Immigration Phobia and the Security Dilemma

Immigration phobia is a paradoxical global phenomenon: neither theories that link conflict to symbolic and realistic threats, nor the ‘contact hypothesis’ can systematically explain intense anti-migrant alarmism and exclusionism toward marginally small migrant minorities. Through a careful comparative study of immigration attitudes in the Russian Far East, the EU, and the United States, this book is the first to demonstrate that concerns about national identity and economic interests associated with migration are themselves ignited by a unique perceptual logic of the security dilemma. Regression analysis and case studies trace support for expulsion of migrants to human yearning for pre-emptive self-defense under uncertainty. Alarmism and hostility arise from ambiguities about immigration consequences and migrants’ motivations. Framing migration as a national security problem is therefore logical, but counterproductive. The book instead recommends managing migration through economic incentives and new institutions at the global, national, and local level.

Spis treści:
1. Immigration phobia and its paradoxes
2. The immigration security dilemma, anarchy, offensiveness, and groupness
3. The two faces of socioeconomic impact perceptions
4. In the shadow of the Asian Balkans, anti-Chinese alarmism and hostility in the Russian Far East
5. Whos behind Fortress Europe? Xenophobia and anti-migrant exclusionism from Dublin to the Danube
6. Los Angeles ablaze, anti-migrant backlashes in the nation of immigrants
7. Immigration and security, how worst-case scenarios become self-fulfilling and what we can do about it.