The essays in this book emerged out of a series of workshops in International Security of Marginal Populations sponsored by the Committee on International Peace of the Social Science Research Council, which were intended to contribute - alongside other initiatives of the Committee - to an approach to international security that goes beyond the traditional emphasis on the interests and relations of states, and gives due weight to the security of people.

The dominant theme of the book is the need to treat the state-people relationship as profoundly problematic in the area of international security, and starting from there to search for new, more appropriate forms of political association that can improve upon a state's intervention for the security of its people as we have known it thus far.