Security, Stability, and International Migration

gee issues, no longer the sole concern of ministries of labor or of immigration, are now matters of high international politics, engaging the attention of heads of states, cabinets, and key ministries involved in defense, internal security, and external relations. Certainly the most dramatic high-politics event involving international migration in recent years was the exodus of East Germans to Austria through Czechoslovakia and Hungary in July and August 1989; it precipitated the decision of the German Democratic Republic to open its western borders, a massive migration westward followed by the fall of the East German government, and the absorption of East Germany by the Federal Republic of Germany. It was flight, not an invasion, that ultimately destroyed the East German state.’ Examples abound of migration flows-both of economic migrants affected by the push and pull of differentials in employment opportunities and income , and of refugees from the pushes of domestic turmoil and persecutionthat have generated conflicts within and between states and have therefore risen to the top of the political agenda. Among these examples are the rise of right-wing anti-migrant political parties throughout Western Europe; the conflict between the United States and Great Britain over the forcible repatriation of refugees from Hong Kong; the U.S.-Israeli controversy over the settlement of Soviet Jews on the West Bank; the placement of Western migrants by Iraq at strategic locations in order to prevent air strikes; the anxieties in Western Europe over a possible influx of migrants from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union; a threat by Palestinian radicals that they would launch terrorist attacks against airlines that carried Soviet Jews to Israel; an Myron Weiner is Ford International Professor in the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was director of the Center of lnternational Studies at MITfrom 1987 to 1992. For helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper I am grateful to Rogers Brubaker, Karen Jacobsen, Robert Jervis, Stephen Krasner, Robert Lucas, Rosemarie Rogers, and Sharon Russell. 1. Timothy Garton Ash, “The German Revolution,” The New York Review of Books, December 21, 1989, pp. 14-17, provides an informed eye-witness account of how the exodus of East Germans in the summer and fall of 1989 led to the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and the absorption of the East German state into West Germany. International Security, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Winter 1992/93), pp. 91-126 01992 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 91 International Security 17:3 I 92 invasion of Rwanda by armed Tutsi refugees in Uganda aimed at overthrowing the Hutu-dominated government; the successful defeat of the Kabul regime, after thirteen years of warfare, by the Afghan mujaheddin. One could go on, drawing examples from the daily press to make three points: First, international migration shows no sign of abating. Indeed, with the end of the Cold War there has been a resurgence of violent secessionist movements that create refugee flows,2while barriers to exit from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe have been lifted. The breakup of empires and countries into smaller units has created minorities who now feel insecure .3 Vast differentials in income and employment opportunities among countries persist, providing the push and pull that motivate economic mig r a n t ~ . ~ Environmental degradation, droughts, floods, famines, and civil conflicts compel people to flee across international border^.^ And new global 2. On secessionist movements, see Allen Buchanan, Secession: The Morality of Political Divorce from Fort Sumter to Lithuania and Quebec (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1991).This otherwise excellent analysis by a political philosopher does not deal with the problem of minorities that remain in successor states. 3. Democratization and political liberalization of authoritarian regimes have enabled people to leave who previously were denied the right of exit. An entire region of the world, ranging from Central Europe to the Chinese border, had imprisoned those who sought to emigrate. Similar restrictions continue to operate for several of the remaining communist countries. If and when the regimes of North Korea and China liberalize, another large region of the world will allow its citizens to...