Community meetings and the integration of internally displaced people in hosting neighborhoods – lessons from Mozambique

This intervention will use structured community meetings to study the interaction between internally displaced people (IDPs) and the local hosting community, in the context of an ongoing armed conflict.
- Community meetings will gather both IDPs and hosting community residents (locals) in a public conversation.
- These community meetings will follow a pre-defined script, following the format of a Public Conversation, which was validated by local community leaders.
- These meetings will take approximately 3 hours.
- Community meetings will be facilitated by a moderator, who is a local community leader.
- Community meetings will cover topics related to the daily life in the neighbourhood.
- The main goal is to promote a conversation in which individuals of each group discuss their views about the other group, as well as what can be done to overcome differences.

- This study will measure how community meetings change the perceptions, beliefs and attitudes of participants of both groups (IDPs and locals).

2022-08-08

2022-10-31

1. Tolerance towards IDPs and locals
- survey questions
- lab-in-the-field games (joy of destruction)

2. Trust towards locals / IDPs
- survey questions;
- lab-in-the-field games (trust, public goods)

3. Social Cohesion
- survey questions
-lab-in-the-field games (public goods)

4. Integration of IDPs in local community
- survey questions.
- follow-up surveys tracking individuals connections.

5. Preference / Bias towards insurgents and religious extremism
- survey questions (religious extremism)
- List experiment (preference for insurgents)
- Implicit association test (bias towards insurgents)

1. Survey questions will ask about participants' beliefs and attitudes about iDPs and locals. The joy of destruction game will measure how participants are willing to give up some of their endowment in order to "destroy" a larger sum of the opponent's endowment.

2. Trust in different individuals will be measured directly in the survey (i.e. the level of trust that a participant has in family members, neighbours, IDPs, locals, political leaders, etc.). I will also construct a trust index by aggregating participants' trust level in different individuals: a) general trust index (averaging all questions); b) government, c) local people, etc.

The trust and public goods games will follow the standard format. I will then measure the amount participants are willing to send / contribute when they play with someone inside or outside their group.

3. Social cohesion will be directly measured using survey questions addressing how the community gathers to help people in need, support for IDPs, etc. The public goods game will be as described in point 2 (above).

4. Integration of IDPs in the local community will be measured with a) survey questions asking IDPs' participation in local community groups; b) IDPs' connections (which will be aggregated in an index capturing the strength of individuals connections: importance of the people IDPs know, how regular they contact these people; whether IDPs contact more regularly other IDPs or if they also have good connections with locals); c) whether IDPs feel welcomed by the local community.

1. Individuals' aspirations
2. Individuals' labor market participation

1 and 2 will be measured using survey questions. These questions will measure individuals aspirations, namely how they wish and expect their lives to change in the following years; the level of education that parents aspire for their children; whether individuals find a job or are at least looking for a job.

Phase 1: Intervention and main results
1. Individuals living in local neighborhoods are recruited to participate in the research study. Those who accept to participate are then randomly allocated in treatment and control cohorts.
2. A baseline survey is conducted, covering basic demographics and characteristics, and beliefs / attitudes.
3. Community meetings are conducted for individuals in the treatment group.
4. A post-treatment survey is conducted measuring individuals beliefs / attitudes. A list experiment and an implicit association test are conducted (to measure biases towards insurgents). At the same time lab-in-the-field games are conducted.

Phase 2: follow-up activities
5. Follow-up surveys will be conducted in-person to track participants', following a format similar to the post-treatment survey of phase 1. The implicit association test will also be conducted. Activities will conclude with the same lab-in-the-field games as in phase 1. The idea is to understand the persistence of the effects generated by community meetings. Follow-up surveys are predicted to take place 3, 6 and 9 months after the conclusion of the intervention.

There will exist 2 different randomisation strategies: a) IDPs; b) Locals.
a) IDPs' recruitment will be randomised based on the roster of displaced people, kept by the local government. In each neighbourhood 48 individuals will be randomly chosen out of all IDPs in the roster. Specifically, this will be done by using a computer to randomly pick 48 individuals among everyone in the roster.

b) Locals's recruitment in each neighbourhood will follow the method of a random walk. Enumerators will have the help of local guides in order to find the center of the neighbourhoods. From there, they will move in different directions, randomly picking up local households according to the designated sampling interval (neighbourhood-specific).

Individual level

Yes

9 neighbourhoods. Each neighbourhood is planned to have 12 cohorts (clusters)

864 individuals (432 internally displaced people, and 432 locals).

Each neighbourhood will have control and treatment clusters. I estimate 6 treatment clusters and 6 control clusters (each cluster is planned to be composed of 8 individuals, ideally 4 IDPs and 4 locals).