European migration and terrorism: humanitarian crisis, political rhetoric, or pragmatic policy?

ABSTRACT The security debate concerning the recent wave of migrants into Europe has been contentious. This article examines the impact of recent migration flows into Europe and assesses the veracity of political rhetoric that migrants from Muslim states were reputedly responsible for the uptick in terrorist attacks. After conducting a series of quantitative tests that control for a variety of factors, we find little evidence that the increase in the number of migrants corresponded to an increase in terrorism during the European crisis. Our findings, therefore, contain important implications in terms of migration policy and counterterrorism tactics.