Kennedy School Postdoc Discusses Government-Sanctioned Mass Expulsion at Belfer Center Seminar

Meghan M. Garrity, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, discussed her research on government-sanctioned mass expulsion events at a virtual Belfer Center seminar Thursday.

Roughly 25 people attended the talk, entitled "Disorderly and Inhumane: Explaining Government-Sponsored Mass Expulsion, 1900–2020." During the seminar, Garrity discussed factors that contribute to mass population exchanges and presented the case studies of Uganda — which experienced a mass expulsion event — and Kenya, which did not.

Garrity identified three elements that constrain or enable state-sponsored mass expulsion: domestic and transnational alliances, a government's relationship to the home country of a targeted group, and the involvement of international organizations like the United Nations.

"Now, none of these factors on its own is enough to enable or constrain expulsion, but the more that are in place, the more likely that it becomes," Garrity said....