Leveraging Selective State Capacity: Understanding Changing Responses to Migration and Refugees

Abstract

State capacity is seen as one of the central elements determining whether countries have “strong” or “weak” systems of immigration and asylum. An underlying assumption of the global refugee regime is that countries of the Global South—thought to have less state capacity—do not have the ability to respond and host asylum seekers and refugees and must be financially supported by countries of the Global North in order to do so. But how can we understand “strong” migration responses from an otherwise “weak” state, as well as responses that change over time without corresponding alterations to underlying state capacity? This paper analyzes the case of Egypt, which, over the course of a decade, alternated between three types of migration policies requiring a range of state resources. Drawing on more than 70 in-person interviews and an analysis of public documents, this paper presents a theory of selective state capacity and argues that infrastructural weakness does not imply a lack of strategic decision-making in the field of migration, or an unwillingness to expend state resources, when the political incentives are in place.

Resumen

La capacidad estatal se considera uno de los elementos principales que determinan si los países tienen sistemas “fuertes” o “débiles” en materia de inmigración y asilo. Existe una suposición subyacente con respecto régimen global de refugiados, la cual indica que los países del Sur Global (de los que se cree que tienen una menor capacidad estatal) no tienen la capacidad suficiente para responder y acoger a solicitantes de asilo y refugiados y que, por ese motivo, deben recibir apoyo financiero de los países del Norte Global para poder hacerlo. Pero, ¿cómo podemos entender, tanto las respuestas migratorias “fuertes” por parte de un Estado que, de otro modo, se consideraría “débil”, como aquellas respuestas que cambian con el tiempo sin alteraciones correspondientes en la capacidad estatal subyacente? Este artículo analiza el caso de Egipto, que a lo largo de una década alternó tres tipos de políticas migratorias, las cuales requerían una serie de recursos estatales. Este artículo parte de la base de más de 70 entrevistas en persona y de un análisis de documentos públicos para presentar una teoría de la capacidad selectiva del Estado y argumenta que la debilidad de las infraestructuras no significa una falta de toma de decisiones estratégicas en el campo de la migración, o una falta de voluntad para gastar recursos estatales, si existen los incentivos políticos adecuados.

Résumé

L'on considère la capacité étatique comme l'un des éléments centraux quand il s'agit de déterminer si les pays possèdent des systèmes d'immigration et d'asile “forts” ou “faibles”. Le régime mondial des réfugiés implique notamment que les pays du Sud—qui auraient une capacité étatique plus faible—ne sont pas en mesure de répondre aux demandeurs d'asile et d'accueillir des réfugiés, et qu'ils doivent recevoir une aide financière de la part des pays du Nord pour ce faire. Mais alors, comment interpréter les réponses “fortes” à l'immigration qui proviennent d'un État qui sinon est considéré “faible”, ainsi que les réponses qui évoluent au fil du temps, sans que l’évolution de la capacité étatique sous-jacente ne l'explique? Cet article analyse le cas de l’Égypte qui, en l'espace d'une décennie, a adopté trois types de politiques migratoires différentes, exigeant un éventail de ressources étatiques. Se fondant sur plus de 70 entretiens en présentiel et sur une analyse de documents publics, cet article présente une théorie de la capacité étatique sélective. Il affirme aussi que la faiblesse n'implique pas une absence de prise de décisions stratégiques dans le domaine de l'immigration ou une réticence à élargir les ressources de l’État lorsque les motivations politiques existent.

1. Introduction

In 2021, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that Turkey “does not have the capacity to handle a new migration burden,” referring to the possibility of Afghan refugees arriving in Turkey after the fall of Kabul (AP 2021). Lebanon's President Michel Aoun has repeatedly stated that Lebanon can “no longer handle” the presence of more than 1.5 million Syrian refugees on its territory (Barrington 2017). In 2016, Jordan's King Abdullah II claimed that the presence of Syrians in Jordan is a “huge burden on our country, and we're in dire straits” (Pelley 2016). And Kenyan authorities have repeatedly claimed that refugee camps have adverse effects on the country's economy, threatening to close the camps and return refugees to their home states (DW 2016).

Across the globe, state capacity is cited by political leaders as a central determinant for whether states are able to welcome, host or incorporate migrants and refugees. Up until the last decade, much of the academic work on migrant and refugee hosting reflected this assumption. For instance, in his work on global refugee burden-sharing between countries of the Global North and South, Betts (2011) wrote, “With relatively porous borders, limited capacity to deport, and a clearly defined legal obligation not to forcibly return refugees to their countries of origin if they face persecution, these neighboring states have little choice but to host refugees” (13). Betts conceived of Global South host states as lacking the capacity, and thus the choice, to respond to refugees, which must accept their position as temporary host countries due to the international norm of burden-sharing and pressure from more powerful Global North states. In a similar vein, Hollifield (2004) argued, “In Africa and the Middle East, which have high numbers of migrants and refugees, there is a great deal of instability, and states are fluid with little institutional or legal capacity for dealing with international migration” (905). The purpose of such sentiments and scholarship was partly to highlight the extent to which Global North countries shirk their “burden”-sharing responsibilities, but host states in the Middle East and North Africa region—and in the Global South more broadly—were nonetheless too often viewed as passive actors (Geddes 2005; Lavenex 2008). It was assumed that they accepted migrants and refugees because they could not keep their borders closed and then allowed these groups to remain because they did not have the capacity to do otherwise.

Only within the last decade has academic work begun to call attention to the local agency of Global South host states, and various actors within them. For example, Betts’ later work compares Botswanan and South African policies towards Zimbabwean refugees to demonstrate how domestic political incentives drove a more restrictive versus more inclusive response in the latter case (Betts 2014). Hovil and Maple (2022) outline how policies among various sub-Saharan African states deliberately evade prospects for local refugee integration. Abdelaaty's (2021) work on Kenya, Egypt, and Turkey argues that states are willing to act more strategically toward refugee populations when refugees share co-ethnic ties or when host state governments want to demonstrate political opposition to sending countries. Natter (2022) evidences how state actors in Tunisia and Morocco secure their power over immigration by deliberately opting for “ad-hoc” policy tools that increase their governance leeway by not setting anything in stone. Finally, Paliwal (2022) proposes a “situational strategic context” to explain India's divergent responses to arriving refugees, arguing that whether India tolerates, accommodates or repatriates refugees largely depends on a mix of international and domestic political priorities.

