The ties that bind and break: a natural experiment on the role of (in)stability in local and transnational social ties for loneliness among refugees

Meta van der Linden; Emanuele Politi; Marija Dangubic

doi:10.1093/jrs/feaf064

The ties that bind and break: a natural experiment on the role of (in)stability in local and transnational social ties for loneliness among refugees

Meta van der Linden^*
, Emanuele Politi
, Marija Dangubic

^*Corresponding author for this work

KU Leuven
University of Lausanne

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

Research on social isolation and loneliness has largely overlooked refugees, who are among the loneliest in society. This study employs the COVID-19 pandemic as a natural experiment to examine how stable and situational social isolation contribute to loneliness. Drawing on two-wave panel data from 647 Syrian refugees in the Netherlands, fielded before and during the pandemic, we explore the stability of social ties across geographical and ethnic dimensions and how fluctuations lead to varying degrees of loneliness. While transnational ties served as a social safety net against loneliness during situational social isolation, our findings underscore their limited effectiveness compared to the more transient but protective local ties. Refugees who lacked local ties or experienced a disruption in local inter-ethnic ties were particularly vulnerable to heightened loneliness, emphasizing the importance of maintaining geographically close ties.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	265-277
Number of pages	13
Journal	Journal of Refugee Studies
Volume	39
Issue number	1
Early online date	30 Oct 2025
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/feaf064
Publication status	Published - Mar 2026

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2025. Published by Oxford University Press. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Funding

The data were provided by the EUR Bridge project and used with permission from Erasmus University Rotterdam, based on a data sharing agreement. In addition, this work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation grant (Weave/Lead Agency Grant No. 205182) and the Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek-Vlaanderen under Grant 12A7522N LV 3088.

Funders	Funder number
Swiss National Science Foundation grant (Weave/Lead Agency)	205182
Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek-Vlaanderen	12A7522N LV 3088

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

SDG 16 Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

Keywords

co-ethnic contact
inter-ethnic contact
latent transition analysis
loneliness
refugees
transnational contact

Access to Document

10.1093/jrs/feaf064Licence: CC BY

feaf064Final published version, 766 KBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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title = "The ties that bind and break: a natural experiment on the role of (in)stability in local and transnational social ties for loneliness among refugees",

abstract = "Research on social isolation and loneliness has largely overlooked refugees, who are among the loneliest in society. This study employs the COVID-19 pandemic as a natural experiment to examine how stable and situational social isolation contribute to loneliness. Drawing on two-wave panel data from 647 Syrian refugees in the Netherlands, fielded before and during the pandemic, we explore the stability of social ties across geographical and ethnic dimensions and how fluctuations lead to varying degrees of loneliness. While transnational ties served as a social safety net against loneliness during situational social isolation, our findings underscore their limited effectiveness compared to the more transient but protective local ties. Refugees who lacked local ties or experienced a disruption in local inter-ethnic ties were particularly vulnerable to heightened loneliness, emphasizing the importance of maintaining geographically close ties.",

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The ties that bind and break: a natural experiment on the role of (in)stability in local and transnational social ties for loneliness among refugees

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Funding

UN SDGs

Keywords

Access to Document

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Cite this