Political Crises and International Migration

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Political crisis is a major cause of emigration and forced displacement. This involves people fleeing, for example, from democratic retrenchment and regime collapse, as well as from protracted or sudden political violence and instability. At the same time, migration can also be the cause of political crisis in origin, transit, and destination countries. This leads governments to attempt to control entry, residence, and exit from their territory. This panel engages with this two-way relationship between political crisis and international migration, drawing on the concepts of crisis migration (McAdam, 2014), migration crises (Menjívar et al., 2019) and research on the relation between crisis and migration (Lindley, 2016). The papers position state actors as key decision makers and implementers of continual attempts to control movement across international borders and people’s access to rights inside the territory; they also show that states react to crises, but states also create and manipulate crises. With the intention of theory building on political crises, we will discuss various trade-offs and dilemmas that states face and the legal effects stemming from different political regimes, including transitions of democratization and autocratization.

Sub Unit

• Division 52: Migration & Citizenship

Individual Presentations

• Political Crises and International Migration - Victoria Finn, University of Oslo

• A Century of State-Generated Migration “Crises” - Fiona B. Adamson, SOAS University of London; Kelly M. Greenhill, Tufts and Harvard Universities

• Threatening Refugees: Refugee Rentierism and Arms Deals in Jordan, 1967–77 - Lillian Frost, Virginia Tech

• Documenting as State Making: Dilemmas in Regularizing Undocumented Immigrants - Andres Besserer Rayas, The Graduate Center, City University of New York

• Immigration Policy in Times of Autocratization - K Natter

Chair

• Victoria Finn University of Oslo

Discussant

• Michael Orlando Sharpe CUNY-York College/Graduate Center