Looking sub-nationally, Betts, MemiŞoĞlu, and Ali (2021) demonstrate how municipal mayors in Turkey and Lebanon mediate the implementation of refugee policies, cultivating connections with international actors and introducing local policies based on a combination of economic calculations and identity-based factors that show high levels of strategic agency at the municipal level. Similarly, Mourad's (2017) work on Lebanon introduces the concept of “standoffishness” to capture how, in the early period of Syrian arrivals, Lebanese central authorities preferred to have minimal involvement in the regulation of Syrians within their borders, enabling—and at times encouraging—this space to be taken up by local and international authorities. Also examining Lebanon, Stel (2020) posits that while the precarity and uncertainty that refugees face are typically blamed on a lack of state capacity and political and economic “crises,” these explanations mask the intentionality of implementing ambiguous policies.

These studies collectively move the needle toward recognition of the agency of Global South states in crafting strategic responses to migration, but they do not directly confront the issue of state capacity. In building upon the contributions of this growing literature, I ask: How is capacity leveraged to serve specific political purposes in an otherwise “weak” state? I advance a theory of selective state capacity to demonstrate that Global South states are strategic actors when it comes to migration and refugee policy, carefully selecting the policy most suitable to their domestic and foreign policy goals, while also attempting to utilize as few state resources as possible. In sum, migration and refugee policies are driven more by geostrategic imperatives than latent state capacity.

In order to make this argument, I redefine the engagement options available to Global South host states. While existing citizenship and migration scholarship asserts that host countries essentially have two policy options regarding the treatment of migrants and refugees on their territory—a “liberal” policy that welcomes and encourages integration, or a “repressive” policy that aims to exclude—I utilize the concept of “strategic indifference” to introduce a third option.¹ Aware of the presence of migrant and refugee groups residing semi-permanently on its territory, a host state chooses not to directly engage these populations. This proclaimed indifference toward the issue of migration and refugee hosting invites international organizations and NGOs to carry out engagement on the state's behalf, yielding tangential benefits for the state. Host countries thus have three affirmative options for engaging with migrants and refugees on their territory: a liberal policy, a repressive policy, or a strategically indifferent policy.

I illustrate these policy options through a longitudinal case study of Egypt, which moved between all three types of engagement over the course of a decade. When Egypt began to see its migrant and refugee population grow in the 1990s and 2000s, it utilized a policy of strategic indifference to mitigate the effects of migrants staying in Egypt over the medium to long term. The Egyptian government allowed international organizations and NGOs to offer services to these populations, carefully monitoring their activities and ensuring that organizations, as well as migrants and refugees themselves, did not engage in political activity or challenge state authority. This policy option worked well until 2013. Following the 2011 Egyptian popular uprising and the 2013 military coup, the Egyptian government took a more proactive, securitized, and repressive approach to its migrant and refugee population, expending further state resources for the purpose of policing, detaining, and deporting migrants and refugees. Later, as Egypt observed countries across the Mediterranean region reaping financial and diplomatic benefits following Europe's 2015 refugee “crisis,” Egypt took domestic steps to indicate to Europe that it could be a strong partner on migration, leveraging state capacity to stop irregular migrants departing from Egypt and expending resources to further incorporate the refugees it was already hosting.

I argue that these substantive policy changes over the course of a decade were not driven by any major changes to state capacity but rather by changing political incentives. Instead of viewing state capacity as a fixed determinant of refugee hosting capability, states leverage the perception of capacity—or the lack thereof—for domestic political or diplomatic purposes. This has important implications for our understanding of policy inaction beyond the realm of migration. Recent work within political science has attempted to demonstrate how informality and state inaction can result from intentional restraint rather than low capacity (Davis 2018; Gallien 2019). As this article will demonstrate, a state like Egypt can utilize inaction to reap diplomatic and financial benefits from wealthier countries in the Global North, only choosing to implement a more resource-intensive policy when domestic political calculations dictate anticipated benefits.

2. The Global North/South Impasse

Most refugees—and nearly half the world's migrants—live in Global South states. The Global South admittedly encompasses a wide variety of countries, whether in terms of governance or resources. Yet its delineation from the Global North remains important when it comes to the global refugee regime and the concept of the “grand compromise,” referring to the informal system whereby wealthy countries in the Global North financially support most of the world's refugees to remain in the South (Cuéller 2006; Betts 2008). This arrangement has had implications both for how scholars conceive of host countries in the Global South, and for the actions of Global South host states.

First, because Global South host countries are frequently less well-resourced than countries in the Global North, scholars have previously assumed that most major refugee-hosting states lack the capacity to develop strong, cohesive or legible migration and refugee policies (Hollifield 2004; Betts 2011). This is partly derived from an assumption that many Global South states have weak or undemocratic institutions and that they are therefore low-capacity states (Hendrix 2010; Cingolani 2013; Berwick and Christia 2018), which control their populations from “above,” whereas fully democratic, “strong” states control from “below” (Hall and Ikenberry 1989; Bäck and Hadenius 2008). For Mann (1988), an important element of capacity is predicated on the state's infrastructural power to, “penetrate and centrally coordinate civil society through its own infrastructure” (7). Because illiberal states are more likely to rule through coercion than through coordination, they are also seen as “weak” states.

Second, the “grand compromise” has meant that Global South states sometimes have an incentive to portray themselves as weak and without the capacity to adequately respond to migrants and refugees, thereby requiring additional financial assistance from the Global North. Since the 1950s, the UNHCR has served as the intermediary actor attempting to negotiate this impasse, convincing countries of the Global North to provide further funding to meet the needs of Global South host states (Loescher 2003), often using issue linkages to other substantive areas like security, trade, and diplomatic concessions (Betts 2008; Tsourapas 2019). Sometimes the perception of capacity—or incapacity—can serve strategic domestic or diplomatic purposes for migrant and refugee host states, and this influences the choices that they make regarding which type of migration and refugee engagement policy to use and under what circumstances.

