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HANDBOOK ON THE GOVERNANCE AND POLITICS OF MIGRATION
ELGAR HANDBOOKS IN MIGRATION The Elgar Handbooks in Migration series provides a definitive overview of recent research in all matters relating to the study of Migration, forming an extensive guide to the subject. This series covers research areas including internal migration, the global impact of human trafficking and forced labour, and international migration policy, and constitutes an essential new resource in the field. Each volume is edited by an editor recognized as an international leader within the field and consists of original contributions by leading authors. These Handbooks are developed using an international approach and contribute to both the expansion of current debates within the field, and the development of future research agendas. Titles in the series include: Handbook of Culture and Migration Edited by Jeffrey H. Cohen and Ibrahim Sirkeci Handbook on the Governance and Politics of Migration Edited by Emma Carmel, Katharina Lenner and Regine Paul Handbook of Citizenship and Migration Edited by Marco Giugni and Maria Grasso
Handbook on the Governance and Politics of Migration Edited by
Emma Carmel Associate Professor, Department of Social and Policy Sciences, University of Bath, UK
Katharina Lenner Assistant Professor, Department of Social and Policy Sciences, University of Bath, UK
Regine Paul Associate Professor, Comparative Policy Studies, Department of Administration and Organization Theory, University of Bergen, Norway
ELGAR HANDBOOKS IN MIGRATION
Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA
© Emma Carmel, Katharina Lenner and Regine Paul 2021
Cover image: Carlos de Toro on Unsplash. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Published by Edward Elgar Publishing Limited The Lypiatts 15 Lansdown Road Cheltenham Glos GL50 2JA UK Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc. William Pratt House 9 Dewey Court Northampton Massachusetts 01060 USA A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Control Number: 2021930695 This book is available electronically in the Political Science and Public Policy subject collection http://dx.doi.org/10.4337/9781788117234
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ISBN 978 1 78811 722 7 (cased) ISBN 978 1 78811 723 4 (eBook)
Contents
List of contributorsviii Acknowledgementsxiv 1
The governance and politics of migration: a conceptual-analytical map Emma Carmel, Katharina Lenner and Regine Paul
PART I
1
CONCEPTUALISING THE POLITICS AND GOVERNANCE OF MIGRATION
2
Postcolonial perspectives on migration governance Lucy Mayblin
25
3
Nationhood and citizenship: from producing states to enacting rights Flávia Rodrigues de Castro and Carolina Moulin
36
4
Transnationalism and diaspora as epistemology and practice Carolin Fischer
47
5
The politics of conceptualizing border/security Karolina Follis
60
6
Rethinking migration and development as a hegemonic project Lama Kabbanji
73
7
Climate migration between conflictive discourses and empirical realities Ingrid Boas and Hanne Wiegel
86
8
Humanitarianism in principle and practice Jason Hart
98
9
Beyond the dichotomy of liberal and illiberal migration governance Katharina Natter
PART II
110
THE POLITICS OF CATEGORISING MIGRATION
10
Unsettling the boundaries between forced and voluntary migration Oliver Bakewell
124
11
The construction and contestation of illegality Vicki Squire
137
v
vi Handbook on the governance and politics of migration 12
Trafficking as the moral filter of migration control Cameron Thibos and Neil Howard
148
13
Co-constructions of family and belonging in the politics of family migration Saskia Bonjour and Laura Cleton
161
14
Deconstructing skills in the stratification of migration governance Huw Vasey
173
PART III INSTITUTIONS AND REGIMES OF MIGRATION GOVERNANCE 15
Towards a relational perspective on border regimes Prem Kumar Rajaram
185
16
The limits of the ‘global refugee regime’ Heaven Crawley and Mary Setrana
195
17
Pitfalls, ambivalences and contestations of ‘migration management’ Antoine Pécoud
206
18
Global value chains, production regimes and the governance of migrant workers218 Shamel Azmeh
19
National states in the governance of mobilities Nora El Qadim
229
PART IV SPACES OF MIGRATION GOVERNANCE 20
The migration route as governance William Walters
242
21
Migration, governance, and the co-production of urban spaces An Van Raemdonck and Fran Meissner
254
22
Reconsidering migration dynamics within diverse rural spaces Lydia Medland
267
23
Governing, experiencing and contesting camps and encampment Lewis Turner
279
24
Political economy, law and the regulation of migrantsʼ workplaces Tesseltje de Lange, Lisa Berntsen and Pedro de Sena
291
25
Homes as workplaces at the intersection of migration, care and gender regimes 304 Sabrina Marchetti and Anna di Bartolomeo
Contents vii PART V
PROCESSES AND PRACTICES OF MIGRATION GOVERNANCE
26
Interrogating time and temporality in migration governance Melanie Griffiths
316
27
Technology, knowledge and the governing of migration Julien Jeandesboz
329
28
Governing migration by other means: criminalization, crimmigration, or legal pluralism? David Moffette
29
Situating deportation and expulsion in migration governance Annika Lindberg and Shahram Khosravi
341 354
PART VI CONTESTING MIGRATION GOVERNANCE 30
Reconceptualizing and de-nationalizing repertoires of migrant political activism367 Ilker Ataç and Helen Schwenken
31
Contesting migration governance through legal mobilization Leila Kawar
380
32
Solidarities and disjunctures in the (global) mobilization of migrant workers Nicola Piper
391
33
Nativist politics and the mobilization of anti-immigrant discourses Aitana Guia
404
Index417
Contributors
Ilker Ataç is a Professor in the University of Applied Sciences Fulda in Germany. He was previously a post-doctoral research fellow at the Department of Political Science at the University of Vienna. His research interests are citizenship studies, migration policies, social movements and social policies. For further information, see https://www.hs-fulda.de/sozialwesen/ueber -uns/professuren/details/person/prof-dr-ilker-atac-2804/contactBox. Shamel Azmeh is a Lecturer at the Global Development Institute (GDI) at the University of Manchester. His research interests are international political economy, trade and labour. For further information, see https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/shamel.azmeh.html. Oliver Bakewell is a Senior Lecturer at the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester. His work focuses on the intersections between migration and mobility and processes of development and change, with an empirical focus on migration within Africa. For further information, see https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/oliver.bakewell.html. Anna di Bartolomeo is Permanent Officer at the Italian National Institute for Social Security. Her research interests include gender and migration, the demographic aspects of international migration and the educational trajectories of immigrants’ children. Lisa Berntsen is a Researcher at the Scientific Research Institute for the Dutch Labour Movement (‘De Burcht’). Her research interests are in the field of employment relations, with a special focus on migration and trade union representation. Ingrid Boas is Associate Professor at the Environmental Policy Group of Wageningen University. Her research interest is about the relation between environmental change and mobilities, with an emphasis on human mobility and migration. For further information, see https://www.wur.nl/en/Persons/Ingrid-dr.-IJC-Ingrid-Boas.htm. Saskia Bonjour is Associate Professor in Political Science at the University of Amsterdam. She studies the politics of migration and citizenship in Europe, with a particular interest in the role of gender and family norms. She has published on the politics of family migration and civic integration, as well as on the role of the judiciary in policy-making, and the impact of EU policies on domestic politics. For further information, see https://www.uva.nl/profile/s.a .bonjour. Emma Carmel is Associate Professor in social and policy sciences at the University of Bath, UK. Her work examines the relationship between governance, politics and societ(ies), comparatively and transnationally. Her interests include the politics and governance of migration, social protection, and algorithmic statehood. For further information, see https://researchportal .bath.ac.uk/en/persons/emma-carmel. Laura Cleton is a PhD researcher in Political Science at the University of Antwerp. Her work deals with the socio-political production of migrant deportability in return policies and programming in Europe, using feminist intersectionality theory. Her research interests include viii
Contributors ix ‘voluntary’ and forced return, migration governance, critical and interpretative policy studies, gender and intersectionality and family migration. For further information, see https://www .uantwerpen.be/en/staff/laura-cleton/. Heaven Crawley is Director of the UKRI GCRF South-South Migration, Inequality and Development Hub (MIDEQ) and Professor of International Migration at Coventry University. She has published on a wide range of migration issues including the drivers of migration and migrant decision-making, gender issues in forced migration, refugee and migrant rights, the experiences of children and young people on the move, attitudes towards migration and migrants and the politics of migration policy-making. For further details, see https://pureportal .coventry.ac.uk/en/persons/heaven-crawley. Nora El Qadim is Assistant Professor of political science at University Paris 8, and a researcher at the CRESPPA-Laboratoire des Théories du Politique (LabTop) and at the Institut Convergences Migrations. Her research addresses the international and transnational dimensions of public policies, in particular migration and border policies. For further information, see http://www.cresppa.cnrs.fr/labtop/equipe/les-membres-du-labtop/el-qadim-nora/. Carolin Fischer is Ambizione Research Fellow at the Institute of Social Anthropology of the University of Bern. She leads a project entitled Violent Safe Havens? Exploring Articulations and Repercussions of Violence in Refugee Reception and Settlement. Her recent work addresses issues of belonging, participation, inclusion and exclusion, as well as knowledge production in contexts of migration and mobility. Karolina Follis is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion at Lancaster University. She has written on border regimes, surveillance technologies and the ideas and practices of human rights. She is currently developing work on healthcare for migrants and refugees. For further information, see https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/ppr/about-us/ people/karolina-szmagalska-follis. Melanie Griffiths is a Birmingham Fellow at the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Birmingham. She works on a range of migration topics, with a focus on immigration enforcement and the UK. For further information, see https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/gees/griffiths-melanie.aspx. Aitana Guia is Associate Professor in Modern European History at California State University, Fullerton. She specializes in migration, minorities and nationalism in post-war Europe. Social media: @AitanaGuia. For further information, see http://www.aitanaguia.com. Jason Hart is Associate Professor in the International Development Group at the University of Bath. His research interests coalesce around humanitarian response to conflict-affected and displaced populations with particular attention to children. For further information, see https:// researchportal.bath.ac.uk/en/persons/jason-hart. Neil Howard is Prize Fellow in International Development at the University of Bath and Founder and Editor of the Beyond Trafficking and Slavery section of opendemocracy.net. His research examines in particular the various forms of trafficking targeted for eradication by the Sustainable Development Goals. More about his work can be found at https://researchportal .bath.ac.uk/en/persons/neil-howard.
x Handbook on the governance and politics of migration Julien Jeandesboz is Professor of International Relations and European Union Politics at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB, Belgium) and a member of the ULB’s centre for international political research (REPI) and Institute for European Studies (IEE). He researches technologies of border and migration enforcement in the European Union. Lama Kabbanji is a researcher at the Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD, France). She has been working on migration issues since 2005, specifically on the politics of migration in West Africa as well as the migration and development nexus. Her research is currently focused on higher education dynamics and academic mobility. For more information, see https://www.ceped.org/fr/membres/chercheurs-enseignants-chercheurs/article/kabbanji -lama. Leila Kawar is Associate Professor of American Culture at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She is author of Contesting Immigration Policy in Court: Legal Activism and Its Radiating Effects in the United States and France (Cambridge University Press, 2015), which won the Herbert Jacob Book Award from the Law & Society Association and the Book Award of the Migration & Citizenship Section of the American Political Science Association. For more information, see https://lsa.umich.edu/rc/people/faculty/lckawar.html. Shahram Khosravi is Professor of Social Anthropology at Stockholm University. His research interests include anthropology of Iran and the Middle East, migration, forced displacement, and border studies. Khosravi is the author of several books including: The Illegal Traveler: An Auto-ethnography of Borders (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), Precarious Lives: Waiting and Hope in Iran (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017) and After Deportation: Ethnographic Perspectives (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, edited volume), https://www.palgrave .com/gp/book/9780230230798. Tesseltje de Lange is Professor in European Migration Law and Director of the Centre for Migration Law at the Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. Her research focus is economic migration into and within the European Union and migrant worker rights globally. For further information, see https://www.ru.nl/english/people/lange-t-de/. Katharina Lenner is Assistant Professor in Social and Policy Sciences at the University of Bath. She studies the politics of (forced) migration and development policy between the Arab World and Europe, with a particular interest in labour market, gender and North/South dynamics. She has published on conceptualisations of refugee policy, political responses to Syrian displacement, labour market integration schemes for refugees, poverty alleviation and rural development in Jordan and elsewhere. For further details, see https://researchportal.bath .ac.uk/en/persons/katharina-lenner. Annika Lindberg is a visiting postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Advanced Migration Studies/SAXO Institute, University of Copenhagen. Her research interests include state power, bureaucracy and violence, and migration and border control practices in Northern Europe. For further information, see https://unibe-ch1.academia.edu/AnnikaLindberg/. Sabrina Marchetti is Associate Professor in Sociology at University Ca’ Foscari in Venice. She specialises mainly on issues of gender, racism, labour and migration, with a specific focus on the question of migrant domestic work. For more information, see www.sabrinamarchetti.net.
