Talk:Refugees as weapons

This article was nominated for deletion on 13 January 2021. The result of the discussion was keep.

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The following references may be useful when improving this article in the future:

Marder, Lev (23 February 2018). "Refugees Are Not Weapons: The "Weapons of Mass Migration" Metaphor and Its Implications". International Studies Review. Oxford University Press (OUP): 576-. doi:10.1093/isr/vix055. ISSN 1521-9488.
Greenhill, Kelly M. (2002). "Engineered Migration and the Use of Refugees as Political Weapons: A Case Study of the 1994 Cuban Balseros Crisis". International Migration. 40 (4). Wiley: 39–74. doi:10.1111/1468-2435.00205. ISSN 0020-7985.
Salehyan, Idean (2010). "Refugees as Weapons of the Weak". International Studies Review. 12 (4). Oxford University Press (OUP): 640–642. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2486.2010.00973.x. ISSN 1521-9488.
Anderson, Tim (2019). Axis of resistance : towards an independent Middle East. Atlanta, GA: Clarity Press, Inc. ISBN 978-1-949762-17-4. OCLC 1135357390. (chapter 11, "Refugees as Weapons of War")

Case:Islamist Refugee[edit]

Resident is a very big difference to citizen. The opinion is thus not valid, since the immigrant's culture/family is still responsible for the development. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:ED:BDA:C701:8C72:A0EA:BED2:4651 (talk) 09:43, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The title is doubtfull.[edit]

There is no differention to political persecution and thus need to flee over many countries. Also migration and political persecutees are intermixed, which does not make alot sense. Migration is clearly the subset of refugees and thus the title should be changed.

The title is doubtfull.[edit]

There is no differention to political persecution and thus need to flee over many countries. Also migration and political persecutees are intermixed, which does not make alot sense. Migration is clearly the superset of refugees and thus the title should be changed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:ED:BDA:C701:8C72:A0EA:BED2:4651 (talk) 09:57, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Misplaced criticism section[edit]

On most if not all other wikipdia articles the criticism section is placed near the end, is there any reason why this should be an exceptional case? As it is right now it makes the entire article reek of bias. 78.30.21.221 (talk) 10:31, 28 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Title and content problems[edit]

The article's title is problematic and the various sections rely heavily on an (unpublished) Master's dissertation, without proper academic referencing. I agree that there is bias throughout this article, and the scientific basis of its claims are very weak.

I concur, that the content of the article is lacking. It is an interesting subject and might have made for a good paper, but it is strangely written for a WP article, i.e. putting "criticism" at the start and putting a lot of new concepts with very few sentences or explanation. Definitely needs some QS. Pastelfa (talk) 09:30, 9 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The title is used by RSes. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40931369 Let us keep it. Zezen (talk) 09:34, 3 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Delete?[edit]

This just reads like a personal essay and probably should be deleted. What do other people think?

Jasper0333 (talk)

Plenty of references. Well written. Relevant. Maybe you don't like the content. For example, I think Mormonism is fake but I don't want articles on it deleted.Prudens Hominem (talk) 20:21, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as synth. Cinadon36 11:24, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Keep and improve. There are low quality articles that are poorly written and contain errors in Wikipedia. However, this shouldn't be a reason to delete them, because, they can always be improved and redacted to sweep away its flaws. Besides, there are academic articles and books that prove subject's notability (e.g. Weapons of Mass Migration by M. Greenhill). Best regards.--John the Janitor (talk) 12:28, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Pretty difficult to improve the article, needs total reconstruction. There are structural issues. The article seems like a presentation, aiming to convince audience. Cinadon36 13:21, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

On the other hand I am thrilled to notice that a high quality source exists and gives us the potential to write a good article.Kelly Greenhill Cinadon36 13:31, 29 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Narrower focus[edit]

I think the article is salvageable with major changes. At the moment, it's about two concepts: (1) political leaders engineering "migrant crises" to extract economic or geopolitical concessions from other countries and (2) politicians "using" the presence of refugees by whipping up fear for political gain.

I don't think these two concepts are natural fits to be combined into a single article. I do think there's a case for having a dedicated article on the first concept, although maybe under a more descriptive name like Weaponized migration. There are plenty of historical and contemporary examples and sources that cover it. The second concept is already to a large extent covered by a range of articles, especially right-wing populism, but also opposition to immigration, criticism of multiculturalism, nativism, and several others. There might be a case for having a dedicated article on it, but I'm skeptical because there's not a lot of coverage on this form of "weaponization" other than in the context of garden-variety nativist politicians.

Anyway, how would people feel about narrowing the focus of this article on the more literal weaponization of immigrants and refugees? Examples are Belarus' trafficking operation in Eastern Europe (Belarus–European Union border crisis) and Erdogan's occasional threats to "unleash" Syrian refugees on Europe. Again, I would suggest changing the title, although we can leave that discussion for when the article is in better shape. Tserton (talk) 13:38, 21 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to start implementing the proposed changes. I'll start by deleting the following coatracky subsections under the level-1 section Definitions. Where appropriate, I will try to move content into another article rather than deleting it.

Illegal immigration to the United States, which is mostly about how Donald Trump made anti-immigration sentiment a centerpiece of his political platform
Islamist militants among Refugees, which is about the theory that ISIL organized an effort for militants to sneak into Europe disguised as refugees. I don't know to what extent this actually happened, but it wouldn't fit the scope of the article as proposed above
Most of Threat to use force against Refugees. This subheading, and the main source used in it ([1]), might actually be within the scope of this article. But the current text doesn't really address the topic directly. It talks about the protections granted to refugees by the UN and mentions that the US military has published a handbook on the topic.
Forced labor flow, about how North Korea sends laborers abroad to earn money for the state
Diaspora tax, about how the Eritrean government levies spurious taxes on its diaspora
Defensive use of border barrier, Move refugees to a safe zone, move refugees to a safe country, Military and Defensive use of smartphone data, which are simply lists of how governments try to prevent/manage immigration in general

I think that's enough deletions for now. The following section, Several cases or alleged cases also contain several examples that are "just" refugee/migrant crises, rather than examples of a state or organization engineering one. But I'll sift through that section later. --Tserton (talk) 09:26, 29 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]