Disorderly & Inhumane: Explaining Government-Sponsored Mass Expulsion, 1900–2020

About

Speaker: Meghan Garrity, Postdoctoral Fellow, International Security Program

This seminar examines why and how governments expel ethnic groups en masse. What motivates them to implement expulsion policies and why don't more governments do the same? Isolating policies of intentional group-based population removal—distinct from genocide, massacre, and coercive assimilation—more precisely identifies the motivations of expulsionist governments. However, not all governments motivated to expel move forward with its implementation. Through a novel paired comparison of South Asian minorities in post-colonial Uganda and Kenya, this presentation introduces a new framework to conceptualize the process of government mass expulsion policy decisions. Despite analogous contexts, target populations, and motives to expel, in 1972, Uganda systematically removed up to 80,000 Asians en masse, while, in 1967–1969, Kenya did not. The negative case of Kenya generates new hypotheses about important factors that constrain government expulsion decisions: alliances, target group homeland state(s), and international organizations.

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar:
https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIuceygrT0vGNUIa_e-PGPLPT1NTaLVGvId

Contact

For more information, email the International Security Program Assistant at susan_lynch@harvard.edu.