How Return Migration Leads to Conflict

I propose a two-part argument linking return migration and conflict: First I argue that return migration after civil war creates new group identities based on where individuals were during the war. This may be as simple as in-country or abroad, or further delineated by the type of displacement (e.g. perception of physical coercion vs. voluntary migration), host-country type (region, political relationship to country-of-origin, language, etc.), or era of flight. For the purposes of this project, I limit the inquiry on type of displacement to divisions between groups who were displaced across international borders

22 This definition is based on Martin and Simmons's (2012) definition of international institutions as “sets of rules meant to govern international behavior.” p 328.

23 Duffield 2007, 6.

and those who did not cross borders during wartime. Internal displacement may function similar to, though not exactly the same as, international displacement within my argument. However, the patterns I describe will be most visible when a group fully exits the country due to the stark differences of experience in different states, and the opportunity for narratives of competition over nationalism to emerge between those who “stayed, suffered, and fought,” and those who “left the homeland.” As such, examining relations between these sets will make it easier to confirm or disconfirm the plausibility of my argument. If the general constructs hold for these groups, future projects may examine the similarities and differences for processes of internal displacement.

The creation of latent social categorizations after return migration is logical given what we know about migration and network processes. Whereas there is a tendency in the forced migration, peacebuilding, and development literatures to focus on the creation and maintenance of multi- and trans-national networks through the cross-border flow of goods, ideas, money, and social capital,²⁴ social network formation among migrants within host-countries is equally relevant.²⁵ For individuals living abroad, shared experiences of adapting to new environments, combined with the very act of leaving, help to create new networks and signal group identification in contrast to co-nationals who remained in-country. Some characteristics that differentiate these groups are discrete and observable – language, accent, way of dress, religion. Others are more nuanced, based on perceptions of differences in national ideology or patriotism, roles in the prior conflict, access to wealth and education, and/or “deservedness” of peace dividends.

This process is not restricted to those who fled; those who stayed in-country also share a set of experiences during the war that can create new collective memories, networks, and group cohesion.

24 Brinkerhoff 2008; Salehyan and Gleditsch 2006; Kuznetsov 2006; Mearsheimer and Walt 2006; Meyer and Brown 1999; Ong 1999; Portes et al. 1999; Wayland 2004. For an overview of recent literature on remittances and migration see Cohen 2005.

25 Boyd 1989; Castles & Miller 1999; Castles 2002.

As Nicholas van Hear writes, “It is an obvious fact, but it bears noting that both the returnees and the home community will have changed during the absence of the migrants.”²⁶ For those who stayed these changes may have been sparked by collectively experiencing wartime violence, participating in the conflict on either the government or rebel side, and even the experience of being left behind by those who fled. For example, Ivana Maček documented how for Sarajevans living under siege, the everyday task of collecting water during wartime was such a formative experience that “the physical hardships of transport and psychic exposure to nervous, depressed, or angry fellow townspeople engraved the experience of supplying water in people’s bodies and memories as something to avoid by all means.”²⁷

With these new collective experiences, networks, and/or altered cultural practices, the return of displaced populations to their countries-of-origin creates the opportunity to divide people according to those who stayed and those who left and returned. While we commonly think of local cleavages as existing exogenous to war, in this case the local cleavage is produced through the previous conflict.²⁸ Therefore, in addition to describing these supra-local dynamics of competition between returnees and stayees, because the return-migration cleavage is produced through one of the most common social processes associated with violent conflict – displacement and return – it is likely to be a common source behind seemingly idiosyncratic local-level conflicts across contexts. Moreover, the international community also contributes to this pattern of local conflict through its frequent promotion of repatriation as the most pragmatic durable solution to refugee crises, even when return is not entirely voluntary.²⁹

26 Van Hear 2003, 56–57.

27 Maček 2009, 65.

28 Kalyvas notes that cleavages may be produced exogenous or endogenous to conflict Kalyvas 2006, 375.

29 For a similar argument on the international community’s war in perpetuating civil war see Hironaka 2005, 149.

Having explained why migration-related tensions are common across post-conflict contexts, we then need an additional theoretical component to explain the different forms in which returnee-stayee frictions manifest in each specific context, and the relative degree of hostility associated with the migration-related divisions, from moderate social tension to widespread violence.

This brings me to the second part of my argument: Migration-related cleavages become more politically and socially salient when post-conflict institutions create, or further, differential outcomes for individuals based on their migration history. Institutions may include formal bodies and regulations, or informal practices at the national, regional, and community level. For example, a national-level language law may affect returnees who spent protracted periods of time in host-countries with a different predominant language by impeding access to jobs, education, or even healthcare. If these institutions seemingly favor returnees over stayees, or vice versa, it can create an endogenous cycle whereby institutional biases shape and reify migration-related group divisions: As individuals begin to understand their position in society as connected to their migration history, their future political and social behavior adjusts accordingly. They may begin to resent groups who seemingly have more access to the dividends of peace and limit their interaction with this out-group.

Having experienced a perceived difference in outcome with relation to one institution, they may adhere to narratives of discrimination and bias against their imagined community of like others in different aspects of their lives not related to that specific institution. This increased group identification and resentment may provide an impetus for mobilizing politically (or violently) against the other group.

Additionally, elites may strategically use these divisions to their advantage by enacting policies such as orchestrating demographic shifts or changing citizenship, property, or land codes so as to bolster their own power – be it electoral, wealth, etc. Societies where institutions do not provide differential dividends to migrants and non-migrants, or where policy-makers quickly remedy these

disparities rather than exacerbate them, are less likely to see violent tension between these groups.

Importantly, the argument does not predict that divisions between returnees and stayees will be stagnant, but allows for change and gradation depending on interaction with institutions and elites over time.

Finally, the emergence of migration-related divisions can affect political structures and individual behavior in post-conflict environments. For example, returnee-stayee conflicts can create de facto hierarchies of citizenship, lead to the exclusion of diaspora or stayees from public or private offices, and/or alter the nature of political rivalries in peacetime. Moreover, these new local migration-related cleavages can operate in alliance with national-level cleavages to produce conflict during peacetime in a number of different ways. First, individual returnees seeking to gain leverage over stayees may use connections to national politics to gain status, money, and/or arms. Second, if migration-related divisions have created widespread and/or violent tensions at the local level, this can also hasten descent into a broader political crisis should there be a trigger at the national level. The population, primed by these low-level conflicts, may anticipate that additional, even unrelated, political turmoil may open the door to alliances between local and national actors, and create a more permissive environment for local rivals to act with impunity.