Smugglers vs. Students: Migration Deterrence and Understandings of Risk Among Eritrean Refugees in Ethiopia

Between 2016 and 2019, Ethiopia began to implement a series of policies intended to deter the onward migration of Eritrean refugees. These policies were not limited to educating refugees about the risks of migration, but also used development and local integration to create conditions which would ostensibly make Ethiopia a better long-term hosting state. We argue that in order to understand whether these policies changed the way Eritrean refugees thought about migration from Ethiopia, we need to not only consider how refugees think about the risks of migration, but also understand how refugees think about the risks of staying in Ethiopia.