Migration and Terrorism

This chapter explores the complex interaction between (human) migration and terrorism. It proposes a ‘terrorism-migration cycle’ to investigate systematically this interaction for various stages of the migration process. Importantly, no stage of the migration process is independent of what happened on the previous stage, affecting how terrorism and migration interact. It is shown that terrorism may be a trigger of migration in the origin country, that only particular selections of migrants choose to leave a country, and that these migrants then sort into different destinations. The role of migration governance as a means to avoid the influx of potential terrorists is explored as well as the responses of destination-country populations and governments to the threat of imported terrorism. In addition, homegrown terrorism produced in immigrant communities is discussed as well as political violence directed against immigrants. Finally, it is argued that there are feedback effects from diasporas on the origin countries of immigrants.