Refugees, Economic Capacity, and Host State Repression*

Wright, Thorin M.; Moorthy, Shweta

doi:10.1080/03050629.2017.1273915

Cited by 18 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…Assuming the civil war ends with a return to the political status quo, we might also expect repression levels to return to about where they were before the civil war. Other factors that can serve as exogenous or endogenous shocks to the repressive status quo are interstate conflict or some form of external threat (Gibler, 2012; Wright, 2014), economic sanctions (Wood, 2008), natural disasters (Wood and Wright, 2016), or hosting of large numbers of refugees (Wright and Moorthy, 2018).…”

Section: Structures Shocks and Repressionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revisionist Conflict and State Repression

Wright

2020

International Area Studies Review

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What kinds of international conflicts make states more likely to increase repression? I argue that the issues at stake in conflict may have different levels of domestic salience and may alter the domestic political status quo, thus increasing or decreasing a state’s or regime’s propensity to repress. I argue and find that democracies are most likely to increase repression when they are territorial revisionists, specifically increasing the use of imprisonment and torture. Autocratic states are more likely to increase repression during foreign policy-oriented disputes, as opposed to those fought over territory, which are less likely to escalate to full-scale war, and more likely to be domestically motivated. This project thus opens up the black box of international conflict to better understand how the reasons states fight abroad affects decisions to repress at home.

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Section: Structures Shocks and Repressionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revisionist Conflict and State Repression

Wright

2020

International Area Studies Review

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“…Dancygier (2010) shows that economic scarcity is a key driver of immigrant-related violence, especially if immigrants do not have political power. Similarly, Wright & Moorthy (2018) argue that a state's economic capacity reduces the incentives of host governments to repress refugees as they do not have to worry as much about economic grievances of locals. We measure the economic scarcity with GDP per capita of a country, measured as the logged value of millions of constant 2005 US dollars; the data come from the World Bank's World Development Indicators.…”

Section: Research Design and Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Who is the state targeting with repression? Scholars have not theorized much about how states choose the targets of repression and often use country-level aggregate indicators, such as the Political Terror Scale (PTS), that do not distinguish between the groups of victims (Wright & Moorthy, 2018: 151). 8 Rational actors choose not only to repress or not but also whom to repress.…”

Section: Security Crises and State Violence Against Refugeesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is not only the strength of the host state but also the size of the refugee population that may affect whether repression is a likely strategy. Wright & Moorthy (2018) show that large refugee populations increase the incentives of host governments to repress because of (perceived) higher negative economic and security externalities. Refugee population (share) is the size of the refugee population as a percentage of the host country’s population.…”

Section: Research Design and Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

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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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“…Moreover, there are large differences in "receiver effects", namely, host states' counterterrorism capacities as well as states' ability to police their borders and screen refugee flows for possible terrorist infiltrations. While previous research suggests that specific state characteristics can mitigate domestic conflict (Braithwaite 2010;Lischer 2005;Wright and Moorthy 2018) "receiver effects" have generally been neglected in the context of terrorist diffusion via refugee flows. Incorporating heterogeneous receiver effects is important because many of the above mechanisms linking refugees and violence primarily apply to developing, civil war-prone countries (cf.…”

Section: Previous Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trojan Horse, Copycat, or Scapegoat? Unpacking the Refugees-Terrorism Nexus

Polo¹,

Wucherpfennig²

2019

Preprint

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Widespread fear that hosting refugees will mean more terrorism in host states is at the heart of the `refugee crisis'. Yet, we lack rigorous evidence for such claims. This article theoretically unpacks how and under what conditions transnational refugee movements plausibly lead to different types of terrorist outcomes. Combining original data with a multi-pronged approach involving a treatment-placebo design as well as instrumental variable estimation, we provide systematic and robust evidence that sheds new light on the security implications of forced migration. Our findings challenge the claim that hosting refugees heightens the risk of ``importing'' terrorist attacks against nationals of host countries, especially in developed countries. However, in these countries refugees themselves are particularly prone to becoming the targets of terrorist attacks by natives, driven by fear and revenge. Dominant policy responses to the refugee crisis that raise fears and suspicions are therefore not only ill-suited, but potentially counterproductive.

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Refugees, Economic Capacity, and Host State Repression*

Cited by 18 publications

References 45 publications

Revisionist Conflict and State Repression

Revisionist Conflict and State Repression

From protection to persecution: Threat environment and refugee scapegoating

Trojan Horse, Copycat, or Scapegoat? Unpacking the Refugees-Terrorism Nexus

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