Refugee and Internally Displaced Person Flows

What would cause one to abandon one's home, belongings, etc. to pursue an uncertain future elsewhere, retaining only those possessions one can carry or fit into one's vehicle?

This page describes research that models the flows of refugees and internally displaced persons over the period 1952-1995. We use a rational choice as a heuristic to develop hypotheses about the information people monitor to make a decision whether to abandon their homes and, if so, where to relocate. We assume that at anytime one can (1) choose to abandon his or her home and migrate elsewhere, or (2) choose not to do so. Further, we assume that those individuals fleeing who select the first option then face a second choice: (1a) to relocate abroad or (1b) relocate within their country. Finally, we assume that those individuals who select option 1a face a third choice: (1a1) to relocate in bordering country 1, (1a2) to relocate in bordering country 2, ..., or (1aN) to relocate in bordering country N.

More specifically the project seeks to address three questions, which we list here along with links to the studies that answer them:

1. What conditons lead people to abandon their homes?
   • "Sometimes You Just Have to Leave: Threat and Refugee Movements, 1964-1989," Christian A. Davenport, Will H. Moore, and Steven C. Poe, International Interactions, 2003, 29:27-55.
     • The replication data set was deposited at the ICPSR's Publication Related Archive as study #1288.
   • "Fear of Persecution: Forced Migration, 1952-95," Will H. Moore & Stephen M. Shellman, Journal of Conflict Resolution, October 2004, 48(5):723-745. This article has an online appendix.
     • The replication data set (and online appendix) are available as a zipped file.
2. What circumstances lead people to emigrate outside of their country rather than relocate within their country?
   • "Refugee or Internally Displaced Person? To Where Should One Flee?," Will H. Moore and Stephen M. Shellman, Comparative Political Studies, August 2006, 39(5):599-622, DOI: 10.1177/0010414005276457. This paper has an online appendix, and an earlier version is available as Working Paper #65 in the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies' Working Paper Series.
     • The replication data is available as study #1319 at the ICPSR's Publication Related Archive.
3. Which characteristics of potential countries of refuge lead refugees to select them over the alternatives?
   • "Whither Will They Go? A Global Analysis of Refugee Flows, 1955-95" Will H. Moore & Stephen M. Shellman, presented at the Workshop on the Economics of Forced Migration, MIT, 9-10 December 2005.
     We presented a rather different version of the paper at the Midwest Political Science Association Annual Meeting, 15-18 April 2004: '04 MPSA version

Other Project Related Documents

• "Risk Factors for Forced Migrant Flight," Jacqueline Rubin & Will H. Moore, Conflict Management & Peace Science, forthcoming.
• The Directed Dyad Geographical Borders Time Series Data Set and codebook can be downloaded here. It contains the terrain variables coded for the project.
• Rape as a Strategy of War: The Sexual Assault of Kosovar Albanian Women in 1999, an undergraduate research paper by Jillian Weise, Florida State University (June 2002).
• Presentation at UNHCR. This is a PDF of the Powerpoint presentation we gave at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees on 11 June 2001. It provides an overview of the project.
• NSF Grant Proposal (August 2000). This document describes the hypotheses and research plan for the three studies by Moore & Shellman as we initially conceived them.

Participants:

• Christian Davenport Associate Professor, Department of Government, University of Maryland.
• Will H. Moore, Professor, Department of Political Science, Florida State University.
• Steven C. Poe, Professor, Department of Political Science, University of North Texas.
• Stephen M. Shellman, Assistant Professor, Department of International Affairs University of Georgia.

Funding:

The Project, Modeling Flows of Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons, received funding from the National Science Foundation (SES-0099313) and the Council on Research and Creativity at Florida State University.