The Refugee in Flight: Kinetic Models and forms of Displacement

Abstract

After the publication of Fairchild’s early Immigrant Backgrounds in which he emphasised the importance of such immigrant characteristics as race culture and nationality it became an axiom of immigration studies that the immigrant’s background affects his future as settler. Work following in the next decades confirmed Fairchild’s observation and enlarged on it. By 1958 Petersen listed the emigrantsmotives and the social causes of emigration as an important background factor affecting aspirations and migrant outcomes. The growing recognition that the refugeesmotivation to seek a new place of settlement differs from that of the voluntary migrant was also accompanied by mounting evidence that the refugeesexperiences may vary one from the other the variance resulting in different refugee outcomes. However observations on individual refugee groups were neither compared nor operationally utilised in any comprehensive way. Such a comprehensive study cannot be undertaken without the existence of a workable theory of refugee movements based on a fruitful refugee typology and resting on suitable conceptual categories. This study intends to help lay these foundations. (excerpt)