Description
Why have the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states increasingly engaged in the post-2011 Syrian refugee crisis? Drawing on a comparative historical process tracing method, I attempt to explain why the Gulf States have increasingly engaged in the international protection of forced migrants in the post-2011 Syrian refugee crisis, which will be contrasted to the far less attention raised by the Gulf States in the post-2003 Iraqi refugee crisis. Introducing the concept of migration diplomacy (i.e. states use cross-border population mobility for their diplomatic purposes), first, I argue the recent GCC states’ cooperative engagement as a case of migration diplomacy. Thereafter, particularly focusing on the role of external pressures, I explore the mechanism by which authoritarian governments are incentivised to take cooperative migration diplomacy at the international arena, or not. This paper concludes that the GCC states engage in “omnibalancing” behaviour when conducting migration diplomacy, and contribute to our understanding of how the Gulf States’ policy or diplomatic strategy is created in interaction with issues of international migration generally, and forced migration specifically.