As explained in the introduction, classifications in the existing literature tend to describe engagement in a dichotomous manner, whereby states are either inclusionary or exclusionary toward migrants and refugees, leaving no room for the possibility of state inaction—or what I call “strategic indifference”—as a policy choice unto itself. Instead, building off the literature on state inaction (McConnell and Hart 2014; Moss 2014; Bishara 2015; Holland 2017; Gallien 2019), I argue that host states have three affirmative policy options: liberalism, repression, and strategic indifference. Under a liberal policy, the state uses mechanisms such as education, employment, or the provision of health services to bring migrants or refugees into a country's national system, requiring a relatively high use of state resources (Kymlicka and Norman 2000). Conversely, a repressive policy utilizes exclusionary measures that aim to exclude or remove migrants or refugees from the state, characterized by high levels of policing, arrest, detention, and even deportation, thereby also requiring a high level of state resource use (Mylonas 2012)²

In contrast to these two options, a policy of indifference requires fewer resources. A host state refrains from directly engaging with or providing services to migrants and refugees and instead relies on international organizations and NGOs to carry out engagement on its behalf, yielding tangential benefits for the host state (Norman 2020). Because indifference encourages civil society and international actors to step in and provide services to migrants and refugees, it alleviates the state from having to expend its own resources to do so. The host state must utilize some resources to monitor and regulate the activities of the organizations providing services, as well as the activities of migrants and refugees, but the reputational and economic benefits it receives from a policy of indifference outweigh these costs. Specifically, a policy of indifference garners international credibility for the host state while procuring economic benefits through the participation of migrants and refugees in informal economies and via development aid channeled through international organizations and NGOs, thereby also benefiting host country nationals. Figure 1 illustrates the goal of each of the three policy options as well as the relative state resources required to implement them. It should be noted that these categories represent ideal types and that a state policy may not fall perfectly into any one category.

This paper traces the range of policies employed by one migrant and refugee host state—Egypt—across the span of a decade (2011–2021) as it oscillated between each policy type. I argue that rather than any major alterations to the state capacity of Egypt during this period,³ Egypt's changing domestic political and diplomatic incentives drove policy change, illustrating that Egypt's general infrastructural weakness does not imply a lack of strategic decision-making in the field of migration, or an unwillingness to expend state resources in this policy area, when the incentives are in place.

3. Methods

I use a detailed case study of Egypt to illustrate how domestic political and diplomatic incentives drive the migration and refugee policies of Global South host states. Egypt has a long history as a country of immigration prior to its independence and also received Palestinian refugees after 1948 (El-Abed 2009). However, Egypt began receiving new forms of inward migration from both sub-Saharan Africa and other countries in the Middle East in the 1990s and 2000s. In particular, migrants and refugees arrived from the Horn of Africa, most predominantly from Sudan but also from Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia (Kagan 2002). In the following two decades, Egypt also received migrants and refugees from other Arab states as a result of either invasion or uprising and subsequent instability; first Iraq, followed by Libya, Syria, Yemen, and most recently, at the time of writing, new asylum seeker arrivals from Sudan. President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi claimed in 2016 that Egypt hosted 5 million migrants and refugees, and by 2022, this number had nearly doubled to 9 million (IOM 2022). These figures are almost certainly gross overestimates,⁴ but the official refugee count provided by the UNHCR is also understood to be an underestimate. For example, while the UNHCR cited 250,000 Syrians registered with their office in late 2014 at the peak of Syrian arrivals, the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs estimated that 100,000 Syrians remained unregistered yet residing in the country.⁵

For individuals arriving in Egypt and attempting to seek asylum, Egypt is often originally thought of as temporary host state. Egypt has signed onto the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol guaranteeing certain de jure rights to refugees, and it allows the UNHCR to run a resettlement operation in conjunction with the embassies of Global North countries including Canada, Australia, and the United States (Grabska 2006). While international organizations have asserted that the possibility of resettlement from Cairo can act as a pull factor drawing asylum seekers to Egypt (Sperl 2001), the reality is that only a few thousand refugees are actually resettled from Cairo each year (Kagan 2011). Other migrants and asylum seekers arrive in Egypt looking for opportunities to travel irregularly to Europe via Egypt's north coast or through Libya. And in the mid-2000s, some migrants and asylum seekers arrived in Egypt, hoping to afterward cross into Israel, though this route was closed in 2013 after the construction of a separation barrier between Israel and Egypt and the use of aggressive and deadly policing tactics (Judell and Brucker 2015).

Egypt is therefore an excellent exemplar of a “transit-turned-host” country (Norman 2019). The outcome of European border externalization since the 1980s has been the increasing cost and difficulty for both irregular migrants and asylum seekers to successfully reach countries of the European Union (EU), leading to the buildup of migrant and refugee populations in surrounding Middle East and North African countries (FitzGerald 2019). As such, states that are often conceived of as transit countries in academic and policy literature are also host countries in their own right. In Egypt's case, the vast majority of arriving migrants and asylum seekers will not make onward journeys to Europe, nor will they be resettled to countries of the Global North. Instead, they will end up residing semi-permanently in Egypt for lengthy periods of time.

To understand Egypt's evolving response to migrants and refugees, I constructed a case study through several years of qualitative research. In total, this paper draws on data collected from 79 interviews, including 46 elite interviews and 33 interviews with migrants and refugees conducted between 2013 and 2019.⁶ Elite interview subjects included relevant government ministries, INGOs, local NGOs, and international migration bodies like the UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration (IOM). I attempted to make my sample of migrant and refugee interview subjects as diverse as possible in terms of nationality, gender, age, and years spent in Egypt,⁷ asking these individuals how they navigated life in Egypt on a day-to-day basis: whether they were able to access certain services or employment, whether they were subject to discrimination, and whether and how they interacted with organizations and state authorities.⁸

In addition to formal interviews, I also adopted an ethnographic sensibility in my approach to this research by recording informal interactions and fieldnotes, allowing me to reflect on the broader political and social world in which interactions and exchanges are embedded (Wedeen 2010, Fujii 2015). These observations were further supported by collecting policy documents, reports from international organizations and NGOs, and through an analysis of Egyptian and international media articles. In combination, these various methods yielded detailed and comprehensive data.

