The journal Comparative Political Studies has published a new article on the effects of border fortifications by Dr. Justin Schon, post-doctoral research associate at the Democracy Initiative's Statecraft Lab, and Politics Professor David Leblang. In the article, Schon and Leblang challenge the assumption that physical border barriers reduce migration. Using an original dataset, the authors find "physical barriers actually increase refugee flows, consistent with the “backfire effect” identified in research on United States immigration enforcement policies on its Mexican border. Furthermore, we find that state repression (immigration enforcement) creates this “backfire effect” via a “sunk costs” problem that reduces movements of people and increases movement of status from migrant to refugee."

Read the article online here.