The Coercive Power of Unnatural Disasters.

While refugee and migration flows would only rarely be appropriately classified as issues of vital national interest, they have nevertheless emerged as major issues in contemporary international relations and foreign policy, as well as within many states significant domestic political problems. Long before September 11th galvanized a new preoccupation with border security, issues surrounding refugees and illegal migrants had in many countries transmuted from a matter of "low politics" to a matter of "high politics," involving a shift in the definition of national security threats and in the practice of security policy. In fact, migration-related anxieties have been immutably on the rise since the early 1980s, when the number of asylum seekers trying to enter the West began a steep and prolonged ascent, leading a majority of Europeans to declare "refugees and uncontrolled immigration" their most pressing security concern. Similarly, in the United States calls to increase the stringency of immigration policies—and tighten access to social services—have proven effective campaign fodder, especially in states with large immigrant populations. In fact, one 2005 poll indicated that 69 percent of Americans believe immigration-related issues now affect the way they vote. While our understanding of the consequences of such anxieties is relatively well developed, such is not the case with respect to their causes. Assessments within recipient states of the causes of migration crises have tended to privilege transparent, individual-level "pull factors" that drive migration, such as the search for a better socio-economic future over less obvious, yet also critically important, state and group-level "push factors," such as the desire to influence policy within potential receiving states. Using combination of large-N data and comparative case study analysis (of Kosovo and Haiti), this paper offers a new look at the underappreciated role of push factors in the creation and escalation of migration crises and, in particular, the role of attempted coercion in catalyzing and exacerbating crises. Specifically, the paper presents—and offers a plausibility probe of—a new theory to explain how and under what conditions states' material fears of massive inflows may come into conflict with their normative commitments to the protection of the displaced, and do so in ways that facilitate successful coercion of the strong by the relatively weak. This kind of coercion does not always succeed. Still, for reasons this paper will make clear, it succeeds with greater frequency than traditional IR theory would predict, given the power and capabilities asymmetries that tend to exist between coercers and their targets. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]