Migration and Security in South Asia Afghan Refugees in Pakistan

While the phenomenon of migration is as old as humanity, it has been analysed as an economic and political factor only in the last two centuries. After the Second World War, South Asia became the site of the largest population displacement over a short span of time, in the wake of the separation of Pakistan and Burma from the former British Indian Raj and later in 1971 during the breakup of Pakistan. The mass migrations substantially altered demographic and cultural characteristics in affected regions. Since the seventies, the large-scale exodus of Afghans into Pakistan has generated ethnic strife, economic problems and a criminalisation of society in the host country, creating permanent instability within the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.