Hybrid CoE Paper 17: Instrumentalized migration and the Belarus crisis: Strategies of legal coercion

This Hybrid CoE Paper presents a legal assessment of the instrumental­ization of migration by the Government of Belarus against the EU and its Member States in 2021. The paper demonstrates that legal dynamics were at the heart of the incident, enabling Belarus to leverage the flow of migrants to achieve coercive effects. The Belarus migration crisis offers important lessons about responding to similar incidents in the future and illustrates how hostile actors exploit legal asymmetries and vulnerabilities to their strategic advantage.