Law, Security and Migration: The Nationalistic Turn in the International Order

This book analyzes the impact of the increasing securitization of migration within the international legal and political order.

Migration has increasingly become a security issue. Examining this tendency towards the securitization of migration around the world, this book argues that it is indicative of a shift in the international order towards geopolitical and security strategies, and away from cooperation and multilateralism. States are now more inclined to produce national legislation in the fields of countering terrorism, migration, and security, than dealing with such global issues through international cooperation and international norm-making. As such, this book demonstrates, they tend to prioritize national rather than international interests in a radical shift away from the universal rights and liberal values that were dominant at the end of the 20th century, to a model based on geopolitical interests. The securitization of migration is a process that not only affects the rights of migrants, but ushers in a new international legal and political order.

This book will be of considerable interest to scholars and professionals in the fields of international law, international relations, migration, security, and human rights.

Laura Planas Gifra is Lecturer in the Department of Law at Pompeu Fabra University, Spain.