The nature of refugee generating circumstances are both and multi-faceted and have become prolific in recent times. Derrida (1994) proclaims that "violence, inequality, exclusion, famine, and thus economic oppression" has never affected as many human beings as in the history of humanity. Indeed, UNHCR (1997) asserts that the issue of forced displacement has assumed some particularly important- and in several senses new- dimensions in the final years of the twentieth century. "First, and foremost, the numbers have been staggering… some 50 million people around the world might be described as victims of forced displacement"(p.2). The majority of refugees who take flight today do so due to generalised violence that emerges sporadically. Nonetheless, the causes of such violence rarely emerges sporadically and are a result of various conditions that both accompany and exacerbate each other. In the following paragraphs it will be argued that the causes of flight are due to a number of interdependent variables which are inextricably linked. They are principally political, ethnic conflict, economic, overpopulation and environmental determinants.

The following paragraphs are concerned with the motivation behind enforced migration and considers the mode of flight once the decision has been made to leave. Moreover, the resulting spatial dynamics of refugee movements will also be addressed in order to situate the refugee experience in its modern context. Before tackling the inducements which generate displacement, it is necessary to highlight some of the legacies of colonial rule, taking Africa as an example, for several of them underpin the route causes of flight in the Majority World.

The Legacies of colonialism

According to Slater (1997) colonialism "represented the imposition and installation of principles of the political that violated the bond between national sovereignty and the constitution of societal being. The framing of time, the ordering of space, followed an externally imposed logic that did not cease to have effects in the post-colonial period"(Slater, 1997, p.269). These effects which Slater mentions are identified by Potter (1992) as four characteristics: 1. Authoritarianism, 2. Use of force, 3. Statism and 4. International political dimension. First, Potter (1992) maintains that authoritarianism that existed in Africa was due to the fact that there was little or no participation by indigenous populations in the colonial governing apparatus. "More Africans, therefore, had little experience of democratic government until independence in many cases was rather suddenly thrust upon them"(Potter, 1992, p.219). Second, the new rulers following independence, like their colonial counterparts used force in order to control the general population. Crowder (1987) affirms that the new elite’s having gained a personal experience of torture and exile from the colonialists themselves, proceeded to use identical measures when dealing with their own people. Third, Potter contends that Statism is another legacy of colonialism which still has ramifications today. He argues that the colonialists discouraged ‘indigenous development’ in order to construct the economies of the developing world around the burgeoning markets of Europe. The form of Statism introduced promoted the consolidation of power and accumulation of personal wealth for the colonial administrators. Once the new ruling elite’s gained power, they choose not to transform the state structures that had been carved out by the colonialists, rather they relied on them with the result being that the state continued to be arbitrary in its nature. Finally, Potter (1992) concludes that independence "left most African states acutely vulnerable to new forms of economic dependence on external forces. For example, changes in international commodity prices have had adverse effects on attempts at planned economic development"(Potter, 1992, p.219). Directly and indirectly these factors have caused major displacements throughout the Majority World to varying degrees. However, for the most part they have been accompanied by other issues, that will be discussed below.

"Since the early 1970s the causes of flight have included: the aftermath of the end of colonial rule; the partition of states; struggles for autonomy, political violence and repression; ethnic and religious struggles, sometimes leading to genocide; "ethnic cleansing"; discrimination; and armed conflict"(Amnesty International, 1997, p.16). "Persecution usually takes place in the context of fundamental disputes over how society organises itself and who commands power, privileges and patronage that go with political control"(ICPD, 1994, p.6). Political insurrections frequently appear in three configurations; state collapse, state formation and dictatorships that abuse state power which often results in persecution. Moreover, conflicts and civil unrest emerge when the general population or even minority groups hold opposing political ideals to the dominant ruling class and they subsequently resist. Pile (1997) in Geographies of Resistance states that "resistance stands in implacable opposition to power; so power is held by elite, who use injurious and contemptible means to secure their control; meanwhile, resistance is the people fighting back in defence of freedom, democracy and humanity"(p.1). He describes the many forms that resistance takes in the contemporary world.

"Since resistance opposes power, it hardly seems worth mentioning that acts of resistance take place through specific geographies: in the spaces under the noses of the oppressor, on the street, outside military bases, and so on; or further, around specific geographical entities such as the nation, or ‘our land’, or world peace, or the rain forests; or, over other kinds of geographies, such as riots in urban forests; or, over other kinds of geographies, such as riots in urban places or revolts by peasants in the country side or jamming government web sites in cyberspace"(p.1).