4. Evidence from Egypt

4.1. Egypt's Go-To Approach: Strategic Indifference

As stated in the previous section, the size of Egypt's migrant and refugee population is unknown and contentious, but the majority of migrants and refugees residing semi-permanently in Egypt live in the sprawling metropolis of Cairo,⁹ which can afford opportunities for informal employment and relative anonymity from host state authorities. Migrants and refugees with whom I spoke found jobs in agricultural, industrial, artisanal, and service sectors, in addition to domestic work. Some migrants and refugees also chose Egypt for its relative affordability. Usama, a Syrian man living in the Sixth of October on the outskirts of Cairo, explained that he would rather be in Egypt than in Jordan, Lebanon or Turkey, the other main countries hosting Syrians, saying, “Turkey is too expensive. It's better in Egypt, where things are cheap.”¹⁰ Egypt was also an attractive country for Syrian refugees to launch enterprises due to Egypt's large market and supply chain and the presence of a pre-existing Syrian business community (UNDP, ILO and WFP 2017). Between 2011 and 2017, Syrians contributed an estimated $800 million to the Egyptian economy (ibid).

Despite such benefits, in public statements and even in private conversations, the Egyptian government has most often decried its refugee hosting responsibilities (Norman 2020). For government officials, this positioning yielded tangential benefits. It sent a message to Western donor states that Egypt is an overburdened country that has too many political and social challenges on its plate. If these countries wanted Egypt to directly engage with and manage its refugee and migrant population—as well as prevent the onward migration of frustrated asylum seekers—they needed to financially support its government and populace. As Milner (2009) acknowledges in the sub-Saharan African context, host states may see advantages in downplaying the benefits of hosting refugees as part of broader effort to extract funding from donor states.

Positioning Egypt as a state that was strategically indifferent to the presence of migrants and refugees necessitated that intergovernmental migration organizations like the UNHCR and IOM, in addition to other international and domestic NGOs, step in to act as the primary service providers for refugees and, in some cases, irregular migrants (Norman 2020). From the perspective of the Egyptian government, these organizations also brought in international aid that translated into development funding for the broader Egyptian populace. For example, the UNHCR provided the Egyptian government with 1.4 million dollars in 2014 to rehabilitate Egyptian schools, which some nationalities of refugees are also able to attend.¹¹ The organizations also provided essential services for migrants and refugees that the Egyptian government might otherwise have to provide itself.¹² As the director of a Cairo-based refugee school noted, “All the international money goes to the UNHCR. But in a sense, it's like this is going to Egypt, because it's money that Egypt doesn't have to spend on refugees and migrants.”¹³

The Egyptian state permitted migrants and refugees to remain in Egypt, and refrained from directly engaging with them, because a policy of strategic indifference yielded economic and reputational benefits. An individual at the Ministry of the Interior stated bluntly, “Of course we know about them [migrants and refugees]. We let them stay. Even those without papers or who come illegally.”¹⁴ The government did little to police or arrest irregular migrants or asylum seekers lacking official documentation, even as, it was aware of their presence, nor did it intentionally police communities or neighborhoods known to house these groups.¹⁵ Nonetheless, migrants, refugees, and the organizations working with them were aware of the Egyptian state's ability to document and track their presence. As the director of a migration-focused NGO in Cairo explained, “The Ministry of the Interior knows. They know everyone who passes through the border.”¹⁶

The director of one of Cairo's dozens of refugee community schools relayed a chilling story that illustrates this dynamic. Like many refugee schools and other NGOs in Egypt, the school was unregistered with the Ministry of Social Solidarity, and the Egyptian authorities had never contacted the school's administration. Nonetheless, the director received a call one morning from a polite woman at the Ministry of the Interior—speaking in perfect English—asking him to close the school that day for the safety of the students, as the government anticipated unrest from protests. The director recalled, “I laughed, because I had actually been overseas, and I had just changed my phone number only three days earlier, but they managed to get straight to me, on my mobile.” Even though the director had never interacted with Egyptian authorities and had not properly registered the school, the authorities had clearly been monitoring the school's activities.

By allowing international organizations and NGOs that receive international funding to manage service provision for migrant and refugee populations, the Egyptian state derived credibility from Western donor countries while simultaneously receiving funding that tangentially benefited its own national population (Norman 2020). A representative at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs explained how Egypt viewed this dynamic:

We prefer that IOs help us in enhancing the infrastructure of the local communities that receive refugees and immigrants. That way, in the sense of building new schools, building new hospitals, you're benefiting both the refugees and the local communities at the same time. And you're assisting the government in alleviating part of the challenges that it is facing in dealing with the issues.¹⁷

For the most part, a policy of strategic indifference defined Egypt's approach toward migrants and refugees throughout the 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s. It was only as domestic politics shifted following the 2011 uprising and subsequent 2013 military coup that strategic indifference gave way to repression, once the government decided that its security concerns outweighed the benefits it received from an indifferent approach.

4.2. 2013–2014: Toward Repression

As mentioned in the previous section, prior to 2013, security officials did not actively seek out irregular migrants or refugees without identification. Yet after a military coup with wide-ranging popular support ousted former President Mohammed Morsi from power in 2013, the laissez-faire approach to policing changed.¹⁸ As the acting director of one of Cairo's refugee schools explained, “The Egyptian government's not going to do anything with refugees and migrants—good or bad—unless it considers them a security threat. And if it considers you a security threat, it doesn't matter if you have [residency]. Nothing comes before security.”¹⁹ The period following the coup saw a securitization of migration (Buzan, Wæver, and Wilde 1998), meaning that the topic became associated with perceived threats to state security, including terrorism, porous borders, and smuggling.

This dynamic first changed with regard to Syrians, the most populous refugee group in Egypt at the time. Under Morsi, Syrian refugees were extended special privileges—healthcare, access to primary education, and bread subsidies—not given to the broader refugee population. Technically, these privileges were upheld by the subsequent military government, but the de facto treatment of Syrians changed dramatically. Hady, a Syrian refugee living in Cairo, relayed a story from this time period:

I had two friends who were driving with a taxi and when the driver heard them speaking in the Syrian dialect, he took them in front of the Ministry of the Interior and started yelling “I have Syrians here!” It's not as bad as that now. But it's still worse than it was under Morsi when I first came here as a refugee. Last year [2013] I got stopped twice while coming back late at night. They were checking everyone, but I felt like they were targeting me more than the [Egyptians]. Luckily, I had the residency document. But if I didn't have it, I don't know what would have happened. I don't know what people who don't have documents do.²⁰

Human Rights Watch documented over 1,500 cases of prolonged detainment of Syrian refugees between July and December 2013, as well as hundreds of cases of coerced refoulment to Syria (Human Rights Watch 2013). As a result of the rapidly decreasing protection environment for Syrians, Amnesty International also documented a sharp increase in the number of Syrian refugees attempting to travel irregularly from Egypt's north coast to Europe in mid-to-late 2013 (Amnesty International 2013). During the eight months between January and August 2013, an estimated 6,000 Syrian refugees arrived to Italy by boat from Egypt, but in only a month and a half between September and mid-October 2013, over 3,000 Syrians departed from Egypt for Italy.