Contributors xi Lucy Mayblin is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Sheffield. She is the author of Asylum After Empire: Colonial Legacies in the Politics of Asylum Seeking (Rowman and Littlefield International, 2017) which won the 2018 BSA Philip Abrams Memorial Prize, and Impoverishment and Asylum: Social Policy as Slow Violence (Routledge, 2019). For more information, see https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/socstudies/people/academic-staff/lucy -mayblin. Lydia Medland is a Senior Research Associate and a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Bristol, UK. Her research interests are in the global food system, labour and seasonal work. She has carried out field research with migrant and mobile workers in Spain and Morocco and her current research focuses on the resilience of agricultural workers in the UK in the face of a changing food system. For more information, see https://www.bristol.ac .uk/people/person/Lydia-Medland-737918e0-e2b8-4713-9850-294720226ce6. Fran Meissner is Assistant Professor of Critical Geodata Studies and Geodata Ethics at the University of Twente. Her work focuses on how migration changes cities and how (big-)data about migrants and diversity feeds into processes of urban change. For more information, see http://www.franmeissner.com David Moffette is Associate Professor in the Department of Criminology at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He researches the intersections between immigration law and criminal law, the securitisation of immigration, borders and bordering practices, experiences of policing and profiling, and race and racism. He is the author of Governing Irregular Migration: Bordering Culture, Labour and Security in Spain (UBC Press, 2018). For further information, see https:// uniweb.uottawa.ca/home/852/profile. Carolina Moulin is Professor at the Department of Economics and Center for Regional Planning and Development (CEDEPLAR), Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil (UFMG). She is a researcher for the National Council for Scientific Research (CNPQ/308023/2019–6). Her research interests are critical citizenship and migration studies, and global and regional governance of mobility, with a specific focus on refugee populations. For further information, see https://puc-rio-br.academia.edu/CarolinaMoulin. Katharina Natter is Assistant Professor at the Leiden University Institute of Political Science. She studies immigration policy-making, with the particular goal of bridging research on and in the ‘Global South’ and the ‘Global North’. She has published on Morocco and Tunisia, on the role of democratization and authoritarianism in migration politics, as well as on historical and global migration policy trends more generally. For further information, see https://www .universiteitleiden.nl/en/staffmembers/katharina-natter. Regine Paul is Associate Professor in Administration and Organization Theory at the University of Bergen in Norway. Her research examines the governance and politics of migration in Europe, with a particular interest in labour migration/mobility, risk-based regulation, and the role of algorithms in administrative decision-making. She has published on the comparative political economy of labour migration ‘management’ and EU migration governance, including Frontex risk analysis. For further information, see www.researchgate.net/profile/ Regine_Paul.
xii Handbook on the governance and politics of migration Antoine Pécoud is Professor of Sociology at the University of Sorbonne Paris Nord, research associate at the Center for International Studies (CERI) at Sciences Po, and fellow of the Institut des migrations. For further information, see https://univ-paris13.academia.edu/ AntoineP%C3%A9coud. Nicola Piper, a political sociologist, is Professor of International Migration. She is currently a British Academy Global Professor Fellow at Queen Mary University of London (2019–22). Her research profile can be found at https://www.qmul.ac.uk/law/staff/piper.html#. Prem Kumar Rajaram is Professor of Sociology and Social Anthropology and Head of the Open Learning Initiative (OLIve) at Central European University, Budapest and Vienna. He is also Project Leader of the Refugee Education Initiatives consortium (https://www.refugee educationinitiatives.org/). His research interests are in studies of race, capitalism and colonialism; borders and refugee mobilities and their governance; and critical pedagogies. For more information, see https://ceu.academia.edu/PremKumarRajaram. Flávia Rodrigues de Castro is a Post-doctoral Fellow in International Relations at PUC-Rio, Brazil. She is also Project Manager at Digital Humanities Laboratory (dhLab), PUC-Rio. Her research interests are critical citizenship and borderwork, sovereignty, human mobility and international security. For further information, see https://puc-rio.academia.edu/Fl%C3%A1 viaRodriguesdeCastro. Helen Schwenken is Professor for Migration and Society (Sociology) at, and co-director of, the Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (IMIS) at the University of Osnabrück/Germany. Her research focuses thematically on critical migration regime analysis, labour migration, gender and migration, social movement studies and labour organizing. For further information, see https://www.imis.uni-osnabrueck.de/personen/imis_mitglieder/ schwenken_helen.html. Pedro de Sena is a legal adviser with extensive experience in legislative affairs. He is a PhD candidate at the University of Amsterdam, researching norm creation processes in the context of labour migration. He has a particular interest in migration in Asia, where he lived for over two decades. Currently he is a senior adviser to the State Secretary of Home Affairs of the Portuguese government. Mary Setrana is Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Migration Studies (CMS), University of Ghana (UG), Legon and Research Associate, Department of Sociology University of Johannesburg, South Africa. She is a researcher on several national and internationally funded projects including the South-South Migration, Inequality and Development (MIDEQ) Hub. She has published on a range of migration issues including migration conflict and peacebuilding, migration decisions of youth to Europe, gender and migration, migration and development in Africa, transnational migration and diasporas, and return migration and reintegration among others. For further information, see https://ug-gh.academia.edu/marysetrana. Vicki Squire is Professor of International Politics at the Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick, UK. Her research focuses on the politics of migration and asylum, contemporary border struggles, and solidarity activism. For further information, see https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/people/squire/.
Contributors xiii Cameron Thibos is Managing Editor of Beyond Trafficking and Slavery on openDemocracy.net and Research Fellow on the WorkFREE project at the University of Bath. Lewis Turner is a Lecturer in International Politics of Gender at Newcastle University, UK. He is a political ethnographer of humanitarianism, and his research focuses on men and masculinities, refugee encampment, and humanitarian labour market interventions. For further information, see https://www.ncl.ac.uk/gps/staff/profile/lewisturner.html. An Van Raemdonck is Postdoctoral Researcher at Ghent University, Belgium. She is an interdisciplinary social anthropologist with research interests at the intersection of globalisation, minorities, identity, migrant and refugee studies, gender and sexuality religion and (post) secularism. For further information, see https://ugent.academia.edu/AnVanRaemdonck. Huw Vasey is Senior Portfolio Manager, Economic & Social Research Council, UK Research & Innovation. His research interests include post-migration adaption and change, complexity and social change, skills, knowledge and international migration. For further information, see https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Huw_Vasey. William Walters is Professor of Political Sociology at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. His main research interests are secrecy and security, borders and migration, and mobility and politics. For further information, see https://carleton.ca/polisci/people/walters-william/. Hanne Wiegel is a PhD researcher in the Environmental Policy and the Sociology of Development and Change groups at Wageningen University, the Netherlands. Her work is a critical take on the interactions between human mobilities and policy discourses around climate change.
Acknowledgements
The editors are deeply indebted to the Handbook’s contributors for generously sharing their expertise, sticking to deadlines, and holding their patience through several rounds of requests, reviews and revisions. This Handbook would not have been possible without your profound and enriching engagement researching the governance and politics of migration. In this volume, you have shown a peerless capacity to transform your research expertise and offer our readers a critical, insightful and multi-dimensional perspective on the empirical world and how we as researchers ought to examine it. So, thank you dearly! We extend our thanks to Daniel Mathers at Edward Elgar, in particular for his patience, good humour, and professional advice throughout this process, along with the professional editorial and design staff that have made the production process so straightforward for us all. We would not have been able to get such a large and complex volume to the publishers without the sterling support of Catherine Adams in editorial support/formatting, and Cameron Thibos for thorough and constructive copy-editing of several chapters and much needed logistical support with initiating what grew, over the years, into a monster of an airtable. Emma would like to thank Edward Elgar for commissioning the book and for the wise recommendation to recruit co-editors. Most thanks are due to Regine and Katharina for saying yes to this role. It has been a pleasure and honour to work with such talented scholars, committed professionals and ethical human beings – a rare experience that I have really treasured. To the students and doctoral researchers at the University of Bath whose engagement in studying migration, migrants and governance continues to inspire – thank you, and we hope this inspires you in return. Special thanks as ever to Theo Papadopoulos, and our much loved children for everything else. Katharina would like to thank both Emma and Regine for an amazingly collegial experience that survived three rounds of maternity leave, several temporary migrations, job changes and a pandemic unscathed, and allowed us all to be professionals and human beings; Cameron Thibos for continuous support and inspiration in content, style and the art of living well; and Robin and Nina for introducing a whole other dimension to my life. Regine would like to thank Emma and Katharina for turning the long, and sometimes relentless, journey of editing a handbook into a truly collegial and enjoyable experience; students of the MA Political Science at the University of Kassel for engaging in inspiring debates about the Handbook’s themes and critical approach in class; Gislinde Stieler at Kassel for great editorial assistance; and Rieke, Moritz and Mathi for drawing me away from the desk often enough to put things in perspective.
