– – In Kampala, we find some evidence of a positive albeit small effect of interactions on perceptions. The finding that the effect of refugee-host interactions is more positive in urban contexts resonates with the work of Dustmann et al. (2019) who, using data from Denmark, find that refugee presence is associated with lower vote shares for anti-immigration parties in large urban municipalities, while the opposite is true in rural municipalities. Interestingly, this suggests that some of the mechanisms and findings relating to the impact of contact on social cohesion in the ‘North’ may also be applicable in the ‘South’.

Another robust finding of our analysis is that respondents’ attitudes are closely correlated with other household members and immediate neighbours, which highlights the importance of intra-group attitude formation processes alongside inter-group contact as closely related mechanisms for attitude formation. While Hopkins (2010), for example, looks at the interrelationships between contact and national-level processes of attitude formation, our research highlights the need to examine the inter-relationship between contact and local-level (neighbourhood or household) processes of attitude formation. This suggests the need for further research to explore how exactly neighbourhood and household-level processes of intra-group attitude formation interact with members’ experiences of inter-group contact.

Our results further suggest that ethnic and linguistic ties between refugees and hosts matter for perceptions and attitudes. ‘Group threat theory’ predicts that diversity leads to opposition (Quillian 1996; Hjerm 2007; Stephan and Stephan 2017). Steele and Abdelaaty (2019) find that greater ethnic diversity is associated with decreased support for refugees; however, this relationship is not consistent across all measures of diversity. We find suggestive evidence that proximity in terms of ethnicity and language between refugees and host communities correlates with more positive mutual attitudes of hosts towards refugees, and vice versa.

Our qualitative research complements these insights, but inevitably also speaks to some of the other theoretical explanations for social cohesion within the literature such as the labour market competition and fiscal burden hypotheses. Overall, though, we interpret both the quantitative and qualitative findings as rejecting the ‘any contact’ version of contact theory, but we confirm the importance of understanding the enabling conditions through which contact improves social cohesion (Pettigrew and Tropp 2006). The key question is: under what conditions does contact lead to social cohesion? To be effective in promoting refugee-host social cohesion, contact may be most effective in the context of a) shared norms (e.g. ethno-linguistic proximity), b) mutually beneficial socio-economic opportunity, and c) within-group community structures that amplify positive perceptions. The identification of these mechanisms are, however, preliminary findings that requires further research, including through intervention-based studies.

In 2021, the World Bank, UNHCR, and FCDO commissioned a series of papers on social cohesion and forced displacement. Many of the findings in this paper resonate with preliminary findings in that broader collection. Several papers highlight that refugee arrivals or returns can, under certain conditions, be linked to host-refugee tensions (Groeger et al. 2021; 32