Fear of Persecution : Forced Migration, 1952-95

Why would people abandon their homes in favor of an uncertain life elsewhere? The short answer, of course, is violence. More specifically, we contend that people monitor the violent behavior of both the government and dissidents and assess the threat such behavior poses to their lives, physical person, and liberty. The greater the threat posed by the behavior of the government and dissidents, the larger the number of forced migrants a country will produce. To test hypotheses drawn from our argument we use a global sample of countries over more than forty years. Our findings are consistent with our argument, and we are able to show that violent behavior has a substantially larger impact on forced migration than variables such as the type of political institutions or the average size of the economy