THE NATION-STATE, VICTIM GROUPS AND REFUGEES

There are two major categories of refugees. Some are persecuted for their political beliefs or political activities. Such persecution is normally associated with non-democratic regimes, be these totalitarian or authoritarian. Others are persecuted by the state because of their social, religious, racial, ethnic and/or national affiliations. The analysis here focuses on the latter. The general proposition of this article is that the process which gives rise to this second category of refugees is largely a by-product of the secular transformation of political units into nation-states. Drawing upon Arendt's thesis on minorities and stateless persons, a brief historical review outlines how this process originated in Europe. Next, using the general proposition above as a point of reference, the study sketches specific conditions which account for the high incidence of targeted victim groups as refugees in the contemporary Third World. The findings of this article include: (1) whenever the state chooses to forge a collective identity on the basis of race, religion, and nationality, it produces target minorities. A mononational integration formula in a multi-ethnic environment, for instance, creates victim groups subject to exclusion, segregation, expulsion, and repression; (2) the pursuit of a mono-national formula and/or a strategy of ‘unmixing’ populations in circumstances wherein the targeted groups are regionally concentrated, may lead to separatism. These situations, in turn, create refugee flows out of the targeted victim groups. The article proposes various reforms to reduce the incidence of this class of refugees in the Third World. © 1991, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. All rights reserved.