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1. The governance and politics of migration: a conceptual-analytical map Emma Carmel, Katharina Lenner and Regine Paul
INTRODUCTION The mobility of people is a commonplace of the contemporary world. Nor is this really a new or radically exceptional phenomenon. Migration for trade; for raids, conquest and settlement; for cultural exchange and learning; for enforced labour, and from conflict, have been integral to the development of human history. Nonetheless, the form, patterns, and experiences of such migrations – as well as conceptions and appreciations of them – have varied by time and place. And political and governmental action have always been central to this variation. At the time of writing, governments around the world have extended and intensified their strategies of mobility control in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic. Exclusion and expulsion are partnered with immobilisation in new ways, and gain new justifications, for the supposed protection of health and economic development. Long-settled policies for labour migrants have been overturned in weeks or even days. These measures, and their consequences, challenge the social and economic infrastructure across and between global North and South. They highlight the integral role played by migrant workers in health, care, food production, waste and transport systems, as well as the expendability of migrants in the face of other political priorities. The possibility, practice and experience of migration is closely related to the efforts of public authorities to prevent, encourage or channel it. This includes attempts to ‘import’ or ‘export’ labour (e.g. Cohen 2006; Piore 1979); to use emigrants as resources in domestic economic and political projects (e.g. Boccagni et al. 2016; Weinar 2019); or to define who counts as unwanted and thus ‘illegal’ (e.g. Chavez 2007). In turn, the possibility, practice and experience of governance is closely related to how public authorities conceptualise and act on migration as part of population management within their territories (Bhambra 2017; Foucault, 2007). After all, governing (specifically defined) peoples in (specifically defined) places is integral to collective rule and ideas of modern statehood (Torpey 2000; more generally, see Jessop 2016). And the politics of collective rule is integral to determining which peoples are governed in which places, and in what ways. This central duality of migration governance underpins this volume: that understanding governance sheds light on the specific forms and processes of migration, and that understanding migration sheds light on specific forms and processes of governance. This duality, however, is not a fixed relationship, but one that varies by time and place. It is also not confined to formal government action and institutions. Organising who moves when, where, how and why, are central preoccupations for local and transnational public authorities. But they are also affected by the actions of NGOs, trade unions, technology companies and banks, and every kind of employer from global South to global North. Policy, legal and institutional innovations often follow in the wake of migrations, whether they are to selectively mobilise and immobilise specific people; to induce development; and/or to enhance territorial claims 1
2 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration (Raghuram 2009; Torpey 2000). As a result, both the institutions and purposes of governing are shaped by migrations. In turn, while migrations and migrants’ experiences are not determined by their governance and politics – migration is ‘autonomous’ from its governance (Anderson 2017; Castles 2004) – nonetheless they are profoundly shaped by it. Studying the politics and governance of migration involves explanations of the mutual significance and implications of mobility and governance in different times and places. As migration experiences, on the one hand, and the governance and politics of migration, on the other, are intrinsically and complexly interwoven, scholarly work must explain this duality and make it visible. Yet it must also attend to how governance and migration experiences are produced in practice, at multiple interconnected sites and across different scales. Rather than treating migration as an objectively observable – and governable – phenomenon, we explore how actors’ specific perceptions of migration shape possibilities for political action and policymaking (see also Geddes and Scholten 2016: 3). We explain the micro-politics of migrant experiences and how these shape governance practices on the ground. Such micro-politics are always embedded in, and structured by, the wider power relations between places and social groups. To study the governance and politics of migration is to recurrently reflect back on how governance in one place affects mobility in another; to explain the interdependence of my migration with someone else’s immobility. It is from this starting point that this Handbook addresses the governance and politics of migration: as dynamic, relational and still highly structured, with profoundly unequal and contested consequences across the world. Migration governance is about more than policy or political problems and their solutions. Migrants are not just objects to be governed, and migration governance not only emerges from technical decisions on how to make migrants move, settle, move on, integrate and/or return. Migrants live, love, laugh, have ambitions, face setbacks, suffer and resist. The contingency and diversity of migration and migrants’ lives exhibits multiplicitous, fractured, and largely ungovernable human complexity. Migration governance usually involves attempts to simplify, classify and regularise these, through general rules for action (Rose 1999; Scott 1998; Sharma 2015). These efforts are highly political in their origins and their effects, even when expressed in universal, or problem-solving terms. Like governance more generally, migration governance purposefully disguises its political origins and the unequal relations of power that sustain it (Bourdieu 1991; Fanon 2008 [1967]; Wynter 2003). Yet despite the ubiquity of migration, and of attempts to govern it, migration governance remains a site of struggle and contestation. It is this foundational position that gives the Handbook its identity and coherence in defining the field of study. The Handbook sets out to define and extend the contours of contemporary research and theorising and situate them in a critically minded appraisal of the governance and politics of migration. We bring key perspectives from a range of disciplines into dialogue with one another, to examine crucial intellectual and research contributions to the field and its debates over the last 20 years. Our contributors offer significant critiques of myopic conceptualisations, limited scope of empirical research, dominant perspectives and narrowly defined objects of analysis. At the same time, they set out significant emerging theorisations and new research in the field. In the next section of the introduction, we outline in more detail the conceptual approach and distinct epistemological position that underpins contributions to the Handbook. We discuss ‘governance’ and ‘politics’ each in turn, to explain how they are used in the remainder of the book. The section closes with a critical reflection on the politics of researching this field. In the subsequent section, we explore three ‘constitutive contradictions’ (Heinelt 1993) of
The governance and politics of migration: a conceptual-analytical map 3 migration governance and politics that emerge from discussions in this volume. Synthesising the findings in this book, we argue that the governance and politics of migration are constituted from the contradictions between their ●● conceptual framing and material expression; ●● global scope and relational practice; ●● structured form and dynamic changeability. The final section of this introduction explains the organising rationale for the book’s structure and the role of each section for understanding the governance and politics of migration.
THEORISING THE GOVERNANCE AND POLITICS OF MIGRATION In order to grasp the duality of migration and its governance and politics from a critical scholarly perspective, we conceptualise ‘governance and politics’ as concerned with (1) ‘regimes of governing practices’ (Carmel, 2019), and (2) political contestation. This approach enables our contributors across the whole Handbook to explore a range of practices as well as challenges to them, and to examine how they exert specific material effects on political, economic and social relations; including, and beyond, migration. Migration Governance as Regimes of Governing Practices In this Handbook and elsewhere, we treat governance as ‘regimes of governing practices’ (Carmel 2019: 24–46). In doing so, we take a multi-scalar perspective on the interaction of global structural conditions; specific policymaking processes; and the everyday decision-making of actors involved in migration governance (ibid.). Our starting point is that migration governance both resides in highly structured and unequal relationships of power and is also made and remade in everyday action (Carmel 2019; Lenner 2020; Però 2011; Pott et al. 2018; Shore et al. 2011). The iteration of governing practices over time produces and reproduces certain forms of rule and institutions that acquire a taken-for-granted character. Yet, governing practices are assembled from contingent and often contradictory actions of multiple actors and can have powerful effects without being coherent (Mosse 2004; Stone 2012; Wedel et al. 2005). Our approach therefore highlights the structural conditions, long-term forces and power relations that shape possibilities for political and policy action. But these conditions are never completely fixed; they are always subject to reconstruction and transformation by social actors, whether migrants, policymakers or others (cf. Jessop 2016). Micro-level interactions between migrants and different types of officials in these structured and unequal contexts are often as relevant for migrants’ experiences and life trajectories, as are international or national regulations (Brachet 2016; Gaibazzi 2017; Hoag 2010): they unfold and are enacted together in a ‘regime’ of governing practices (Carmel 2019). Our approach involves a close examination of the power dynamics that shape the governance of migration in different settings. This includes analysing how dominant social actors purposefully obscure the power relations inherent in this process. In this, mundane policy and administrative procedures really matter: consider the use of digital and biometric technologies for food payments in refugee camps; the creation of special categories of visa for ‘entrepre-
4 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration neurs’ or the ‘highly skilled’; the requirement for appeals against asylum decisions to be lodged in person, or at a particular time. These are all highly political measures, rationalised by policymakers and legislators as neutral, technical instruments of law and/or as ‘common-sense’. They are enacted as practical measures for the orderly and utilitarian management of mobility. Yet other groups of actors, including migrants themselves, challenge, reify or subvert these ‘common-sense’ strategies, to create new possibilities for governance and political action. Central to these power dynamics in particular settings are definitions of what migration is, and who counts as what kind of migrant. Our contributors critically examine concepts and categorisations of migration as both historically contingent and politically salient. The materialisation of these categorisations in specific governing practices expresses the self-image of dominant players in migration governance and their attempt to manage global migration flows (see e.g. Landau and Achiume 2017). In Part I, for example, our Handbook contributors review key concepts of migration governance, such as citizenship, national state or border, to highlight why, how and with what effects these have been normalised as foundations for usually exclusionary, sometimes deadly, governance practices. In Part II of the Handbook, we assess the emergence of distinctions between migrations and types of migrants. Contributors identify the conflicts they have obscured, and examine the shifting practices of governing through these categorisations in various historical and geographical contexts (see e.g. Bakewell 2008; Chimni 1998; Long 2013; Mayblin 2014; Paul 2015, 2016; Crawley and Skleparis 2017). Our conceptual approach to governance is explicitly interdisciplinary. Political science and economics scholars – as well as policymakers – have commonly sought to explain why countries might favour particular immigration (and much more rarely, emigration) policies. In this, they have focused on sectoral interests and political representation (e.g. Cornelius et al. 2004; de Haas et al. 2018; Freemann 1995; Hollifield 1992; Joppke 1998; Menz 2009; Ruhs 2013). This important but conventional picture is enriched by understanding how international political economy, geo-politics and international relations shape who migrates, where and under what conditions (e.g. Berggren et al. 2007; Geiger and Pécoud 2010; Hansen and Jonsson 2014; Lee 2013). Contributions from sociology, anthropology and geography, but also constructivist political science, explore what it means to migrate, or to be a migrant (e.g. Amaya-Castro 2011; Andersson 2014; Baldaccini et al. 2007; De Genova 2013; Eule et al. 2018; Huysmans 2000; Schwenken and Ruß-Sattar 2014; Sigona 2014; Triandafyllidou 2019). They also speak to the wider relations of power, political authority and political economy in which migration and its governance are embedded (cf. Anderson 2019; Paul 2015; Pott et al. 2018; Rijken and de Lange 2018). Along with critical legal perspectives, they draw attention to the unequal implications of policies and politics (e.g. Anderson 2013; Carmel et al. 2019; Coddington, 2020; Tilly 2011). Thus, in Parts III and V of this volume, our contributors highlight the contingency and structural power of institutions at different scales. They identify the structured and structuring effects of migration governance hidden in technocratic tools and mundane governance processes. In doing so, these contributions also ‘speak back’ to a wider conceptualisation of politics. Migration Politics Mainstream studies of the ‘politics’ of migration have been traditionally conceptualised rather narrowly around the institutional politics of migration within nation states, and frequently just within destination states (see critiques in e.g. Amelina and Faist 2012; Meeus 2016). However,
