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Journal of Refugee Studies Advance Access published online on October 20, 2009
Journal of Refugee Studies, doi:10.1093/jrs/fep031
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© The Author [2009]. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Displaced Livelihoods in Sri Lanka: An Economic Analysis

Kopalapillai Amirthalingam and Rajith W. D. Lakshman

Department of Economics, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka rajith{at}econ.cmb.ac.lk

This paper investigates how internal displacement affects the livelihoods of the displaced, using a group of IDPs currently living in Batticaloa in eastern Sri Lanka. These Tamil IDPs have come from Sampur which is located in Trincomalee, in eastern Sri Lanka. As expected, displacement has had a statistically significant negative impact on livelihoods. However, the impact varies among four categories of livelihoods identified by us: Type I Labour, Type II Labour, government service, and entrepreneurship. Type I Labourers with a ready demand in the host community and the salaried class of public servants are able to make ends meet, while entrepreneurs are rendered worse off. Type II Labourers have skills but the demand for their services in the host communities is negligible. They are therefore significantly impoverished in spite of their skills. Though public servants’ livelihoods were economically intact, our results show that displacement has had other forms of negative impacts on their livelihoods.

Key Words: Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) • livelihoods • Conflict Induced Displacement (CID) • Sri Lanka • coping strategies • vulnerability

MS received March 1, 2009 Accepted for publication July 1, 2009.


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