Displacement as Strategy: Cultural Denigration and the Escalation of Violence

This thesis examines how structural violence escalates into more direct forms of harm, particularly through forced displacement. I introduce the concept of cultural denigration, defined as structural violence that degrades the identity, culture, and status of a socially constructed out-group. I argue that cultural denigration can act as a precursor to escalation and that forced displacement is one key manifestation of this process. I hypothesize that cultural denigration increases the likelihood of displacement when perpetrators have a sufficiently long time horizon and when capacity constraints make displacement more viable than immediate mass violence. Using comparative case studies of Tamils in Sri Lanka and Uyghurs in China, I show that prolonged repression preceded large-scale displacement in both cases. The findings suggest that displacement is a strategic form of escalation linking structural and physical violence, and highlight the importance of identifying sociocultural warning signs in efforts to predict and prevent mass atrocities.