The governance and politics of migration: a conceptual-analytical map 5 ‘politics’ does not just reside in institutions. Institutions are not suitable proxies for analysing power and the dynamics of political interaction, particularly in the case of migration. The politics of migration, and of migration governance, are relational and multi-scalar. They are inextricably linked with wider relations of political economy; post- and neo-colonialism; and social inequalities, as well as the institutions and forces that shape them. In this Handbook, we treat the study of politics as the study of power/authority, its contestation and their combined effects. Analytically, such political relations of power are revealed in resistance and contestation as well as in institutional authority, rule-making and brute force. As such, we are concerned with the ways in which politics plays out between formal institutions and informal exchanges among social actors. The politics of migration(s) are conditioned by structural factors, although these can be subject to rupture as well as gradual change. These include symbolic power and discursive resources; technologies of government; and conduits of money and violence, as well as intersectional inequalities, such as race, class, gender, age, sexuality and disability (Amelina and Lutz 2019; Crenshaw 1991). Our contributors examine migration politics from this conceptual vantage point. They analyse actors’ changing interpretations of the structural conditions they face, and how this affects their actions in particular settings. But they also examine how these interpretations and actions can affect the wider political economy, and power relations between particular places and institutions (often in unintended ways). Contributors show how wider social inequalities of gender, race, class, age or sexuality interact with specific legal statuses of migration. They explore the grey area between policies ‘on paper’ and practices on the ground to shed light on hidden social spaces where migrants’ lived experience and biographies create new forms of social and political action, contradicting dominant narratives. Treating politics as practices of power/authority enables us to explore how political actors seek to structure the social, economic, geographical and political spaces inhabited by ‘others’. And how this governance is subverted or resisted, too. For example, the designation of ‘legal’ or ‘illegal’ entry and residence in national states is shaped by historically established inequalities including colonial encounters, as well as gendered and racialised forms of governing mobility (cf. Anderson 2013; Ellermann 2020; Hansen and Jonsson 2014; Kofman and Raghuram 2013; Mayblin and Turner 2020; Paul 2015). However, to understand the politics of this distinction and how it is governed, we need to attend to how it works ‘on the ground’. As they move through their daily lives, migrants’ experiences can be marked by liminality (e.g. Menjívar 2006) as their status is subject to diverse and incongruent regulatory conditions, both formal and informal. Migrants’ rights as workers often stand in contrast to their rights of residence or their rights as family members (cf. Carmel and Paul 2013; Chauvin and Garcés-Mascareñas 2012; Lenner and Turner 2019; Ruhs 2013). And in turn, these intersect in complex ways with legal regulations and custom and practice, to shape migrants’ gendered and racialised transnational access to social security (e.g. Amelina, Carmel et al 2019; Ataç and Roseberger, 2019; Vintila and Lafleur, 2020). It is in day-to-day practices that power inequalities come to matter, and the political contestedness of migration is expressed. Each contribution of the Handbook engages in its subfield and theme to explore how migration politics and governance are contested and practised in different places through diverse categories, regimes, spatial relations and processes. Two specific sections do so in a more targeted manner: Part IV is dedicated to space-specific analysis of practices of migration governance. Contributions examine how particular spaces of destination, origin and transit are imagined, produced and experienced. In addition, Part VI discusses key arenas of contestation
6 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration to dominant regimes of migration governance. Contributions assess how different forms of mobilisation around migration governance emerge, as well as their effects on power relations, and the allocation of entitlements and rights for migrants. Migration Governance Research as Both Governance and Politics Migration governance is intimately bound up with the politics of research and the political economy of knowledge production (Anderson 2019; Sukarieh and Tannock 2019). Academic research, and the ways in which scholars generate and contest knowledge, significantly shape how migrants are imagined and governed. This makes the politics of such knowledge generation integral to our study of the politics and governance of migration more generally. In this Handbook, we show how particular ways of seeing migration and its governance are themselves political. When researchers seek research funding from the governments of receiving states or regional authorities; when we act as expert-advisors to governments or other public authorities; or when we work as expert-advocates to NGOs and legal campaigners, we invoke different ideas about what migration is and who migrants are. We claim authority from diverse forms of knowledge about migration in order to justify specific ideas about its governance. In some cases, the politics of knowledge generation is also associated with different (sub‑) disciplines: typically, orthodox economic analysis of migration ‘stocks’ and ‘flows’ constitutes palatable and digestible knowledge for the policymakers of destination countries. It is more easily reproducible as visuals for committee presentations and ‘data-driven’ reports, which fit the institutional grammar of governmental decision-making. Indeed, this applies even when the ‘data’ is unreliable, fungible and indeterminate, as long as definitions and labels fit policymaker expectations (Bigo 2014; Crisp 1999; Landau and Achiume 2017; Taylor and Meissner 2020). As in any ecology of knowledge production, particular disciplines, even individual authors from high status institutions, usually in the global North, are better placed to establish their approach, knowledge and recommendations as authoritative to high-level policy and political actors (Santos 2015: 188ff; in practice, see Lenner and Turner 2019). Most of the time, at least. But even more complex anthropological or sociological studies, say of the living conditions of refugees in large camps in the global South, may be susceptible to using melodramatic narratives that reproduce stereotypical ideas about vulnerability and victimhood. Such ideas continue to shape the limits of political and policy debate within donor countries and international organisations (e.g. Hyndman and Giles 2011; Johnson 2011; Turner 2019). Conceptualisations of migration and its governance are also predicated on subdivisions within our field of study. The attempt to separate forced migration studies from migration studies overall and treat it as an independent subfield with its own journals, conferences and so on, for example, has not only contributed to reinforcing the erroneous assumption of clearly distinguishable (‘forced’ vs. ‘voluntary’) migration flows. It has also led to a tendency to decouple forced migration studies from broader conceptual discussions about the politics of migration and its governance, as well as the ethics of researching it. This has often resulted in a policy-oriented research focus on those political institutions concerned with refugees and forced migrants, adapted to the categories they operate with, rather than challenging them (cf. Bakewell 2008). This politics of knowledge about migration and its governance is of fundamental importance. Dominant ways of seeing and knowing the world reproduce privileged positions of
The governance and politics of migration: a conceptual-analytical map 7 those who simultaneously present ‘authoritative knowledge’ and signal what kinds of knowledge (about migration and its governance) are actually authoritative (Santos 2015, esp. 157–8; Tuhiwai-Smith 1999). For students of migration, however, the politics of presenting ‘alternative’ forms and sources of authoritative knowledge, especially that of migrants, is also not straightforward. It is certainly not straightforwardly emancipatory (cf. Hill Collins 2002; Sharma 2015). Alternative knowledges and co-produced or migrant-centred biographical and ethnographic accounts are still brought to metropolitan centres of power, such as donor governments, international NGOs or humanitarian organisations, in a system of knowledge production that rewards researchers for ‘impact’ and ‘engagement’. This process is entangled with wider political relations, of post-colonialism and profoundly unequal economic development. Researchers, especially from well-funded universities in the global North rehearse and reproduce dominant positions and narratives that continue to position migrants as racialised objects of analysis, and re-work existing conceptualisations of how migrations and their governance are debated and understood (cf. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh with Fiori 2020; Grieve and Mitchell 2020). The common focus on South–North migrations, for example, tends to neglect dynamics of migration and migration governance in most of the world, which could enrich our conceptual tools and understandings (cf. Comaroff and Comaroff 2011; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh et al. 2020; Stel forthcoming). Indeed, in-depth ethnographic, ‘migrant-centred’ accounts exploring their agency can also provide policymakers with opportunities to develop new mechanisms of control, deportation and incarceration (Haile 2020). As Tuhiwai-Smith (1999: 1–20) argues, the inquisition of research can also act as the acquisition of personhood, social practices and value of those being ‘researched’ (p. 6) and of the ‘field’ of research. The re-writing and re-presentation of migrants’ concepts and knowledge, in order to conform to dominant forms and practices then re-works them in ways that permit the reproduction of iniquitous ways of knowing and governing (El Qadim et al. 2020; Mignolo 2012; Mignolo and Walsh 2018; Wynter 2003). The politics and political economy of knowledge production thus generates ways of seeing and knowing about migration governance, but it is also integral to migration governance. In acknowledgement of this, and to counter it, contributors to this book examine and challenge theoretical framings of what migration governance is, how it is produced and takes effect. They also review and critique empirical research on how migration and migrants are governed in particular places, times and settings, and seek to explicitly include contexts of the global South.
STUDYING THE POLITICS AND GOVERNANCE OF MIGRATION So how does the conceptual focus on ‘regimes of governing practices’ (governance) and contestations of power/authority (politics) matter for the contribution of this volume overall? Our authors show how the governance and politics of migration emerge from three constitutive contradictions. First, the governance and politics of migration are conceptually framed and understood, but materially expressed in ground-level practices in specific settings for specific migrants. As such, it is important to attend to the ways that migration, migrants and their governance are conceptualised and also to how those constructions are enacted to have material effects. Second, the governance and politics of migration have global reach. They affect, connect and
8 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration disconnect people and institutions across space, but they are also experienced, undertaken and contested in specific places. They have their own forms that can still produce unexpected commonalities of experience in very different settings. Even in the same place, they are marked by uneven and diverse outcomes. Third, the politics and governance of migration are inscribed in socio-economic power relations and structures, power-laden and often iniquitous. They are highly structured and condition political action, but, through the interpretations and actions of social and political agents, they are also dynamic and subject to transformation. This book, both in structure and in individual contributions, purposefully makes these contradictory characteristics of migration governance visible, systematically analysable, and subject to critique. Conceptual and Material One of the Handbook’s chief analytical contributions is an explicit and critical focus on the contested character of migration governance. Indeed, following our framework outlined in the previous section, we contend that the conceptualisation of the issues at stake in migration governance is itself political. It requires close analytical scrutiny to identify the consequences of how migration and migrants are conceptualised, why dominant conceptualisations prevail and how they are contested and transform over time. Longstanding lines of theoretical argument involve classic questions of citizenship and belonging. Debates about the ‘liberal paradox’ of migration governance have been concerned with conflicts between claims to state sovereignty, on the one hand, and democratic commitments to individuals’ rights against arbitrary state interventions on the other (cf. Faist and Özveren 2004; Hollifield 2000; Joppke 1998, 2005). However, notions of post-colonial belonging, universal rights and transnational citizenship have rightly challenged such conventional framings of how migrants belong, and how they secure rights in different places, including those places that are outside or beyond the state. When those denied citizenship take political action to claim their ‘right to have rights’ they challenge us to rethink what it means to be a member of a society or political community (Isin 2002; Nyers 2018). Another defining line of theoretical debate concerns whether and how policies should respond to the socio-economic interdependencies and global inequalities – created by uneven capitalist development – which shape migration patterns (Cohen 2006; Sassen 1999). When migration governance is explicitly made part of global ‘development’ governance, then both become subject to critique on the misuse of political and economic power to serve the interests of globally powerful states (see Raghuram 2009). Similar contentious questions about global responsibilities concern who can and should be subject to humanitarian protection (Chimni 1998; Crawley and Skleparis 2017; Saunders 2014). The climate emergency is used to expand definitions of refugee status, while threats of migration are used xenophobically to bolster campaigns for climate policies. Such pertinent debates are discussed in Part I of the volume. Conceptualisations of migration, of migrants, and their governance have emerged in processes that are deeply political; and their effects are profound. We expose the politics of these conceptualisations and question the conventional presentation of particular categories of migrant as defined by international organisations or states. In this, we support Bakewell’s (2008) call for ‘policy-irrelevant’ research: we set aside the ways in which policies conceptualise migration and migrants to be able to see them beyond state and policy-imposed categories. Yet these categories and conceptualisations remain important because they are not abstract legal or political constructs without further implications. These conceptualisations and the
The governance and politics of migration: a conceptual-analytical map 9 theoretical narratives that underpin them, have direct effects when expressed in laws and regulations, in institutions and processes, and when materialised in physical objects of governance: from digital online forms to ID cards; in floating barrages used to exclude dinghies from coastal borderlands; and branded backpacks for children whose status as forced migrants warrants their receipt of international aid.1 Our intention is to make visible, and to explain, the power relationships between theoretical scholarly conceptualisations; dominant conceptualisations in governance; and migration governance practices. A first analytical step is to identify the myopias of conceptual debates that define the study of migration governance and politics. All our contributors take this as a central task, acknowledging the situatedness of their critique, in, mostly, the ‘global North’, and in particular social science disciplines. Our contributors trace the history of such conceptualisations and their concrete effects in specific experiences of migration, family life and working conditions. They explore categorisations as political and legal artefacts that disguise the commonalities of migrants’ experiences, both in relation to other migrants and non-migrants (Part II). They also show how bureaucratic rules facilitate the violence and control experienced by migrants, and how political forces are brought to bear to manage, or contest, the status quo (Parts III, V and VI). Overall, our contributors show that governance conceptualisations render some migrants highly visible, and targets of governance, while abandoning and invisibilising others. Just as importantly, they insist that it is the relationship between the dominant governance conceptualisations and strategies, and the marginalisation of other aspects of migration, that shapes migrants’ lives and rights. Global and Relational Governing is a process which institutes relationships of power and possibilities of governing in highly contextualised ways. It is emplaced – politically, socially and economically – and articulated with wider conditions that mark the particularity of places and settings. And yet, such contextualisation ought not make researchers blind to the wider trends in migration governance, related knowledge biases, global power asymmetries and inequalities that underpin migration overall. It is therefore necessary to study the governance and politics of migration with a perspective on the global and relational character of distinct and yet connected governing practices and their contestation. At the same time, to acknowledge such connectedness also offers an opportunity to decolonise research – often dominated by conceptualisations stemming from the ‘global North’ (Mayblin and Turner 2020). To reconceptualise beyond normalised knowledge what migration is, and how it is experienced, our next analytical step is to fully acknowledge, and learn from, the ‘pluriverse’ (Mignolo and Walsh 2018) of knowledges about migration and its governance. Our contributors do so by exposing hegemonic discourses on migration governance and their implications as well as seeking to diversify research perspectives and empirical applications beyond ‘Northern’ academia, as well as research settings. Methodological nationalism is a well-acknowledged, but persistent, obstacle to a full understanding of globally connected practices of migration governance. Conceptual framings of the state as the sole (sometimes monolithic) actor in migration governance have met with increasing criticism (cf. Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002). Yet treating countries as “natural units for comparative analysis” (Garcés-Mascareñas 2019: 51) often continues for the sake of methodological ease. It may also be the product of a politics of research funding which often
