Overflight, 110
“Coercive engineered migrations (or coercion−driven migrations) are «those cross−border population movements that are deliberately created or manipulated in order to induce political, military and/or economic concessions from a target state or states.» … It is likely, at least in part as a consequence of its embedded and often camouflaged nature, that its prevalence has also been generally underrecognized and its significance, underappreciated. …
In fact, well over forty groups of displaced people have been used as pawns in at least fifty−six discrete attempts at coercive engineered migration since the advent of the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention alone. …
A failure to appreciate the relative pervasiveness of a frequently employed policy weapon can actively impede the ability of both scholars and policymakers to understand, combat, and respond to potential threats, as well as to protect those victimized by its use.
… Like immigration and refugee policy more generally, real and threatened migration crises tend to split societies into (at least) two mutually antagonistic and often highly mobilized groups: the prorefugee/migrant camp and anti−refugee/migrant camp. What it means to be pro− or anti−refugee/migrant varies depending on the target and the crisis. … The bottom line is that, because targets cannot simultaneously satisfy demands both to accept and reject a given group of migrants or refugees, leaders facing highly mobilized and highly polarized interests can find themselves on the horns of a real dilemma, whereby it may be impossible to satisfy the demands of one camp without alienating the other.
… Under such conditions, leaders may face strong domestic−level incentives to concede to coercers’ international−level demands. …
In fact, would−be coercers often do more than simply exploit extant heterogeneity within target states. They may also aim to increase target vulnerability over time by acting in ways designed to directly or indirectly catalyze greater mobilization, heighten the degree of polarization between groups, and thereby reduce the available policy options open to targets. …
In other words, would−be coercers can effectively engage – with the (often unintentional) assistance of the pro−refugee/migrant camp – in a kind of norms−aided entrapment, whereby humanitarian norms are used as coercive cudgels by actors with selfish, self−serving motives as well as those with more altruistic aims, often simultaneously.”
Kelly M. Greenhill, Weapons of Mass Migration