In 2012, 2016 and 2018–2019, Pakistan threatened to expel Afghan refugees and in 2015, 2016 and 2019, Kenya threatened to demolish the Dadaab camp and expel Somali refugees. Following the threats, the governments extracted more than $300 million aid, combined. Why did these states succeed in extracting aid despite their relatively weak status and not bordering the target of their blackmail? This article first situates refugee expulsion within the literature on refugee policies, migration diplomacy and refugee rentier states. Second, in two cases – Somalis in Kenya and Afghans in Pakistan – I show how states used the threat of expulsion to construct and leverage the deportability of their refugee communities as a foreign policy tool. States used the legal uncertainty around deportability to channel threats and violence toward refugees, but the primary audience of the threats were not refugees, but the international community. Officials in Kenya and Pakistan used threats paired with six-month or one-year delays as negotiation tactics to extract aid. Surprisingly, states that were generous hosts to refugees become strategically important because of their role in providing regional stability, which turned otherwise weak states into important allies that could threaten expulsion and extract aid from superpowers.

2012年、2016年和2018-2019年，巴基斯坦威胁要驱逐阿富汗难民，2015年、2016年和2019年，肯尼亚威胁要拆除达达布营地并驱逐索马里难民。在这些威胁之后，各国政府总共提取了超过 3 亿美元的援助。为什么这些国家尽管地位相对较弱，而且没有接近勒索的目标，但仍能成功地获得援助？本文首先将难民驱逐置于有关难民政策、移民外交和难民食利者国家的文献中。其次，在两个案例中——肯尼亚的索马里人和巴基斯坦的阿富汗人——我展示了各国如何利用驱逐威胁来构建和利用其难民社区的可驱逐性作为外交政策工具。各州利用围绕可驱逐性的法律不确定性将威胁和暴力引向难民，但威胁的主要对象不是难民，而是国际社会。肯尼亚和巴基斯坦的官员使用威胁加上六个月或一年的延迟作为谈判策略来获取援助。令人惊讶的是，慷慨接纳难民的国家因其在提供地区稳定方面的作用而变得具有战略重要性，这将原本薄弱的国家变成了可能威胁驱逐并从超级大国获得援助的重要盟友。