However, resistance can result in the exercise of authoritarian state power which in turn may lead to oppression. For instance, Amnesty International (1997) in Refugees Human Rights Have No Borders, states that when the military government in Myanmar seized power in 1988, it "brutally repressed the activities of the pro-democracy opposition. Its forces have killed and tortured thousands of people. Those most in danger are members of Myanmar’s minority ethnic groups and those living in border areas where armed opposition groups are active"(p.20).

Ethnic Conflict

The ICPD (1994) claims that ethnic tensions can be seen as the root cause of refugee flows for two reasons. "First, they are highly susceptible to political exploitation. Factions seeking to mobilise support commonly fan ethnic antagonisms for their own ends. Second, despite the fact that most States contain a variety of ethnic groups, the ethnic identity of a single group is all too often made a defining characteristic of nationality"(p.7). This form of conflict has manifested itself within the confines of Europe i.e. the break-up of former Yugoslavia. However, the root causes of ethnic conflict are rather complex and require some examination taking Africa as an example.

In the aftermath of decolonisation the African state has come to be characterised by the fragmentation and segregation of political and cultural groupings all striving to attain and abuse power and thus, as well as preventing their own oppression. This was due in part to authoritarianism and statism inherited by the African elite which was discussed above. "Beset by a multitude of hostile forces that their betrayal of the nationalist movement and their political repression had created, the African elite’s developed a siege mentality"(Ake, 1996, p.116). "Reactionary monolithism" in the form of single-party and military dictatorships began to reign in Africa. Ake (1996) maintains that they began manipulating "ethnic and communal loyalties to elicit loyalty and establish common cause with some communities. In doing so, they divided into hostile camps not only the elite’s but also the wider society and transformed ethnicity into a violent and highly destructive force in many countries, including Togo, Congo, Rwanda, Kenya, Liberia, Angola, Uganda, Ethiopia, Burundi, Mauritania, Zaire, Nigeria, and Sudan"(p.116). Taking Rwanda as a case in point, is one of the most densely populated states in Africa. The legacy of colonialism and land ownership patterns has resulted in conflict between the cattle owning Tutsis and the land owning Hutus. The initial differences are class based. However. These differences were manipulated along ethnic lines for political purposes, which resulted in the mass movement of one million Rwandans to Goma and Zaire.

Refugees may leave their country of origin for reasons discussed above. However, "many of the world’s poorer nations are now locked into a vicious circle of economic stagnation, environmental degradation and impoverishment, reinforced in some cases by rapid rated of population growth"(UNHCR, 1997, p.15). With this in mind it is necessary to examine some of the facts which have contributed to these circumstances.

According to UNHCR(1997), in less developed regions of the world, at least 89 countries currently have a lower per capita income than they had ten years ago. In fact, nineteen of these states, including Haiti, Liberia, Rwanda, Sudan and Venezuela, are poorer today than they were in 1960"(UNHCR, 1997, p.14). The material polarisation that has occurred in the majority world is due to a number of inter-dependent variables, which have hindered development and whose origins lie with decolonisation and the rise of national independence movements. Claude Ake (1996) in Democracy and Development in Africa, argues that development projects in Africa never failed because they never began. "At the beginning of the independence period, African leaders, with few exceptions, were so absorbed in the struggle for power and survival and so politically isolated by their betrayal of the nationalist revolution that they could not launch a national development, letting their metropolitan patrons determine the agenda and find the resources to implement it"(Ake, 1996, p.40). The African leaders formulated policies that were based on self interest and hence, they ceased to be strategies for development, rather they emerged as a means of "reproducing political hegemony". As a result "agricultural policies in Africa have been dominated by the struggle of the political class against the peasantry over the control of the peasants production and surplus. Such is to be expected in a continent whose leaders are seeking capitalist development in the context of largely pre-capitalist social relations of production"(Ake, 1996, p.64). In Africa the struggle for power has taken all precedence over development.

The economic situation is exacerbated by the debts that the Majority World have incurred in years spanning 1974-84 when the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) gave rise to the oil boom. The loans were procured in an economic climate which saw young inexperienced bankers frantically touring the Majority world making loans without taking into account the ability of the debtors to repay them. Nearly all of the nations of Africa borrowed enthusiastically and lost most of it due to poor and often ill planned investments. "Total bank exposure in the Third World [sic] from $110 billion in 1978 to $450 billion at the end of 1982-over 300 percent in four years"(George, 1990, p.30). George (1990) suggests that the debt is attributable to arms purchases, "conspicuous consumption", capital flight, profitless and ineffectual projects, rising interest rates oil prices.

