The conclusion of the book summarizes its main arguments and findings and considers their implications for research on forced migration, conflict, and political violence. Beyond strategic displacement, the book illuminates the politics of civilian movements in wartime, which can shape the perceptions of civilians as well as combatants during and after war. To demonstrate this, the chapter provides evidence of a survey experiment from Iraq that shows how displacement decisions during the ISIS conflict influence people's willingness to accept and live alongside others after war. The chapter also discusses the policy implications of the analysis in five areas: displacement early warning, justice and accountability, humanitarian aid, post-conflict peacebuilding, and refugee resettlement and asylum. It also discusses some of the limitations of the analysis in the book and pathways for future research.

This chapter sums up the book’s key theoretical claims and empirical findings and then explores the extension of its argument beyond the cases examined in the empirical chapters. It first applies the argument to additional migration-related policy areas, including asylum, refugee resettlement, migration control, immigrant integration, and citizenship policy. The chapter then ventures beyond the national level of policy making by using the insulation framework to shed light on the logic of immigration policy making in the European Union, followed by subnational policy making. The chapter concludes with an appraisal of the future politics of immigration policy.

Between the late 1970s and the mid-1990s, more than one million Vietnamese “boat people” fled from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam by crossing the South China Sea. Some 700,000 were permanently resettled more than two dozen countries across the world. This essay compares the resettlement of Vietnamese refugees in West Germany and the United States to illuminate similarities and differences in international and local responses to the influx of this refugee population within the context of the Cold War.Covering topics such as government responses, humanitarian interventions, public perception/reception, and refugee networks in the US and West Germany, the essay emphasizes connections overlooked in previous studies that examine Vietnamese boat people resettlement in only one national context.It underscores the multilateral impacts of the Vietnamese boat people exodus and its legacies in contemporary Germany and America.

Pakistan has been variously described as an “insecurity state,” a “neo-vassal state,” and, by some Western commentators, a “failed state.” This essay argues that Pakistan’s religious nationalism, its “enduring rivalry” with India, and the ethnic conflicts that have undermined democratic consolidation cannot be fully understood without reference to the massive Partition-related migration in 1947. The extent to which Pakistan started life as a “refugee state” can be grasped by the fact that the first national census in 1951 recorded that 7 million people were refugees. They amounted to 20 percent of the total population and 48 percent of the urban population. These figures obscure the ethnic and linguistic differences of the refugee population, which were further differentiated by its place of settlement and the patterns and timing of partition-related forced migration. This essay analyzes the Pakistan state’s response to the refugee crisis and the impact of the crisis on both national and democratic consolidation. It assesses the immediate aftermath of the governmental response as well as the longer term consequences for nation-building and political culture.