Crossing Borders Fiona B. Adamson International Migration and National Security
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Crossing Borders Crossing Borders Fiona B. Adamson International Migration and National Security International migration has moved to the top of the international security agenda. Increasingly, policy- makers in the United States, Europe, and around the world are making links between migration policy and national security. Much of this discussion has focused on migration ºows as a conduit for international terrorism. The ability of nineteen hijackers from overseas to enter, live, and train in the United States in preparation for carrying out attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pen- tagon could not but raise concerns regarding the relationship between the cross-border mobility of people and international terrorism. Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, the management of migration has become a top na- tional security priority for the United States, with concerns about migration helping to drive the largest reorganization of the U.S. government since the passage of the National Security Act of 1947.1 Even before the September 11 attacks, however, interest in the relationship between globalization, migration, and security had emerged both in the policy world and in some areas of the security studies ªeld.2 Migration was high on the European security agenda throughout the 1990s.3 The bombings in Madrid Fiona B. Adamson is Director of the Program in International Public Policy and Assistant Professor of International Relations at University College London. A version of this article was presented at the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies workshop “Globalization and National Security,” on June 11–12, 2004, at Harvard University. The author thanks the organizer of the workshop, Jonathan Kirshner, and the workshop participants for their helpful suggestions. In addition, she is grateful to Nora Bensahel, Alexander Cooley, Peter Liberman, Pieter van Houten, and two anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier versions of this article. 1. Since March 1, 2003, immigration and border control have fallen within the purview of the De- partment of Homeland Security; in January 2004 the Department of Homeland Security rolled out the new US-VISIT program, which began to introduce biometric technology at all U.S. immigra- tion and border control points. 2. See, for example, Roxanne Lynn Doty, “Immigration and the Politics of Security,” Security Studies, Vol. 8, Nos. 2/3 (Winter 1998/99–Spring 1999), pp. 71–93; Keith Krause and Michael C. Williams, eds., Critical Security Studies: Concepts and Cases (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997); Myron Weiner, “Security, Stability, and International Migration,” International Secu- rity, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Winter 1992/93), pp. 91–126; Myron Weiner, ed., International Migration and Security (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1993); and Myron Weiner, ed., The Global Migration Crisis: Chal- lenges to States and to Human Rights (New York: HarperCollins, 1995). 3. Fiona B. Adamson, “Globalization, International Migration, and Changing Security Interests in Western Europe,” paper presented at the Ninety-ªfth Annual Meeting of the American Political International Security, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Summer 2006), pp. 165–199 © 2006 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 165 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/isec.2006.31.1.165 by guest on 30 September 2021 International Security 31:1 166 on March 11, 2004, and in London on July 7, 2005, only reinforced already- existing fears regarding the links between migration and terrorism in Europe. Earlier incidents, such as the 1995 bombings of the Paris metro system by Algeria’s Armed Islamic Group and attacks in various Western European states in the 1990s by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, had already raised con- cerns regarding the relationship between migration and security. Some scholars have noted that the end of the Cold War and bipolarity has helped to transform both the nature and the function of national boundaries in ways that increasingly securitize migration and lead to a greater policing of national borders.4 In addition, concerns about the security impacts of massive refugee ºows and the roles that mobilized diasporas play in fueling violent conºicts around the globe were being discussed long before September 11.5 Moreover, migration and migrants have a long history of being viewed as closely linked to national security concerns. States have traditionally forged their national immigration policies in response to their security and economic interests.6 In the United States and other countries, migrants have all too often been viewed as national security threats during times of war or crisis because Science Association, Atlanta, Georgia, September 2–5, 1999; Sarah Collinson, Europe and Interna- tional Migration (London: Pinter, 1994); Jef Huysmans, “The European Union and the Securitiza- tion of Migration,” Journal of Common Market Studies, Vol. 38, No. 5 (December 2000), pp. 751–777; Jef Huysmans, “Contested Community: Migration and the Question of the Political in the EU,” in Morten Kelstrup and Michael C. Williams, eds., International Relations Theory and the Politics of European Integration: Power, Security, and Community (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 149–170; Peter J. Katzenstein, “Regional Orders: Security in Europe and Asia,” paper presented at the Thirty- ninth Annual International Studies Association Convention, Minneapolis, Minnesota, March 17– 21, 1998; and Ole Waever, Barry Buzan, Morten Kelstrup, and Pierre LeMaitre, eds., Identity, Migra- tion, and the New Security Agenda in Europe (New York: St. Martin’s, 1993). 4. Peter Andreas, Border Games: Policing the U.S.-Mexico Divide (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000); Peter Andreas and Timothy Snyder, eds., The Wall around the West: State Borders and Immigration Controls in North America and Europe (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littleªeld, 2000); Didier Bigo, Polices en réseaux: L’Expérience Européene (Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 1996); Didier Bigo, “Security, Borders, and the State,” in Paul Ganster, Alan Sweedler, James Scott, and Wolf Dieter-Eberwein, eds., Borders and Border Regions in Europe and North America (San Diego, Calif.: San Diego State University Press, 1997), pp. 81–104; and Malcolm Anderson and Monica den Boer, eds., Policing across National Boundaries (London: Pinter, 1994). 5. Aristide R. Zolberg, Astri Suhrke, and Sergio Aguayo, Escape from Violence: Conºict and the Refu- gee Crisis in the Developing World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989); Gil Loescher, Beyond Charity: International Cooperation and the Global Refugee Crisis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); Weiner, International Migration and Security; Barry R. Posen, “Military Responses to Refugee Disasters,” International Security, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Summer 1996), pp. 72–111; Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999); and Paul Collier, “Economic Causes of Civil Conºict and Their Implications for Policy,” Working Paper (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, June 15, 2000). 6. Christopher Rudolph, “Security and the Political Economy of Migration,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 97, No. 4 (November 2003), pp. 603–620. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/isec.2006.31.1.165 by guest on 30 September 2021 Crossing Borders 167 of the possibility that they may possess dual political loyalties or represent a “ªfth column” in a conºict.7 Scholars in mainstream security studies have often dismissed such concerns as insigniªcant or as issues limited to matters of domestic politics and policy. Yet international security scholars and policymakers are ªnding it increasingly difªcult to ignore the relationship between migration and security in a highly interconnected world deªned by globalization processes. Globalization is changing the overall environment in which states operate, including how they formulate their security policies. The management of international migration ºows is one area in which policymakers are having to weigh the costs and beneªts of particular policies with an eye to their overall implications for inter- national security, in addition to their implications for other policy areas, such as social welfare and economic growth. To assess the implications of any par- ticular set of migration policies for national security, however, it is ªrst neces- sary to understand the ways in which migration ºows can potentially help or hinder states’ security interests. This article provides a framework for thinking about the relationship be- tween international migration and national security by surveying how cross- border migration ºows affect state interests in three core areas of national security concern: state sovereignty, or the overall capacity and autonomy of state actors; the balance of power among states; and the nature of violent conºict in the international system.8 A focus on traditional national security in- terests does not imply that such interests should always trump other factors relating to migration, or that a state-centric framework is the only lens through which to view the relationship between migration and security. Migration and migration policies are also closely intertwined with issues relating to individ- ual and human security. While human security and national security para- digms need not necessarily be diametrically opposed, each does suggest a particular analytical lens through which one