During anti-corruption campaigns, one can see them everywhere from prime-time TV ads, to billboards, to posters in schools and hospitals. Public servants and public service providers are a prime target: they’re urged to turn down attempted bribes and refrain from misappropriating public goods. But do anti-corruption sensitization messages make any difference at all? It’s a legitimate question. In the last decade or so, a series of studies that cast doubt about digital advertising’s ability to affect shoppers’ behavior has shaken the advertising world, which similarly relies on raising people’s attention to a particular issue through messaging. eBay and Facebook may, in fact, have overestimated the effectiveness of their ads by up to 4,000%. In the world of anti-corruption, many researchers have pointed out that raising awareness to corruption does not necessarily mean many changes in practice (or may even make things worse). Such reckoning, however, has yet to happen among most practitioners. But if practice needs to change, what might it look like? Testing anti-corruption messaging in Burundi Sign from Ministry of Good Governance: Photo: Falisse (2014).” The caption in the banner image isn’t quite right. Let’s have it read as follows: “Lab in the field, Burundi. Photo: Jean-Benoit Falisse In a recently published study, we became interested in a key dimension that may affect the effectiveness of anti-corruption messaging: the interplay between social and moral norms—what is seen as one’s normal and expected social behavior—and corruption. We built on research from different disciplines. In social anthropology, for instance, a growing body of research has stressed the importance of understanding so-called ‘practical norms’ in public service: what is it that constitutes an accepted and acceptable behavior in practice in the first place? In social psychology and behavioral economics, new evidence that moral and behavioral norms differ between social and professional groups has emerged—for instance, the seminal research by Cohn, Fehr, and Marechal showing that bankers were more likely to cheat in a lab game after the experimenter had stressed the participants’ professional identity. In our research, we set up a lab in the field experiment in Burundi. Actual civil servants were asked to react to a scenario where citizens asked them to “provide a service they are not meant to provide against some extra money”—a bribery attempt (as they identified it in later focus groups). The stakes were real: civil servants could make actual money. Burundi was and still is one of the poorest countries on earth, and, by all available metrics, corruption is rampant. “Beyond dangerous clichés on civil service in resource-poor environments, what do we actually know of the social and moral norms that structure daily life in the public service? For practitioners, the implication is clear: before launching a campaign, define target groups and carefully understand and document their day-to-day realities.“ Our preliminary research had found that, despite those adverse circumstances, civil servants generally viewed bribery as inconsistent with their professional values—this was especially true for teachers and court clerks, slightly less so for the police. We are far from the only ones to make that point but it bears reiteration: anti-corruption practitioners should not conflate widespread corruption with widespread acceptance of corruption. Would anti-corruption messages make any difference? Before answering this question, we had to think carefully. Many anti-corruption messages are generic: they describe corruption as something bad, immoral, or with dire consequences. Subscribe here to receive the Corruption in Fragile State Blog’s posts. We publish every three weeks—enough to keep you informed without cluttering your inboxes. Anti-corruption practitioners should, however, think twice about which messages to display. Indeed, research shows that the framing of sensitization messages matters: in a lab experiment, asking participants “not to cheat” was found less effective than asking them “not to be cheaters.” The likely underlying mechanism, as the researchers explained, is that the second message speaks to one’s “implication of the self.” In societies where cheating is considered amoral, very few want to see themselves as cheaters deep inside. In our lab in the field, we decided to expose a portion of our participants to two written anti-sensitization messages (in the national language, Kirundi): one was framed in general terms “good governance is the pillar of an equitable and uncorrupted society” and the other one appealed to professional norms “a real public servant is equitable and incorruptible.” As anticipated, only the second message had some effect on the participants’ behavior. But what is it exactly in the behavior of the participants that changed? “Anti-corruption practitioners should not conflate widespread corruption with widespread acceptance of corruption.” Our scenario did not imply reciprocity; civil servants could pocket the bribe without being forced to provide the service to the briber. This is precisely what happened: exposure to the message did not affect the civil servants’ propensity to take the bribe. It did, however, make them keener to deny the request of the briber and, instead, treat them as an ordinary citizen who hadn’t attempted to bribe them. Practitioners may want to think through this case, and how it compares to the situations they confront. Would they see their anti-corruption campaigns as successful if they ‘only’ made public services fairer from the perspective of users, but did not necessarily curb illicit payments? Which is most important? Rethinking anti-corruption sensitization These findings suggest two key action points for policymakers and anti-corruption practitioners. 1. The exact framing and wording of anti-corruption messages matters. A message appealing to one’s “implication of the self within society” might be more effective than a broad descriptive message—this resonates with work on injunctive versus descriptive norms that Mattias Agerberg recently presented on this blog. There is no one size fits all: crafting a good message requires a good understanding of the norms and values of the target group and brings …

• Op-Ed: What Biden’s deeply troubling asylum limit means for the economy

  By Carlos Alvarado Quesada, Former President of Costa Rica, The Hill Opinion Contributor, and Professor of the Practice Despite celebrating its positive strides on issues as important as the climate crisis and effective multilateralism, I am deeply troubled by the Biden administration’s latest proposal to limit access to asylum. A decision seemingly born of an electoral calculus, it neither benefits the United States nor its relationship with countries throughout Latin America and the Caribbean at what should be a time of unrivaled opportunity despite very real challenges.

• PRAXIS Journal: Everything you think you know about human trafficking is probably wrong

  By Avery Closser Have you ever been in a rest stop or airport bathroom and noticed a subtle flyer taped to the back of the door that reads: “GET HELP. If you are a victim of human trafficking, call this number”? If you identify as a woman, then your answer is probably yes. If you are a man, you might have a different answer. Victims of human trafficking are often transported along the same trade routes as other commodities, both licit and illicit ones, which is why these hotline numbers are posted along popular travel routes. It may seem unlikely, though, to find a trafficking victim in a rest-stop bathroom. We might wonder, wouldn’t their abductor be more careful than to take them somewhere in public? Or wouldn’t it be obvious to us that they were in trouble? The answer to both questions is no. Human trafficking, or modern slavery as it is often called, is highly pervasive and invisible. It is extremely difficult to detect and monitor, and most traffickers carry on with impunity. Human trafficking awareness campaigns are often trumped by pop culture depictions, like in the 2009 film Taken, which portrays a father, played by Liam Neeson, rescuing his daughter from an international organized crime group attempting to sell her into a sex trafficking ring. Another prominent example is the recent sensational case of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, both of whom were convicted for trafficking minors for sex.  While this case underscores many features of human trafficking, (including proving that women can be responsible for trafficking other women, contrary to popular belief) it is highly unlike the vast majority of trafficking schemes. It is crucial to understand the enormity and complexity of these crimes to begin to conceptualize how to put an end to them.