ISSN 2309-0081 Naseem, Ahmad & Mahmood (2021) 356 I www.irss.academyirmbr.com April 2021 International Review of Social Sciences Vol. 9 Issue.4 R S S Security as a Social Construct in States Hosting Ethnopolitically Proximal Refugee Groups: A Case Study of Afghan Refugee Situation in Pakistan NOORULAIN NASEEM MPhil in Peace and Conflict Studies, Visiting lecturer in the Department of International Relations National University of Modern Languages, Islamabad. Dr. RASHID AHMAD Assistant Professor in the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies, National Defence University, Islamabad. Email: rashidahmed@ndu.edu.pk Dr. SADIA MAHMOOD Assistant Professor at the National Institute of Pakistan Studies, Quaid-i-Azam University Islamabad. Abstract This paper aims to analyze the security concerns to Pakistan from hosting around 3.5 million Afghan Refugees for around four decades. The term security is widened in coming analysis to accommodate societal and political security concerns to Pakistan, which it faced directly or indirectly from the perpetual movement of personnel across the Af-Pak border and social contact of refugee groups with the local population. The first research question the study addresses is; How did the Afghan refugee movement negatively affect the security paradigm of Pakistan? Here we analyze the preconditions in the host state under which mass social contact of host community with refugee groups resulted in establishing patterns of movement across the border, maintaining transnational ties, strengthening of affinity links, and rise of affective motivation for belligerent causes in ethnically similar groups within Pakistan. This seems to have facilitated the infiltration of crime and terror nexuses and the introduction of trans-national rebellions and terrorist activities in border areas of Pakistan. The research then further asks why Pakistan did not securitize this exchange of personnel, networking, and integration with the local community as a medium to spillover of conflict from across the border? This question helps to analyze precisely what social, political, and cultural preconditions in Pakistan acted as ethnopolitical conduciveness for the state to de-securitize protracted Refugee Hosting and subsequently resulted in internal and border security breaches. Keywords: Afghan Refugee Movement, Ethnic Solidarities, Diffusion of Violence, Spillover of Conflict, Border Control, Societal Security, Ethnic Conflict. Introduction By Ethnopolitically conduciveness, we mean Host States (HS), including Pakistan, that hold significant proximity with refugees based on ethnic, social, and cultural similarities. Also, such states may have significant political and strategic stakes attached to the hosting of Refugees. These socio-political circumstances make host communities sharing affinity links with refugees; as being conducive to spillover of negative externalities of violent conflicts, such negative externalities may include like armament, rebels, methods of combat and ideologies, and may travel in disguise of refugee groups or seeking facilitation of refugee movements as an established pattern of back and forth movement of personnel and finances; a