the COVID-19 pandemic has deeply impacted refugee communities in the aforementioned locations. Refugees in host countries were more likely to be living below the poverty line pre-pandemic and refugees were often more highly impacted due to reliance on wage work (Bank (2020a)). Within Syrian, Syrians living in all regions are subject to a lack of services including electricity and water, and 60% of Syrians are food insecure (WFP (2021)).

# **3 Relevant Literature**

The situation of Syrian refugees is not unique, with over 80% of global refugees hosted by developing countries bordering the regions refugees flee from (UNHCR (2020)). These host countries struggle with service provision and maintaining the requisite bureaucracy to determine refugee legal status, while also facing backlash and anti-refugee sentiment among their own citizens (Lazarev and Sharma (2017), Alrababa’h et al. (2021), Chu et al. (2019), Braithwaite et al. (2019), Bradley (2013)). Refugees may be displaced from their home country for many reasons including economic, political, and environmental factors, and their destination depends on similar factors in potential host countries (Arias et al. (2014), Lischer (2005), Rüegger (2013), Davenport et al. (2003), Zolberg et al. (1989), Martin et al. (2019)). Kunz (1973) codes displacement as anticipatory, when the refugee is prepared to leave before the situation in their home country has degraded, or acute, when refugees are forced to leave due to government failure, violence, or environmental conditions (Kunz (1973)). The relative importance of different displacement conditions varies depending on region and political climate (Singh et al. (2020)). Given area politics, we may expect similarities in displacement between Syria and Iraq, where those topics which generated the most buzz prior to displacement were related to politics, insecurities, and infrastructure (Martin and Singh (2018)).

Barring local conditions, violence is often considered the key driver of displacement (Davenport et al. (2003), Zolberg et al. (1989)). In a 2020 CARE survey conducted through interviews with Syrian IDPs, 99% said they had been displaced due to violence or fighting (Hoffman and Makovsky (2021)). The type and prevalence of violence also matters, in that state sponsored violence and genocide are more likely to lead to refugees whereas civil wars are associated more highly with internal displacement (Steele (2019), Moore and Shellman (2006)). Individuals who witness, but do not necessarily directly experience, violence are more likely to delay leaving if they receive community support and experience post-traumatic growth (Schon (2019)).

Enabling return for the displaced requires a good understanding of how the displaced view their possibilities and options around return (Metivier et al. (2018), Camarena and Hägerdal (2020)) as well as the broader effects of such return on postwar politics (Fabbe et al. (2019)) or on security (Van Leeuwen and Van Der Haar (2016), Camarena (2016), Schwartz (2019)). Willingness to confront danger on the path to return may also be impacted by refugees’ experiences of violence prior to return and belief in their ability to adapt to circumstances on the ground (Ghosn et al. (2021)). As a result, refugees who spent more time in their home country before fleeing, and were thus more likely to have been victims of violence, are more likely to return. In the Syrian context, refugees who are single and male are more likely to return since family ties often play a large role in these decisions (Bank (2019)).

## **3.1 Return Considerations**

Knowledge of the factors which initiate displacement is key to understanding when refugees may return. Individuals are more likely to return once there are economic opportunities, services, and social networks in place to support their transition, the same features which may have prompted movement away from a region when they became unavailable (Aymerich and Zeyneloglu (2019), Hoogeveen et al. (2017), Arias et al. (2014)). In a survey study conducted on 6