'Wicked' Challenges in Migration Management: Weaponization, Politicization, and Hostile Influence Operations
As allegations of the weaponization of migration proliferate on both sides of the Atlantic, Professor Kelly M Greenhill will explore a triad of intertwined and self-reinforcing challenges that inform, affect and complicate migration management and the politics around border security: 1) the weaponization of migration for political, economic and/or military gain; 2) the politicization and exploitation of fears of migration for domestic political gain – or the weaponization of the weaponization of migration, if you will; and 3) the weaponization of the politicization of migration, in the form of hostile influence operations that rely on the deployment of rumors, conspiracy theories, and other forms of what Greenhill calls “extra-factual information” as well as on the direct and indirect creation of actual migration outflows.

Drawing upon evidence from recent and ongoing cases, Professor Greenhill will also discuss how each of these three distinct phenomena can feed and exacerbate the others, creating vicious feedback loops. leaving target states less secure and more vulnerable to future acts of migration predation and further endangering the human rights of the true victims of migration weaponization, the displaced.
Date: 19 March 2025, 17:00
Venue: Queen Elizabeth House, 3 Mansfield Road OX1 3TB
Venue Details: Seminar Room 1
Speaker: Professor Kelly Greenhill (Tufts University and MIT)
Organising department: Oxford Department of International Development
Part of: Refugee Studies Centre Public Seminar Series
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Public
Editor: Jo Boyce