On December 8, 2024, the sudden collapse of Bashar al‑Assad’s regime abruptly changed Syria’s political landscape and reshaped the return prospects for millions of Syrians living abroad. We exploit this unanticipated regime change as a natural experiment to estimate the causal impact of homeland developments on refugees’ settlement and return intentions. Drawing on novel survey data from Germany, launched just days before Assad’s fall, we find that the regime collapse significantly affected the expressed settlement intentions of Syrians in Germany.
IAB-Discussion-Paper 09/2025: „The Downfall of Assad: Syrian Refugees’ Settlement Intentions after the Unexpected Regime Change“
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