Playing the immigration card: the politics of exclusion in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana

Whitaker, Beth

doi:10.1080/14662043.2015.1051289

Cited by 21 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 60 publications

(72 reference statements)

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“…Following previous work on political violence (Cohen & Nordås, 2014, 2015, we use an ordinal scale to code our dependent variable. The scale ranges from 0 to 3.…”

Section: Research Design and Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

From protection to persecution: Threat environment and refugee scapegoating

Savun

Gineste

2018

Journal of Peace Research

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The security consequences associated with refugee flows are among the most widely studied aspects of forced migration. While the majority of this research program has focused on how refugee movements affect the risk of political violence, scant scholarly attention has been paid to violence perpetrated against refugees. Building upon the state repression literature, we argue that refugees are particularly vulnerable to the violation of their physical integrity rights in the wake of terrorist attacks in host states. Governments are pressured to respond to security crises but prefer to take actions without jeopardizing public support. In this context, refugee groups can be strategically attractive targets of repression because they lack electoral power and citizens are often supportive of government crackdown against foreigners in times of security crises. Given that leaders have stronger incentives to respond to voters’ demands quickly in democracies, we expect the effect of terror attacks on violence against refugees to be stronger in democratic host states. Using a novel global dataset on anti-refugee violence between 1996 and 2015, we show that refugees are more likely to be exposed to violence by the coercive agents of the state in the wake of security crises. We provide suggestive evidence that the repression of refugees is more consistent with a scapegoating mechanism than the actual ties and involvement of refugees in terrorism. The findings reveal that the well-being of uprooted populations is particularly at risk when host countries face a security threat.

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“…Following previous work on political violence (Cohen & Nordås, 2014, 2015, we use an ordinal scale to code our dependent variable. The scale ranges from 0 to 3.…”

Section: Research Design and Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

From protection to persecution: Threat environment and refugee scapegoating

Savun

Gineste

2018

Journal of Peace Research

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“…Although the 2015 elections were peaceful, issues underpinning the social turmoil that led to conflict in the recent past -namely land grievances and identity politics -have not yet been addressed meaningfully and continue to pose challenges to Côte d'Ivoire's democratic development (Klaus and Mitchell 2015;Whitaker 2015). Tests for Côte d'Ivoire's democratic consolidation continue into the future, when election years might occur during years of economic decline or stagnation, which would create a starker trade-off for incumbents between electoral defeat and free and fair elections.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Untitled

2016

JAE

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“…Often, the translation of attitudes into government policy depends on which constituencies are necessary to build a winning electoral coalition (Money 1997, 1999). These theories help explain recent differences between Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana with respect to the politicization of immigration (Whitaker 2015) and could similarly be useful in understanding government responses throughout Africa to Somali migration.…”

Section: Comparative Immigration Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

Refugees, Foreign Nationals, andWageni: Comparing African Responses to Somali Migration

Whitaker¹

2020

Afr. stud. rev.

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Abstract:Host governments have responded to the migration of Somali refugees throughout Africa in recent decades in different ways. Kenyan policymakers have treated Somalis primarily as a security threat, imposing restrictions on them that especially target this group. In South Africa, where economic and political competition fuel xenophobia, Somalis are part of a larger foreign national population that is seen as having disproportionate economic influence. However, Somali Bantus have been welcomed in Tanzania, which granted them citizenship even as it limited the mobility and activities of other refugees. A comparative analysis suggests that the relative balance among security, economic, political, and normative considerations shapes the extent and scope of host government policies.

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Playing the immigration card: the politics of exclusion in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana

Cited by 21 publications

References 60 publications

From protection to persecution: Threat environment and refugee scapegoating

From protection to persecution: Threat environment and refugee scapegoating

Untitled

Refugees, Foreign Nationals, andWageni: Comparing African Responses to Somali Migration

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