How Does Someone Who Has Been Forcibly Displaced Make the Decision to Cross an International Border?

Notwithstanding the al-Assad regime’s recent recapture of Aleppo, the crisis in Syria is unlikely to be resolved in the immediate future, and Europe is beginning to collapse under the strain of its inability to devise a tenable solution to the influx of refugees and asylum seekers. The perceived refugee crisis in the Western world is dominating the global conversation, and relatively little attention is being paid to the 40.8 million internally displaced. Internally displaced persons, or IDPs, by virtue of remaining in their country of origin, are largely considered to be just one component of any given state’s burden of impoverished, needy, or disenfranchised people. They are thus often excluded from international debate on the management of refugees and the appropriate responses to crises of displacement that reverberate on a transnational scale.