Publication: Unemployment and Violent Extremism: Evidence from Daesh Foreign Recruits
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2018-03
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2018-03-30
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Transnational terrorist organizations such as the Islamic State group (also known as ISIS/ISIL or Daesh) have shown an ability to attract radicalized individuals from many countries to join their ranks. Using a novel data set that reports countries of residence and educational levels of a large sample of Daesh's foreign recruits, this paper finds that a lack of economic opportunities -- measured by unemployment rates disaggregated by country and education level -- explains foreign enrollment in the terrorist organization, especially for countries that are geographically closer to the Syrian Arab Republic.
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“Abdel Jelil, Mohamed; Bhatia, Kartika; Brockmeyer, Anne; Do, Quy-Toan; Joubert, Clement. 2018. Unemployment and Violent Extremism: Evidence from Daesh Foreign Recruits. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 8381. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/29561 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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