Syrians also had difficulty renewing their passports during this time period. Refugees need a valid passport that is not close to expiring in order to obtain residency, but at the time of interviewing, many Syrians were fearful of approaching their embassy to make a renewal. Mohammed, a young Syrian man living in Cairo, explained:

I have a [refugee] card. I waited for several months though after I got here to go to the UN. I didn't feel comfortable, I was scared. And now, my passport will expire in four months, and the UN says just, “Don't worry, it'll be fine. You have the [refugee] card.” But a [refugee] card isn't a passport. They don't recognize the card here. I will be stateless.²¹

Unlike in earlier periods, refugees—and in particular Syrians and Palestinians from Syria—without valid documents were at risk of arrest, detention, and even deportation, with at least 150 Syrians and Palestinians from Syria deported to Syria, Gaza, Lebanon and Turkey throughout 2014 (Amnesty International 2014). While deportations were not carried out en mass, the threat of arrest, detention or deportation had a chilling effect for migrants and refugees of all nationalities residing in Egypt.

Within a year of the military coup, the securitization of migration—whereby the topic was associated with alleged links to terrorism—had spread to all migrant and refugee nationalities. In November 2014, a representative from the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs explained, “And let me say that for us now, from a governmental perspective, there is a link between terrorism, illegal migration, and human trafficking. The networks are connecting together.”²² Organizations attempting to advocate on behalf of migrants and refugees in Egypt understood that migration had been transferred from a low-priority concern to a high-risk threat because of the type of security forces that gained purview over the issue. An activist at a prominent Egyptian human rights NGO who focused on the issue of migrant and refugee rights explained:

Nowadays it's the first time that the Egyptian intelligence [is] involved with the migrant situation. There are one hundred and thirteen migrants arrested in Abu al-Kheir, west of Alexandria. They're always detained in some police station or some detention place, and after that national security searches their papers. [Last week was] the first time that the intelligence [mukhābarāt] searched their papers, not the national security.²³

While both the National Security Agency and the General Intelligence Service are involved with information-gathering, the head of the General Intelligence Service reports directly to the Egyptian president, signaling the issue's growing importance. Some Egyptian advocacy organizations also warned migrants and refugees against protesting, fearing that lawyers may not be able to intervene should they be detained. One activist described the case of a Syrian man who was accused of participating in a demonstration. He was arrested, held in detention for two months, and even after he was found innocent, he was nonetheless deported.²⁴

While the Egyptian government generally maintained its hands-off approach toward organizations that were strictly engaged in service-provision, organizations that attempted to engage in advocacy faced an extremely challenging operating environment after 2013. An official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs articulated this distinction, stating, “We differentiate between political organizations that deal with human rights, solely human rights, and organizations that deal with social welfare and economic prosperity for migrants and refugees.”²⁵ Technically, NGOs in Egypt must register with the Ministry of Social Solidarity, although adherence to this law was not strictly enforced prior to the 2011 revolution (Herrold and Atia 2016). In 2014, all unregistered organizations were issued a mandate requiring them to register with the Ministry of Solidarity, which would then have the right to approve all organizational activities and funding in advance. The crackdown on unregistered NGOs eventually culminated in a draft law in 2017 and a revised draft law in 2019, leaving NGOs in Egypt in a space of legal limbo and contributing to a “climate of uncertainty, fear, and self-censorship” (TIMEP 2019). Members of Egypt's parliament justified the introduction of the new NGO law on the grounds that it was necessary to protect national security (Aboulenein 2017).

In the context of the 2014 crackdown on NGOs, the president of one migration-focused organization explained that he was taking precautions in his work not to cross the line from providing legal aid for detained migrants and refugees to conducting advocacy. He elaborated, “With this campaign against NGOs in Egypt, I think they will not be focused so much on the people working in development or service organizations. They care about the people who work on election observing, democracy, and human rights.”²⁶ Representatives from a prominent human rights organization also noted that public perceptions toward NGOs due to the rhetoric of state-owned media made their work both difficult and dangerous. One representative reported, “It's ridiculous. Sometimes you can't tell them that you're a human rights defender; you have to tell them something else. It's not safe on the streets.”²⁷

By elevating the policy area of migration and refugees to the purview of general intelligence, rather than national security, the Egyptian government signaled that the topic was considered a grave threat and a stronger priority for the post-2013 military-backed regime. As detailed in the previous section, the Egyptian state generally refrained from direct engagement with migrants and refugees, explained primarily by the economic and reputational benefits it received from this type of approach. Yet once migrants and refugees were considered a security threat by domestic actors, the government did not hesitate to expend the additional state resources required to police, detain, and—in some cases—deport migrants and refugees, as well as the additional resources required to more actively interfere in the activities of organizations attempting to challenge its approach. The use of such resources was considered necessary to uphold and strengthen the regime's repressive surveillance and policing apparatus, whereby the issue of migration became coupled with other security concerns, including terrorism, trafficking, and smuggling.

4.3. 2015-2019: Levering a Liberal Policy For Europe

Egypt's international positioning on the issue of migration and refugee hosting began to change in late 2014, when increasing numbers of both foreign and Egyptian nationals departed Egypt's North Coast toward Italy. That year, Ambassador Naela Gabr was appointed chairperson of the National Committee on Combating and Preventing Illegal Migration (NCCCPIM), a governmental body formed to draft a law criminalizing smuggling in Egypt. According to the Ambassador,

My essential problem, my primary concern is that I want to stop the exploitation of my people by strengthening the penalties. And fighting impunity. . .So my concern with the law is Egyptians. I want to protect my people from exploitation. . .There's going to be penalties on the smugglers and on families sending their minors to European countries. I want to envisage the possibility of doing so.²⁸

In addition to the NCCPIM, located in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and attached to the Prime Minister's office, its counterpart—the National Committee on Countering Trafficking in Persons (NCCTIP)—was formed under the Ministry of Justice.

