There is an increased interest in analysing how state and non-state actors manipulate migration and refugees as a leverage to get certain concessions from other international actors or as an instrument to achieve their goals. Terms as weaponization of migration (WoM), coercive engineered migration (CEM), migration diplomacy, and instrumentalization of migration (IoM) partially illustrate this interest. After briefly reviewing the existing main theoretical contributions on terms and patterns of utilization of migration in literature, the authors develop a typology of soft versus hard forms of IoM as a more intuitive, inclusive and expansive categorization. This typology combines three basic criteria of extent of utilizer's responsibility, tangibility and multiplicity of goals and finally nature of tactics and strategies. The article compares the Egyptian and Turkish cases to illustrate the differences between the two countries in instrumentalizing the Syrian refugees' crisis in their relations with the EU.
Moving beyond description to explanation, the article then focuses on utilizer's political leadership as a plausible, yet surprisingly understudied, variable and addresses its possible impact on the state's decision on how to instrumentalize migration. Events of Integrated Crisis Early Warning System (ICEWS) database show how Turkish and Egyptian leaders differ in their cooperative and conflictual behaviours. This preliminary application of congruence analysis and plausibility probe aims to highlight how different leadership styles affect the patterns of externally utilizing the refugees' crises.