23 several studies exploring how to improve integration of regular migrants (voluntary and forced) in the receiving countries. OECD, ILO, World Bank, and IMF (2017) provide a review of the experience. Early integration in the labor market proves critical. This requires legal access to the labor market, especially language skills and occupational skill matching, as well as coordination among stakeholders and coherent implementation. Access to housing proves also a challenge, especially for recognized refugees. When it comes to policies enforcing strong economic rights for migrants in the receiving countries, such as high minimum wages, the research suggests the existence of a trade-off, with higher benefits resulting in a decline in the number of migrants benefiting.

The solutions also critically depend on the initial economic conditions of the hosting communities. In developing country settings, lessons from experience suggest addressing longstanding developing issues, which the presence of the forcibly displaced exacerbates, supporting those who have been hurt within host communities, strengthening and expanding social service delivery, and encouraging granting the forcibly displaced the freedom of movement and the right to work (World Bank, 2017a). Overall, rigorous empirical evidence on the effectiveness of different approaches, in both developed and developing host country settings, remains largely lacking, though with many opportunities to learn more systematically, for example today in Europe and the Middle East.

Finally, the role of return migration in managing migration and increasing development outcomes is also increasingly attracting attention. This includes policies to remove regulatory, bureaucratic and informational barriers (e.g. pension portability, go and see visits for refugees), policies changing financial and other incentives to return (assisted voluntary return, permanent return of qualified migrants), as well as policies to make return migrants more productive and adjust reintegration easier (recognition of skills abroad). Except for greater mobility following dual citizenship, evidence on the effectiveness of most of such measures is lacking.

Return migration remains especially an important policy focus of countries/communities hosting forcefully displaced persons. But the costs of ensuring favorable conditions for repatriation of refugees have often been underestimated,<sup>44</sup> while integration in the local labor markets has often been neglected as a solution. This reluctance to integrate refugees locally has often also precluded the opportunity to test local integration approaches. Irrespectively, whether repatriation or local integration is promoted, it is especially the protracted nature of forced displacement that is pernicious. It holds the displaced hostage in short planning horizons. The more rapid the situation can be normalized, the smaller the welfare losses.<sup>45</sup> Early involvement of development agencies, along with humanitarian agencies, rather than a sequential approach, with an initial humanitarian effort response followed by a development effort when the situation becomes protracted holds some promise in this regard (World Bank, 2017a).<sup>46</sup>

> 44 Land tenure and property issues often pose a real challenge for example, when returnees find their land or houses occupied by others (World Bank, 2017a).  As Verwimp and Muñoz-Mora (2017) show in their study of returning refugees in Burundi, the plight of (former) refugees does not end upon return. 45 Studying children in Burundi Verwimp and Van Bavel (2013) find that for every additional year children passed in a displacement camp before returning, they were 2 percentage points less likely to finish primary school. Similarly, Verwimp and Muñoz-Mora (2017) show that duration of displacement has long lasting negative effects.

> 46 World Bank (2017b) and Verwimp and Maystadt (2015) review some of the lessons from the experience with forced migration.