# **1. Introduction**

Protracted displacement — displacement for five years or more — is ubiquitous and a programming priority. For instance, in more than 50 countries around the world, people were living in internal displacement for more than 10 years in 2014 (Kälin and Chapusiat, 2017). Moreover, 78% of all refugees worldwide were in protracted situations in 2018.<sup>1</sup> Policy makers have recognized the urgent need to act and to prevent these millions of people from being left behind. For example, the Agenda for Humanity and the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit or the 2018 UNHCR Global Compact on Refugees signed by the UN general assembly focused on the need to adopt a new approach to protracted crises that addresses displacement needs, fosters durable solutions and embraces gender equality as a central principle.

A surge of studies in recent years has produced detailed insights into the characteristics, causes, and consequences of forced displacement (Ruiz and Vargas-Silva, 2013; World Bank, 2017). Specifically, it is increasingly recognized that risk factors for gender equality are often especially pervasive in situations of forced displacement (Rohrwerder, 2016), and that impacts of gender and forced displacement can not only add to but also interact with each other (Arango et al., 2021).

Yet, quantitative empirical research and micro-level evidence on the gendered causes, forms and consequences of livelihoods during displacement remain scarce, which is at least partly due to a lack of suitable, high-quality large-n survey data (ISDC, 2019; Brück and Stojetz, 2020). Specifically, how the two dimensions of gender and forced displacement combine and interact is not well understood in particular (for a detailed review, see Arango et al., 2021). Knowledge is particularly limited for protracted situations, which, due to the long time horizons, can severely compound and create new gender-based vulnerabilities and disparities due to displacement. Little is known about the livelihood strategies of men and women in protracted displacement and how they compare to those of otherwise similar host populations. We do not know, either, how and for how long the origins of displacement, such as violent conflict, shape gendered protracted displacement. Finally, little is known about the mechanisms of how these outcomes are obtained.

In this paper, we study the gendered dimensions of livelihoods in a protracted forced displacement setting. Specifically, we analyze how gender and displacement outcomes — in the form of displacement status and displacement experiences — shape employment outcomes.

To grasp the complex impacts of gender and forced displacement on livelihood outcomes, we take an ‘intersectional’ perspective (Bastia, 2014). Such an approach aims to explore different forms and sources of disadvantage and emphasizes their interconnectedness and interdependencies, rather than approach them as separate domains (Crenshaw, 1990; Valentine, 2007). Specifically, it explores the relationships and interactions between individual factors across multiple levels of society to determine how outcomes are shaped across societal groups (Kapilashrami and Hankivsky, 2018). Intersectional approaches are increasingly applied in development research and have been shown to improve analyses of labor market outcomes in Sub-Saharan Africa (Elu and Loubert, 2013; Grünenfelder and Schurr, 2015). From a gender perspective, it can help to tease out the interlinkages between the multiple sources of gender inequalities and “focus on the experiences of those who have been excluded thus far from feminist analysis” (Bastia, 2014). We thus aim to analyze how different forms of disadvantage stemming from gender and displacement outcomes (our ‘individual factors’) intersect, combine, and interact in shaping employment outcomes, with a focus on the

> [†] ISDC – International Security and Development Center, Berlin, Germany; and Humboldt University Berlin, Germany. Email: stojetz@isdc.org (corresponding author).

> [‡] ISDC – International Security and Development Center, Berlin, Germany; Leibniz Institute of Vegetable and Ornamental Crops, Großbeeren, Germany; and Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich, Chatham Maritime, United Kingdom.

> 1 See https://www.unhcr.org/globaltrends2018/ (accessed June 30, 2021).