Summary of Kelly M. Greenhill's Weapons of Mass Migration

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 Conventional wisdom states that coercion is rare, but I demonstrate that it is used frequently and to great effect. I define coercive engineered migration as the cross-border population movements that are deliberately created or manipulated to induce political, military, and economic concessions from a target state or states.

#2 Coercive engineered migration is when a group is expelled from its land or property by another group in order to take it over or eliminate them as a threat. It is a subset of a broader class of events that rely on the creation and exploitation of crises as means to political and military ends.

#3 There have been at least 56 attempts at coercive engineered migration since the 1951 Refugee Convention. The groups of people exploited have ranged from co-nationals to migrants and asylum seekers from abroad.

#4 The prevalence of coercive engineered migration is difficult to measure, as it is often embedded within outflows that are also engineered for other reasons. It is significantly less common than interstate territorial disputes, but more prevalent than both intrastate wars and extended intermediate deterrence crises.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822517424

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Insights on Kelly M. Greenhill's Weapons of Mass Migration

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Conventional wisdom states that coercion is rare, but I demonstrate that it is used frequently and to great effect. I define coercive engineered migration as the cross-border population movements that are deliberately created or manipulated to induce political, military, and economic concessions from a target state or states.

#2

Coercive engineered migration is when a group is expelled from its land or property by another group in order to take it over or eliminate them as a threat. It is a subset of a broader class of events that rely on the creation and exploitation of crises as means to political and military ends.

#3

There have been at least 56 attempts at coercive engineered migration since the 1951 Refugee Convention. The groups of people exploited have ranged from co-nationals to migrants and asylum seekers from abroad.

#4

The prevalence of coercive engineered migration is difficult to measure, as it is often embedded within outflows that are also engineered for other reasons. It is significantly less common than interstate territorial disputes, but more prevalent than both intrastate wars and extended intermediate deterrence crises.

#5

The ambiguity of intent inherent in the Carter-Deng exchange effectively excludes the case from the accounting of cases presented here. But this raises several obvious questions: What basis have I used to conclude that coercive engineered migration was attempted in the cases identified in table 1. 1.

#6

There have been on average at least one attempt at coercive engineered migration per year since the Refugee Convention came into force. And although the potential significance of this phenomenon has been underappreciated by many migration scholars, the same cannot be said for potential target states.

#7

Generators are the most easily recognizable actors. They are actors such as Idi Amin and Fidel Castro, who directly create or threaten to create cross-border population movements unless targets concede to their demands.

#8

Agents provocateurs may instigate small-scale outflows in order to turn them into full-scale crises that catalyze regime change. They may even encourage outflows to generate fear of their consequences within potential recipient states.

#9

Weak actors often use mass migrations to influence their more powerful counterparts. For example, in international negotiations, weak actors may generate crises as a precursor to negotiations with more powerful ones.