Subject: The effects of Refugees on the Nations, States ‘security

               Abstract

This brief paper aims to study the effects of refugees on the security of Nations, States. Several previous scientific researches can be used as a base to find out difficulties that countries have had to deal with. This paper would like to suggest future research’s relating to this topic.

I. Introduction

According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ‘Human rights are rights inherent to all human beings, regardless of race, sex, nationality, ethnicity, language, religion, or any other status. Human rights include the right to life and liberty, freedom from slavery and torture, freedom of opinion and expression, the right to work and education, and many more.  Everyone is entitled to these rights, without discrimination’. In 2019, 24.9 million people have been robbed by human trafficking. One of the reason that leads to the increased number of international human traffickers has been refugees. Migration is still seen as primarily the concern of the State. Migration is often cast as a “problem” to control  in the domestic politics of richer countries, heightened by recent concerns with “national security”. One of the policies that some countries have imposed on the regular basis is “ stratified entry” such as tightly defining rights to asylum, stratifying rights with gendered implications,... With stronger restrictions on entry, illegal or irregular migration thrives.  

The purpose of this  paper is to study “The effects of Refugees on the Nations, States ‘security”. This paper would like to answer the question:” How current mass migration including refugees altered the physical boundaries of sovereign states and regional blocs?” This paper would like to contribute to the research of international migration. Further feedback from other academia’s is really important to the complete of this report. 

This paper is divided into 4 chapters including introduction, literature review, methodology, conclusion and further suggestions.

II. Literature review

In this chapter, the author would like to cite some previous scientific research’s relating to this topic.

Edwin S. Rubenstein argued that the most negative effect of refugee or asylee (an individual who is already in the United States but is unable or unwilling to return to his own country due to fear of persecution) is the chain migration problem. The author explained that after one year arrival to America, refugees or asylees can apply for Legal Permanent Resident (LPR) status and after 5 years of living in America, they can apply for U.S. citizenships. When they get married, their sons and daughters can become legal immigrants of U.S. Besides, refugees from Iraq, Somali,... have also threatened the national security of America. Furthermore, refugees can create social burden.

Sarah Deardoff Miller argued that refugees have had economic, environmental, social, political and security impacts on Nations, States. On security aspects, the author said that refugees can be regarded as the reason leads to countries’ destabilization that take them in. The author explained that political activists have had a tendency to use the host countries as bases for mobilizing and recruiting insurgents.

III. Methodology

Qualitative research is applied to study the subject: “The effects of Refugees on the Nations, States ‘security”.

This chapter is categorized into 3 sections to talk about the definition of refugees, causes of refugees, effects of refugees on the countries. The aim of these sections is to trace back to the origin of refugees. To have the basic understanding of refugees can be essential for readers to expand knowledge as well as analyze news, current issues relating to international migration in specific and in international relation in general. “When we are pursuing something, a clear and precise conception of what we are pursuing would seem to be the first thing we need”(John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism).

Definition of refugees
According to UNHCR, “A refugee is someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war or violence. A refugee has a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. Most likely, they cannot return home or are afraid to do so. War and ethnic, tribal and religious violence are leading causes of refugees fleeing their countries”. 
There are some types of refugees: a stateless person, an asylum seeker,...

Causes of refugees
Causes of refugees include push and pull factors. Push factors are negative effects or consequences of their origin countries on emigrants that force them to lead their countries. On the contrary, pull factors are interests, benefits or influences of other countries that emigrants have had a desire to settle down.
The main actor of this paper is refugees. This paper would like to present main push and pull factors that cause refugees.
Push factor: Civil war  causes population flows. To cite an example, the end of cold war lead to regime changes in the Soviet Union and the  communist system in West Europe. This event boomed the number of international migration and refugees. This was the reason why many citizens decided to leave their instable origin country in search of shelter and safer place in another countries. 
Pull factors: include migration legislation and the labour market situation in hosting countries (Boswell,2002). 

Effects of refugees on the  security of countries
Before studying the effects of refugees on the security of countries, the author would like to present the definition of boundary and border.

Boundaries: have been a key component of the modern territorial vocabulary. They have origins in Euclidean thinking, which sees space as two-dimensional. They also fit in well with Kantian rationality, which considers space and time as two symmetrical conditions of human experience. They can be considered “a generic term for the linear spatial discontinuity” .

Border: constitute both a restriction and an expansion of the semantic field of boundaries, and in this sense it is hard to discuss one term without examining the other. Borders have indeed been endowed with a stronger political use than boundaries, having been “invented” in modern times to express a specific balance of territorialized powers. They also invite a more-than-linear approach, enabling the possibility of borderlands. 

In the process of globalization, the definitions of boundaries and borders has to strive to account for complex elements interacting in a technology-dependent, trade, cultural cooperation between nations, states. 

International migration including refugees has some negative effects on the physical boundaries of sovereign states and regional blocs:

Countries have had to increase the number of border checkpoints to control the flow of migration for fear of terrorism, drug and human  trafficking and the crossing of undocumented persons. Through border surveillance, in the past 15 years, 5000 Mexican migrants have died trying  to enter the United States. As a consequence, individual security has been threatening. On the contrary, American citizen can cross into Mexico without no need to show any documents and the Mexican border checkpoints have been less than those in America. No American have died trying to enter Mexico. This phenomenon has intensified as a result of legislative changes that blurred the distinction between “legal of fence” and criminal or terrorist activities as a result of which resident undocumented migrants are treated  as if they were entering the United States . 

Migrations in general and refugees in particular can use the territory of hosting country for military and political purposes. To cite an example, in 1975, Thailand offered the Khmer Rouge regime recognition, contacts between the two sides began. In late April 1975, twenty Khmer Rouge soldiers reportedly contacted Thai border authorities at Aranyaprathet district of Prachinburi Province, stating that they wanted the Thai-Cambodian border to reopen as soon as the situation in Cambodia returned to normal.

IV. Conclusion and future suggestions

Figure 1 demonstrates numbers relating to International refugees. About 80% of refugees live in countries neighboring of their countries of origin. For example, Mexican people have had tendency to migrate to America in search of job, better and more stable life. Therefore, this trend has negative effects on American native people. Therefore, Donald Trump was elected because of his migration policies. After he was in office, he imposed a plan to build a wall between the boundary of America and Mexico. 57% of UNHCR refugees came from three countries including Syria, Afghanistan and South Sudan which demonstrates that origin countries that have instable political and social life can lead to the high number of emigrations to another countries to seek for more stable life. 

This figure has partly illustrated instable status of outward migration. International migration in general and refugee in specific has become one of the global issues recently that both sending and receiving countries have figured out the essential solutions and impose proper policies on limiting the number of immigrants including refugees.

Later research can present some other effects of refugees on the security of countries due to the fact that the cited effects are still limited. Besides, later papers can present practical policies that can be applied to deal with the increased number of international migrations in general and refugees in particular. Furthermore, later paper can study the role of non governmental organization to protect the right of international migrations in general and refugees in specific in hosting countries.

Figure 1: Chart of international refugees