How Armed Conflict Influences Migration

The literature on migration during armed confiict is abundant. Yet, the questions of highest policy relevance-how many people will leave because of a confiict and how many more people will be living outside a country because of a confiict-are not well addressed. This article explores these questions using an agent-based model, a computational simulation that allows us to connect armed confiict to individual behavioral changes and then to aggregate migration fiows and migrant stocks. With detailed data from Nepal during the 1996-2006 confiict, we find that out-migration rates actually decrease on average, largely due to a prior decrease in return migration. Regardless, the stock of migrants outside the country increases modestly during that period. Broadly, this study demonstrates that population dynamics are inherent to and necessary for understanding confiict-related migration. We conclude with a discussion of the generalizability and policy implications of this study.