The creation of these two committees was an important signal to European partners. According to a representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Before [the committees], it was hard to know who to cooperate with for the Europeans. The committee[s] made things clearer, it was much more organized, and it gave the EU a focal point.”²⁹ What is remarkable about this decision by the Egyptian government is that it was not prompted by any financial incentives or coercive diplomacy on the part of Europe. In fact, Europe had been minimal in its engagement with Egypt on the topic of migration in comparison to neighbors like Libya or Tunisia. Instead, in the words of a representative from the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the decision to create the committees was, “. . .Egypt taking the initiative. It was a political step, considering all the things happening at this time. The President wanted to signal to Europe.”³⁰

This initial gesture toward Europe—signaling that Egypt was willing to engage in migration diplomacy—was furthered along by Europe's 2015 refugee “crisis,” when unprecedented numbers of asylum seekers and migrants arrived in Europe via the Eastern Mediterranean migration route between Turkey and Greece. In late 2015, the EU delegation to Egypt created a post that focused specifically on migration governance.³¹ Around the same time, the EU established the Emergency Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF) at the Valletta Summit on Migration in November 2015, worth over €5 billion (Hopper 2017). The resources from the fund were allocated for, “. . .the creation of jobs and economic development, basic services for local populations, stability and governance, and migration management” (European Commission 2017). In early 2016, the EU also struck a deal with Turkey, ultimately offering €6 billion in exchange for Turkey agreeing to take back Syrian nationals who arrived in Greece.

Following the proliferation of EU migration deals across the Mediterranean in the wake of the 2015 “crisis,” the international incentives were in place for Egypt to approach Europe about a deal of its own. However, it was not until a domestic tragedy in September 2016 that Egypt decided to respond. On September 21, 2016, a fishing boat carrying as many as 450 individuals left the North Coast of Egypt, embarking on an unauthorized trip toward Italy and harboring both Egyptian and foreign nationals. After traveling only 12 miles, the overcrowded ship sank off the coast of the city of Rasheed (in English, Rosetta), killing more than 200 people (Al Hurra 2016). While government officials and government-controlled media outlets were quick to blame smugglers and victims, independent media accused the Egyptian coastguard of failing to respond to calls that the boat was sinking (Magid 2016). The highly publicized tragedy was deeply embarrassing for the government (Ali 2016), especially since so many of those killed were Egyptian nationals attempting to reach Europe. As a representative from the International Organization for Migration explained, “It went out on all the media worldwide, and of course [the government] was not happy here about that.”³² Egyptian authorities quickly arrested 57 individuals that the state claimed were responsible for orchestrating the boat's departure (Youm7 2017). Yet the more important action taken by the government in the wake of the tragedy was the hurried passing of new domestic legislation.

Within weeks of the Rasheed tragedy, the Egyptian parliament successfully approved domestic legislation on anti-smuggling—Law No. 82—, thereby implementing the UN Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea, and Air, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, which Egypt ratified in 2005 (Government of Egypt 2016). It also adopted a five-year strategy on trafficking and merged the two committees—NCCTIP and NCCPIM—into one: the National Coordinating Committee for Combating and Preventing Illegal Migration, Trafficking in Persons (NCCPIM, TIP). While a turf war had emerged between the Ministry of Justice and Ambassador Naela Gabr, the Ambassador ultimately won out, allowing her to remain as the chairperson of the new unified committee.³³ A representative of the European Union delegation in Egypt viewed this as a remarkable time period, noting that “The passing of that law and the merger of those two committees into one, still headed by Ambassador Gabr, [and] that accident,” all occurred within weeks of each other. According to the representative, “the Egyptian government did it to themselves, by themselves, for themselves. . .[It] moved this issue from a second-tier issue to a first-tier issue.”

After the Rasheed tragedy, the Egyptian authorities displayed an impressive use of selective state capacity to effectively halt unauthorized migration from its Northern Coast “overnight.”³⁴ While the coast guard was accused of being slow in responding to cries for help coming from passengers aboard the overcrowded vessel that sank near Rasheed, Egyptian authorities as well as the coast guard proactively dismantled the entire smuggling network along Egypt's North Coast within a matter of weeks. According to a representative of the EU delegation to Egypt, “We didn't hear of any boats anymore, basically, after November 2016.”³⁵ A representative from the IOM office in Cairo concurred, saying, “The line is that: “Egypt stopped migration completely.” In reality, there are still some small numbers of boats leaving the coast. But Egypt hadn't received any funding from Europe at this point to stop boats. It was doing it out of its own volition, to, again, signal to Europe that it has the capacity.”³⁶ One month after the Rasheed tragedy Ambassador Naela Gabr published a blog post on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, stating that,

International support might not be enough to help ease the burden several countries bear to accommodate the growing number of migrants. We stand ready to enhance our engagement with international donors and financial institutions to mobilize additional resources for developmental projects with immediate bearing on youth susceptible to illegal migration in Egypt and elsewhere (Gabr 2016).

In other words, if the EU wanted international migrants—and potential Egyptian migrants—to remain in Egypt, Europe needed to support Egypt.

Yet unlike Turkey, Egypt did not engage in a tit-for-tat use of coercive migration diplomacy, even though it demonstrated its ability to shut down the migratory route departing from its Northern Coast. Tsourapas (2019) argues that a country will utilize “blackmailing” if domestic elites believe that their state is geopolitically important vis-a-vis a target state(s) and they host a significant number of refugees, while otherwise a state is more likely to employ a strategy of “back-scratching.” Egypt's strategy contradicts this categorization. Egypt, with a population of nearly 100 million nationals and host to approximately 250,000 asylum seekers and refugees, certainly presented a threat to Europe, should the Egyptian authorities have continued to allow Egyptian nationals, migrants, and refugees to depart. Instead, Egypt opted for “backscratching.” As an IOM representative put it, “Egypt had a different approach, because there was a time in 2016, for example, after Rashid, they could have called [the] European Union and said, “Okay, so how can we cooperate? Basically, how can you help me to stop this movement? The same as Turkey.””³⁷ In other words, Egypt, “wanted to demonstrate that it [has] control. . .Then of course, they go to the table, to the negotiation. But now, “we have it under control.””³⁸

