Risk Factors for Forced Migrant Flight

Abstract

An important type of medical study seeks to establish the risk factors for contracting various diseases. A similar, but very small, vein of research exists in peace and conflict studies, and we seek to contribute to it. Our study evaluates whether variables shown to explain variance in numbers of forced migrants can serve as risk factors that might aid contingency planning for such humanitarian crises. We study a cross-national sample of cases over the period from 1985 through 1994. Our findings indicate that annual, country-level indicators of civil war, a forced migrant episode, and human rights violations are candidate risk factors for forced migration in the following year. Interestingly, when using country-years as the unit of observation genocide is not a useful risk factor for forced migration.