Prolonged Social Contact to Internally Displaced Migrants Does Not Reduce Prejudice Among Locals in Wartime Settings
An online talk by:
Dr. Yang-Yang Zhou
Assistant Professor, UBC Political Science
Friday, October 23, 2020
12:30 – 2:00 p.m. (Pacific Daylight Time)
[ Abstract ]
In this talk, based on a co-authored paper with Jason Lyall, Associate Professor of Transnational Studies at Dartmouth, I ask: Can prolonged social contact reduce local residents’ prejudice toward internally displaced persons (IDPs) in fragile and violent settings? Despite record numbers of IDPs globally, there are few experimental tests of the causal effects of inter- group contact on views toward migrants, and almost none in countries experiencing active conflict. We conducted a randomized controlled trial of a vocational skills training program in Kandahar, Afghanistan, that enrolled 2,597 locals and migrants, in near equal numbers. The program offered prolonged and meaningful contact; courses lasted three or six months and emphasized soft-skills development in addition to learning a technical trade. Unlike most contact studies that measure outcomes the same day, we surveyed locals at the end of the program and again eight months later. Despite meeting the conditions for contact theory, we find no evidence of prejudice reduction toward IDPs regardless of classroom demographics or course duration.
