Human Mobility and Security

Abstract

This chapter explores the relationship between security and human mobility, offering some insight into the migration-security nexus first by establishing where migration has consistently been characterized as a point of contestation for security studies. The assumption that states are the providers of security for their populations is called to question when large numbers of people are forced to flee a country because they are insecure. Following that, the chapter turns to the construction of human mobility as a threat to bounded human communities, with particular attention to how Western states construct immigration as a threat. Finally, the chapter considers the consequences of this construction: how the provision of security for some people renders other people insecure.