© 2001 by Oxford University Press
Plying the Humanitarian Human Trade: The Politics of Facilitative Relocation
1 Department of Government, Connecticut College, New London, CT
This article examines ‘facilitative relocation’: third-party efforts to physically relocate individuals facing persecution on the basis of their ethnicity or individual political activities. Three cases are investigated: antebellum efforts to facilitate emancipation through the subsidized removal of free blacks to colonies outside the United States; the Nazi–Zionist agreement to promote the emigration of German Jews to Palestine in 1933–1939; and the West German purchase of political prisoners and other would-be emigrants from East Germany during the Cold War. The following tentative conclusions are drawn. (1) If facilitative relocation involves external ransom payments, then the ‘captors’ will be able to demand higher payments over time and will resist placing relocation on a less pecuniary footing. (2) If a substantial portion of the pre-existing population of the ‘host’ territory views the relocatees as undesirable aliens, then facilitative relocation will generate or intensify intergroup conflict in that territory. (3) If the repression that gives rise to facilitative relocation is based upon individual behaviour rather than ascriptive attributes, facilitative relocation may help to stabilize repressive regimes in the short run; but, by underwriting the risks associated with political dissent and defection, it may also contribute to the delegitimation and destabilization of the regime in the long run. (4) Where facilitative relocation is a response to ethnic persecution, it is likely to be accompanied by increased persecution of the targeted group, and the reinforcement of ethnic rather than civic definitions of national identity. (5) Despite these drawbacks, facilitative relocation may sometimes be the ‘least bad’ solution available.
Received March 2000. Revised June 2001.