From protection to persecution: Threat environment and refugee scapegoating

Abstract

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.

Abuse by association: migration from terror-prone countries and human rights abuses

“…Essentially, the arrival of migrant populations can serve to inflame already existing grievances found within the radical right-wing segment of the population and can be linked to an increase of domestic right-wing terrorism (McAlexander 2019). This also lines up with a recent study that finds that refugee populations are at an increased risk of violence when a state faces a terrorist attack (Savun and Gineste 2019). If this is the case with general migration in Western Europe, we can only imagine how much larger of an impact this would have on general violence within the state if the migrants are also associated with terrorism themselves.…”

“…We undertake this scholarly endeavor by asking: does migration affect the human rights record of destination states? Savun and Gineste (2019) show that refugees often encounter violence and repression by state agents. But this work does not inform us on whether migration induces a broader pattern of deteriorating human rights conditions.…”

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

“…This is an important finding as it shows that refugees do not randomly cause conflict in the asylum state. Similarly, Political marginalization of co-ethnic groups in the host country also increases the risk of non-state conflict (Fisk, 2019) and violence against refugees (Savun & Gineste, 2019). 8 Additional models in the Online appendix that include the logged count of co-ethnic refugees, the share of refugees in relation to the ethnic kin group's size, and the share of refugees in relation to the incumbent reveal that these coefficients have no significant effect on the risk of conflict.…”

Far from Home, Far from Safe: State Violence against Unaccompanied Refugee Children Seeking Asylum in Kenya

“…In the aftermath of such attacks, feeling compelled to show evidence of leadership and control, governments often choose to target certain groups for political gain and expedience. Refugees are particularly enticing; they have no electoral rights and domestic intolerance of foreigners is frequently high in times of crisis (Savun and Gineste 2019). This creates a ripe environment for state brutality without consequence.…”