Refugees and rivals: The international dynamics of refugee flows

Moorthy, Shweta; Brathwaite, Robert

doi:10.1177/0738894216657047

Cited by 25 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…We also consider the relationship between the original (sending) state and host state. The protection of refugees from rival states may help host countries in their efforts to weaken their rivals and hence result in lower rates of repression (Moorthy & Brathwaite, 2016). Refugee population from rival state (share) is the size of the refugee population originating from a rival state as a percentage of the host country's population.…”

Section: Robustness Checksmentioning

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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Section: Robustness Checksmentioning

confidence: 99%

From protection to persecution: Threat environment and refugee scapegoating

Savun

Gineste

2018

Journal of Peace Research

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“…The most common way that quantitative refugee scholars have previously accounted for this is to use a zero-inflated negative binomial or a Heckman selection model (Moore andShellman 2006, 2007;Moorthy and Brathwaite 2016). These approaches account for the structural zeroes by identifying the conditions under which refugees may be generated, and then down-weighting observations in which a receiving state could not have conceivably accepted refugees from a given sending state.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We follow this approach and employ zero-inflated negative binomial models in our main analyses, since we have an overdispersed count dependent variable with structural zeroes in the dependent variable. 10 This approach requires that we accurately model which factors create refugee flows to account for the structural zeroes, and we draw on previous quantitative studies of refugee flows to determine these (Moore andShellman 2006, 2007;Moorthy and Brathwaite 2016;Salehyan 2008).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Refugee of My Enemy Is My Friend: Rivalry Type and Refugee Admission

Jackson

Atkinson

2018

Political Research Quarterly

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Why do states accept refugees? While there are a number of factors that influence a state’s decision to accept refugees, interstate relations play an important yet understudied role in refugee flows. In this paper, we build on previous work that has suggested that states with an adversarial relationship will be more likely to accept refugees. We incorporate existing conceptualization and theory from the rivalry literature and extend this logic to state strategy of refugee acceptance to provide one of the first empirical evaluations of refugee acceptance by states. Specifically, we argue that the issues rivals are contending over will change the incentives and disincentives for admitting a rival’s refugees. We anticipate that rivals disputing over ideology will be more likely to accept their rival’s refugees than rivals contending over other rivalry types. We test and find evidence for our arguments using a data set of all directed dyads from 1960 to 2006.

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“…10 Finally, in Models 15 and 16, I control for whether the refugee-sending and receiving countries are rivals, as coded in the strategic rivalry dataset (Thompson & Dreyer, 2011). Scholarship contends that rivalry between states increases the size of refugee flows between these states (Moorthy & Brathwaite, 2016), as well as the risk of refugee militarization (Lebson, 2013;Muggah & Mogire, 2006;Stedman & Tanner, 2003), which might indirectly affect refugee-related conflict. However, the effect of kin refugees remains positive and significant.…”

Section: Sensitivity Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Refugees, ethnic power relations, and civil conflict in the country of asylum

Rüegger

2018

Journal of Peace Research

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Many countries that face forced migrant inflows refuse to admit these uprooted people premised on negative externalities such as increased insecurity associated with refugee presence. Also, the academic literature on civil conflict identified refugee movements as a factor contributing to the regional clustering of war. Case-based evidence suggests that refugees can disturb the ethnic setup in the country of asylum and thereby trigger instability. To enhance the yet limited systematic understanding of the role of refugees in violent conflicts, this study examines the linkage between forced migrants, transnational connections, and ethnic civil conflict in the country of asylum with a large-N analysis, 1975–2013, arguing that ethnic power politics in the asylum state are determinant for intrastate conflict onset after a refugee influx. Statistical analysis finds that groups are particularly prone to conflict if they are excluded from governmental power and simultaneously host ethnic kin refugees, because a co-ethnic refugee influx enlarges the demographic and political leverage of the kin group, possibly resulting in clashes with other groups in the country. Hence, refugees alone do not consistently influence armed violence – only in combination with political tensions in the receiving country. Therefore, host governments should pursue inclusionary policies towards their population, to prevent dangerous instability, instead of closing borders or blaming refugees for domestic problems.

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Refugees and rivals: The international dynamics of refugee flows

Cited by 25 publications

References 48 publications

From protection to persecution: Threat environment and refugee scapegoating

From protection to persecution: Threat environment and refugee scapegoating

The Refugee of My Enemy Is My Friend: Rivalry Type and Refugee Admission

Refugees, ethnic power relations, and civil conflict in the country of asylum

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