International migration has moved to the top of the international security agenda, due in part to concerns that migration flows provide conduits for the spread of international terrorism. Although such concerns are not entirely unfounded, they must be placed within the broader context of the range of impacts—both positive and negative—that international migration flows have on states' core national security interests. Migration flows affect at least three dimensions of national security: state capacity and autonomy, the balance of power, and the nature of violent conflict. Overall, migration management presents a far greater security challenge to weak and failing states than to advanced postindustrial states. States that are able to formulate and implement migration policies that harness the power of international migration will be more secure, rather than less secure, in the new globalized security environment.

The structural components of a state are regularly conflated with a state's national identity. In reality, however, the assumption that the boundaries of a state and its national identity are coterminous is problematic. While this has always been the case, changes in the ability of actors in the international system to use communication and transportation technologies to sustain transnational collective identities points to the need for new empirical research in this area. Contemporary diasporas are defined by a national or cultural identity, yet differ from nation-states in terms of their organizational and spatial logics. By comparing diaspora mobilization in two cases, we find that both non-state political entrepreneurs and state elites are using diasporic practices of identity formation as a means of generating economic and political support in an increasingly integrated global economy. This points to discontinuities between a territorially defined states system and deterritorialized practices of collective identity formation.

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