The refugee system is an interactive set of processes within, among, and transcending states that produce immobility and movement related to violence and persecution. Ideological, military, economic, and political power shape the system. Its processes include feedback mechanisms linking elements across time and place. Our fundamental orientation toward understanding the system is derived from key thinkers in historical sociology, but eclectic tools from across the social sciences, history, and law illuminate particular contexts

Chapter two summarizes debates among different approaches toward defining refugees. Constructivists argue that refugees are not a reality outside the act of naming them and the consequences of acquiring that label. Realists object, and assert that refugees have unique characteristics. Sociological realists define refugees as a subtype of migrant who has been displaced across an international border by the threat of violence. Within the realist camp, there are disputes about how far to push the boundaries of who should be legally recognized as a refugee. A focus on subjective self-identities brackets all the questions of realist definitions to focus on how individuals define themselves to make sense of their experience. We then show how a systems approach reveals a matrix of movement and coercion, ranging from those who cannot move because they have been killed, to those who come and go freely as voluntary migrants. A visual representation of the “(im)mobility chessboard” brings together experiences that are usually discussed in siloed bodies of literature about armed conflict, ethnic cleansing, refugee studies, and international migration studies. We highlight the connections among categories and how the same individuals can move among them.

Chapter three describes the development of the legal regime around refugees from overlapping policies aimed at managing different forms of mobility. Rather than taking a narrow approach that focuses on the origins of refugee law in the interwar period or 1951, we take a systemic view that illuminates how different strands of law and norms came together to influence the contemporary refugee regime. Refugee law is rooted in the realist notion that certain classes of individuals deserve exceptional protections related to punishment, slavery, extradition, and migration control. Over time, the regime has become secularized, formalized in multilateral agreements, and applies increasingly universalistic criteria to the refugee definition. The construction of the refugee regime and its use have been shaped by power relations among states more than the objective characteristics of displaced individuals. The chapter also provides a narrative historical scaffolding for many of the examples in the subsequent analytical chapters which refer to cases that may not be uniformly familiar. Readers interested in learning more about particular episodes and historiographic debates will find endnotes to detailed sources.

Chapter four examines how people who face violence and persecution calculate the costs of migration and weigh the risks of staying. We consider the degree and character of violence that refugees face, which can be generalized or targeted against an individual or ethnic group in the case of genocide and ethnic cleansing. Economic factors also play a role in decision-making, especially when the escalation of war leads to currency devaluation, the breakdown of other social institutions, and the scarcity of basic goods. After refugees leave their home country, they face the question of whether to attempt to migrate further. The prospect of return looms at every stage of migration. We introduce a model for refugee household decision-making called the “new economics of displacement,” which takes into consideration how families manage multiple risks and goals. Through a longitudinal case study of the Asfour family from Syria, we show how members of one family attempted to manage the risks of the armed conflict from its outbreak in 2011 through the next decade.

Chapter five details how the ability of people to flee violence and persecution is shaped by exit policies of states and non-state combatants. Many states have historically restricted exit. Others tolerate or even deliberately try to expel targeted groups. These policies are developed interactively with policies of potential host states. Particular types of conflict are more likely to produce refugees, including nation-state building from multi-ethnic empires and civil wars with foreign interventions.

In chapter six, we demonstrate that the global system of refugee management is dependent upon states that are not signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention and states in the Global South more broadly. States in the Global South not only host most of the world’s refugees; they also facilitate highly controlled refugee movement to the Global North through resettlement, and restrict the onward movement of asylum seekers through containment measures pushed by powerful Northern states. We identify variation across Southern host states by breaking away from the refugee/migrant binary, in which only UN-recognized refugees are counted, and invite readers to consider the many Global Souths.

Chapter seven examines host country interests from the perspective of powerful countries such as the United States, Germany, Britain, Australia, and Canada. Attempts to control and select refugees for admission reflect their foreign policy interests interacting with economic and demographic goals and ideologies of ethnocentrism, humanitarianism, and nationalism. A systems approach highlights how even some lobbying groups that appear to be “domestic” in fact have interests shaped by earlier migrations and transnational experiences and goals. One of the ways that powerful states try to limit refugee flows is by pushing control out from their borders into the territories of countries of origin and weaker states in the Global South.

Refugees often maintain and forge new ties to their places of origin, from long-distance engagements to repatriation. Chapter eight identifies the remittances, visits, communications, and political organizing that constitute these ties. We then turn to the conditions that favor or inhibit cross-border connections. Conditions in countries of origin affect homeland engagements as well as host country politics, international organizations, and migration patterns.

The conclusion recaps the main arguments about the merits of a systems approach revealed in the empirical chapters. We then establish the similarities and differences between policies in powerful and weaker host states. Finally, we make a set of recommendations to policymakers, journalists, and researchers working on displacement issues.