Anticipatory, Chronic, and Imminent: A Typology of Insecurities Underlying Protracted Conflict Displacement and Its Implications

Protracted armed conflicts increasingly drive long‐term displacement, yet demographic frameworks often treat forced migration from conflict settings as a response to acute, singular events. This study introduces a typology of displacement grounded in the tempo and form of conflict‐related insecurities—anticipatory, chronic, and imminent—and examines their consequences for women displaced from Myanmar to Thailand. Using survey data from 390 women, latent class analysis identified distinct pre‐displacement insecurity profiles and linked them to post‐displacement outcomes, including parallel insecurity profiles, mobility constraints, and labor exploitation. We also examined legal status and residence type as additional understudied yet policy‐relevant post‐displacement outcomes. Most respondents fled under anticipatory or chronic conditions rather than acute violence, underscoring that displacement from protracted conflict settings is often propelled by cumulative structural harm. Regression models showed that women who fled under chronic or imminent insecurity were substantially more likely to experience continued precarity after migration, including camp residence and insecure legal status. These findings highlight the need for temporal nuance in migration theory and humanitarian policy, recognizing conflict displacement as a prolonged process with enduring insecurities for women, families, and future generations, rather than a discrete event.