What They Say vs. What They Do: Government Responses to Displacement

• In Event: Multimethods Approaches to Studying the Politics of Migration

Abstract

Displacement within and across borders is the most prevalent form of violence during armed conflict. Scholars have established that displacement is not simply a negative side effect of other forms of violence but is often the deliberate result of government and armed groups’ political and military strategies. Similarly, state responses to displacement are shaped by governments’ political goals. Yet current conceptions of state responses to displacement often imply two assumptions: (i) that the relative liberality of state responses can be inferred from de jure measures; and (ii) that differences between de jure measures and observed responses constitute gaps in implementation. This paper presents a descriptive typology that challenges these assumptions and makes three primary contributions. First, we offer a conception of state responses to displacement that accounts for the interaction between what governments say they will do (de jure measures) and how they behave in practice (de facto measures). These combinations can produce consistently liberal or consistently restrictive national responses, as well as responses that are liberal in practice but restrictive on paper, or restrictive in practice despite liberal de jure commitments. Second, we demonstrate why state responses are not accurately characterized as a gap between intended policy and practice, but intentional deviations from de jure measures. Finally, we bring state responses to both internal and cross-border displacement under the same conceptual umbrella to illustrate the links between responses to internal displacement and cross-border migration.

Author

• Stephanie Schwartz, The London School of Economics and Political Science