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4 - International Relations Theory and Modern International Order: The Case of Refugees

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 December 2022

By
Mira Siegelberg
Edited by
Richard Bourke  and
Quentin Skinner
Richard Bourke
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Quentin Skinner
Affiliation:
Queen Mary University of London
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Summary

This chapter examines the proposal that theories of international relations provide an invaluable resource for comprehending the politics of forced migration. To interrogate this proposition, the essay takes up the question of how forced migration, came to be written out of the study of international politics in the first place. This development, the essay argues, contributed to a fundamentally static vision of international order, a fact that has a significant bearing on the proposition that IR possesses unique intellectual and conceptual resources to grapple with the challenges introduced by climate migration. In evaluating the larger proposal to draw on the resources of IR to comprehend an emergent crisis, the further question to consider is what a revised historical account of international order implies for the proposal that theories of international relations can illuminate the present dynamics of global politics. As this essay argues, a consideration of the common enterprise undertaken by historical IR scholars and historians to historicize the dominant representations of international politics indicates the virtues of conceiving of IR theory as a distinct resource for analytically grasping the global political implications of climate migration.

Keywords

Historyinternational lawmigration
Type
Chapter
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History in the Humanities and Social Sciences , pp. 90 - 115
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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