TOWARD UNDERSTANDING LIVELIHOOD FRAMEWORK OF REFUGEES IN MALAYSIA: A CONCEPTUAL PAPER

Abstract

Refugees are commonly viewed as burdensome, helpless, and purely depend on government or agencies responding to refugees’ needs because the existing studies mainly report and illustrated lacking, incapability and the burden of refugees into hosting countries. On the contrary, while some studies suggest that refugees have no significant impact, others portray heterogeneous impacts, with some negative impact on poor host-country households. Surprisingly, with 161,359 refugees and asylum-seekers registered with UNHCR in Malaysia for the year 2017, there is limited research are conducted on the livelihood and economic impacts of refugees in Malaysia which have provided shelter to hundred thousands of refugees for more about a half-century. The issue of the refugee crisis is a serious issue in today’s geopolitical and has captured incredible responses from both international communities and receiving countries. The policymakers need a clear understanding of the impacts of refugees not only on social and legal aspects but specifically on the economic aspect to cope with these ever increasing refugees who will stay in the host countries for a long time while waiting for relocation. Due to that, the study aims to highlight livelihood strategies as well as economic outcomes among urban refugees in Malaysia. This study proposes a conceptual model of the livelihood framework which comprises the key factors such as human capital, natural capital financial capital, social capital and physical capital. This study is hopefully can support the existing studies which may not extensively explore livelihood and economic outcomes concerning refugee’s population in a comprehensive model.