BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Sociol.
Sec. Migration and Society
This article is part of the Research TopicExploring Human Mobility Dynamics: Causes and Implications with Geospatial Big Data InsightsView all articles
Invisible Exodus: Toward a Methodology for Estimating Religious Displacement in Nigeria
Provisionally accepted
Dennis P. Petri1*
John T. Bainbridge2- 1Latin American University of Science and Technology, San José, Costa Rica
- 2International Institute for Religious Freedom, Edgemead, South Africa
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The purview of the current study is to estimate the religious affiliation of Nigerian displaced persons, specifically to assess the number of internally displaced Christians. Although official data sources such as the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, International Organization for Migration, and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees do not disaggregate internally displaced persons by religion, a growing body of evidence indicates that a substantial proportion of these individuals are Christians displaced as a result of religiously motivated violence. Because major displacement datasets lack religious identifiers, this study develops a proxy-based estimation model that infers the religious composition of displacement through patterns of targeted violence. This approach directly addresses the absence of systematic data on the religious affiliation of victims of forced displacement, offering an innovative method to approximate what existing sources cannot measure. We apply state-level ratios of religiously targeted killings from the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa to estimate the likely number of displaced Christians in 2023. This study finds that Christian communities in Nigeria experience disproportionate displacement linked to community-targeted violence, with northwestern states Katsina, Sokoto, and Zamfara showing the highest relative disparities and Borno and Taraba contributing the largest absolute numbers. While these patterns align with known hotspots of insecurity, the analysis relies on modeled relationships between killings and displacement and on proxy data, so the findings should be interpreted as indicative rather than definitive. The study underscores the need for more disaggregated humanitarian data to better understand the role of religious persecution in forced migration.
Keywords: Religious displacement, Nigeria, internally displaced persons (IDPs), Christianpersecution, Religious violence, Proxy estimation, Displacement data gaps, Methodology for religiousdemographics
Received: 01 Aug 2025; Accepted: 18 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Petri and Bainbridge. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Dennis P. Petri, dpetrik299@ulacit.ed.cr
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