TY - INPR JF - American Political Science Review TI - The Journey Home: Violence, Anchoring, and Refugee Decisions to Return Y1 - 2021/05/17/ A1 - Ghosn, F A1 - Chu, TS A1 - Simon, M A1 - Braithwaite, A A1 - Frith, M A1 - Jandali, J N1 - This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ UR - http://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055421000344 N2 - While the UNHCR promotes voluntary repatriation as the preferred solution to refugee situations, there is little understanding of variation in refugees' preferences regarding return. We develop a theoretical framework suggesting two mechanisms influencing refugees' preferences. First, refugees' lived experiences in their country of origin prior to displacement and in their new host country create a trade-off in feelings of being anchored to their origin or host country. Second, firsthand exposure to traumas of war provides some refugees with a sense of competency and self-efficacy, leading them to prefer to return home. We test these relationships with data from a survey among Syrian refugees hosted in Lebanon. We find refugees exposed to violence during the war have a sense of attachment to Syria and are most likely to prefer return. Refugees who have developed a detachment from Syria or an attachment to Lebanon are less likely to prefer return. ID - discovery10128917 AV - public ER -