Political Instability and Migration: The South Asian Context

Political instability has become one of the most powerful forces shaping human movement across South Asia. When governments collapse, conflicts erupt, or states fail to protect their citizens, people do what they have always done in moments of crisis: they leave. From Afghanistan’s protracted turmoil to the persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar and the economic-political breakdown in Sri Lanka, millions across the region have been forced to abandon their homes. Understanding how political instability triggers migration-and what it means for the countries people flee and the countries that take them in-is essential to grasping one of the defining challenges of contemporary South Asia.

The political landscape of instability in South Asia 🔗

South Asia is home to nearly two billion people, and its political history has been marked by partition, recurring conflict, and fragile democratic institutions. The region contains several states that political scientists describe as “fragile” or “weak”-states that struggle to maintain control over their territory, deliver basic services, or guarantee the rule of law.

Afghanistan is the clearest example. Decades of war, foreign intervention, and the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021 have created a country where governance is contested and citizens face profound uncertainty. Pakistan, too, continues to struggle with economic and political instability, with rising concerns over authoritarian tendencies and persistent violence in its border regions. The instability is not contained within national boundaries-it spills over. The Afghanistan-Pakistan border, particularly the disputed Durand Line, has become a flashpoint for regional instability, with cross-border militancy and clashes intensifying since 2021.

What makes a state “fragile”? 🔗

A fragile state is one that cannot consistently perform the core functions expected of a government: protecting its population, enforcing laws, and providing public goods. When these functions break down, the social contract between citizens and the state weakens. People lose faith that staying will keep them safe or allow them to build a future. Fragility often combines several stressors at once-armed conflict, weak institutions, economic collapse, and the presence of non-state armed groups that operate beyond government control. In Pakistan’s former tribal areas, for instance, the state has not managed to fully implement its writ, leaving room for groups like the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan to operate.

How political instability drives migration 🔗

Migration scholars often use a “push and pull” framework. Political instability is one of the strongest push factors-it actively forces people out. Several distinct mechanisms are at work here.

Escaping conflict and violence 🔗

The most direct driver is physical danger. When fighting breaks out, civilians are caught in the crossfire, and fleeing becomes a matter of survival. The Rohingya exodus from Myanmar is a stark illustration. In August 2017, a wave of military violence in Rakhine State forced more than 750,000 people to seek refuge in Bangladesh, half of them children. Entire villages were burned, and the United Nations described the campaign as a textbook example of ethnic cleansing. People do not undertake dangerous journeys-walking for days through jungles or crossing seas in unsafe boats-unless staying is even more dangerous.

Lack of political freedom and persecution 🔗

Not all political migration is driven by active warfare. Sometimes the trigger is systematic persecution or the denial of basic rights. The Rohingya were effectively rendered stateless by Myanmar’s 1982 Citizenship Law, which stripped them of citizenship and left them as one of the largest stateless populations in the world. Denied citizenship, freedom of movement, and access to services, they faced a form of structured persecution long before the violence of 2017. When a government targets a group on the basis of ethnicity, religion, or political belief, leaving becomes the only path to dignity and safety.

Seeking better governance and stability 🔗

People also migrate toward the promise of stable, functioning governance. The distinction between “political” and “economic” migration is often blurry, because poor governance frequently produces economic collapse. Sri Lanka in 2022 demonstrated this overlap vividly. As the country experienced its worst financial crisis-marked by debt, shortages of food, fuel, and medicine, and mass protests demanding the president’s resignation-Tamil families began crossing to Tamil Nadu in India. Unlike the earlier waves driven by civil war, this movement was propelled by economic desperation rooted in political and governance failure. The collapse of effective governance can push people out just as forcefully as bullets.

The impact on home countries 🔗

When large numbers of people leave, the country they leave behind is profoundly affected. Mass emigration of skilled professionals-doctors, engineers, teachers-drains a nation of the human capital it needs to rebuild. This “brain drain” can trap fragile states in a vicious cycle: instability causes the educated and capable to leave, which further weakens institutions and prolongs the instability.

The departure of populations can also reshape a country’s demographics and economy in lasting ways. For Afghanistan, the forced return of nearly a million refugees from Pakistan by early 2025 threatened to strain an already collapsing economy and add pressure to a fragile humanitarian situation. Displacement and return flows both carry heavy costs for origin states. At the same time, diaspora communities sometimes send back remittances or political support, creating complex ties between those who leave and those who remain.

The impact on host countries 🔗

Receiving countries face a different but equally significant set of challenges. Hosting large refugee populations strains resources, infrastructure, and social cohesion.

