Why do combatants uproot civilians in wartime? In this paper I identify cross-national variation in three population-displacement strategies—cleansing, depopulation, and forced relocation—and test different explanations for their use by state actors. I advance a new “assortative” theory to explain forced relocation, the most common type. I argue that combatants displace not only to expel undesirable populations, but also to identify the undesirables in the first place by forcing people to send signals of loyalty and affiliation based on whether, and to where, they flee. This makes communities more “legible” and facilitates the extraction of rents and recruits. I test these arguments using a novel Strategic Displacement in Civil Conflict data set (1945–2008). Consistent with my expectations, different displacement strategies occur in different contexts and appear to follow different logics. Cleansing is more likely in conventional wars, where territorial conquest takes primacy, while forced relocation is more likely in irregular wars, where identification problems are most acute. The evidence indicates that cleansing follows a logic of punishment. The results for relocation, however, are consistent with the implications of my assortative logic: it is more likely to be employed by resource-constrained incumbents fighting insurgencies in “illegible” areas—rural, peripheral territories. A case study from Uganda based on in-depth fieldwork provides evidence for the assortative mechanism. As the most comprehensive analysis of wartime displacement strategies to date, this paper challenges some core assumptions about a devastating form of contemporary political violence.

中文翻译：

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解释内战中的人口迁移策略：跨国分析

为什么战斗人员在战时将平民连根拔起？在本文中，我确定了三种人口迁移策略（清理、人口减少和强制迁移）的跨国差异，并测试了国家行为者对它们使用的不同解释。我提出了一种新的“分类”理论来解释最常见的强制迁移类型。我认为，战斗人员流离失所不仅是为了驱逐不受欢迎的人口，而且首先通过迫使人们根据他们是否逃跑以及逃往何处来发送忠诚和隶属关系的信号来识别不受欢迎的人。这使社区更加“清晰”，并促进了租金和新兵的提取。我使用一个新颖的内战中的战略流离失所数据集（1945-2008）来测试这些论点。符合我的预期，不同的置换策略出现在不同的背景下，似乎遵循不同的逻辑。在以领土征服为首要任务的常规战争中，清洗更有可能发生，而在身份认同问题最为严重的非正规战争中，强制迁移更有可能发生。证据表明，清洗遵循惩罚的逻辑。然而，搬迁的结果与我的分类逻辑的含义是一致的：它更有可能被资源有限的老牌企业在“难以辨认”的地区——农村、外围地区——打击叛乱时使用。乌干达的一项基于深入实地调查的案例研究为分类机制提供了证据。作为迄今为止对战时流离失所策略最全面的分析，