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Most quantitative studies investigating the relationship between refugees and se- curity tend to find that refugees are associated with a higher propensity for civil conflict onset (Salehyan and Gleditsch 2006), one-sided violence against civilians

(Fisk 2018), and repression in the host state (Danneman and Ritter 2014; Wright

and Moorthy 2018). While other studies show that accepting refugees is beneficial

for the host in terms of political and economic gains (Jacobsen 2002; Cortes 2004;

Sadiq 2005;Adamson 2006), they tend to address specific cases that are not always

generalizable to other situations. The findings of this study advance our knowl- edge regarding how human rights practices in host states are impacted by the arrival of refugees. Namely, accepting refugees from a strategic rival provides an incentive to boast about humanitarian practices toward these populations, which

can also garner good-will from the international community and are documented in human rights reports.

I find that the arrival of refugees from a rival state leads to boasting of good behavior by host governments because they are accommodating refugees. In this context, the government has an incentive to highlight their humanitarian action because there is a foreign policy objective to undermine their adversary and project their hospitality to the international community. By accepting refugees from their strategic rival, host states are able to tarnish the reputation of their adversary by highlight that their enemy is unable to protect its own citizens. This may also lead to the host state being more active in procuring funds from aid or- ganizations and a productive working relationship with the UNHCR in order to implement assistance programs. While this was not directly tested in this chapter, future work can investigate whether and how some countries are more successful at obtaining monetary and institutional support or whether the host state pro- vides more of its own resources for hosting refugees . This would be especially interesting over time when refugee situations become protracted and funds be- come limited.

On the other hand, refugees from a non-rival state are met with a decrease in respect for human rights. This is likely linked to the traditional theories of immigration that expect a response of xenophobia and discrimination because refugees pose a “threat” as an inherent out-group. While refugees are often con- sidered more “deserving” than regular migrants for sanctuary, their arrival can be associated with negative security externalities. This subjects host countries to

implement policies designed to prevent individuals from seeking asylum within their borders or to incentivize repatriation. Across the globe, this is witnessed through closures of border crossings in Europe, the attempt to close down the Dadaab camp in Kenya, de-funding assistance to refugees in Lebanon, and im- plementing quotas on how many individuals are awarded refugee status in the United Kingdom and United States. These actions contribute to a negative im- pact on a country’s respect for human rights since governments are deliberately enforcing measures to keep individuals out of their country.

This negative relationship between refugees and respect for human rights is most pronounced when refugees arrive from a non-contiguous country. A simple explanation is that refugees or immigrants from further away are more likely to be “incompatible” with the national culture in the host state. Domestic populations of the host state are more likely to view refugees as intruders when refugees are seen as being more culturally and socially “distant” (Adida, Laitin, and Valfort 2016). For instance, refugees from the Middle East and Africa hoping to make it to Europe are often treated with disdain and met with “non-assistance” poli- cies by potential host states (Heller and Pezzani 2016). Policies toward refugees are crafted under a framework of security, which can lead to more violations of human rights by the government. This is reflected in the statistical relationship found in the results.

How host governments promote their own behavior toward accepting or deny- ing displaced populations is clearly being picked up by human rights monitors. States certainly have strong motivations to vocalize good behavior toward the

exiled population of their rival, which is observed as cooperative and positive behavior. Since governments have the foreign policy goal of undermining their rival, the government will purposefully act and broadcast this behavior. Con- versely, states without such a foreign policy objective in mind must consider the costs associated with hosting refugees and will act in their self-interest, which tends to be characterized as xenophobic.

Another ramification is understanding the complexities of refugee burden sharing. The majority of refugees flee to neighboring countries, yet it seems states farther away tend to enforce tough policies barring immigrants from en- tering and are able to get away with it. In particular, countries farther away from conflict regions (i.e. Western states) tend to have strict and long bureaucratic vetting processes that may not grant asylum to the whole family. On the other hand, countries within a region experiencing violence are less capable of control- ling cross-border flows and are the states hosting most refugees. For instance, Kenya announced they would close the Dadaab camp but after a backlash and a Supreme Court ruling, Dadaab kept the doors open. On the other hand, poli- cies like the United State’s “travel ban” are adopted to keep the already limited number of refugees from entering.12

While there are exceptions, such as Canada and Germany who promote their open border policy and increase their asylum seeker quota, there is domestic 12_{In the next chapter of the dissertation, I show how, since the end of the Cold War, 356 million} people are or have been refugees. The majority of these individuals remained in host states, with 27 million refugees repatriating to their country of origin and only 3 million refugees resettled to a third country. Note third-country resettlement is the main avenue for refugees to be granted asylum in developed Western nations, such as the United States.

backlash to these stances. Right-wing anti-immigrant parties are collecting more of the vote share in these countries in response to their federal government’s stance. While out of the scope of this chapter, future work can examine the variation in host government’s policies—and how this changes given inflows of refugees—and the reasons behind this variation.