Civil Conflict and Displacement: Village-Level Determinants of Forced Migration in Aceh
| Date | 01 May 2009 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343309102659 |
| Author | Krisztina Kis-Katos,Mathias Czaika |
| Published date | 01 May 2009 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
399
© The Author(s), 2009. Reprints and permissions:
http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav,
vol. 46, no. 3, 2009, pp. 399–418
Sage Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi,
Singapore and Washington DC) http://jpr.sagepub.com
DOI 10.1177/0022343309102659
Civil Conflict and Displacement: Village-Level
Determinants of Forced Migration in Aceh*
MATHIAS CZAIKA & KRISZTINA KIS-KATOS
Department of International Economic Policy, University of Freiburg
The purpose of this article is to identify the determinants of displacement behavior based on various
push and pull factors at the village level. The study concentrates on changes in village population dur-
ing three years of civil conflict (1999–2002) in Aceh, Indonesia. The empirical analysis is based on a
unique dataset from two census rounds of the Indonesian Village Potential Census (PODES). It uses
data on around 5,200 Acehnese villages and relates village-level population change to conflict variables,
geographic patterns, and traditional socio-economic determinants of migration. By applying quantile
regressions, the push (outflow) factors and the pull (inflow) determinants of migration can also be dis-
tinguished. The authors identify the following factors as the main determinants of the Aceh migration
pattern in this period. First, conflict clashes induced large rearrangements of the population between
villages in highly affected districts, as well as strong village emigration from the geographically remote
regions in Central Aceh towards the less conflict-affected coastal industrial areas. Besides conflict fac-
tors, an (ongoing) rural–urban migration process, driven by socio-economic factors, has taken place
during the conflict period. Second, there is also evidence that security considerations, such as the pres-
ence of police in a village or neighborhood, were either emigration-reducing or immigration-inducing.
Third, although the presence of ethnic Javanese has not been a primary cause of conflict incidence, their
intimidation by the rebel movement has led to a significant outflow, primarily from conflict-affected
villages in Central Aceh. These results reveal that, beside a conflict-induced fear of violence, population
movements in Aceh have also been an outcome of traditional migration determinants.
Introduction
Worldwide, the number of international
and intrastate conflicts has fallen dramati-
cally since the end of the Cold War. This has
led to a continuous reduction in the world’s
refugee population over the past years. How-
ever, internal displacement has not been
reduced to the same extent as cross-border
refugee movements. Globally, at the end
of 2005, about 23.7 million internally dis-
placed persons (IDPs) were seeking refuge
within their own conflict-affected countries
(IDMC, 2006a). Obviously, large displace-
ments are induced by armed conflicts and
grave human rights violations, but beyond
this, the role of other political, economic, or
social determinants of internal displacement
is still unresolved.
Although some hypotheses on the deter-
minants of forced migration decisions have
been put forth in the refugee studies lit-
erature, the relevance of traditional socio-
economic migration determinants has not
been systematically analyzed at a disaggre-
gated level. At the cross-country level, most
* We would like to thank Günther Schulze, participants
of the HiCN Workshop, and of the PEGNet Confer-
ence in Berlin for helpful comments and discussions. We
would also like to thank two anonymous referees for their
detailed comments, and Fitria Fitrani for answering ques-
tions concerning the data. All remaining errors are ours.
The dataset, codebook, and do-files for the empirical anal-
ysis in this article can be found at http://www.prio.no/jpr/
datasets. Correspondence: M_Czaika@gmx.de, Krisztina.
Kis-Katos@vwl.uni-freiburg.de.
journal of PEACE RESEARCH volume 46 / number 3 / may 2009
400
studies emphasize that violence is the major
push factor of forced migration flows, indi-
cating that institutional or economic factors
have a relatively small impact (see, for exam-
ple, Schmeidl, 1997; Moore & Shellman,
2004). However, using Colombian house-
hold data, Engel & Ibánez (2007) find that,
even in a conflict environment, economic
incentives play an important role in house-
hold displacement decisions, although the
impact of economic incentives is less strong
where violence levels are high.
This study identifies the determinants
of displacement during a period of conflict
in Aceh, Indonesia. The Aceh conflict was
politically motivated and arose between
the Indonesian military forces, TNI (Ten-
tara Nasional Indonesia), and the Acehnese
Freedom Movement, GAM (Gerakan Aceh
Merdeka). This conflict was particularly
intense between 1999 and 2004. During
this period, large-scale displacements were
a recurrent feature, and the number of dis-
placed persons has been estimated at more
than 500,000 (IDMC, 2006b).
Our main task is to investigate the major
determinants of these internal displacements
during three years of severe clashes (1999 to
2002) in the Aceh province. For this purpose,
we use data on 5,211 Acehnese villages from
two rounds of the Indonesian Village Poten-
tial Census PODES 2000 and 2003 (BPS,
2000, 2003). Unlike empirical analysis based
on household data, this village-level dataset
enables us to focus on the village-specific
determinants of population changes, which
makes this analysis unique.
Although we cannot directly interpret
our results as explaining the individual
migration decision of household members,
we are able to identify the most relevant
push and pull factors at the village level.
This level of aggregation also allows us to
cover almost the whole area affected by the
Acehnese conflict (91.3% of Acehnese vil-
lages). We distinguish between the effects of
conflict-related and more traditional socio-
economic determinants of net population
change. Furthermore, and in addition to
standard OLS estimation, we apply a quan-
tile estimation technique, which enables us
to separate the push (outflow) factors from
the pull (inflow) factors driving the change
in Acehnese village population stocks dur-
ing this period of civil conflict.
Obviously, violence and displacement
are strongly linked, and this relationship is
reflected in our results: the presence of con-
flict, which is captured by both reported
conflict variables and district controls,
reduces net population increase. Beyond
this, we are also able to identify several socio-
economic factors as driving forces of popu-
lation displacement, indicating an ongoing
rural–urban migration movement within the
province of Aceh. We find that population
displacement in Aceh is not only caused by
the fear of violence, but also by traditional
socio-economic migration variables. This
corroborates the results of Engel & Ibánez
(2007) from their study of Colombian
households.
The remainder of this article is structured
as follows. The next section briefly reviews
the Acehnese conflict history and its effects
on population displacement in the past
decade. Then, we briefly review the tradi-
tional migration literature and discuss its
main implications for our empirical analysis.
The empirical section contains an introduc-
tion to the dataset, an explanation of the
empirical strategy, and a discussion of the
results of the regression analysis. Some final
remarks conclude.
Conflict History and Displacement
in Aceh
Indonesia’s recent history is characterized
by persistent conflicts and population dis-
placements in various provinces. Frequent
flare-ups of violence in the different prov-
To continue reading
Request your trial