Between 2008 and 2018, the number of asylum seekers from Africa entering the European Union tripled. In this paper, we analyze whether this increase can be explained by intensified violent conflicts in the countries of origin. We use quarterly data on bilateral flows of asylum seekers from 48 African into 31 European countries. We find that an increase in the number of violent incidents leads to an increase in the number of refugees within country-dyads. However, this effect declined in size over time. Since the peak of the “refugee crisis” of 2015, migration increasingly appears as a self-reinforcing process.
