Refugees and Intrastate Armed Conflict : A Contagion Process Approach
Year: 2009
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: A common assertion is that refugees may cause civil war to spread from one state to another. Although often suggested, this claim has received little scrutiny. Hence, this study intends to statistically evaluate refugee flows as a cause of the contagion of conflict using a contagion process approach. This approach includes both the sending and receiving state by starting with a state with armed conflict – this conflict may generate refugee flows – and examining whether a neighboring state that receives these refugees are more prone to end up in armed conflict than a neighboring state that does not receive refugee flows. Adapting this approach enables an empirical distinction between some of the explanations proposed in previous literature. These explanations are very diverse; even so, they have not been separated systematically in previous empirical analyses. First, it is hypothesized that refugee flows from conflict areas are associated with spill-over effects that make receiving states more likely to experience conflict. Second, it is suggested that neighboring states with latent conflicts are more sensitive to the inflow of refugee flows and, consequently, more likely to escalate into militarized conflict. Third, it is argued that a significant change in the ethnic geography of the host state due to refugee flows makes ethnic conflict in the host state more likely. Such disruptions of the ethnic geography are more likely to generate conflict when the state is characterized by a precarious ethnic balance. The findings suggest that refugee flows are indeed associated with an increased risk of both internal conflict in general and ethnic conflict in particular. The conditional hypotheses, suggesting that the effect of refugees should be enhanced in the presence of latent conflict and a sensitive ethnic balance in the host state, are not supported. Indeed, evidence suggests the opposite, indicating that these factors, that normally are associated with an increased likelihood of conflict, dampen the risk of conflict in the presence of refugee flows.
Author: Erika Forsberg
Institution: Uppsala University
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1575659115