The Political Economy of Refugee Migration and Foreign Aid

This book inquires the determinants of forced migration, describes the distribution of burdens from forced migration across countries, and analyzes the strategic interaction of national refugee policies to control refugee flows. Emphasis is put on the role of asymmetries between countries with respect to their preferences regarding immigrants, the costs incurred by immigrants, their stage of development and especially their geographical position as neighboring first asylum country or Western asylum country. Special attention is given to one policy instrument to control refugee migration flows, namely foreign aid. The book attempts to answer questions such as: What are the driving factors of forced migration movements? How can refugee burdens be assessed and compared across different types of host countries? Who are the actors in international refugee protection and management, and how do they act? And finally, how does the phenomenon of international refugee movements, and specifically how do asylum seekers, influence the aid allocation politics of Western industrialized countries?

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction, Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.