When these countries failed to make the repayments, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was called in to assess the situation and to impose conditions upon new loans. The result being that these nations are unable to channel funds into much needed areas such as health care, housing and education. It is worth mentioning that while the IMF force the debtors to cut back on spending in the areas mentioned above, they rarely prevent them from cutting back on arms spending. This could be considered to be a factor that contributes to the militarisation the Majority World.

"The sum of the global national debt currently amounts to $2.2 thousand billion. Three of the largest debtors are Nigeria, the Ivory Coast and sub-Saharan Africa which are forced to contribute 71% of the gross national product to paying off their loans, hence, they are "cannibalising their capital base"(UNHCR, 1997, p.15). New loans are frequently required to service the interest on previous ones. Nevertheless, the debt crisis can not be held solely responsible for the deteriorating economic situation in the Majority World. While it is clear that development and infrastructural spending is hindered by structural adjustment programmes framed in the neo-classical tradition, which are promoted by the IMF and Bretton Woods institutions. Ake (1996) suggests that a cancellation of these debts would not make much of a difference if the those conditions such as "inappropriate policies, corruption, disarticulated economies" and the marginalisation of the Majority World in international markets persist. Upon closer examination it is clear that the economic problems of the South are undeniably complex. The situation is compounded by rising birth rates which occur in response to poverty. Shiva (1995) would seem to support this assertion for she states that those who are denied social security subsequently look to their children to provide "labour and social security, especially in agrarian societies"(Shiva, 1995, p.110). The consequences of this have been explosive population growth in regions which are densely populated. This leads me on to the next cause of displacement, overpopulation.

"From the current level of 5.3 billion people, the world’s population is projected to increase by 90 million per year to the year 2000"(Hewitt & Smyth, 1992, p.80). Much of this growth is concentrated in the Majority World and is effected by two factors: mortality and fertility. Hewitt and Smyth (1992) argue that even though mortality rates have fallen in recent times, fertility rates have not. "When mortality rates are low, high fertility generates a ‘populous momentum’, such that an increasing proportion of women in the total population is of childbearing age who will reproduce the next generation"(Hewitt & Smyth, 1992, p.80). So even if population growth reversed and began to decrease, the major concentration of the population would be in the South, and specifically within urban agglomerates. "Between 1950 and 1990, the population of Africa, Asia and Latin America grew from 1.7 billion to close to four billion, while its urban population grew from 286 million to more than 1.5 billion; this urban population is now larger than the total population is now larger than the total population of Europe, North America, Japan, the former Soviet Union and Australasia combined"(Hardoy et al., 1997, p.29). This results in the uneven distribution of population around the globe. Hence, it is not enough to simply label the dilemma as overpopulation, when it is overpopulation in densely populated regions. For example, taking Africa as point, Hartman (1987) affirms that the average density of sub-Saharan Africa is only 16 people per square kilometre.

"Yet there are also areas of very high population density in the cities, along the coast, and in the highlands, where population pressure has contributed to environmental degradation. In Ethiopia, for example, the highest densities are in the drought-prone, environmentally vulnerable highlands, while there are thousands of acres of uncultivated arable land in the south and the east"(Hartman, 1987, p.17-18, quoted in Hewitt & Smyth, 1992).

Apart from the pressure this puts on the environment, one must make note of the fact that an expanding population is often accompanied by civil strife and unrest. Rwanda, Afghanistan and the Middle East, all of which have experienced armed conflict in recent times, possess young and rapidly growing populations. Mac Éinrí (1995) suggests that "the social effects of a population explosion appear to form the context within which such bitter struggles swiftly escalate"(p.59). Indeed, McNeill (1998) suggests given the experience of two world wars, the demographic factor is inescapable. By way of illustration, he describes the political upheaval that population growth caused in pre-war mainland Europe.

"Assuredly, a basic and fundamental disturbance to all existing social relationships set in whenever and wherever broods of peasant children grew to adulthood in villages where, when it came time for them to marry and assume adult roles, they could not get hold of enough land to live as their forefathers had done from time immemorial. In such circumstances, traditional ways of rural life came under unbearable strain. Family duties and moral imperatives of village custom could not be fulfilled. The only question was what form of revolutionary ideal would attract young people"( p.63).

He goes on to suggest that the demographic factor continues to be contributeable to resistance movements in Latin America, parts of Africa and south-east Asia. While it is apparent that overpopulation aggravates the social conditions, the environmental impact of it has been widely felt in recent years.

