Forced Migration and Global Politics

• Provides an accessible and thought-provoking introduction to the main debates and concepts in international relations and examines their relevance for understanding forced migration
• Utilizes a wide-range of real-world examples and in-depth case studies, including the harmonization of EU asylum and immigration policy and the securitization of asylum since 9/11
• Explores the relevance of cutting-edge debates in international relations to forced migration

Throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, millions of people have been forced to flee their homes. The causes and consequences of this and international responses to displacement lie at the very heart of world politics; however, these important issues have been largely neglected by its primary discipline: International Relations.

Redressing this gap, the book systematically applies International Relations (IR) theory to the international politics of forced migration. This represents the first textbook to merge conceptual tools of IR with empirical data on forced migration. It explains the central debates and concepts of IR – International Relations theories, sovereignty and statehood, security, international cooperation, global governance, global North–South relations, globalization, and regionalism – and highlights their relevance to forced migration. Using examples and in-depth case studies, Forced Migration and Global Politics adopts a ground-breaking approach to offer valuable insights to an issue of increasing complexity and importance in today's world.

Alexander Betts is Hedley Bull Research Fellow in International Relations at the University of Oxford, where he is also Director of the MacArthur Foundation-funded Global Migration Governance Project. He has written extensively on the international politics of refugee protection and migration, most recently co-authoring UNHCR: The Politics and Practice of Refugee Protection into the Twenty-First Century with Gil Loescher and James Milner (2008).