Kyilah Terry is a doctoral student in political science at the University of Pennsylvania who studies strategic displacement, climate mobility, and border securitization.
This post won the Grand Prize in Social Sciences in the Jordan Center Blog's fifth annual Graduate Student Essay Competition.
In recent years, migration has emerged as a powerful political instrument, with some states using human mobility as a tool to exert pressure on rival nations. While much of the global migration debate focuses on policies to restrict movement, Belarus has taken an unconventional approach: actively encouraging migration to destabilize its adversaries. By lowering travel costs, expediting visas, and facilitating transit routes, Belarus has strategically directed migrants toward the EU, turning migration into a form of coercion.
Belarus’s Playbook: Migration as State Strategy
In July 2021, thousands of migrants, primarily from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), arrived in Belarus with the promise of easy entry into the EU. These migrants did not come spontaneously; instead, their movement was orchestrated by the Belarusian government. Airlines increased flights from cities like Baghdad, Erbil, and Istanbul, while Belarusian travel agencies promoted the country as a gateway to Europe. Journalistic reports indicate that Belarusian embassies in the Middle East and North Africa issued visas with unprecedented ease.
Upon arrival, migrants were housed in government-approved hotels before being transported to border regions. Belarusian security forces then funneled the migrants toward the EU border, often providing wire cutters, makeshift weapons, and even logistical support to cross into Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia. Meanwhile, the Belarusian state-controlled media framed the crisis as a humanitarian issue, positioning Belarus as a protector of vulnerable populations while simultaneously blaming the EU for the unfolding crisis.
This maneuver was not merely a policy shift, but a calculated geopolitical strategy. By facilitating irregular migration, Belarus sought to exploit the EU’s internal divisions over asylum and border security. The sudden influx of migrants placed significant strain on European governments, forcing them to grapple with humanitarian concerns while maintaining border integrity. By exacerbating existing tensions, Belarus aimed to weaken the EU’s unity and retaliate against sanctions imposed on its regime.
Belarus’s use of migration as a coercive tool is not an isolated incident. According to European Union officials, it fits within a broader pattern of hybrid warfare, a strategy that blends conventional military tactics with cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns, and economic pressure. Russia, Belarus’s closest ally, has a history of using migration strategically. In 2015 and 2016, for instance Russia orchestrated a migration crisis at Finland’s and Norway’s northern borders, directing asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa through Arctic routes. The goal, analysts inferred, was to deepen social polarization within these countries and exacerbate Europe’s ongoing migration-management crisis.
More recently, in 2023, Sweden accused Russia of facilitating migrant flows to destabilize the country ahead of its NATO accession. By engineering a migration crisis, Belarus is following a similar playbook, using human mobility as a pressure point to challenge Western cohesion.
The Motivations Behind Belarus’s Actions
While Belarus’s actions align with Russia’s broader foreign policy strategies, the country also has its own incentives for “weaponizing” migration. Domestically, President Alexander Lukashenko has faced significant political challenges, including widespread protests following the disputed 2020 presidential election. By orchestrating the movement of Middle Eastern and North African migrants, Lukashenko has diverted attention from internal dissent and consolidated power, portraying himself as a strong leader defending Belarus against Western aggression.
Economically, Belarus has struggled under the weight of international sanctions. The EU’s restrictions on Belarusian industries have worsened economic instability. Enabling migration provided a means for Belarus to retaliate against these sanctions by forcing the EU to contend with an expensive and politically divisive crisis. Additionally, reports collected from migrant interviews in Berlin, a common destination for many, suggests that Belarusian authorities profited from migration facilitation, charging migrants exorbitant fees for visas, transportation, and lodging.
The Human Cost of Weaponized Migration
While Belarus’s strategy may have achieved short-term political and economic gains, for instance reducing EU pressure on Belarus to democratize, the human consequences of weaponized migration have been severe. Many migrants who traveled to Belarus under false promises found themselves stranded in freezing conditions, caught between Belarusian forces pushing them forward and EU border guards preventing their entry into their respective countries. Several migrants lost their lives due to exposure, lack of medical care, and violent confrontations with security forces on both the Polish and Belarusian sides. Those who survived abuses and pushback at the border made it into the interior of the EU, where they filed asylum claims. However, many will have their claims denied or continue to live in limbo status in one of many informal migrant camps that exist in Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland.
European states responded with emergency border measures, including the construction of fortified barriers and the deployment of military personnel to border regions. Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia declared states of emergency, restricting movement in border areas and implementing policies that made it more difficult for asylum seekers to access protection. Human rights organizations criticized the EU’s response, arguing that pushback tactics and border militarization violated international asylum laws. Moreover, some scholars argue that the EU’s narrative of “hybrid warfare” not only conceals the dearth of legal pathways to reach Europe, but also is part of an effort to increasingly securitize borders and create more restrictive immigration policy.
Why Belarus’s Tactics Matter
Strategic migration is a growing phenomenon that extends beyond Belarus. Other states have used similar strategies to gain leverage in international disputes. In YEAR, Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, for instance, threatened to "flood" Europe with migrants unless he received financial support. Turkey used Syrian refugees as bargaining chips in negotiations with the EU in 2021. However, what makes the Belarusian case unique is that it is not merely exploiting an existing migration crisis, but actively manufacturing itself as a transit state and creating an entirely new migration route from the MENA region to Europe.
This manufactured transit status allows Belarus to manipulate migration on a sustained basis rather than as a one-time geopolitical maneuver. Unlike traditional migration hubs that emerge due to geographic necessity or historical factors, Belarus has deliberately constructed a migration pipeline by recruiting travel agencies, coordinating transport logistics, and offering simplified visa procedures. This innovation in state-led migration manipulation raises concerns that other authoritarian regimes may adopt similar strategies, using artificial migration routes as a long-term tool of geopolitical leverage.
Understanding this tactic is crucial for developing effective responses. Policymakers must recognize that migration crises are not always organic. They can be deliberately manufactured to achieve geopolitical objectives. Addressing these challenges requires a balance between humanitarian obligations and security concerns, as well as coordinated efforts to counter states that exploit migration for coercive purposes.
One possible solution would be for EU countries to agree to stop outsourcing responsibility for incoming migrants to surrounding countries, depriving would-be coercers of a crucial source of leverage. Another option would be to increase the number of reception facilities providing humanitarian and legal assistance along European borders. Finally, the EU could coordinate with countries where migrants originate to discuss potential expansions to legal immigration pathways.
But will Europe actually implement any of these potential remedies? Although it is unlikely that it would reduce the number of third-country agreements, expanding reception facilities is feasible given the vast resources already committed to border infrastructure following the Belarus migration attempt. By contrast, coordination with origin countries requires political will that many European leaders appear unwilling to muster.
Conclusion
Belarus’s actions demonstrate that migration is not just a humanitarian issue, but also a geopolitical weapon. As long as migration remains a politically salient topic, states will continue to use it to their advantage. Recognizing this strategy and developing countermeasures that would render migration less fraught will be essential for maintaining stability in an era where human mobility is increasingly entangled with international conflict.
The Belarus case is a cautionary tale, illustrating how authoritarian regimes can manipulate migration to serve their interests. The EU’s response to the crisis has produced greater securitization and suffering along its Eastern border, greater politicization of migrant presence, more anti-immigrant sentiment, and greater animosity toward Belarus and Russia. What is needed is a more cohesive and proactive migration policy that would address security concerns without compromising human rights. Moving forward, governments and international organizations must anticipate and counteract the weaponization of migration, ensuring that human mobility is not exploited as a tool of political warfare.