Environmental Roots

Displacements due to environmental roots have taken on new dimensions in recent years. Richmond (1994) contends that is necessary to take a systems approach, rather then a "descriptive typology" in order to explain the driving force behind environmental displacements. In Global Apartheid Refugees, Racism, and the New World Order, Richmond (1994) constructs a model of environmentally related disasters in order to explain the intricate nature of environmental displacement. He divides the model into five sections; 1. naturally induced disasters i.e. hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, fires and drought; 2. technologically induced disasters i.e. chemical, pollution, explosions, dams (floods, etc.) factory accidents; 3. economically induced disasters i.e. deforestation, mineral exhaustion, population clearances; 4. politically induced disasters i.e. war, apartheid, exile, totalitarianism; and 5. socially induced disasters such as ecological extremism, fanaticism, class war.

Naturally induced disasters have always been a constant form of displacement. However, technological and economically induced disasters have reached new proportions due to the growth and expansion of agriculture and urbanisation. For example, Hardoy et al. (1997) argues that if rapid urban expansion is not accompanied by effective urban management, large sectors of the population of these cities will be at risk from not only natural disasters, but also economically induced hazards. "In most Third World [sic] and many smaller urban centres, serious environmental degradation affects soils, crops, forests, freshwater aquifers and surface water, fisheries and other natural resources"(Hardoy et al., 1997, p.20). According to the United Nations Environment Programme, one of the tragic consequences of such degradation is the forced migration of millions of people in search of land that can not sustain them. "Environmental accidents and emergencies are also occurring with increasing frequency, placing natural and human habitats under acute stress and increasing risks of mass exoduses"(UN Commission on Human Rights Thematic Reports, (Feb. 96). Preston (1998) maintains that the expansion of human numbers has contributed, sometimes wholly, to economically induced disasters i.e. deforestation, soil degradation, and species loss. He states that sixteen million square kilometres of tropical forest have been significantly diminished to eight over the last forty years. He places the blame on the "encroachment of slash-and-burn cultivators"(p.258).

These types of disasters are to be found in many regions of the former Soviet Union. Wolfsen (1992) credits this to the Soviet development strategy. He poses that the main thrust of Soviet ideology was the "idea of boundless space and inexhaustible resources,"(p.57). However, he stresses that this philosophy has had a disastrous impact on the environment in the following ways:

"(a) fall of the groundwater or salination of the soil;

1. strong erosion or salination of the soil;
2. decrease of biological productivity (due to the effect of both the above-mentioned factors);
3. depletion of various species of flora and fauna with a substitution by more primitive ones more adaptable to serve conditions, for more sophisticated, and more developed ecosystems;
4. changes in the physical condition of the environment"(Wolfsen, 1992, p.59).

The case of the Aral sea, the most serious water management crisis in Central Asia, is a prime example of how Soviet policy has led to extensive degradation of an ecosystem. This body of water is situated in the most arid zone of the region. Micklin (1992) claims that irrigation is the most dominant and consistent form of water use in Central Asia which is the fundamental cause of the problem. The region is one of the primary producers of cotton for the global market and as a result requires vast amounts of water. Irrigation canals (the Kara-Kum being the most important) were constructed over the course of this century with devastating results. Micklin (1992) maintains that the area of the sea has halved with the volume decreasing by two thirds. The sea itself contains an estimated 10 billion metric tonnes of dissolved salts. Given that the volume of the sea has been reduced in recent years, the concentration of the salinity of the water has increased also. This has effected water supplies and depleted fish stocks to almost zero forcing fishing villages surrounding the sea to be abandoned. According to Micklin (1992) Soviet cosmonauts have observed that there were nine dust-salt storms in the years between 1975-1981. They claim that the occurrence of these storms increases as the area of the sea shrinks. Given that the region is in one of the most arid sections of the continent, desertification is occurring at an alarming rate.

Environmental refugees differ from other refugees in that they usually have the protection of their government and are not victims of persecution. Therefore, they are not included in the scope of the Geneva Convention, which is also the case with economic refugees and victims of famine and war (however, in some cases they may be granted leave to remain). The six categories delineated above rarely occur solely rather accompanying each other. "Exiled populations may often come from very poor countries and be destitute when they arrive in a country of asylum. But refugee movements cannot be 'caused' by economic, environmental or demographic problems alone. The linkage between underdevelopment and displacement must therefore be regarded as an indirect or contributory one"(UNHCR, 1995).