10 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration privileges large-n comparative studies and quantification that promise strict hypothesis-testing and index-building. State-centred geographical markers of difference remain important, of course, as does large-n comparative work. Yet they are not the only spaces in which migration governance takes place and is experienced. The daily lives of migrants are regulated and contested in and across diverse spaces, which often transcend nation state borders. Such spaces include land or sea routes, which are reconstituted with changing international regulations (Walters 2015, 2017). They also comprise zones of transit and border processing (De Genova 2013). Yet even spaces of migration governance clearly located within nation state boundaries – e.g. refugee camps, cities, or rural areas – are not only determined by national governments, but equally shaped by international organisations, globalised technologies, donor politics and other states (cf. Amelina et al. 2019; Feldman 2011; Lenner 2020). Practices of migration governance can differ substantially depending on where migrants live, where they work, and under which conditions (Crowley 2001; Jaji 2011; Kofman 2013; Sigona 2014). These spatialised practices seek to manage migrants’ relationships with each other, public authorities and their living spaces. They emerge from global inequalities, and frequently reproduce them. Yet they can also produce individual, everyday contestations, and even significant mobilisations through unionisation, legal action and political campaigning. These mobilisations are then sometimes able to re-connect sites of bordering, migration, exploitation and precariousness to challenge the life and work conditions in otherwise distant places (e.g. de Vries and Guild 2019; Rygiel and Nyers 2012; Schwenken and Ruß-Sattar 2014; Stierl 2015). Flowing from methodological nationalism is also a methodological North-centrism (often also labelled ‘Euro-centrism’ or ‘Western-centrism’), which assumes migration from the global South to the global North and political responses there to constitute the norm of current migration governance. Focusing on migration governance in ‘Northern’ settings, even if from a critical perspective, can easily end up disavowing ongoing relations between migration processes and wider governance practices (e.g. uneven economic developments connecting consumers with migrant agricultural labour, climate change effects or conflict and arms trade/ security involvement as shown in Feldman 2011; Medland 2017). There is also much highly critical scholarship which, by drawing sharp distinctions between migration governance in global North and South, or by simply focusing on Northern contexts only, overlooks dynamics of governance that are, in fact, global (cf. e.g. Garcés-Mascareñas 2019; Jaji 2013; Natter 2018). There is need, for example, to understand the central role of ambiguity and informality of regulations and processes in reinforcing migrants’ precarity in work, welfare, housing and family life (see e.g. Carmel et al. 2019; Nassar and Stel 2019; Oesch 2017). The same goes for the significance of social institutions and networks in shaping migrants’ lives, complicating and/or opening up ways to cope with, circumvent, or challenge formal authorities (e.g. Scheibelhofer et al. 2019; Jacobsen 2006). There is much to learn from scholarship on migration governance in the global South, which can help transcend a bias towards formal institutions and get away from assuming fundamental differences in and of migration policy, for example between supposedly democratic vs. undemocratic regimes. This includes appreciating how Southern settings have served as laboratories for developing technologies of (migrant) population control, which are subsequently rolled out across the globe – the iris scan technology for refugees being only one of the latest in a long line of examples (cf. Jacobsen 2017; Sharma 2015). Scholarship that highlights similarities in processes and practices of migration governance across the globe, and/or the South to North routes of tech-
The governance and politics of migration: a conceptual-analytical map 11 nologies of control, productively contributes to provincialising some founding assumptions of Northern-centred scholarship, and helps in decolonising established frameworks of analysis, particularly in political science and political sociology (Comaroff and Comaroff 2011). Such decolonisation does not imply a hyper-contextualisation, which treats every experience of migration governance as specific and incomparable though. It rather highlights the relatedness of distinct phenomena and events across different sectors of governance, space and time. Finally, an explicitly spatialised perspective not only acknowledges the simultaneous specificity and connectedness of migration governance and politics. It also helps to shed light on how spaces not usually seen as ‘migration governance and politics’ can play a strong role in regulating and shaping migrants’ everyday lives, such as homes or workplaces. In sum, adopting a spatialised perspective on migration governance and politics enables us to see more clearly the multiple dimensions of the political. Structured and Dynamic Migration governance is characterised by relatively stable arrangements that structure and constrain how governing is done, and how governing practices are made sense of and acted upon by political actors (more generally, see Jessop 2016; Sum and Jessop 2013). As they become taken for granted, the inequalities that governance arrangements embody become more difficult to see, challenge and change. In particular, they are often occluded by the common-sense conceptualisations, and apparently technocratic ways of governing migration and migrants we discussed above. Over the longer term, such power and resource inequalities also become institutionalised as structural conditions that migrants, decision-makers and political stakeholders reproduce or simply work within. As such arrangements are not politically neutral, scholars need to challenge their ‘taken for granted’ character. In this Handbook, authors explain how dominant structures in migration governance can come to be seen as such. They historicise their origins, and problematise contemporary practices. Governing regimes can be assembled in formal institutional arrangements such as the UN refugee agency, but also through informal and often hidden processes generated by political actors, whether in everyday decision-making or grand re-definitions of policy problems. Institutions and regimes may act in ways that change how migration is seen and acted on, even if they more usually reify existing relationships of power. While Part III is specifically dedicated to analysing such formal and informal governance regimes, all contributions address the question of structures and their effects from diverse conceptual vantage points and empirical angles. Importantly, from our critical lens, we can see that the highly structured practices of migration governance are also deeply but often invisibly interwoven with (equally structured) processes of knowledge generation. These include, but are not confined to, risk-based technologies, ‘real-time’ maritime mapping, heat-detection and bio-technology regulated food assistance (Amoore and Hall 2009; Broeders and Hampshire 2013; Dijstelbloem and Meijer 2011; Duez and Bellanova 2012; Tazzioli 2019; Walters 2008). The use of these technologies makes a number of normative assumptions about the costs and benefits of migration which policymakers – and sometimes also researchers – take for granted or obscure despite their highly political implications (Paul 2019). As normative judgements about migration become inscribed into the complex technical and often covert models of risk analysis, their legitimacy
12 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration and practical workings are even further removed from democratic scrutiny (Amoore 2020; Leese 2014, 2016; Tazzioli 2018). However, exploring the structured and structuring purposes and effects of migration governance ought not to obscure simultaneous instances of transformation. While knowledge generation and its political uses often proceed quietly, they can also be undermined or become re-politicised, through individual acts of resistance or more sustained forms of mobilisation (Andersson 2014; Collyer 2012). Migrants may choose to defy categories they are placed in or to make strategic use of them. They may claim their vulnerability and victimhood in order to fit with categories such as ‘victim of trafficking’ or ‘forced migrant’ (e.g. O’Higgins 2012; Plambech 2014). Alternatively, they may challenge these definitions through practical action (Nyers 2018); not least through their migratory movements (e.g. Perkowski and Squire 2019). The politics of migration governance, however, is also transformed through anti-immigrant forms of mobilisation (Neocosmos 2008; Sassen 2014). In Parts V and VI, our contributors analyse different processes through which migration governance can be politicised, depoliticised, and re-politicised: demonstrating both the normalisation of migration governance and challenges to it.
OUTLINE OF THE BOOK The conceptual and analytical approach outlined in the previous sections shapes how we examine the governance and politics of migration in the Handbook, including the book’s overall organisation and presentation. As we have shown, politics inheres in governing practices, but these are not confined to government institutions, public authorities or laws. The governance of migration and migrants is dispersed across different sites: not just at borders, but in workplaces, homes and routes. It also varies by place and context, whether in grand global programmes or in the practices of police on the street. This empirical diversity cannot be easily contained in the confines of a formal book structure. Indeed, we do not claim to do so. To systematise and then re-present the full range of institutions, rules, places, practices and experiences of migration governance and politics in a linear organisational format, would itself be a political act. As we contend that it is not possible to understand migration governance by looking at formal characterisations of ‘types’ of migration, or ‘levels of governance’, or regions of the world, so we do not use these to organise this Handbook. Such an approach would imply that migration governance is knowable through these characterisations, and as such can be acted on straightforwardly with regular effects. As we argued earlier in this introduction, and as our contributors show, such an approach would blind us to some of the most significant aspects of how migration and migrants are governed and how this governance is contested. However, we still need an organising framework, to present the wide-ranging and in-depth contributions of this volume, and their intersection. Our choice for the structure of the volume follows from our emphasis on a conceptual-analytical, rather than an empirical-descriptive frame for the study of migration governance and politics. We have therefore organised this Handbook to address what we view as the six key dimensions of governance and politics of migration: (1) conceptualisations of migration governance and politics and how they have been understood and debated; (2) categorisations of migration and migrants that underpin key ways in which migration has been governed and contested; (3) regimes of migration
The governance and politics of migration: a conceptual-analytical map 13 governance that express the contingent but institutionalised forms through which migration is structured; (4) the spaces in and through which migrants’ lives are shaped, mediated and experienced; (5) the processes through which governing is enacted and materialised on the ground; and (6) key forms and processes of contestation and mobilisation for other ways of governing migration, and sometimes, other ways of doing politics. The remainder of this introductory chapter explains the rationale, focus and contributions in each of these sections, before concluding with some reflections on our scholarly and political position as editors. Part I: Conceptualising the Politics and Governance of Migration Part I deals with key debates through which scholars understand the governance and politics of migration, and the insights to be gained from their empirical application. As such, chapters in this section also forge a conceptual compass to navigate through the more empirically oriented sections of the Handbook. The book opens with three chapters on key theoretical framings of migration governance. Lucy Mayblin shows the potentially transformative effects of reading migration and its governance through de-colonial perspectives. Flávia Rodrigues de Castro and Carolina Moulin examine changes in theorisations of nationhood and citizenship, highlighting how they inform our understanding of migration governance, and how recent ‘critical mobility’ approaches open new ways of viewing political action and citizenship. Carolin Fischer reflexively explores insights from revitalised scholarship on diaspora and transnationalism, to animate a rethinking of how key areas of migration governance and politics are strategically shaped by transnational action, and to move beyond methodological nationalism in such discussions. The following chapters in this opening section explain key lines of argument in how we theorise specific forms and conditions of migration governance and their politics. Karolina Follis explores how the border/security nexus in migration governance is shaped by contestation, and its limits, around three key concepts: sovereignty, security and risk. Lama Kabbanji uses a Gramscian perspective to identify and critique the current hegemonic model of the migration/development nexus, and the political relationships that this model disguises and reproduces. Ingrid Boas and Hanne Wiegel identify three waves of changes in the governance of the climate change/migration nexus, none of which accommodate the experiences and practices on the ground, and propose adopting a mobilities approach as an alternative. Jason Hart historicises the place of humanitarianism in migration governance and shows the tensions and compromises faced by humanitarian organisations as political and organisational dependence challenge principles of ‘modern’ humanitarianism. Katharina Natter closes the section by unravelling dominant dichotomies in political science theories on immigration in different political regimes to make a case for new frameworks that facilitate research and theorising beyond the global North/global South divide. Across all these contributions, the emphasis is on teasing out the historical, social and political contexts within which theorisations of migration governance have developed. All the authors identify the need for further critical reflexivity and closer theoretical engagement with the politics of migration governance in practice. Part II: The Politics of Categorising Migration The premises on which the current governance and politics of migration are built can only be understood through an examination of specific socially constructed categories of migrant (among numerous others, e.g. Bakewell 2008; Carmel and Paul 2013; Crisp 1999; Paul 2015).
