https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642231182631 American Behavioral Scientist 1–17 © 2023 SAGE Publications Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/00027642231182631 journals.sagepub.com/home/abs Article The Bosnian War and Refugee Policy: Crisis Management and Migration Control Clara Lecadet 1 Abstract Based on research in the United Nations high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR) archives in Geneva, this article aims to reflect, through an examination of UNHCR’s huge operation during the Bosnian war, on the major role played by the crisis paradigm in conflict management and related population movements, and on the construction and conceptualization over time of long-term forms of migration management. It analyses how the notion of “preventive protection” which emerges in the early 1990s illustrates a shift in the asylum regime, which concerns altogether the categories of its beneficiaries, the spaces, and the very nature of its application. The focus on humanitarian operations taking place as close as possible to the areas from which refugees are coming is at the origin of new patterns of emergency management which intend to contain and eventually hinder massive refugee flows and migration. This new approach of refugees flow was experimented during the Bosnian war; the UNHCR reflected on this experience and its learnings to build up long-term strategies for managing migration in a context of increased States’ hostility to the permanent welcoming of refugees. The continuity between wartime and peacetime for experimenting and enforcing new modes of migration management is emphasized, in order to show that the importance of the crisis paradigm symbolized by open conflicts and wars is thereafter used as a tool to manage migration flows in ordinary times. Keywords UNHCR, Bosnian war, preventive protection, migration control, refugee crisis 1 Laboratoire d’anthropologie politique, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique-Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France Corresponding Author: Clara Lecadet, Laboratoire d’anthropologie politique, CNRS-EHESS, 54 bd Raspail, Paris, Île-de-France 75006, France. Email: clara.lecadet@ehess.fr 1182631ABS XX X 10.1177/00027642231182631American Behavioral ScientistLecadet research-article 2023