Migrants, Refugees, and Foreign Policy

Foreign policies have always played an important role in the movements of migrants. A number of essays in this volume show how the foreign policies of the United States and Germany have directly or inadvertently contributed to the influx from the former Yugoslavia, Mexico, the Caribbean, and the former Soviet Union. Now being faced with growing resistance to admit foreigners into their countries, both governments have once again been using foreign-policy instruments in an effort to change the conditions in the refugees' countries of origin which forced people to leave. This volume addresses questions such as which policies can influence governments to improve their human rights, protect minorities, end internal strife, reduce the level of violence, or improve economic conditions so that large numbers of people need not leave their homes.

Rainer Münz is Head of Research & Knowledge Center (Erste Group), Non-resident Fellow of the Migration Policy Institute, Washington DC, and Senior Fellow at the Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWI). He studied at Vienna University, where he earned his PhD in 1978. In 1979 he joined the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Until 1992 he was director of the Institute of Demography at the Austrian Academy of Science. Between 1992 and 2003 he was head of the Department of Demography at Humboldt University, Berlin. He was visiting professor at the Universities of Bamberg (1986), University of California at Berkeley (1986, 1989, 1997-98), Frankfurt (1988), Klagenfurt (1996, 1998), Vienna (2001-02) and Zurich (1992). He also was Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Mathematics of Finance, Technical University Vienna (2001-2002). Since 2010 he teaches at the University of St. Gallen. His main fields of research are European Migration, ethnic and linguistic minority issues, and the impact of demographic change on social policy.