Assessing Displaced People’s Design Choices Around Social Assistance
Authors: Collyer Michael , Te Lintelo Dolf , Zaman Tahir 
Published: September 2024

Many social assistance programmes make no explicit provision for displaced people at all. Although refugees have more often been considered in terms of international protection, this has not been the case as regularly for internally displaced people (IDPs). As crises become more prolonged, international support is also likely to decline. Whenever displaced people are included, they are usually considered in terms of the reach or impact of social assistance programmes but are rarely consulted about the design of such programmes. This is often due to political barriers around exclusion by host governments. This paper does not tackle these political barriers but sets out to partially address the exclusion of displaced people from the design and planning of social assistance programming by consulting them in a range of design choices about how they engage with social assistance and what a good social assistance programme would look like. The paper draws on research in two locations (camp and city) in each of three countries: the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Lebanon, and Pakistan. Each of these countries has hosted large numbers of displaced people for extensive periods of time but they are otherwise very different contexts. This is therefore a ‘most different’ comparative research design, so common factors across the three countries are particularly important. Research is based on Q method – a relatively unusual methodological approach that has a number of specific advantages in this field. One of the aims of this paper is to test and outline this relatively unusual method, meaning that academics are one of the primary audiences. Displaced participants were consulted directly on their views about the design of social assistance programmes. Rather than expanding on individual perspectives (as focus groups or interviews do) or taking aggregate views of multiple variables (as surveys do), Q allows the identification of groups by individual. Rather than isolating multiple opinions on single points of design, Q allows for the complexity of a single individual’s opinions on multiple points of design and compares these statistically to many other individuals’ opinions of the same design points. This results in the identification of groups of individuals who share similar sets of perspectives, allowing the creation of personas that are statistically representative of the group. This method is set out in detail in the annexe and the resulting personas are presented in section 3. These groups allow us to highlight the key lines of differentiation around important design points. Overall, the paper provides a series of significant directions to consider in the design of formal social assistance programmes. These are expanded on in section 4, but in summary: ● Opinions on design of social assistance fall significantly along gender lines. In all three countries, at least one of the groups was exclusively or mostly comprised of women, meaning that significant groups of women share common opinions on social assistance, which are distinct from men’s opinions. This underlines the importance of consulting men and women separately. ● When looking at the range of opinions particular to women’s groups, some issues stand out, particularly a reluctance to engage with community or neighbourhood organisations that is not shared by groups that are majority men. This is important for the paper’s analysis of informal social assistance. We argue that it is important for formal programmes to recognise the role played by informal social assistance, and the greater sensitivity expressed by women around reliance on neighbourhoods and communities is a significant element of this. ● A second key distinction across all three countries is between urban and ‘camp’ locations, though this was less evident in Lebanon. Urban residents are more likely to demand more from the state in fulfilling its responsibility of managing the population on its territory, and have less confidence in United Nations (UN) agencies. This suggests that displaced people will be more receptive to social assistance programmes that are delivered through or alongside state-based programmes in urban areas. ● A third common point was in support for universality, with very little targeting of particular vulnerable groups. In DRC there was strong support among displaced groups to focus social assistance exclusively on them, though within this focus there was also little support for targeting of specific displaced groups (for ‍example, women, even among the majority women’s groups). ● Significant currents of opinion also emerge around the importance of dignity in support programmes, which is closely linked to anonymity and invisibility in means of receipt of assistance. There are very clear lessons here in ensuring that recipients are not publicly identified in the operation of these programmes. ● The research provides further support for the value of cash, but this is nuanced in situations where vital needs (medicine in the case of DRC) are not available to buy. Generally, those people with experience of receiving cash were more supportive. The design lesson here is that greater support will be needed to introduce and monitor cash in areas where there is limited experience of using cash. ● Finally, research highlights the values of incorporating informal forms of social assistance (from neighbours, family, religious organisations, and community groups) into analysis of more formal sources, even though support for this (as noted earlier) was not universal, highlighting how informal social assistance is far from an ideal alternative to the decline in formal sources of assistance.