collection and profiling exercises, and to monitor people’s situations and trajectories, including across borders, over longer periods of time. If donors are serious about improving responses, they should invest in bringing data collection agencies together and piloting such a system. This could be done for crises such as Iraq, South Sudan or the countries of Central America’s Northern Triangle, where mixed migration is a feature and urgent attention is required. Second, we need more qualitative data and clarity on the combination of factors that determine IDPs’ onward and cross-border flight. Understanding how and when they make such decisions and which issues weigh heaviest on them is key. Is physical safety and security their prime concern, which would reflect a clear failure to protect them at home? How important are social and economic considerations, when livelihoods, employment and education options have all but disappeared and people have no choice but to seek opportunities elsewhere? To what extent are decisions taken by individuals or within families? Or are they driven more by external pressure, rumour or the appeal of destination countries based on their border and asylum policies or socioeconomic conditions? A clear understanding of the push and pull factors that drive people to flee is a prerequisite for national and international responders to prioritise resources and offer the right type of support when and where it is needed. These questions can be answered with systemic analyses and system dynamics models of the environmental, socioeconomic, political and security variables that prompt, force or hinder cross-border movement. Such work has to be a collaborative effort between regional experts, humanitarian responders, economists and development specialists. Qualitative information is also required, including the anonymised interview transcripts and profiling data that different agencies currently collect at different points of transit and arrival but as yet only share inconsistently. These exercises need to be prioritised, expanded and adequately funded to increase the current coverage and allow for the collection of more data over longer periods of time. Countries such as Afghanistan, Colombia, Iraq, South Sudan, Sudan and Syria would be prime candidates for this type of analysis. risk this carries of future displacement. We need insights into the proportion of people who return voluntarily or under external pressure, those who return to their home areas or find themselves living in internal displacement camps, and those who eventually conclude they have no choice but to go back to their country of refuge or move on to a third country. Thorough contextual analyses of the exact conditions in designated return areas, and the ability of national and local authorities to respond adequately to the needs of those in them, will be key to measuring the sustainability of returns and the risk of onward movement or displacement. To achieve this, agencies and authorities on the ground need to monitor returnees’ trajectories over time, not just at drop-off but much further into the settlement and reintegration process. We also need to reach a consensus on the notion that a returned refugee who faces conditions of insecurity and precariousness and is unable to integrate sustainably in their place of origin or elsewhere becomes internally displaced, and qualifies for protection and assistance as any other IDP would. This means gathering data on the full range of indicators contained in the IASC framework for durable solutions systematically, comprehensively and longitudinally, and in ways that are collaborative and interoperable. It goes without saying that much greater political will and financial investment is required to reach this objective, and to ensure the needs of all those displaced are met until they have fully recovered from their plight and re-established stable and sustainable lives. Third, we need a much better understanding of the circumstances in which people return to their countries of origin, and a measure of the OFF THE GRID: Are today’s IDPs tomorrow’s refugees and migrants? 67