Transnational terrorism and restrictive immigration policies
| Published date | 01 July 2020 |
| Author | Marc Helbling,Daniel Meierrieks |
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343319897105 |
| Date | 01 July 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Regular Articles |
Transnational terrorism and restrictive
immigration policies
Marc Helbling
WZB Berlin Social Science Center & University of Bamberg
Daniel Meierrieks
WZB Berlin Social Science Center
Abstract
We investigate the relationship between transnational terrorism and the restrictiveness of immigration policies.
We argue that transnational terrorism may create incentives for governments to implement more restrictive
migration policies. First, more restrictive policies may make terrorism a more costly endeavor, discouraging
future terrorist activity. Second, voters may hold the government accountable for the increased insecurity and
economic instability terrorism produces; more restrictive migration policies may signal political resolve and
meet public demand for security-providing policies, consequently reducing the government’s chances of elec-
toral defeat. We provide an empirical analysis of the effect of transnational terrorism on migration policy
restrictiveness for a sample of 30 OECD countries between 1980 and 2010. We find that a greater exposure to
transnational terrorism is associated with stricter migration controls, but not stricter migration regulations
regarding eligibility criteria and conditions. This finding is robust to different model specifications, estimation
methods, operationalizations of terrorism, and instrumental-variable approaches. It points to the securitization
of immigration, providing partial support for the notion that transnational terrorism incentivizes migration
policy change towards greater restrictiveness. However, the policy response appears to be surgical (affecting
only migration controls) rather than sweeping (and thus not influencing broader migration regulations) for the
countries in our sample.
Keywords
immigration, immigration policy, securitization, transnational terrorism
Introduction
A few days after his inauguration, on 27 January 2017,
US president Donald Trump issued Executive Order
13769 titled ‘Protecting the nation from foreign terrorist
entry into the United States’ (Trump, 2017); colloqui-
ally, this order became known as the ‘Muslim travel ban’.
Explicitly referring to the terrorist attacks on New York
and Washington, DC, on 11 September 2001 (9/11), as
motivation for his actions, Trump ordered a number of
restrictions regarding immigration into the United
States, ranging from travel bans for citizens of certain
countries to the elimination of visa waiver programs and
stricter screening of refugees and potential migrants.
Trump’s actions hint at three important points that
are highly relevant to our study. First, terrorism
1
can
have important policy consequences. Indeed, it has been
argued that the 9/11 attacks and subsequent terrorist
Corresponding author:
daniel.meierrieks@wzb.eu
1
We follow Enders, Sanders & Gaibulloev (2011: 321) who define
terrorism as the ‘premeditated use or threat to use violence by
individuals or subnational groups against noncombatants in order
to obtain a political or social objective through the intimidation of
a large audience beyond that of the immediate victims’.
Journal of Peace Research
2020, Vol. 57(4) 564–580
ªThe Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0022343319897105
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incidences in European countries have shaped interna-
tional cooperation as well as defense, security, privacy,
and foreign policy in many nations (e.g. Epifanio, 2011;
Messina, 2014; Neumayer, Plu
¨mper & Epifanio, 2014).
Second, there is a ‘memory’ associated with terrorism,
leading to long-run effects of terrorism on policymaking;
for instance, the 9/11 attacks are still relevant for policy
decisions over 15 years later. Third, Trump’s executive
order points to the securitization of immigration, mean-
ing that non-security issues – such as migration – are
linked to security concerns (Messina, 2014). While the
securitization of immigration is exemplified in Trump’s
executive order, it is also reflected in popular opinion.
For instance, a 2016 Gallup poll across 14 European
countries found that 66% of respondents believed ter-
rorism by non-residents to be a serious problem, while at
the same time 55% of respondents thought that migra-
tion is a similarly serious issue, with concerns about both
issues being strongly positively correlated.
2
Motivated by this discussion, we study whether
migration policy indeed becomes more restrictive in
response to transnational terrorism.
3
While informative,
existing research on the nexus between terrorism and
migration policies focuses on the impact of the 9/11
attacks, the post-9/11 era, or only examines changes in
individual countries (Epifanio, 2011; for an overview
see Messina, 2014). We add to this literature by pro-
viding a first systematic cross-country study of the role
of transnational terrorism in migration policy change,
using country-year data for 30 OECD countries for the
1980–2010 period. Importantly, this country sample
allows us to compare country cases where immigration
policies are relatively well developed, transnational ter-
rorism is prevalent, and migration issues are salient, so
that the securitization of immigration may indeed play
arole.
We argue that migration policies become more
restrictive in response to terrorism (i) because of security
considerations (where more restrictive policies make ter-
rorism a more costly endeavor) and (ii) because govern-
ments, held accountable for increased insecurity by the
electorate, respond to voters’ increased fear and demand
for security, so as to avoid electoral defeat. Our empirical
analysis shows that increased exposure to transnational
terrorism – especially when it involves casualties – is
associated with stricter migration control measures, but
not with stricter migration regulations regarding eligibil-
ity criteria and conditions. This finding is robust to dif-
ferent model specifications, estimation methods,
operationalizations of terrorism, and endogeneity con-
cerns. Our analysis thus provides partial support for the
notion of a securitization of immigration. However, the
policy response to the transnational terrorist threat
appears to have been surgical (affecting only instruments
of migration control) rather than sweeping (and thus not
affecting broader migration regulations), making the far-
reaching approach of the Trump administration the
exception rather than the rule.
The effect of transnational terrorism on
migration policy restrictiveness
Migration policy: Definition and dimensions
Following Helbling et al. (2017: 82) we define migration
policies as ‘government’s statements of what it intends to
do or not do (including laws, regulations, decisions or
orders) in regards to the selection, admission, settlement
and deportation of foreign citizens residing in the coun-
try’. These policies consist of two main dimensions:
migration regulations and migration controls (Helbling
et al., 2017: 85). While the former refer to binding legal
provisions that create or constrain rights such as eligibil-
ity criteria, the latter are mechanisms (e.g. the detention
of illegal migrants) that help monitor whether the migra-
tion regulations are actually adhered to. Using these def-
initions, below we first discuss the general relationship
between migration policy and transnational terrorism;
afterwards, we discuss whether transnational terrorism
may interact differently with migration regulations and
migration controls.
From transnational terrorism to migration policy
restrictiveness
A government may respond to transnational terrorism by
restricting migration policies to provide additional secu-
rity against future attacks. This argument is rooted in a
rational-choice framework of terrorism, where terrorists
(as rational actors) weigh the benefits of terrorism (e.g.
from achieving political objectives) against its costs (e.g.
due to capture), choosing to engage in terrorism only
when the former outweigh the latter (Schneider, Bru
¨ck
& Meierrieks, 2015: 132–133). More restrictive migra-
tion policies may increase the costs of carrying out ter-
rorism. For instance, tougher migration controls may
2
https://news.gallup.com/poll/212405/terrorism-migration-trouble-
europe.aspx.
3
Terrorism is transnational when it concerns more than one country.
For example, the 9/11 attacks were transnational terrorism, with the
perpetrators hailing from several Middle Eastern countries and the
attacks occurring in the United States, victimizing thousands of US
and non-US citizens.
Helbling & Meierrieks 565
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