"On a road that divides Canada and Maine, a Canadian drove thirty feet into the Maine section of town to fill his truck with gasoline without checking in with immigration. He was arrested and held in an American prison for 35 days." —from The Maze of Fear
The roster of security measures enacted by the Bush administration in the panic that followed September 11 is by now well-known. Common to all of those initiatives —from the Homeland Security Presidential Directive 2 to the USA PATRIOT Act —is concern about the link between migration and security.
This new appreciation of how people on the move pose a threat —whether real or imagined —will be a recurring theme of domestic policy and international relations for years to come. But the "securitization of migration" must first confront a perplexing tangle of long borders, large-scale labor migration, and throngs of tourist and student visitors. Policymakers are only beginning to catch up with this complicated reality.
Raising vital questions about government policy, The Maze of Fear explores the many dimensions of the migration-security link, including discussions of civil liberties, transnational organizations, refugee populations, and politically active diasporas.
Subjects include:
- The movement of people and the security of states
- Displacement, diaspora mobilization, and transnational cycles of political violence
- The history of immigrants as threats to American security
- The war against havens for terrorism
- The relationship of globalization, low-intensity conflicts, and refugees
- The impact of 9/11 on the Arab and Muslim community in the U.S.
