Book Talk | Mass Expulsion: The Politics of Forced Population Removal

Examining why and how governments expel, providing a systematic, cross-regional account of mass expulsion over the longue durée. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, governments around the world have expelled, en masse, more than 30 million people. Yet despite its prevalence, mass expulsion remains an understudied phenomenon as scholarly attention has been directed toward the gravest atrocities--genocide and mass killing--or toward forced migration more broadly. Mass Expulsion: The Politics of Forced Population Removal examines why and how governments expel, providing a systematic, cross-regional account of mass expulsion over the longue durée. Using the original Government-Sponsored Mass Expulsion (GSME) dataset, the book explains when and where expulsion occurs, who is targeted, and what regimes are most likely to expel. The book identifies two overarching categories of mass expulsion--security and economic--and develops a typology of four corresponding types: counter-irredentist, counter-subversive, reprisal, and nativist. It advances a theory of mass expulsion that traces the decision-making process, showing how key structural, proximate, precipitating, and intervening factors combine to shape the conditions under which governments expel or are restrained. Evidence is drawn from archival research conducted at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the League of Nations archives in Geneva, Switzerland. About the Author Meghan Garrity is an Assistant Professor of International Security & Law at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. During the 2026-2027 academic year she is also a Genocide and Atrocity Prevention Research Fellow with the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Her research is situated at the nexus of international peace and security, ethnic violence, and forced migration. She is focused on understanding conflict processes by examining the causes of, and constraints on, government policies of group-based ethnic violence and exclusion. Her book, Mass Expulsion: The Politics of Forced Population Removal (Oxford University Press – Bridging the Gap Series, 2026), explains why and how governments expel ethnic groups en masse. Garrity’s work is published in the Journal of Peace Research, Security Studies, the British Journal of Sociology, Political Science Quarterly, the International Political Science Review, the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, International Affairs, The Washington Post, The Conversation, and Just Security. She also has over ten years of experience as a humanitarian and development practitioner throughout sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. Garrity was previously a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School, and a Peace Fellow with the U.S. Institute of Peace. She received her PhD in political science from the University of Pennsylvania.