Migration Diplomacy as a Three-Level Game in the Eastern Mediterranean: The Case of Greece and Turkey
8 May 2025. From 18:30 | Conference | English | IEMed
This lecture puts forth a theorisation of migration diplomacy as a three-level game. Beyond the importance of intergovernmental negotiations, we propose that migration diplomacy actors absorb domestic-level concerns as well as supranational pressures, particularly at instances of crisis. We will apply this framework on the February/March 2020 border crisis between Greece and Turkey, in which tens of thousands of migrants sought to enter European territory, with the two countries reaching dangerous levels of escalation. We will examine how both Greek and Turkish use of migration diplomacy was shaped by three sets of policy goals, namely domestic, international, and supranational. We will conclude with a discussion of how such a framework can shed valuable light on border crises and the interplay between migration, geopolitics, and foreign policymaking.
A lecture by Gerasimos Tsourapas, Professor of International Relations at the University of Glasgow and Visiting Professor at the Hellenic Observatory of the London School of Economics (LSE). He is also the Chair of the Ethnicity, Nationalism, & Migration Studies (ENMISA) Section of the International Studies Association, as well as the Editor-in-Chief of Migration Studies at Oxford University Press. His research focuses on the international relations of the Middle East and the broader Global South, with a particular focus on the politics of migrants, refugees, and diasporas. Tsourapas is currently the Principal Investigator of a five-year European Research Council Starting Grant project on migration diplomacy. Some of his recent publications are: “Introduction – Rentierism in Middle East migration and refugee politics” (with M. Lynch, a POMEPS Studies, 2024), Migration Diplomacy in the Middle East and North Africa – Power, Mobility, and the State (ed., Manchester University Press, 2021) and The Politics of Migration in Modern Egypt: Strategies for Regime Survival in Autocracies (ed., Cambridge University Press, 2018).
A session within the framework of the Aula Mediterrània lecture series co-organised with the Master’s Degree in Migration Studies, GRITIM-UPF. Moderated by Luisa Faustini Torres, Senior Researcher, GRITIM-UPF, and Project Manager, EuroMedMig PhD Network.
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