Migration and the Risk of Violent Conflict and Instability

Abstract

This helpdesk report reviews the evidence that migration (including internal migration and forced displacement) contributes to the risk of violent conflict and instability. This rapid review surveys a sample of the academic literature only and has not engaged policy literature except through academic references to it. The central finding of this review is that despite disciplinary differences of conceptual framing and method, the literature agrees that there is nothing inevitable about migration leading to conflict. Instead, it is the nature of socioeconomic and political conditions in receiving areas that determine the risk of political violence, not the fact of migration itself. Rural-urban migration and climate-induced migration are the two pathways to violent conflict considered in this report.