Weaponized Migration

3 Credits · Level: Graduate

Weaponized Migration, and Other Ways Forced Displacement Affects Security” is about the ways in which states and nonstate actors use migrants, migration flows, and narratives about migration as instruments of policy, strategic competition, or war. The first part of the course examines important trends in migration and security. We begin with a session on belonging, analyzing citizenship and identity politics in the United States and other countries. In this session, we ask why migration and narratives about migration can so effectively be politicized and exploited for political leverage. Next, we analyze the relationship between migration and security, evaluating how human, national, and international security goals overlap and diverge in migration politics. And we explore the drivers of forced migration--including war, persecution, climate change, and economy—as well as the current national and international efforts to govern and manage these flows. The second part of the course asks how state and nonstate actors “weaponize” migration or use migrants for political or economic gain. We also examine the consequences and effectiveness of their efforts. We cover topics such as using migration and the threat of migration for diplomatic leverage, strategically engineering migration flows, the role of migration in information warfare, the dynamics of diaspora influence in civil wars and strategic competition, radicalization and recruitment efforts that exploit refugee populations, and people smuggling. The third part of the course asks how national communities can build resilience against efforts to exploit migration flows and migrants. We consider various policy proposals, and assess the prospects for new and better policy responses to forced migration and to competitors’ efforts to weaponize migration. We assess resilience-building proposals among both host and migrant populations.