Introducing the Government-Sponsored Mass Expulsion Dataset
| Author | Meghan Garrity |
| Published date | 01 September 2022 |
| Date | 01 September 2022 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00223433211068633 |
| Subject Matter | Special Data Features |
Introducing the Government-Sponsored
Mass Expulsion Dataset
Meghan Garrity
Department of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania
Abstract
This article introduces the Government-Sponsored Mass Expulsion (GSME) dataset documenting cross-border mass
expulsion episodes around the world from 1900to 2020. This new dataset focuses on mass expulsion policies in which
governments systematically remove ethnic, racial, religious or national groups, en masse. The GSME dataset disaggre-
gates mass expulsion from other exclusionary politics concepts to isolate policiesof intentional group-based population
removal. This allows for a systematic examination of governmental expulsion policies, distinct from policies aimed at
annihilation (genocide), control (massacre) or cultural elimination (coercive assimilation). The GSME dataset docu-
ments 139 expulsion episodes since 1900, affecting over 30 million citizens and non-citizens across all world regions.
The data are drawn from archival research conducted at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the
International Committee of the Red Cross, as well as secondary sources and extant datasets. This article presents an
empirical overview of the data includinginformation on the expellingcountry, onset, duration, region,scale, category of
persons expelled, and frequency. Although mass expulsion is a rare event, it is a reoccurring rare event. Its consistent
use – with over two million people expelled in the last five years alone – demands additional empirical and theoretical
investigation. The GSME dataset contributes to the study of exclusionary politics as a dependent variable, but it also
offers promise as an explanatory variable for those studying phenomena affected by mass expulsion.
Keywords
demographic engineering, ethnic cleansing, forced migration, mass expulsion, quantitative data
Introduction
Since 2015 over two million people have been expelled,
en masse, around the world. Over 800,000 Rohingya
were expelled from Myanmar (2016–18); 500,000
Afghan refugees from Pakistan (2016); 330,000
Congolese diamond miners from Angola (2018);
250,000 Haitians from the Dominican Republic
(2015–19); 100,000 Nigerian refugees from Cameroon
(2015–19); and nearly 70,000 sub-Saharan Africans
from Algeria (2016–20). Mass expulsion is but one
option in a government’s repertoire of exclusionary pol-
icies. Governments may target ethnic groups with poli-
cies of removal (expulsion), annihilation (genocide),
control (massacres
1
) or cultural elimination (coercive
assimilation
2
). Many existing data collection efforts have
aggregated some, or all, of these events (Harff, 2003;
Ulfelder & Valentino, 2008; Orchard, 2010; Bellamy,
2011; Bulutgil, 2016; Butcher et al., 2020; Lichtenheld,
2020), often capturing the practices or tactics used
in implementation (e.g. mass killing, deportation,
displacement), rather than the policy or intention of
the government. The Government-Sponsored Mass
Expulsion (GSME) dataset isolates policies of inten-
tional group-based removal, to allow scholars to
Corresponding author:
megmary@sas.upenn.edu
1
Semelin’s (2007) concept of massacres aiming to subjugate, or force
collective surrender, would fit here as well as Valentino’s (2004)
‘counterguerrilla mass killings’.
2
Some scholars do not include coercive assimilation as a policy of
exclusion (Mylonas, 2012; Bulutgil, 2016), although many
quantitative datasets do (Bellamy, 2011; Ulfelder & Valentino, 2004;
Butcher et al., 2020).
Journal of Peace Research
2022, Vol. 59(5) 767–776
ªThe Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/00223433211068633
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