The Securitization of Refugee Movements in Contemporary Politics

Abstract

Securitization implies moving a situation up the security agenda of a state, so as to perceive it as a potential existential threat to national security. This article attempts to analyze the post-cold war refugee situations in context of the securitization concerns they raised for states hosting them. Here both the traditional and non-traditional contours of security are highlighted, including incidents of direct armed conflict between sending and receiving dyad, external intervention, infiltration or facilitation of trans-national movements across international borders and compromise of territorial integrity in the wake of these movements. The current narrative of persecution and accusation around refugee movements has led to unnecessary bias, directed towards those fleeing conflict zones. There is a need for a delicate balance between concerns of state and human security in the wake of these movements. This can help to understand why these seemingly humanitarian disasters have lately been identified as a securitization concern for host states in international politics. The analysis also uses social constructivism to establish the host state‟s challenges; which may account for as an incremental threat to the integrity of host state‟s ethnic, demographic and social constructs. The primary question that the paper seeks to address is to why and how these movements were able to raise security concerns, though they are usually associated with destitution and marginalization, yet lately have been associated with diffusing negative externalities of violent conflict zones across international borders.