Religion, Ideology, and Political Parties’ Positions on Refugees in South Asia and the Middle East

Abstract

Some political parties adopt rhetoric and policy stances favorable to refugees, while others view refugees as a potential economic or security threat or a challenge to the asylum country's predominant identity and push for refugees’ rapid return. We argue that, despite material constraints in asylum countries, like those stemming from the level of economic development, domestic political contestation and differences shape refugee politics and associated outcomes. We further posit that the key element of those domestic political differences is not that leftist parties are systematically more sympathetic to refugees than rightist parties. Rather, our empirical analysis shows that, in the non-Western contexts that we study, parties that emphasize a religious identity shared with most refugees are more likely to view those refugees more favorably than parties that do not emphasize that religious identity or that emphasize a religious identity not shared with refugees. We build on moral foundations theory to explain why religion and politics matter and why rightist parties are not necessarily less favorable to refugees than leftist parties. We carry out a comparative study of party positions toward Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Turkey and toward Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and explain why party leaders’ choices regarding religion and politics shape refugee politics. While others have questioned the claim that leftists are more likely to favor refugees than conservatives, we contribute to the literature by specifying the conditions under which that is unlikely to be the case, and we develop a theoretically grounded explanation for that pattern.