When migrants become weapons

CREATING MORE TARGETS

Historically, the policy responses to weaponized migration have fallen into several distinct categories. As the high success rate of the tactic shows, governments have frequently chosen to concede to the coercers’ demands. In addition to potential reputational and other political costs, however, a drawback to conceding is that it encourages the weaponizers, like successful hostage takers, to return to the strategy time and again. Cuba, for instance, used weaponized migration against the United States on three different occasions between the 1960s and the 1990s—most notoriously permitting the departure to the coast of Florida of more than 125,000 Cubans during the 1980 Mariel boatlift—in order to obtain a variety of concessions. Haiti did the same in the 1970s and 1980s under the Duvaliers. This continued in the 1990s and into the early years of this century under Aristide, at which point Aristide made one migration threat too many and found himself being flown into exile in central Africa by a fed-up Washington. More recently, the EU’s concessions to Libya and Turkey have encouraged those countries to come back for more. The fact that the Europeans have paid these countries over sustained periods to host ever-larger numbers of displaced people—Turkey is host to more refugees than any other country—also means that their threats should be treated as credible.

When migrants become weapons
The long history and worrying future of a coercive tactic

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