Assessing Refugees’ Onward Mobility with Mobile Phone Data—A Case Study of (Syrian) Refugees in Turkey

Secondary or onward mobility of refugees can pose considerable challenges for targeted and timely humanitarian assistance, and for long-term integration. There is very little systematic knowledge of the onward migration of refugees after their initial flight to a country of reception in general, and specifically in Turkey. In this chapter, we describe how the analysis of mobile phone Call Details Records can help to better understand spatio-temporal patterns of refugees’ onwards mobility. The analysis reveals some clear, large-scale mobility patterns (from South to North, from East to West, from Centre to the Coast, to large urban areas), and also some temporal patterns, but also shows that human mobility is complex and accordingly requires more advanced analytical tools. We conclude that it might be worth of re-framing registration policies for refugees, given the highly mobile share of refugee population, and the important role that this mobility probably plays for livelihoods.