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Population displacement is a devastating feature of contemporary conflict with far-reaching political and humanitarian consequences. This book demonstrates the extent to which displacement is a deliberate strategy of war, not just a consequence of it. Moving beyond instances of ethnic cleansing, Adam Lichtenheld draws on field research in Uganda and Syria; case studies from Burundi, Indonesia, and Vietnam; and an original dataset of strategic displacement in 166 civil wars to show that armed groups often uproot civilians to sort the targeted population, not to get rid of it. When lacking information about opponents' identities and civilians' loyalties, combatants use human mobility to infer wartime affiliations through 'guilt by location'. Different displacement strategies occur in different types of civil wars, with some relying on spatial profiling, rather than ethnic profiling. As displacement reaches record highs, Lichtenheld's findings have important implications for the study of forced migration and policy responses to it.
List of contents
1. Weaponizing displacement in civil wars; 2. Conceptualizing and describing strategic displacement; 3. A sorting theory of strategic displacement; 4. Cross-national evidence (1945–2017); 5. Forced relocation in Uganda; 6. Comparative evidence of the sorting logic: Burundi, Vietnam, and Indonesia; 7. Depopulation in Syria; 8. The politics of wartime displacement; Appendix A: SDCC dataset; A B: A multivariate analysis of strategic displacement.
About the author
Adam Lichtenheld is Executive Director of the Immigration Policy Lab at Stanford University. He has previously worked as a senior researcher at Mercy Corps and a consultant for the UN Refugee Agency, the World Bank, and the US. Agency for International Development. He has designed and evaluated policies and programs on migration and displacement, violence prevention, and conflict resolution with governments, donor agencies, and NGOs around the world. His articles have appeared in a number of academic and policy journals, along with the Washington Post and Foreign Policy.
Summary
As wartime displacement surges to record highs, this book shows how the deliberate and strategic use of displacement by armed groups has been more common than previously thought. Adam Lichtenheld documents these strategies, examines how they vary in form and frequency, and uncovers risk factors that give rise to them.
Foreword
Examines how, when, and why armed groups use population displacement as a weapon of civil war.
