Participation and perceptions of empowerment are core elements of social cohesion.<sup>3</sup> Jenson (1998) describes five dimensions of social cohesion: belonging/isolation, inclusion/exclusion, participation/non-involvement, recognition/rejection, and legitimacy/illegitimacy. The extent to which individuals feel empowered to participate in both the social and political life is – at least partially – a manifestation of all five dimensions of social cohesion. Especially in the context of displacement, where the sudden influx may cause a backlash effect among host populations towards displacees (Dinas, Matakos, Xefteris & Hangartner 2019, Marbach & Ropers 2018, Hangartner, Dinas, Marbach, Matakos & Xefteris 2019), the ability to participate and feel empowered is an important step to building more sustainable livelihoods and may help lessen tension between displaced and non-displaced communities. Promoting empowerment among displaced communities may also help alleviate some of the mental (Pham, Fozouni, Al-Saiedi, Coughlin & Vinck 2021), social (Stevens 2016), and political stress on these communities (Carrillo 2009).

We examine when and why displacees become politically and socially engaged by analyzing a number of surveys of IDPs and relevant comparison groups in Iraq, the Philippines, and Uganda.<sup>4</sup> We collected these surveys in a series of projects between 2005 and 2019 analyzing the political, social, and health consequences of large scale forced displacement crises within each case. By bringing these data together, we explore how IDPs behave in and perceive their environments across different political systems, time periods, and continents. Unifying these contextually specific surveys into a single project enables us to focus on which findings (or do not) translate across contexts while respecting the specifics of the displacement experience within each case.

The insights from our surveys advance our understanding of the behavioral consequences of displacement in a number of ways. The overwhelming majority of existing research on the political and social ramifications of displacement focuses on refugees in the global North,<sup>5</sup> despite the fact that 85% of refugees were hosted in developing countries (UNHRC 2019). Out of 79.5 million total forcibly displaced persons in the world in 2019, 45.7 million were IDPs (UNHCR 2019). We bring to bear original survey evidence from countries and subnational regions with especially large and consequential clusters of IDPs. In doing so, we have amassed an usually large and diverse body

> 3We define social cohesion, in line with De Berry & Roberts (2018), as “the set of relationships between and individuals and groups in a particular environment and between those individuals and groups and the institutions that govern them in a particular environment” (28).

> 4Additionally, we discuss a survey we conducted in Colombia in supplemental material that is not included here due to differences in the survey design and content that limit comparison, but nevertheless provide additional insights into our research question.

> 5For a discussion on the imbalance between displacement loads and the geographic focus of research on the consequences of displacement, see Alrababa’h, Dillon, Williamson, Hainmueller, Hangartner & Weinstein (2021).

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