Do states in the Global South learn from each other regarding the management of forced migration? Although research has shown that refugees have recently been recast as an economic benefit for non-Western host states, little scholarly work exists on whether and how such a normative change is adopted across regions. In this article, we identify the diffusion of refugee rent-seeking behaviour, namely the use of host states' geopolitical position as leverage to extract revenue from other states in exchange for maintaining refugees within their borders. We identify three types of diffusion -learning, cooperation and emulation -occurring at state, regional and international levels across the Global South. Drawing on a range of primary sources, we demonstrate the working of these three types across a range of empirical examples drawn from the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and South America. Overall, we identify a rising trend in the commodification of forced migration across refugee rentier states, while highlighting the need for further interregional research on policy diffusion outside the Global North.

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liam Grimes, Adil Najam, and my students. Prachi Jain, Asia Cesa, and Fotios Dimitriadis were exemplary research assistants. Throughout this period, my research was supported by the International Studies Association James N. Rosenau Postdoctoral Fellowship. Thank you to Kristy Belton and Mark Boyer, along with the rest of the ISA staff. From 2020 to 2021, I was a postdoctoral fellow at Université Laval, as part of the Canada Research Chair in Immigration and Security. I am especially grateful for the support of Phillippe Bourbeau, along with many others, as we persisted during the COVID-19 pandemic. I wish to thank my colleagues around the world for their support of my research and feedback on the manuscript, including