14 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration Part II therefore covers key issues and debates on how different ‘types’ of migration are governed through categorisations, how these categorisations have emerged as distinct, and how the politics of migration is shaped through them. Chapters also consider how resulting categories of migrants are being contested and how they shape migrants’ experiences of inclusion and exclusion. It is in these chapters that we see the close examination of how wider forces and conditions, in the politics of class, gender, ethnicity and colonialism, intersect with the development and enactment of these categories. Oliver Bakewell dissects how the distinction between forced and voluntary migration powerfully shapes the lives and opportunities of migrants, whose journeys more often than not involve elements of force as well as choice. Vicki Squire examines how illegality is systematically produced as a condition that reinforces the precarity of those migrating to search for a better, safer life. Cameron Thibos and Neil Howard look at the discourse and politics of human trafficking, and question the distinction between victims, non-victims and facilitators that it has engendered. Saskia Bonjour and Laura Cleton analyse the politics of constructing family as a legal ground for the admission of foreigners, and the inclusions and exclusions produced by this category. Finally, Huw Vasey outlines how skill has become a powerful social construct that classifies and stratifies migrants into distinct groups. Across contributions, authors question those powerful categories of contemporary migration governance not only by historicising them, but also by outlining how migrants strategically employ, undermine as well as openly contest them, and outline alternative conceptualisations that make visible the politics of producing those categories in the first place. Part III: Institutions and Regimes of Migration Governance Part III is concerned with how the iteration of governance practices over time produces relatively stable institutional arrangements for migration governance. Contributions interrogate how such regimes are assembled, how they come to be taken for granted, and how they – often rather invisibly and informally – shape migration governance beyond simplistic notions of origin, destination and transit. They examine the key components that mark out each governance regime, and how its development over time has been shaped by contestations among different actors, including migrants. They explore how governing strategies and mechanisms are articulated with underlying normative positions to generate a particular regime, and how and to what effect regimes accentuate, amplify but also silence specific issues in the governance of migration. Prem Kumar Rajaram starts with a discussion of border regimes as relational accounts of space and invites us to critically study their particular regime function: to reproduce dominant social relations. Heaven Crawley and Mary Setrana outline the evolution of the global refugee regime and highlight that without reclaiming a meaningful universal concept of protection, governance efforts such as the Global Refugee Compact are bound to reproduce global inequalities and risk of death. Antoine Pécoud deconstructs the global discourse on migration management as a deliberately depoliticising and seemingly consensual approach which glosses over deep disagreements over how to actually govern migration as well as the inequalities such governance (re‑)produces. Shamel Azmeh explores how the mutual constitution of global value chains and the governance of migrant workers deepen global social and economic inequalities. Nora El Qadim discusses national state regimes as the prevailing stronghold of dominant interpretations of legitimate exclusion, while exposing them as complex arrangements riddled with contradictions and constantly in flux.
The governance and politics of migration: a conceptual-analytical map 15 Part IV: Spaces of Migration Governance Chapters in Part IV interrogate how the daily lives of migrants are regulated and contested in and across diverse spaces. Beyond nation states, this section examines how the governance and politics of migration are spatialised in de-centred, complex and deeply contingent ways, and how these affect the practices and experiences of migrants. Contributors explore how the governance of migration expresses the characteristics of each such space, its social relations internally and with other spaces, and how these spaces are connected to broader regimes and dynamics of migration governance. William Walters argues that the idea of migration routes in policy and expert discourses needs to be denaturalised, and promotes the notion of migrant journeys as an alternative concept that allows more space for a diversity of migrant experiences. An van Raemdonck and Fran Meissner review scholarship on urban migration governance which, they argue, needs to extend beyond analysing levels of regulation, and explore migrants’ roles as city makers, as migrant and non-migrant city dwellers interact. Lydia Medland investigates the significance of rural areas as sites of migration governance, and problematises the metropolitan focus, as well as the urban–rural dichotomy permeating much of the scholarship on migration governance. Lewis Turner’s analysis of camps demonstrates that for inhabitants, the meanings of encampment are much more diverse than indicated in current scholarship based on Agamben’s notion of the camp. Tesseltje de Lange, Lisa Berntsen and Pedro de Sena explore the entanglement of political economy, migration governance and (the lack of) labour mobility rights in workplaces, focusing on three workplaces typically associated with migrant labour. Finally, Sabrina Marchetti and Anna di Bartolomeo analyse homes as sites of migration governance, focusing on the experiences and struggles of domestic workers, and the multiple regimes of governance they are subjected to. The list of spaces covered in this section is not exhaustive. They obviously also include the border as a space of governance that is simultaneously violent but also diverse in its workings and effects. Other important spaces that could and have been analysed with similar questions in mind include detention facilities (e.g. Bayles and Mayblin 2018; Moran et al. 2013), courts (see e.g. Gill et al. 2015) or religious spaces. Focusing on specific spaces in a handbook on migration governance overall, however, directs attention to the fact that concepts such as ‘country of destination’ or ‘international regimes of migration governance’ do not do justice to the variety of spatialised experiences of governance that shape migrants’ lives and struggles at different points of their journeys or lives. Part V: Processes and Practices of Migration Governance An important analytical gateway into the conceptual underpinnings and material effects, but also the structured and dynamic character of migration governance, is to ask how and to what effect migration is governed through different processes. In what ways do the processes under scrutiny – such as the technologisation of migration control, the criminalisation of migration or outright deportation – make the politics of migration governance visible or invisible? Why and how do these processes become dominant in governing migration, and which type of actors and knowledge do they privilege and exclude? Contributions in Part V render visible the seemingly technical procedures for processing migrants and migration-related knowledge and the ways in which such procedures obscure political choices and implications. The section starts with Melanie Griffiths’ overview of the temporal dimension of migration governance
16 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration processes. She renders visible the powerful – but often implicit and analytically neglected – selectivity and control functions of time horizons, delays and accelerations, and temporal continuity and disjuncture in migration policies and governance. Julien Jeandesboz discusses how technological innovation and knowledge production affect the intensity, direction and effects of migration control endeavours. David Moffette addresses the widespread intermeshing of criminal law and migration law sanctions in legal practice (‘crimmigration’) from a legal pluralist perspective, exploring how multifaceted political games of ‘cherry-picking’ in and across legal subsystems work to control and punish migrants. Annika Lindberg and Shahram Khosravi take a procedural and temporal analytical perspective on how deportation and detention practices intermingle, in complex and staggered ways, with other processes to produce and sustain global inequalities. Overall, contributions in this section explore both how governance processes inform marginalisation as well as the ways in which they are being – and ought to be – contested. Part VI: Contesting Migration Governance Part VI is specifically dedicated to processes in which the politics of migration governance are being contested and re-politicised. Contributors assess how political mobilisations by, for and against migrants shape the politics of migration. They explore how both migrants and migrations are ‘politicised’ and ‘re-politicised’ in these mobilisations. They examine the resources, strategies and tools that actors have at their disposal to contest migration governance practices, and their relative success and failure in different contexts. The section starts with a contribution on migrant political activism by Ilker Ataç and Helen Schwenken. They shed light on how our idea of ‘the political’ in migrant activism must include the formation of political subjectivities and everyday acts of empowerment vis-à-vis racialised, gendered and social discrimination. Leila Kawar’s discussion of legal mobilisations examines judicially supervised contestations of immigration law, and their often unexpected ‘radiating effects’ on legislative and administrative policymaking. Nicola Piper’s contribution on economic mobilisations highlights how a new conception of migrant rights is being forged around the notion of decent work, embedded in global social justice concerns and an emerging multi-actor governance architecture. The final chapter by Aitana Guia considers how anti-immigrant discourses and mobilisation actively transmit ‘political-religious master frames’ into the general public discourse about migration, usually with the effect of discrediting norms of ‘liberal’ governance.
CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS As explained in the earlier sections of this introduction, our aim in this Handbook is threefold. First, we seek to provide readers with a clear conceptual frame for navigating this field of research. Second, we offer a guide to the governance and politics of migration as a field of study. Finally, we propose a reflexive, critical engagement with the state-of-the-art, in order to address, rethink and redefine the governance and politics of migration in the future. For the first, we conceive of migration and governance as mutually and fundamentally related, but not fixed. We draw from this starting assumption our conceptualisation of (1) governance as ‘regimes of governing practices’ (cf. Carmel 2019), and (2) politics as power/authority and its contestation. Taken together, and synthesising the findings from this Handbook, we propose
The governance and politics of migration: a conceptual-analytical map 17 that the governance and politics of migration inhere in three constitutive contradictions: conceptual/material; global/relational; and structural/dynamic. These contradictions can be observed and explored across six dimensions of migration governance and politics that define it as a field of study, as reflected in the structure of the Handbook. Contributions to this volume more than met our desire to gather scholarly accounts which would portray the state-of-the-art on migration governance in an accessible manner and critically engage with it. While we outlined our conceptual and analytical approach before approaching our contributors, this is not the same handbook we originally imagined. In the long and rewarding process of developing this volume, our engagement and discussion with authors and their work has enabled us to develop, refine and clarify our own thinking. We encouraged contributors to closely examine the state-of-the-art, to historicise our understanding of the ways in which migration and migrants are governed in the contemporary world, and to critically review this governance, and research on it, with a strong sense of their own scholarly voice. We asked them to do all this while also closely attending to the emerging work and ideas that will come to shape the governance and politics of migration in the future. In response, contributors have indeed identified many challenges in our field of research that signal the need to transform how we think about migration governance and politics, and how we study them. We need to continue deepening and extending the ‘pluriverse’ of knowledges (cf. Mignolo and Walsh 2018) on which migration governance and politics currently rest. The contributions in this Handbook point to a number of avenues that should be pursued in much greater depth when seeking to grasp the governance and politics of migration. We need to interrogate state and formal definitions of migration that disavow human relationships and connections across borders, both spatial and temporal. In doing so, we must reassess the relationships of state and political economy that are produced in migration governance. These include both the changing structural conditions of ‘global’ capitalism in general, as well as the concrete role played by individual corporate actors in diverse governance spaces and processes. Above all, we must re-centre the role of ‘race’ in how migration governance and politics produce intersectional inequalities around ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class and (dis)ability. This must include more nuanced attention to the politics of everyday migrant life through exploring the practices entangled between North and South, as well as shared possibilities for transnational political action. We hope that our readers will find the Handbook an enriching and rewarding experience to enter into, refresh or deepen, their own understanding of our field and, by taking up such challenges, contribute to its further development.
NOTE 1.
