Professor Kelly M. Greenhill (Ph.D., MIT) is a political scientist with joint appointments at Tufts University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Greenhill is also a Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center in Washington, DC. Her book Weapons of Mass Migration (Cornell University Press, 2016) has been highly influential in the field of research on the instrumentalisation of migration, of which she is a leading figure. Kelly M. Greenhill is currently conducting additional research on the geopolitics of forced migration in collaboration with the Gerda Henkel Foundation.
Voxeurop: In your work you use the concept of the weaponisation of migration. How can we define it?
Kelly Greenhill: A “weapon” is a tool used by states and non-state actors to attack, defend or deter, in the furtherance of political, economic and military objectives. Weaponised migration, by extension, refers to situations in which governments or non-state actors deliberately create, impede, or manipulate population inflows or outflows, or simply threaten to do so, in order to achieve political, economic and/or military aims.
I identify four overlapping types of weaponised (or “strategically engineered”) migration, distinguished by the objectives for which they are undertaken.
In exportive engineered migration, the objective is to fortify a government’s domestic political position, either by expelling dissidents or by attempting to discomfit, humiliate, or destabilise other governments. This was likely what Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenka was up to in late 2021, when he lured migrants and asylum seekers to Belarus from Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, and transferred them to the EU border, and encouraged them to cross, creating a political and humanitarian headache for neighbouring states and the EU as a whole.
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Militarised engineered migrations are employed during active conflict to gain military advantage against an adversary, by using population movements to disrupt or destroy an opponent’s command and control, supply chain, or movement capabilities, or to gain manpower by pressganging those displaced into military service. A common feature in insurgency and counter-insurgency campaigns, all parties to the Syrian civil war, for instance, have employed this kind of “weaponisation”.
In “dispossessive” engineered migration, the aim is seizure of the territory or property of the displaced or their elimination as a threat to the dominance of the group engaged in “weaponisation”. It includes what is frequently referred to as ethnic cleansing and was a common feature of the Balkan wars in the 1990s, following Yugoslavia’s collapse, and, though few are paying attention, it is happening in Sudan today.
Finally, in coercive engineered migration, population movements are created, impeded, or manipulated, to extract political, military and/or economic concessions from target states. For instance, when former Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi threatened to flood Europe with migrants if not granted sanctions relief, billions of Euros in aid, and other concessions, he was engaged in this kind of coercion. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has similarly repeatedly threatened to flood Europe with (mostly Syrian) refugees and other migrants. One such episode resulted in the oft-maligned 2016 EU-Turkey deal.
The weaponisation of migrants isn’t new. How far back can we trace this phenomenon?
“Weaponisation” is an age-old tool. We know, for instance, strategically engineered migration was a commonly used policy tool in the Assyrian Empire in the 8th and 7th centuries, B.C. It is a very old tool!
What is the profile of governments that use these methods?
There is not a single type of actor or state who uses this tool. Migration weaponisation has been employed by both weak and strong states, democratic and autocratic. Much depends on the objectives of the weaponiser(s) in a particular case and the perceived pros and cons of using various tools, including migration weaponisation, military force, etc. At the same time, democratic states are, on average, far less likely to employ this tool than their illiberal counterparts.
What are the general aims of these governments?
The objectives of those who use this tool are quite diverse. Even within a single variant, such as “weaponisation” undertaken to extract concessions from target states, goals are quite varied, from straightforward demands for financial assistance on one end of the spectrum to complex demands for military intervention and assistance in executing regime change on the other.
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In your work you speak of “coercive migration” and distinguish between “generators”, “provocateurs” and “opportunists”. What do these terms mean?
Generators take direct actions to create or impede cross-border movements. They start crises, or at least threaten to do so. Agents provocateur, in contrast, take direct actions that they think will lead to the creation of migration crises by others, indirectly creating crises. Opportunists are more passive. They do not create crises, directly or indirectly, but rather simply manipulate or exploit crises already created by others.
Over the years, the EU has concluded many agreements with third countries in order to manage migration. By showing that the European Union is making great efforts to prevent entry on its soil and that it has to rely on external actors, whoever they may be, could these agreements encourage more forced migration?
Yes, attempting to externalise migration management can be a double-edged sword. Making deals can keep [the number of migrants] lower than [it] would otherwise be, thereby reducing the [visibility] of irregular migration in domestic politics as well as allow [countries that externalise migration management] to eschew concessions. However, “warehousing” countries can and often have become weaponisers themselves. So, a short-term fix may beget more longer-term problems, cultivating a new and bigger pool of potential weaponisers as well as captive groups of people who can be turned into victimised weapons.
Moreover, for advanced liberal democracies, buying off others to keep migrants at bay may also come at a high political and moral cost. Contravening humanitarian and legal obligations can reinforce anti-immigration sentiment domestically and further undermine the values that liberal states claim to hold dear. Moreover, when one country does it, it often encourages others to follow suit, triggering a cascade of illiberal anti-migration measures. The bottom line is that races to the bottom and buck-passing rarely reduce vulnerability over the longer term. These behaviours just push the problems down the road where they can grow bigger.
For advanced liberal democracies, buying off others to keep migrants at bay may also come at a high political and moral cost
When we think of the weaponisation of migration in Europe, we often think of third countries putting pressure on European countries. Does it happen the other way around?
Certainly not. We have witnessed numerous cases of European countries using migration to pressure other European countries. Additionally, European countries can and have put pressure on countries on Europe’s periphery and beyond. There was an episode between France and Italy over refugees from the MENA region In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, for instance.
However, more commonly, European countries preemptively offer deals to third countries to dissuade them from engaging in migration weaponisation and as a tool of continental migration management. Sometimes such moves are successful; sometimes, they simply incentivise partner countries to escalate and demand better deals. Irrespective of who is applying pressure on whom, however, the costs for the displaced themselves tend to be significant.
You mentioned “weaponisation of weaponisation”. What is that? How dangerous can it be?
The weaponisation of migration has in recent years become much more visible than it used to be, especially the coercive variant. This is because it appears that the number of governments willing to use the tactic publicly—as opposed to privately, by issuing threats directly to government officials—has risen. So has the number of targeted countries that are prepared to publicly acknowledge that they are being blackmailed by friend and foe alike. This marks a substantive change from decades past.
This growing transparency has its pros and cons. On the one hand, it makes coercers’ demands more credible, which could in turn push targeted governments to pursue early, pre-crisis negotiations—something that can be invaluable in forestalling full-blown humanitarian and political crises from materialising. However, on the other hand, politically expedient claims that adversaries are engaged in weaponised migration—which I refer to as a kind of “weaponisation of the weaponisation of migration” can serve as political cover for adoption of illiberal and possibly illegal immigration policies and help justify an array of policies that might otherwise generate more pushback. What I mean is that sometimes politicians play the “protection from weaponisation of migration card” in order to lobby for the adoption of restrictionist policies and/or to deflect attention from potentially illegal interdiction-related behaviour.
This in effect means that both real and potentially unfounded claims of migration weaponisation can be strategically wielded in the service of other political goals and policies. Such moves are likely to further weaken the global refugee regime and the universal humanitarian standards it sought to establish and enshrine.
Moreover, “weaponisation of weaponisation” may be further exploited by external rivals and strategic competitors, who can take advantage of the political terrain pre-softened by domestic politicians engaged in the “weaponisation of weaponisation”, to insert noxious rumours and other kinds of disinformation into target states in bids to further heighten distrust in domestic institutions and in the capacity of national governments to protect their populations and keep their borders secure, leading to deleterious implications for national security.
🤝 This article is published within the Come Together collaborative project.
