MIGWAR · Investigating the interactions between civil wars and migration.

Investigating the interactions between civil wars and migration.

Poor countries are often plagued by civil wars. They are also often emigration countries. Anybody interested in the development of such countries must understand how these phenomena interplay with each other. Based on case studies such as those of Erytrea or of Sri Lanka, the qualitative literature underlines the role played by diasporas on the evolution of violence in their home country, either as peace-builders or as peace-wreckers. Yet, the interactions between diasporas and conflict have roughly been overlooked by the economic literature, despite the crucial policy questions that it raises – in particular, how to optimize the diasporas’ contribution to peaceful development. This project aims at investigating the joint dynamics of civil wars and migration in developing countries. It articulates two axes, which respectively consist in a theoretical and in an empirical approach of the diasporas – conflict nexus. The first axis builds a theoretical framework to characterize how diasporas and civil wars interact together, accounting for the endogeneity of migration and violence. The model shows that diasporas tend to support their groups’ war effort in the homeland through financial contributions, but that this does not always translate into more violence, as a reinforced strike force of migrants’ group of origin can deter its rivals to go to war. In relation with the case studies documented by the qualitative literature, the model allows to understand why, in some cases, diasporas have fueled conflict at home, while in other contexts they have not, in spite of their intent to do so, and while in others they have favored peace. The second axis develops an empirical strategy disaggregated at the level of the actors of civil conflicts, to test the theoretical predictions of the model. Recent, original data on refugees by ethnic groups are matched with violent-event data which inform the ethnic attachment of insurgent groups. On average, the size of refugee outflows is negatively associated with the intensity of violence involving their ethnic group in the homeland, which points to a peace-building effect of refugees. As predicted by the theory, this relationship is heterogeneous across certain country- and group-level characteristics. In particular, refugee flows are more likely to be associated with a de-escalation of violence in poor, small countries, with an important recent history of violence.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union