The Refugee of My Enemy Is My Friend: Rivalry Type and Refugee Admission

• Author: Douglas B. Atkinson,Joshua L. Jackson
• Published date: 01 March 2019
• DOI: 10.1177/1065912918776136
• Date: 01 March 2019
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912918776136

Political Research Quarterly

2019, Vol. 72(1) 63 –74

© 2018 University of Utah

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DOI: 10.1177/1065912918776136

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Article

Why do states agree to admit refugees into their country?

On August 7, 1953, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower

said in his signing of the 1953 Refugee Relief Act that

in enacting this legislation, we are giving a new chance in

life to 214,000 fellow humans. This action demonstrates

again America’s traditional concern for the homeless, the

persecuted and the less fortunate of other lands. It is a

dramatic contrast to the tragic events taking place in East

Germany and in other captive nations. (American Presidency

Project)1

President Eisenhower was contrasting the United States’

humanitarianism with the Soviet Union’s mistreatment of

its citizens, as well as citizens in countries that the Soviets

controlled.

In recent years, the war-ravaged countries of Somalia,

Afghanistan, and Syria, among others, have produced an

unprecedented number of refugees seeking admission into

countries throughout the world. The response of the coun-

tries to which these refugees have appealed for refugee

status has varied widely, with some countries being much

more willing than others to grant refugee status (United

Nations High Commissioner for Refugees). Scholars

studying the role of interstate politics in decisions to grant

refugee status have suggested that states that share an

adversarial relationship are more likely to accept each

other’s refugees than those that do not (Loescher 1994;

Teitelbaum 1984; Weiner 1992). Although this theoretical

argument has been around for more than thirty years, it

has only been subjected to limited empirical scrutiny.

We provide one of the first attempts to empirically test

these arguments. Furthermore, we argue that it is not

merely the presence of severe antagonism, or interstate

rivalry, which leads states to admit refugees who are flee-

ing an adversarial regime. We argue and provide evidence

to show that the specific issue being disputed is what

drives states to decide to admit refugees from their oppo-

nent into their country. When refugees flee a state locked

into an ideological rivalry, that state’s opponent, who has

likely been asserting its own ideological and/or moral

superiority over its opponent, is now incentivized to

admit the refugees to uphold the legitimacy of their claim.

For example, the United States could not continue to tell

the world that it was a regime of humanitarianism and

that the USSR was a regime of oppression while refusing

to extend a humanitarian hand to the victims of the

Soviets. Key to our argument are the costs of refusing

refugee admission by ideological rivals: while any state

takes on costs when it chooses to accept refugees, and

776136PRQXXX10.1177/1065912918776136Political Research QuarterlyJackson and Atkinson

research-article2018

1University of Georgia, Athens, USA

2Cardiff University, UK

Corresponding Author:

Joshua L. Jackson, University of Georgia, 204 Candler Hall, Athens,

GA 30602, USA.

Email: jlj94166@uga.edu

The Refugee of My Enemy Is My Friend:

Rivalry Type and Refugee Admission

Joshua L. Jackson1 and Douglas B. Atkinson2

Abstract

Why do states accept refugees? While there are a number of factors that influence a state’s decision to accept

refugees, interstate relations play an important yet understudied role in refugee flows. In this paper, we build on

previous work that has suggested that states with an adversarial relationship will be more likely to accept refugees.

We incorporate existing conceptualization and theory from the rivalry literature and extend this logic to state strategy

of refugee acceptance to provide one of the first empirical evaluations of refugee acceptance by states. Specifically,

we argue that the issues rivals are contending over will change the incentives and disincentives for admitting a rival’s

refugees. We anticipate that rivals disputing over ideology will be more likely to accept their rival’s refugees than rivals

contending over other rivalry types. We test and find evidence for our arguments using a data set of all directed dyads

from 1960 to 2006.

Keywords

refugees, interstate rivalry, international conflict, civil conflict, repression