Leeds, Brett Ashley2019-05-172019-05-172018-052018-04-23May 2018Wood, Andrew R. "Understanding the Causes and Consequences of Refugee Movements." (2018) Diss., Rice University. <a href="https://hdl.handle.net/1911/105731">https://hdl.handle.net/1911/105731</a>.https://hdl.handle.net/1911/105731As refugee populations continue to grow, understanding their importance to international politics becomes increasingly important. In this project, I explore how refugee populations shape and are shaped by conflict. First, I develop a model of the causes of refugee flight emphasizing how individuals evaluate their prospective risk of victimization from a variety of direct and indirect experiences with violence. I find evidence that refugee flows are larger when violence takes place in heavily populated areas (direct exposure) and when a rebel group experiences significant battlefield defeats (indirect exposure). These results, and the finding that poor performance by rebel organizations is correlated with the presence of co-ethnic refugee populations, point towards the possibility of connections between refugees and militant groups. To further explore this connection, in the second section, I propose a model of the spread of civil conflict through refugee populations. I argue that refugee camps provide useful resources to improve militant’s warfighting capabilities and recover strength after suffering strategic defeats. When these groups seek to use refugee populations and camps for their benefit, the risks of civil conflict in the refugee-hosting states increases due to the presence of violent actors. I find support for these expectations using data on conflicts and refugee flows in Africa and further explore the validity of these ideas by looking closely at a set of conflicts from across the globe. Finally, after examining the ways that refugee populations can influence the spread of violence abroad, I consider how states may respond to the risks associated with hosting refugees. Specifically, I argue that states hosting large refugee populations are more likely than others to intervene in the refugee-producing conflict – especially when the state would otherwise be unaffected by the conflict due to its distance or lack of ethnic ties. This expectation is supported by data on African conflicts and interventions and supports the idea that refugee flows drive intervention by creating security risks for host states. Altogether, these findings offer compelling evidence for the importance of refugees to international politics and civil conflict and provide an impetus for further study of the dynamics of refugee flows.application/pdfengCopyright is held by the author, unless otherwise indicated. Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the work beyond the bounds of fair use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder.RefugeesCivil ConflictInternational PoliticsThesis2019-05-17