Reflective essay international relations, Lecture notes of Political Theory

Download Reflective essay international relations and more Lecture notes Political Theory in PDF only on Docsity! Assignment 2 - Question 5 Why is migration a contested issue in International Relations? Migration is a contested issue because it represents a major global change and it significantly marks not only the domestic policies of a country but also the international relations between countries and foreign policies. It is considered to be the fundamental phenomenon that characterizes the period in which we are living right now. International Relations is a discipline that concerns the state-to-state interaction, and migration concerns the movement of people from one place to the other, and this movement can have many different causes. One thing we know for sure is that migration has always existed because the movement of people from one state to the other has always existed, it is a universal character that does not concern just a single country, but the entire world. The discipline of International Relations is interested in how countries can adjust border control and protect national interest. Governments act through immigration laws and visa policies, residence matters and borders security, and all these things do not only concern the domestic policy of the hosting country; the issues related with migration interest International Relations because when we consider the movement of people from one state to the other, we must consider the kind of relations that the two states have. Another problem that it is essential to consider when studying migration flows is the concept of multiculturalism, as the movement of different groups of people leads to the coexistence of cultures, religions, communities and identities different from each other. The risk is that instead of promoting a multicultural society in which everyone lives respecting each other’s diversities, it could get the opposite effect, obtaining a society in which national identity is at risk and people get scared of diversity. Migration also interests the discipline of International Relations because it could be considered to some extent a security issue. In order to understand whether it can effectively be a security issue, we can analyse a Realist approach to the concept of migration flows, and then we will compare it to a Liberal’s approach. When taking a Realist perspective, we consider states as the key actors in IR, and migrant flows should just be considered as a domestic issue that does not affect relations between countries, as they are just people, not states. Sovereign states are independent actors and they have the final say on every kind of decision, especially when it comes to migration policies. Migrants are not treated as a security issue by realists because they do not represent a military threat. When considering migration and security issue, Liberals offer a more optimistic view, they believe in the 2