Book Project
Go West, Young Han: State-building through Ethnic Migration
How do states project political power over difficult to manage territories, particularly multiethnic border regions? I argue that ethnic migration can be used as a strategy for targeted repression of insurgent violence in peripheral areas, by mitigating the state's delegation problem typical of conventional strategies such as indirect rule, assimilation, and repression. Specifically, ethnic migration allows the state to employ co-ethnic agents and consolidate and delegate authority over complementary tasks such as military and intelligence operations to the same agents. I illustrate these claims by comparing three frontier provinces of Maoist China -- Xinjiang, Heilongjiang, and Tibet -- and an in-depth study of Xinjiang from 1949-present. I use cross-sectional, quasi-experiment, and process-tracing research designs, drawing on original data from historical gazetteers, archival documents, and field interviews. My findings contribute to a vast literature investigating the ethnicity-conflict nexus by proposing new institutional conditions under which ethnic diversity may reduce violence and facilitate state-building.
How do states project political power over difficult to manage territories, particularly multiethnic border regions? I argue that ethnic migration can be used as a strategy for targeted repression of insurgent violence in peripheral areas, by mitigating the state's delegation problem typical of conventional strategies such as indirect rule, assimilation, and repression. Specifically, ethnic migration allows the state to employ co-ethnic agents and consolidate and delegate authority over complementary tasks such as military and intelligence operations to the same agents. I illustrate these claims by comparing three frontier provinces of Maoist China -- Xinjiang, Heilongjiang, and Tibet -- and an in-depth study of Xinjiang from 1949-present. I use cross-sectional, quasi-experiment, and process-tracing research designs, drawing on original data from historical gazetteers, archival documents, and field interviews. My findings contribute to a vast literature investigating the ethnicity-conflict nexus by proposing new institutional conditions under which ethnic diversity may reduce violence and facilitate state-building.
