Intergroup Relations and Security Concepts Quiz

Hard Security Issues

• Hard security involves traditional, tangible aspects of security, using military force to protect national sovereignty and interests.
• Focus areas include military defense, using armed forces, weapons, and strategies for defending from external threats; arms control, regulating the development and deployment of weapons; and border security, protecting national borders.
• Alliance systems, such as NATO, are collaborative defense agreements for collective security.

Soft Security Issues

• Soft security uses non-military and cooperative approaches.
• It focuses on preventing conflicts, promoting stability, and addressing root causes of insecurity.
• Focus areas include diplomacy (negotiation and dialogue for resolving disputes), economic security (ensuring stability and development for reducing conflict risk), and human security (protecting individuals and communities from abuse and dangers).

Security Approaches to Migration

• Extensions of traditional security approaches link individual, state, and international system threats (including economic, political, environmental, and societal).
• Human security, as outlined by the UN Development Programme in 1994, addresses root causes of insecurity, prevention, and empowerment.

Human Security Approach

• Economic insecurity is rooted in persistent poverty, unemployment, and lack of economic opportunities.
• Food insecurity results from widespread hunger and famine, sudden food price increases.
• Health insecurity is caused by epidemics, malnutrition, and inadequate healthcare access.
• Environmental risks include environmental degradation, resource depletion, and natural disasters.
• Other insecurities include physical violence, human trafficking, child labor, inter-ethnic and religious tensions, crime, terrorism, and political repression.

Human Security and Migration

• UN Commission on Human Security (2003) emphasizes protecting people in conflicts, supporting those on the move, and empowering people in post-conflict situations.

Host Country - Migration and Security

• Links between migration and security for host countries include undermining state sovereignty, human trafficking, challenges to resources, competition for jobs and housing, strain on the environment, and public resentment.

Origin Country - Migration and Security

• Migration can have positive impacts, including economic and social change.
• Negative impacts include conflict, brain drain, and reintegration issues for returning migrants.

Intergroup Bias

• Intergroup bias involves a tendency to favor one's own group (in-group) over other groups (out-group) in attitudes, cognition, and behaviour.
• Bias can encompass prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination.
• It has different levels (from publicly stated to implicit biases).

Modern Theories of Intergroup Bias

• Social Identity Theory (Tajfel & Turner 1979) describes how categorization, identification, and comparison can lead to bias.
• Optimal Distinctiveness Theory (Brewer 1991) highlights the balance between satisfaction with group membership and intergroup differentiation.
• Uncertainty reduction theory (Hogg & Abrams, 1993) suggests that group identification helps reduce uncertainty, and Terror Management Theory (Solomon et al., 1991) argues that group identification provides a buffer against the awareness of death.

Reducing Bias

• Direct approaches emphasize positive ideologies, increased awareness of tolerance, value confrontation, and rationalization of bias.
• Indirect methods facilitate individual processes like empathetic understanding and categorization complexity reduction.

Diversity Initiatives (intentional and unintended consequences)

• Diversity initiatives entail measures to support individuals from disadvantaged groups, with intentional strategies, such as resource practices, non-discrimination, and accountability.
• However, they can have unintended consequences of backfiring (negative results), generating negative spillover (undesirable indirect impacts), producing false progress (achieving goals by shortcuts), and moral credentialing (demonstration of moral credentials to justify discrimination).
• Factors driving the success or failure of these initiatives include the culture of the organization, the strength of the approach, related experiences and personal biases.

Big Data and Policing

• Big data in policing, including predictive policing tools, enables forecasting crime, potentially boosting efficiency.
• This approach raises concerns over transparency and accountability, along with issues of racial bias, stereotyping, and discriminatory effects.

Citizenship and Ethnicity

• Historical events and legal frameworks have shaped citizenship and ethnicity relations regarding the Rohingya population, particularly in Myanmar.
• This includes issues of citizenship denial, repression, and displacement for certain ethnic groups.
• Multicultural policies aiming to accommodate ethnic differences are significant in resolving these conflicts.