Influence of Socio-economic Factors on Empowerment of Urban Refugee Youths in Nairobi County, Kenya
Abstract
The ever-increasing rate of urbanization has led to a surge in the number of refugees and
asylum seekers in the urban areas in the twenty first century. Although there are wellwishers
who ensure that rights of refugees living in urban areas across the globe
including Kenya are protected and that they easily access their basic needs, much is not
known whether these individuals can become self-empowered in coming years and avoid
overreliance on humanitarian aid initiated through different projects. The purpose of this
study was to establish the influence of socio-economic factors on empowerment of urban
refugee youths in Nairobi County, Kenya. The objectives of this study were: to examine
the influence of human capital development factors on empowerment of urban refugee
youths, to assess the influence of financial capital development factors on empowerment
of urban refugee youths, to assess the extent to which social capital development factors
influence the empowerment of urban refugee youths and finally to establish the influence
of advocacy support on the empowerment of urban refugee youths. All this was done in
Nairobi County, Kenya. Descriptive Survey Design is what this study confided itself on.
The research targeted 2972 urban refugee youths aged between 18-36 years and had to be
registered by UNHCR and RAS in Nairobi County. 297 respondents were used as the
sample size for this study and were selected through proportionate stratified sampling.
Furthermore, quantitative and qualitative data was collected by use of research
questionnaires. The data was analyzed by both descriptive analysis and inferential
analysis so as to determine the extent to which the variables were related. Data was
further analyzed through use of standard deviations, means, percentiles and Pearson
Correlations and also presented in form of frequency tables, as well as in prose form. The
study’s key findings indicated that human, financial, social capital development as well
as advocacy support positively influenced empowerment of urban refugee youths in
Nairobi County and they all yielded strong positive Pearson Correlation Coefficients of
r=0.896; r=0.868; r=0.787 and r=0.912 respectively. Overall, composite mean and
standard deviations that were yielded by the four objectives were M=4.03; SD=0.966;
M=3.72; SD=1.127; M=3.18; SD=1.050 and M=3.97; SD=.0997 respectively. The study
recommended support organizations to engage more professionals to ensure that urban
refugee youths are equipped with more relevant and numerous skills that can ensure that
human capital development is steadily increased. The target groups should be trained by
the support agencies more on entrepreneurial skills and further more increase the funds
that support the urban refugee youths in starting their businesses in order to achieve
financial capital development. The urban refugee youths should be involved in decision
making concerning matters to do with their wellbeing and support in order to achieve
social capital development. Finally, agencies should create awareness to ensure that
advocacy support reach all urban refugee youths in Nairobi County.
Publisher
University of Nairobi
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United StatesUsage Rights
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/Collections
- Faculty of Education (FEd) [5980]
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