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Research Assistants

Panel Survey on the Influx of Forcibly Displaced Migrants in Bangladesh

In 2017, violence erupted in Myanmar against the Rohingya people, a stateless Muslim ethnic group, and hundreds of thousands of them to fled the country over the subsequent months. In the past three years, as many as 700,000 Rohingya people – over half of them children – crossed the border to Bangladesh under harsh conditions. The vast majority of them have settled in refugee camps in the district of Cox’s Bazar, at the southern end of the country.

Professor Mobarak is leading a longitudinal survey in Cox’s Bazar, with the goal of building an evidence base of how local economies and populations respond to a massive influx of forcibly displaced migrants. The study will collect a detailed panel dataset of social, economic, and health outcomes from 5,000 households representative of Cox’s Bazar over the course of the next 5 years. The first wave was collected between April-July 2019. The second wave is expected to begin in early-mid 2021.
The research project has two overarching goals: (i) investigate the social and economic drivers of ethnic violence in Myanmar, with a focus on the persecution of Rohingya Muslims, and (ii) study the effects of forced displacement on those who escaped violence in their home villages and crossed the border into Bangladesh, as well as Bangladeshi hosts living in refugee-receiving communities, using data from the panel survey.

RA responsibilities under this project may include: downloading, reshaping, and merging datasets; data cleaning and preliminary analyses, translating analysis for clear data visualization, literature and news reviews, and report writing (policy briefs or short academic articles).

Requisite Skills and Qualifications:

We invite application from students with a strong background in economics and statistics. Skills and interests in data collection and econometric analysis are important. Knowledge of Stata and the ability to merge datasets are essential skills.

Excellent writing skills and knowledge of South/ Southeast Asia and/or of forced migration are a plus.