An ongoing critical record of this institutional branding has been collated by Jeff Crisp, on Twitter, @JFCrisp.
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20 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration Garcés-Mascareñas, B. (2019), ‘Beyond Methodological Western-centrism. The “control gap” Debate Reconsidered from a Global Perspective’, in A. Weinar, S. Bonjour and L. Zhyznomirska (eds), The Routledge Handbook of the Politics of European Migration, London: Routledge, pp. 50–59. Geddes, A. and P. Scholten (2016), The Politics of Migration and Immigration in Europe, second edition, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Geiger, M. and A. Pécoud (2010), The Politics of International Migration Management, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Gill, N., R. Rotter, A. Burridge, M. Griffiths and J. Allsopp (2015), ‘Inconsistency in Asylum Appeal Adjudication’, Forced Migration Review, 50, 52–4. Grieve, T. and R. Mitchell (2020), ‘Promoting Meaningful and Equitable Relationships? Exploring the UK’s Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) Funding Criteria from the Perspectives of African Partners’, European Journal of Development Research, 32 (3), 514–28. Haile, S. (2020), ‘Voices to be Heard? Reflections on Refugees, Strategic Invisibility and the Politics of Voice’, in E. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh (ed.), Refuge in a Moving World, London: UCL Press, ch. 2. Hansen, P. and S. Jonsson (2014), Eurafrica, London: Bloomsbury. Heinelt, H. (1993), ‘Policy und Politics. Überlegungen zum Verhältnis von Politikinhalten und Politikprozessen’, in A. Windhoff-Héritier (ed.), Policy-Analyse. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, pp. 307–27. Hill Collins, P. (2002), Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, London: Routledge. Hoag, C. (2010), ‘The Magic of the Populace: An Ethnography of Illegibility in the South African Immigration Bureaucracy’, Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 33 (1), 6–25. Hollifield, J. F. (1992), Immigrants, Markets, and States: The Political Economy of Postwar Europe, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hollifield, J. F. (2000), ‘The Politics of International Migration: How Can we Bring the State Back in?’, in C. Brettell and J. F. Hollifield (eds), Migration Theory: Talking Across Disciplines, London, New York: Routledge, pp. 137–85. Huysmans, J. (2000), ‘The European Union and the Securitization of Migration’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 38 (5), 751–77. Hyndman, J. and W. Giles (2011), ‘Waiting for What? The Feminization of Asylum in Protracted Situations’, Gender, Place & Culture, 18 (3), 361–79. Isin, E. F. (2002), Being Political: Genealogies of Citizenship, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Jacobsen, K. (2006), ‘Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Urban Areas: A Livelihoods Perspective’, Journal of Refugee Studies, 19(3), 273–86. Jacobsen, K. L. (2017), ‘On Humanitarian Refugee Biometrics and New Forms of Intervention’, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 11 (4), 529–51. Jaji, R. (2011), ‘Social Technology and Refugee Encampment in Kenya’, Journal of Refugee Studies, 25 (2), 221–38. Jaji, R. (2013), ‘Somali Asylum Seekers and Refoulement at the Kenya–Somalia Border’, Journal of Borderlands Studies, 28 (3), 355–68. Jessop, B. (2016), The State: Past, Present, Future. Cambridge and Malden, MA: Polity Press. Johnson, H. L. (2011), ‘Click to Donate: Visual Images, Constructing Victims and Imagining the Female Refugee’, Third World Quarterly, 32 (6), 1015–37. Joppke, C. (1998), ‘Immigration Challenges the Nation-state’, in C. Joppke (ed.), Challenge to the Nation-State: Immigration in Western Europe and the United States, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 5–46. Joppke, C. (2005), ‘Exclusion in the Liberal State: The Case of Immigration and Citizenship Policy’, European Journal of Social Theory, 8 (1), 43–61. Kofman, E. (2013), ‘Gendered Labour Migrations in Europe and Emblematic Migratory Figures’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 39 (4), 579–600. Kofman, E. and P. Raghuram (2015), Gendered Migrations and Global Social Reproduction, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Landau, L. B. and Achiume, E. T. (2017), ‘Misreading Mobility? Bureaucratic Politics and Blindness in UN Migration Reports’, Development and Change, 48 (5), 1182–95.
The governance and politics of migration: a conceptual-analytical map 21 Lee, A. E. (2013), ‘“Illegality”, health problems, and return migration’, Regions & Cohesion, 3 (1), 62–93. Leese, M. (2014), ‘The New Profiling: Algorithms, Black Boxes, and the Failure of Anti-Discriminatory Safeguards in the European Union’, Security Dialogue, 45, 494–511, https://doi.org/10.1177/ 0967010614544204. Leese, M. (2016), ‘Exploring the Security/Facilitation Nexus: Foucault at the “Smart” Border’, Global Society, 30, 412–29, https://doi.org/10.1080/13600826.2016.1173016. Lenner, K. (2020), ‘“Biting Our Tongues”: Policy Legacies and Policy Memories in the Making of the Syrian Refugee Response in Jordan’, Refugee Survey Quarterly, 39 (3), 273–298. Lenner, K. and L. Turner (2019), ‘Making Refugees Work? The Politics of Integrating Syrian Refugees into the Labour Market in Jordan’, Middle East Critique, 28 (1), 65–95. Long, K. (2013), ‘When Refugees Stopped Being Migrants: Movement, Labour and Humanitarian Protection’, Migration Studies, 1 (1), 4–26. Mayblin, L. (2014), ‘Colonialism, Decolonisation, and the Right to be Human: Britain and the 1951 Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees’, Journal of Historical Sociology, 27 (3), 423–41. Mayblin, L and J. Turner (2020), Migration Studies and Colonialism, Cambridge: Polity Press. Medland, L. (2017), ‘Misconceiving “Seasons” in Global Food Systems: The Case of the EU Seasonal Workers Directive’, European Law Journal, 23 (3–4), 157–71. Meeus, B. (2016), ‘Migration and Postsocialism: A Relational Geography Approach’, in A. Amelina, B. Meeus and K. Horvath (eds), An Anthology of Migration and Social Transformation. European Perspectives, Heidelberg: Springer, pp. 87–100. Menjívar, C. (2006), ‘Liminal Legality: Salvadoran and Guatemalan Immigrants’ Lives in the United States’, American Journal of Sociology, 111 (4), 999–1037. Menz, G. (2009), The Political Economy of Managed Migration, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mignolo, W. (2012), Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Mignolo, W. and C. Walsh (2018), On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Moran, D., N. Gill and D. Conlon (2013), Carceral Spaces: Mobility and Agency in Imprisonment and Migrant Detention, Aldershot: Ashgate. Mosse, D. (2004), ‘Is Good Policy Unimplementable? Reflections on the Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice’, Development and Change, 35 (4), 639–71. Nassar, J. and N. Stel (2019), ‘Lebanon’s Response to the Syrian Refugee Crisis – Institutional Ambiguity as a Governance Strategy’, Political Geography, 70, 44–54. Natter, K. (2018), ‘Rethinking Immigration Policy Theory Beyond “Western Liberal Democracies”’, Comparative Migration Studies, 6 (1), 1–21. Neocosmos, M. (2008), ‘The Politics of Fear and the Fear of Politics: Reflections on Xenophobic Violence in South Africa’, Journal of Asian and African Studies, 43 (6), 586–94. Nyers, P. (2018), Irregular Citizenship, Immigration, and Deportation, London: Routledge. Oesch, L. (2017), ‘The Refugee Camp as a Space of Multiple Ambiguities and Subjectivities’, Political Geography, 60, 110–20. O’Higgins, A. (2012), ‘Vulnerability and Agency: Beyond an Irreconcilable Dichotomy for Social Service Providers Working with Young Refugees in the UK’, New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 136, 79–91, DOI: 10.1002/cad.20012. Paul, R. (2015), The Political Economy of Border-Drawing: Arranging Legality in European Labor Migration Policies, Oxford and New York: Berghahn. Paul, R. (2016), ‘Negotiating Varieties of Capitalism? Crisis and Change in Contemporary British and German Labour Migration Policies’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 42 (10), 1631–50. Paul, R. (2019), ‘Risk Analysis as a Governance Tool in European Border Control’, in A. Weinar, S. Bonjour and L. Zhyznomirska (eds), The Routledge Handbook of the Politics of European Migration, London: Routledge, pp. 227–38. Perkowski, N. and V. Squire (2019), ‘The Anti-Policy of European Anti-Smuggling as a Site of Contestation in the Mediterranean Migration “Crisis”’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 45 (12), 2167–84.
22 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration Però, D. (2011), ‘Migrants’ Practices of Citizenship and Policy Change’, in C. Shore, S. Wright and D. Però (eds), Policy Worlds: Anthropology and the Analysis of Contemporary Power, New York et al.: Berghahn Books, pp. 244–63. Piore, M. J. (1979), Birds of Passage: Migrant Labor and Industrial Societies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Plambech, S. (2014), ‘Between “Victims” and “Criminals”: Rescue, Deportation, and Everyday Violence Among Nigerian Migrants’, Social Politics, 21 (3), 382–402. Pott, A., C. Rass and F. Wolff (eds) (2018), Was ist ein Migrationsregime? [What Is a Migration Regime?], Berlin: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Raghuram, P. (2009)‚ ‘Which Migration, What Development? Unsettling the Edifice of Migration and Development’, Population, Space and Place, 15, 103–17. Rijken, C. and T. de Lange (eds) (2018), Towards a Decent Labour Market for Low Waged Migrant Workers, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Rose, N. (1999), Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ruhs, M. (2013), The Price of Rights: Regulating International Labor Migration, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Rygiel, K. and P. Nyers (eds) (2012), Citizenship, Migrant Activism and the Politics of Movement, London: Routledge. Santos, B.d.S. (2015), Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide, London: Routledge, https://globalsocialtheory.org/thinkers/santos-boaventura-de-sousa/. Sassen, S. (1999), Guests and Aliens, New York: New Press. Sassen, S. (2014), ‘Anti-Immigrant Politics Along with Institutional Incorporation?’, in M. Walton-Roberts and J. Hennebry (eds), Territoriality and Migration in the E.U., Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 13–26. Saunders, N. (2014), ‘Paradigm Shift or Business as Usual? An Historical Appraisal of the “Shift” to the Securitization of Refugee Protection’, Refugee Survey Quarterly, 33 (3), 69–92. Scheibelhofer, E., N. Regös and C. Holzinger (2019), ‘Navigating the Labyrinths of Transnational Social Security: Experiences and Meaning-Making Processes of EU Migrants When Accessing and Porting Social Rights’, in A. Amelina, E. Carmel, A. Runfors and E. Scheibelhofer (eds), Boundaries of European Social Citizenship, London: Routledge, chapter 5. Schwenken, H. and S. Ruß-Sattar (2014), New Border and Citizenship Politics, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Scott, J., (1998), Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Sharma, N. (2015), ‘Strategic Anti-essentialism: Decolonising Decolonization’, in K. McKittrick (ed.), Syliva Wynter: On being Human as Praxis, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 164–82. Sigona, N. (2014), ‘Campzenship: Reimagining the Camp as a Social and Political Space’, Citizenship Studies, 19 (1), 1–15. Stel, N. (forthcoming), ‘Uncertainty, Exhaustion, Abandonment – Leveraging the Idea of Strategic Institutional Ambiguity to Interrogate North/South Distinctions in Forced Migration Studies’, Political Geography. Stierl, M. (2015), ‘The WatchTheMed Alarm Phone: A Disobedient Border-Intervention’, Movements: Journal for Critical Migration and Border Regime Studies 1 (2), http://movements-journal.org/issues/ 02.kaempfe/13.stierl--watchthemed-alarmphone.html. Stone, D. (2012), Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making, New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Sukarieh, M. and S. Tannock (2019), ‘Subcontracting Academia: Alienation, Exploitation and Disillusionment in the UK Overseas Syrian Refugee Research Industry’, Antipode, 51 (2), 664–80. Sum, N. L. and B. Jessop (2013), Towards a Cultural Political Economy, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing. Taylor, L. and Meissner, F. (2020), ‘A Crisis of Opportunity: Market‐Making, Big Data, and the Consolidation of Migration as Risk’, Antipode, 52, 270–90. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12583. Tazzioli, M. (2018), ‘Spy, Track and Archive: The Temporality of Visibility in Eurosur and Jora’, Security Dialogue, 49 (4), 272–88. Tazzioli, M. (2019), ‘Refugees’ Debit Cards, Subjectivities, and Data Circuits: Financial-Humanitarianism in the Greek Migration Laboratory’, International Political Sociology, 13 (4), 392–408.