Pressure on resources and services 🔗

Bangladesh provides a powerful case study. The country hosts more than 1.1 million Rohingya refugees in overcrowded camps, with Cox’s Bazar now home to the largest refugee settlement in the world. Providing food, shelter, healthcare, and education to such numbers places enormous demands on a developing economy. As international aid budgets shrink, these pressures intensify. Research from the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative notes that prolonged displacement has also created a massive mental health burden and strained relations between refugees and local host communities.

Security and political concerns 🔗

Host states frequently frame migration through a security lens. Pakistan’s policy toward Afghan refugees illustrates this. After the 2014 attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar, Pakistan shifted toward a much harder stance, leading to forced returns and, more recently, mass expulsions. Governments often worry that porous borders and large undocumented populations could be exploited by militant groups, and these fears shape policy in ways that can be harsh toward vulnerable people.

How South Asian states respond: the policy gap 🔗

One striking feature of South Asia is the absence of a coherent regional or even national framework for managing refugees. India, the region’s largest country and a major host, is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol, and it does not formally recognize the administrative role of the UNHCR on its own territory. The same is true of most of its neighbours.

This means India has no dedicated refugee law. Instead, refugees are governed largely through the Foreigners Act of 1946 and handled on a case-by-case basis, which can leave their status precarious and dependent on the goodwill of whichever government is in power. Yet the absence of a treaty obligation does not mean the absence of all protection. The principle of non-refoulement-the rule that a state should not return people to a place where their life or liberty is seriously threatened-is part of customary international law. Indian courts have, in cases such as the 2021 Manipur High Court decision involving Myanmarese nationals, held that non-refoulement is encompassed within Article 21 of the Constitution, which guarantees the right to life and personal liberty.

Selective and inconsistent approaches 🔗

Without a uniform law, treatment varies widely. The Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019 offers a pathway to citizenship for certain religious minorities-Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians-who fled persecution in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, while excluding others such as Muslims. Critics argue this introduces a religious criterion into refugee protection. Meanwhile, India has historically extended de facto protection to Tibetan and Sri Lankan Tamil refugees; tens of thousands of Sri Lankan Tamils still live in camps across Tamil Nadu, many for decades. This patchwork approach reflects what analysts describe as an ad hoc regime, where protection is determined by political considerations rather than consistent legal principle.

Why stable political frameworks matter 🔗

The throughline across all these cases is clear: migration driven by political instability cannot be managed effectively without addressing its root cause-the instability itself. Border closures, deportations, and camps treat the symptoms. The Afghan refugee crisis shows that even mass expulsion does not resolve the underlying problem; it simply shifts the humanitarian burden and can deepen regional tensions.

Lasting solutions require functioning states that can protect their citizens, durable peace agreements, and regional cooperation on managing displacement. The Rohingya situation underlines this point-the UN has consistently stressed that the roots of the crisis lie inside Myanmar, and that safe, voluntary, and dignified return is impossible until persecution and conflict end. A region with stable, accountable governance would have far less involuntary migration to manage in the first place. For South Asia, the challenge is twofold: building the political stability that prevents forced displacement, and creating the legal frameworks that protect people humanely when displacement does occur.

What do you think? Should South Asian countries develop a common regional refugee framework, or does each nation’s distinct political and security context make a unified approach impractical? And when the line between political and economic migration is so blurred-as in Sri Lanka’s recent crisis-how should states decide who qualifies for protection?

References

1. https://thesoufancenter.org/intelbrief-2025-november-21/
2. https://www.newsgram.com/asia/2025/10/21/afghanistan-pakistan-border-instability-in-south-asia
3. https://www.commonwealthroundtable.co.uk/commonwealth/eurasia/pakistan/research-article-borderland-struggles-the-consequences-of-the-afghan-talibans-takeover-on-pakistan/
4. https://www.unrefugees.org/news/rohingya-refugee-crisis-explained/
5. https://www.hrw.org/tag/rohingya
6. https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/concern-sri-lankans-fleeing-india-amid-economic-crisis
7. https://www.faf.ae/home/2025/3/23/the-afghan-refugee-crisis-in-pakistan-causes-implications-and-regional-consequences
8. https://www.rescue.org/article/rohingya-crisis-what-know-and-how-help
9. https://hhi.harvard.edu/news/2025/09/humanitarian-crisis-rohingya-refugees-bangladesh-issues-their-living-and-host
10. https://www.stimson.org/2022/the-geopolitics-of-indias-refugee-policy/
11. https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2021/06/indian-high-court-advances-refugee-policy/
12. https://www.fmreview.org/return/valcarcelsilvela/
13. https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/09/1165984