Since 2016—correlating with Egypt's increased signaling to the EU on halting irregular migration—Egypt also expressed interest in taking on further host state responsibility for hosting refugees. According to a representative of the EU delegation to Egypt, “. . .there seem[ed] to be an interest to become more proactively involved on the Egyptian side.”³⁹ A representative from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs affirmed this change in receptivity, “I think there is quite an appetite for organizing and dealing better with the refugee question in general.”⁴⁰ For example, the Egyptian government began to discuss taking on responsibility for refugee status determination (RSD), a process that had been delegated to the UNHCR since the 1950s (Abdelaaty 2021). The Egyptian government also started developing domestic asylum legislation—a topic that the UNHCR had been quietly pushing for decades—culminating in a draft law in July 2023. Importantly though, the development of asylum legislation was not a request that the EU delegation to Egypt made overtly, though a representative explained that the delegation would be very willing to lend its expertise in this regard.⁴¹ Instead, the Egyptian government chose to demonstrate its capacity and willingness to host refugees—the semblance of a more “liberal” policy—in order to gain leverage at the negotiating table with Europe. Finally, the government also took on further responsibility for providing health care and education directly to refugees, rather than requiring refugees to turn to NGOs that partner with the UNHCR for services as they had under a policy of strategic indifference (Abd Al-Khalaq 2018).⁴²

After Egypt's show of force and its proclaimed willingness to take on further domestic responsibility for refugees, the groundwork was in place for Egypt and Europe to establish formal cooperation. But in order to give Egypt access to funding from the Trust Fund, Europe needed to develop a framework. In March 2017, the European Commission announced an agreement to launch a formal EU-Egypt dialogue on migration, that would “. . .fully [embed] migration on our overall relations and existing frameworks such as the ENP [European Neighborhood Policy], Khartoum [Process] and Valletta [Summit]” (European Commission 2017). In July 2017 Egypt and the EU adopted a series of “partnership principles,” among which was a commitment to “managing migratory flows for mutual benefit,” including supporting, “. . .Egypt's efforts to prevent and combat irregular migration, trafficking and smuggling of human beings, including identifying and assisting victims of trafficking,” and also supporting and strengthening the, “. . .Egyptian capacity to protect migrants’ rights and to provide protection to those who qualify for it, in line with international standards” (General Secretariat of the Association Council 2017).

On a visit to Egypt in October 2017 by the EU Commissioner for European Neighborhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations Johannes Hahn, Egypt was offered €46 million in grants, €600 million in soft loans from European Financial Institutions, and a €60 million grant to, “. . .help Egypt deal with the pressures of hosting migrants and refugees, and help stabilize communities prone to migration” (The European Union Delegation to Egypt 2017). Finally, after months of discussions and proposals from both sides, an EU-Egypt Migration Dialogue was launched on 16 December 2017 (Kashef and Martin 2019).

From this point onward, the EU showered Egypt with praise. In 2018, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz called Egypt “efficient” and commended Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi for providing, "an example when it comes to illegal migration and people smuggling” (Al Jazeera 2018). In January 2019 the High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, met directly with President el-Sisi to applaud Egypt's refugee hosting and discuss el-Sisi's upcoming role as chair of the African Union (UNHCR 2019). And in February 2019, leaders from the EU and the Arab League met in Sharm el-Sheikh for an inaugural summit to discuss migration, security and business opportunities (Cook 2019). In exchange for European recognition and funding, the EU asked for Egypt's assistance in intercepting and returning migrant boats leaving from Libya. Catherine Woolard, Secretary General of the European Council of Refugees and Exile, summarized Egypt's new approach to the EU, stating, “It is quite clear that el-Sisi is playing the migration game. He understands how desperate Europe is to try and prevent people from arriving in Europe and he is willing to exploit that” (Segura 2018).

At the time of interviewing in 2019, the €60 million Euros promised as part of the partnership had not been delivered, held up by the Egyptian government due to disagreements with European counterparts over how the money would be spent.⁴³ This led human rights observers to speculate that strictly obtaining funding was not the most important aspect of establishing an agreement from Egypt's perspective. Instead, Egypt was using its increased collaboration with Europe on the topic of migration to, “. . .gain international legitimacy for a regime that grows more authoritarian every day, [and use] European cooperation to support its counter-terrorism policies.” In other words, the pretense of the agreement—regardless of how it long it took for financial support to be delivered—helped to inoculate the el-Sisi regime from international criticism for its human rights abuses. By praising Egypt's capabilities as a partner on anti-trafficking and irregular migration prevention, as well as its purported willingness to adopt a domestic asylum law and further integrate refugees, the EU helped to distract from international criticism over the Egyptian government's human rights abuses.

The €60 million was eventually delivered after Egypt and the EU came back to the table, and Egypt's strategy toward Europe continued to produce results. In September 2022, the European Union declared an additional €160 million for Egypt, with €80 of the €160 allocated for border management (Statewatch 2022). In late October 2023, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen pushed for greater cooperation with Egypt, arguing that “Egypt's role is vital for the security and stability of the Middle East” (Sorgi and Barigazzi 2023). This came amid pressure from the U.S., EU and Israel for Egypt to open its border to Palestinians fleeing Israeli bombardment in Gaza. Finally, in 2024, Egypt's strategy paid off in full, as the EU pledged €7.4 billion in loans and investments to help keep the country's struggling economy afloat. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni referred to the deal as, "the best way to address migratory flows” (Werr 2024).

