appears in the full Uganda sample, indicating that endogeneity issues significantly bias OLS regressions. Interestingly, the positive association between hosts’ interactions with refugees – — and their attitudes towards refugees remains statistically significant albeit small when the analysis is restricted to Kampala, the capital city. This reflects important differences in the nature of refugee-host interactions and perceptions in urban and rural contexts, which we illustrate using qualitative data. The analysis also suggests that a significant part of attitude formation takes place at the intra-group level, within households and immediate neighbourhoods, independently of inter-group interaction.

For comparison, we use OLS and IV regressions to explore whether refugees’ perception of host trustworthiness are influenced by refugees’ intensity of interactions with host. Results are broadly similar to the analysis of host perceptions of refugees. While OLS regressions identify a positive and significant association between interactions and refugees’ perceptions of hosts, IV regressions show that this association is not robust. Results also suggest that refugee perceptions of hosts are partly formed at the intra-group level, within households and immediate neighbourhoods, independently of inter-group interaction.

Finally, we combine descriptive statistics, regression analysis, and qualitative evidence in order to unravel the complexity of host community attitude formation and to generate new hypotheses. In this process, the qualitative data plays a particularly important role in elucidating contradictions, puzzles or nuances in our findings, which are often less noticeable in quantitative surveys. We further find that ethno-linguistic proximity seems to affect host perceptions; positive attitudes towards refugees are usually observed in contexts where both host and refugee communities are of Somali ethnic origin. Our qualitative methods highlight that host attitudes also appear to depend on households’ socio-economic standing and relation to refugees in the local context. Refugees may be perceived as a threat or as competitors by certain groups of host nationals, yet simultaneously be viewed by other host members within the same neighbourhood as contributors to local economies and development. Moreover, at the local community – or even individual – level, host nationals can hold seemingly contradicting beliefs. For example, while urban hosts are less tolerant of refugees than rural hosts, and often see refugees as an economic burden, they are more progressive in a rights perspective and feel less threatened by refugees’ presence.

Based on these findings, we make a series of recommendations for programmes seeking to improve refugee-host social cohesion: 1) facilitate opportunities for refugee-host interaction, including through economic exchange; 2) target interventions promoting intra-group attitude change at the neighbourhood and household levels; 3) focus differently on the perceived ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ of refugee-hosting; 4) design distinctive social cohesion programmes for urban and camp-like contexts; and 5) incorporate data collection relating to both perceptions and interactions into UNHCR and World Bank socio-economic household surveys focusing on refugee and host communities.

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