ABSTRACT
The emergence of the post-Cold War world order has not brought with it the global peace and economic development that the architects of American foreign policy and students of international relations had hoped for. Continued economic stagnation in large parts of the developing world, civil and interstate wars, and political oppression all translate into vast numbers of people engaging in either voluntary or involuntary migration throughout the world. Some governments have also learned that population transfers can be a potent tool in controlling politically volatile areas. Under Soeharto, Indonesia aggressively relocated Muslim citizens onto predominately non-Muslim islands in an effort to quell secessionist demands (Stern 2003: 63). Likewise, China, in a move that is widely interpreted as an attempt to forestall any future Tibetan independence movement, is in the midst of a long-term project transferring millions of loyal, ethnically Han citizens onto the Tibetan plateau. A similar policy has been pursued with regard to the Muslim Uighur peoples of Xinjiang province, where between one and two million ethnic Han settlers have streamed into the sparsely settled region within the last decade, as reported by Bequelin (2009) and New York Times (2006). The reasons behind mass migration are varied and complex, yet it seems certain that this global trend is likely to remain a fixture of the international environment for some time to come. The UN High Commission on Refugees (2006) estimates that the ongoing conflict in Iraq alone has generated over a million refugees in the region, and found that there were currently close to ten million refugees worldwide. Nor do these numbers include the vast populations that have relocated for economic or social reasons. Yet it is not always the case that migration, population transfer, and economic marginalization lead to conflict. While Indonesia was wracked with conflict following violent outbursts between the Christian and Muslim communities in the late 1990s, the Tibetan refugee communities in Nepal and India have been able to live in peace with their diverse neighbors. For the most part, we have not seen any well-armed or well-funded insurgency movements arising from these camps that might compare with the situation of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon or Jordan. We must examine the role of religious community and social structure to understand the differences between these cases.