5. Considering Alternative Explanations

There are plausible alternative explanations for Egypt's changing migration and asylum strategies that are not based around political incentives. For example, it is possible that Egypt's approach to migration and refugees changed as state capacity changed: perhaps Egypt implemented a more repressive policy in 2014 because the state had acquired further security resources. Yet if capacity were the most important driver of migration policy choice, this does not explain why Egypt failed to immediately accept migration-related funding from the EU in 2017, a period when Egypt's GDP was at a nearly ten-year low (World Bank 2021). Instead, Egypt held up negotiations in order to procure a set of migration-related projects that were to its liking.⁴⁴

And despite posing a significant threat to the EU in 2016, when the arrival of both Egyptian nationals and migrants and asylum seekers of other nationalities to Europe increased, Egypt opted for a non-coercive “back-scratching” migration diplomacy strategy (Tsourapas 2019). Egypt knew that the increasingly “liberal” changes to its domestic migration and asylum laws, coupled with effectively halting irregular migration from its Northern Coast without any financial incentives, would be positively received in Brussels. As a representative from the Egyptian office of the IOM summarized, “If we compare to other countries in the region, [Egypt] want[ed] to show they actually have the capacity and that they are able to control this.”⁴⁵ For Egypt, the most important factor in its dealings with Europe was the perception of capacity, rather than immediate financial gain that would supplement its physical capacity. The fact that it did not immediately require compensation from the EU for its refugee hosting and border-control abilities demonstrates that its partnership with the EU was—most importantly—a means of legitimizing its increasingly authoritarian rule.

Another plausible alternative explanation relates to the size of a migrant or refugee population. Perhaps states only decide to enact a liberal or repressive strategy once the number of migrants or refugees has reached a critical capacity. Otherwise, these groups fly under the government's radar, and the state does not react to them. Alternatively, perhaps a state instigates a repressive policy once a migrant or refugee population becomes large enough that the state deems it a security threat. And yet, the Egyptian case demonstrates that host state policy choice has more to do with domestic political events or perceived diplomatic gains than the size of any particular migrant or refugee group. For example, even though Syrians outnumbered other nationalities in Egypt at the time of interviewing for this research in 2013 and 2014, Egypt financially supported Syrian refugees by offering access to public hospitals, school, and bread subsidies because doing so fit the political agenda of former President Mohammed Morsi and promised international gains, whereas Egypt saw fewer diplomatic benefits from other refugee groups (Abdelaaty 2021). However, domestic political events—as opposed to any increase or decrease in the number of Syrians in the country—caused this treatment to change drastically in mid-2013. After former President Mohammed Morsi fell from power, Syrians were arrested, detained, and, in some cases, deported under the subsequent military regime.

6. Conclusion

During the period examined in this paper (2011-2021), Egypt moved from a policy of strategic indifference to a repressive policy and has more recently taken steps toward a de jure liberal policy, winning support and financial backing from Europe. While a strategically indifferent policy helped Egypt manage the migrant and refugee populations that were staying for longer periods of time throughout the 1990s and up until 2013, the domestic calculation changed following the military coup that removed former President Mohammed Morsi from power. By 2014, Egyptian authorities had coupled concerns over irregular migration with illicit activities like terrorism and smuggling that—in officials’ minds—warranted a more repressive policy and active policing, reflecting the increasingly authoritarian turn of the post-2013 military leadership and President el-Sisi's government more broadly. By 2015, the government was taking steps to further solidify and legalize its authoritarianism, drafting and implementing laws to curtail any form of opposition or contention (Hamzawy 2017). After the regime consolidated its hold on power, the issue of migration was no longer as politicized, and the government instead began looking toward Europe to capitalize on its ability to host migrants and refugees, following in the footsteps of other Mediterranean countries like Turkey.

Over the course of a decade, Egypt made proactive decisions about migration and refugee policy, not because its state capacity drastically altered but because the government chose to redeploy state funding and resources to the institutions that deal with migrants and refugees as a result of perceived political gains—whether domestic or international—from doing so. As such, the case study of Egypt presented in this paper lends support to the theory that migration and refugee policies are driven by geostrategic imperatives rather than latent state capacity. Furthermore, capacity is more than an empirical reality based on a state's GDP or its ability to “penetrate society” (Mann 1988). States also use the perception of capacity to serve strategic domestic or diplomatic purposes, as demonstrated by Egypt's showcasing of its ability to stop migration from its North shore in 2014, or its sudden willingness in 2016 to take on further responsibility for refugees.

In terms of generalizability, Egypt is a prime example of a “transit-turned-host” country and an illiberal Global South state. Democratic states in the Global South may be more confined in their ability to rapidly shift from a strategically indifferent policy to either a repressive or liberal policy as a result of greater institutional checks and balances, and they might also be more responsive to shifts in public opinion regarding refugee hosting. Even with these scope conditions, I argue that the case study presented in this article has important and broad implications for our understanding of state capacity in autocratic settings and speaks to a renewed focus in political science on practices of informality (Helmke and Levitsky 2004). Recent scholarship has argued that informality does not necessarily result from low state capacity but rather that states can choose to refrain from interference, regulation, and engagement if they perceive benefits from restraint (Moss 2014; Holland 2017; Gallien 2019; Natter, Norman, and Stel 2023). Even when states have the legal or institutional authority to regulate populations, “it may not always be in the state's interest to do so, depending on whether such actions may undermine its governing capacity or legitimacy more generally” (Davis 2018, 372). In the policy realm of migration, states can utilize a policy of strategic indifference to reap diplomatic and financial benefits from wealthier countries in the Global North. Only when political calculations change may states implement a more resource-intensive—whether liberal or repressive—policy for engaging with migrant and refugee populations.

This case study also demonstrates that state capacity can be selective across policy areas. In many countries across the Global South, responsibility for refugees and migration tends to fall under the purview of either a Ministry of the Interior or a Ministry of Foreign Affairs for states that do not have a ministry specifically dedicated to migration. Even as a Ministry of Foreign Affairs may appear “weak” in its ability—or willingness—to manage domestic migration and refugee issues, a Ministry of the Interior may simultaneously be “strong” in its capacity to monitor foreigners, collect information, and take selective action should a particular migrant or refugee group be deemed a security risk. This selective state capacity applies beyond the policy area of migration. States may build out security capabilities in order to monitor citizens even as they fail to adequately provide basic services like health and education or repair and upgrade infrastructure. However, deeming such states “weak” misses the unevenness of their capabilities across policy fields and prevents scholars from understanding the underlying motivations behind strategic state resource allocation.

Finally, the findings of this paper reinforce the notion that within the structures of the global refugee regime, Global South states are not merely the recipients of the policy choices of more powerful states or international actors as they are often framed. They make careful decisions about how best to allocate resources and pursue engagement policies, which may or may not be in line with the preferences of international organizations and wealthy donor countries in the Global North. In other words, these states are not merely migrant and refugee hosting vessels. They have their own stakes in the global migration and refugee system and should be understood as competent—and strategic—actors.

Footnotes

References