Trapped in Transit: How Irregular Migration Shapes International Relations in Transit States

Abstract

Irregular migration is one of the most controversial topics of our time. While natural disasters, war, poverty, and inequality are driving people to move at record numbers, wealthy countries are devoting every effort to keeping unwanted migrants out. One of the most overlooked ways that wealthy countries do this is by using other countries that migrants pass through on their way to the wealthy destination. This third category of country is called a transit state. While their use to repel migrants has not gone unnoticed by the leaders of the Global North, researchers have not fully explained how wealthy states convince/coerce them to help and the tools transit states use to stop these migration flows. This dissertation begins to answer this question by looking at how aid, refugee policy, and data capacity could be used to leverage transit states against unwanted, irregular migration.I use observational data from the US, EU, UNHCR, World Bank, and more to answer my question. In the first paper I look at migrants apprehended at the southwest US border and construct migration routes across the Western Hemisphere. I then look at how the use of these transit routes influences the amount of foreign aid a country on that route receives from the US. The second paper analyzes how policy pertaining to refugees changes in the Middle East and North Africa before and after the Syrian Civil War and refugee crisis. I use the new DWRAP database to compare policy changes across time in the relevant countries. I also use expenditure data from UNHCR to see how this kind of aid might influence such policy. The third paper uses metadata on FDP datasets from the World Bank and UNHCR to see which countries have the most data availability and capacity on the forcibly displaced. I find that transit countries are more likely to receive certain types of aid from the US than non-transit countries. Additionally, transit countries are not more likely to open their borders during a refugee crisis but are more likely to receive assistance from UNHCR. Finally, I find that transit states tend to have slightly more datasets and data availability than non-transit states.