The Legacy of Conflict: Reconstruction and Migration in the Aftermath of Civil War in Tajikistan

Abstract

How do civil war and subsequent reconstruction efforts affect international migration? Although a wealth of evidence points to violent conflict’s effects on contemporaneous migration and although a rich body of literature examines development’s effects on migration, we know less about the intersection of conflict, development, and migration. This article examines the intersection of these factors nearly a decade after the 1992–1997 civil war in Tajikistan, combining data from the 2007 Tajikistan Living Standards Survey, the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, and original interviews. In a series of logistic regression models, I show that conflict fatalities do not have a direct effect on subsequent migration, while the number of years a district has had a development resource center directly increases the likelihood of migrating. However, the interaction between development and conflict is negative and significant. These findings suggest that conflict’s legacy does not directly impact the likelihood of respondents migrating but instead changes the nature of the relationship between development and migration. This finding illuminates conflict’s potential long-term consequences for migration and extends the migration-development nexus by addressing the role of conflict in the relationship between development and migration. In particular, it suggests that migration research in conflict-affected countries should incorporate measures of both conflict and development, even after a given conflict has ended.