The governance and politics of migration: a conceptual-analytical map 23 Tilly, C. (2011), ‘The Impact of the Economic Crisis on International Migration: A Review’, Work, Employment and Society, 25 (4), 675–92. Torpey, J. (2000), The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship and the State, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Triandafyllidou, A. (2019), The Migration Archipelago: Social Navigation and Migrant Agency’, International Migration, 57, 5–19. Tuhiwai-Smith, L. (1999), Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, London: Zed Books. Turner, L. (2019), ‘Syrian Refugee Men as Objects of Humanitarian Care’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 21 (4), 595–616. Vintila, D. and Lafleur, J.M. (2020), ‘Migration and access to welfare benefits in the EU: The interplay between residence and nationality’, in J.M. Lafleur and D. Vintila (eds), Migration and Social Protection in Europe and Beyond (Volume 1), Charm: Springer, pp. 1–32. Walters, W. (2008), ‘Putting the Migration-Security Complex in its Place’, in L. Amoore and M. de Goede (eds), Risk and the War on Terror, Oxford: Routledge, pp. 158–77. Walters, W. (2015), ‘Migration, Vehicles, and Politics: Three Theses on Visapolitics’, European Journal of Social Theory, 18 (4), 469–88. Walters, W. (2017), ‘Live Governance, Borders, and the Time–Space of the Situation: EUROSUR and the Genealogy of Bordering in Europe’, Comparative European Politics, 15 (5), 794–817. Wedel, J. R., C. Shore, G. Feldman and S. Lathrop (2005), ‘Toward an Anthropology of Public Policy’, The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 600 (1), 30–51. Weinar, A. (2019), ‘Politics of Emigration in Europe’, in A. Weinar, S. Bonjour and L. Zhyznomirska (eds), The Routledge Handbook of the Politics of European Migration, London: Routledge, pp. 38–49. Wimmer, A. and N. Glick Schiller (2002), ‘Methodological Nationalism and Beyond: Nation-State Building, Migration and the Social Sciences’, Global Networks, 2 (4), 301–34. Wynter, S. (2003), ‘Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, after Man, Its Overrepresentation – An Argument’, The New Centennial Review, 3 (3), 257–337.
PART I CONCEPTUALISING THE POLITICS AND GOVERNANCE OF MIGRATION
2. Postcolonial perspectives on migration governance Lucy Mayblin
INTRODUCTION It is not possible to seriously consider the topics of migration, or international politics, over the past 500 years of history without including colonial histories. From the massive forced migrations of the triangular slave trade to the almost unfettered mobility of white Europeans within their various empires; from the large-scale population displacements which the turbulence of decolonization gave rise to, to the migration of people from the former colonies to the former metropoles in the late twentieth century, colonialism is unavoidable. That all Western countries today have highly restrictive immigration policies which seek to keep brown and black people off their territories is no surprise within this context. And yet, somehow, colonialism, decolonization, and their legacies, have received surprisingly little attention amongst migration studies scholars as the multidisciplinary field has established (and to some extent ‘disciplined’) itself over the past two decades. Even critical migration studies have tended, according to Tudor (2018: 9) ‘to forget about postcolonial racism and racialization and instead promoted an understanding of migration that is disconnected from postcolonial analysis’. Postcolonial scholar Gayarti Spivak might deem this phenomenon ‘sanctioned ignorance’ (Spivak 1999) but, more generously, the lack of enthusiasm for looking back may emerge from the seeming urgency of contemporary issues and ‘crises’. Certainly, presentism is engendered within the field as every year brings new displacements, new patterns of migration, new politicians and laws seeking to control it. The present is, it seems, always new. And yet conversely, migration has been central to postcolonial and decolonial intellectual projects (Nair 2013: 4) and these fields of scholarship have much to offer scholars of migration governance both theoretically and empirically. This chapter outlines what a broadly postcolonial and decolonial perspective on migration governance entails, and how taking this perspective allows us to see that the present rarely is new. It begins with an explanation of what postcolonial and decolonial scholars mean when they speak of the legacies of colonialism in terms of the ‘colonial present’. Following this is a discussion of the categories of ‘man’ and ‘human’ which are central to both postcolonial and migration studies projects, and (following Fanon) goes on to explore one way of conceptualizing international migration in terms of ‘zones of being and non-being’. The penultimate section looks at the idea of ‘Eurocentrism’ and its implications for studying the governance of international migration. The final substantive section discusses some work which has focused on the patterns, politics and power relations entailed in migrating, and governing migration, in the colonial present.
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26 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration
THE COLONIAL PRESENT Within postcolonial and decolonial studies (see Bhambra 2014 on the distinction between the two) colonialism is not simply something that happened and has now ended. Instead, postcolonialists recognize that colonialism has many enduring legacies. ‘Colonialism’ in this context often refers to European colonialism in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Australasia from the fifteenth century through to the late twentieth century, though scholars have also applied postcolonial frameworks in relation to other empires (for example Cohen 2012; Koh 2015). One of the first mysteries that needed to be addressed by postcolonialists was therefore why this simple idea, that colonialism has many enduring legacies, might be controversial for many scholars in the humanities and social sciences. The answer to this question is wrapped up in colonialism itself, and the ways in which the academic disciplines, founded at a time when the world was one of colonialism, imperialism and racial hierarchy, are themselves invested in particular narratives about society and economy. Foundational to many academic disciplines is the idea that at some point in time something happened to Western societies which transformed them from pre-modern into modern societies. The Renaissance, the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution form the key pillars of this story, together facilitating the Enlightenment, the emergence of democracy and the rise of capitalism in the West (Bhambra 2007). These events are commonly considered endogenous to Western societies and are very rarely attributed to such things as slavery, or to the exploitation and subjugation of colonized peoples, industries and lands. For postcolonial and decolonial scholars, this founding narrative of Western modernity, the European ‘miracle’ is the often-unspoken underlying framework from which research on a multiplicity of topics begins (Bhabha 2005 [1994]; Bhambra 2007; Chakrabarty 2000; Mignolo 2000). And for these scholars, this is a problem. In this narrative (or myth), there are temporal and geographical dimensions to the rupture of modernity. Europe and the former white settler colonies are ‘modern’, and therefore ‘ahead’, other places (indeed whole continents) are traditional, behind. Why such events which triggered ‘development’ and ‘enlightenment’ in the West did not occur elsewhere, and how those ‘other’ places might ‘catch up’ and ‘develop’ themselves then (following the narrative) become significant areas of scientific enquiry. While modernity is, according to postcolonialists, constituted through colonialism, ‘Eurocentric knowledge represses or hides modernity’s imperial constitution, reserving modernity instead for westerners’ (Go 2013: 11). Postcolonial and decolonial scholars have spent a significant amount of time dismantling this narrative (Bhabha 2005 [1994]; Mignolo 2000; Quijano 2000; Said 1995 [1978]). One important intervention has come in the form of the concept of coloniality/modernity. Coloniality/modernity refers to the way in which the concepts and phenomena of coloniality (a colonial, racially and culturally hierarchical worldview) and modernity are inseparable – two sides of the same coin. Modernity, then, is viewed as an epistemological frame that is inseparably bound to the European colonial project (Dussel 1995; Mignolo 2007; Quijano 2000). In other words, as Europeans invented the idea of their societies being ‘modern’ (wealthy, scientifically rational, culturally civilized, democratized, secularized, etc.) and this being one stage in an inevitable sequence of events, they were simultaneously plundering, exploiting and impoverishing people in other parts of the world. Modernity therefore silences its own dependence on ‘others’. Logically, then, these other people and the countries which they inhabited came to represent both Europe’s opposite and its past (poor, irrational, uncivi-
Postcolonial perspectives on migration governance 27 lized, incapable of democracy, superstitious, etc.). In sum, modernity is an idea, not a state of being, and it goes hand in hand with the colonial worldview. This colonial/modern worldview is often referred to as ‘coloniality’. Following this is the concept of the ‘coloniality of power’, which encapsulates the idea that so much of the phenomena that we see today (and want to research as migrationists) seems to echo the past colonial organization and interpretation of the world, despite formal colonialism having ended. Taking a postcolonial or decolonial perspective thus entails not only exploring the tangible, material legacies of colonialism, such as ongoing chains of migration from Nigeria, or Jamaica to the UK, or the foundational colonial origins of international law (Anghie 2008). It also, indeed more often, entails rethinking the foundational assumptions which underlie much social scientific enquiry and asking what the origins of those ways of thinking about the world are. It is about the politics of knowledge production, and questioning how we ourselves as scholars may be the living legacies of colonialism when we engage in particular types of academic discussions (see Bhambra et al. 2018 for a broader discussion of these agendas). For example, we all implicitly know that Western governments and public are hostile to immigrants of colour, and that there is a hierarchy of hostility with ‘probational whites’ such as pale-skinned Poles and Latin Americans being seen as preferable to brown-skinned immigrants. We know this and yet it is much less common to hear a historically informed analysis of hostility to immigration which centralizes ‘race’ as a concept (cf. Guia in this volume, Chapter 33), than it is to see one which focuses on economic competition and concentrates exclusively on the present (Grosfoguel et al. 2015). Equally, hostility to Muslim immigrants and refugees in Europe has a long history with its roots in colonial projects (Said 1995 [1978]; Shohat 2002), and yet an analysis which focuses on culture, and on debating the ability of Muslims to integrate into liberal secular societies despite their illiberal beliefs (and how migration governance might serve these ends), is much more common. To acknowledge and engage with racism is not to be racist and a key feature of postcolonial and decolonial work is a lack of fear around engaging with discussions of ‘race’. Though the idea of separate ‘races’ of people who can be distinguished and organized hierarchically has been thoroughly debunked, ‘race’ nevertheless bears meaning for many people in the world, and racism still exists. The refusal of some in migration studies to engage with race as an analytical concept is, for Nicholas De Genova (2018), about an impoverished politics of anti-discrimination. Having discredited racial science, we must now engage with the world as though racial categories no longer have social, cultural, political or economic impacts, or risk legitimising racism. But in ignoring race as a critical analytical category, we also lose or silence accounts of the present which draw out the legacies of colonialism in making sense of differential humanity. Tudor (2018: 9) is more optimistic than De Genova. She argues that a ‘postcolonial turn’ has begun in migration studies and that scholars are increasingly ‘questioning easy assumptions about the connections between racism and migration’. Saucier and Woods (2014), for example, demonstrate how foregrounding race allows for a fully historicized analysis of the governance of migration in the Mediterranean. While a political economy perspective would suggest that ‘the violence that befalls so-called migrants to Europe is an effect of their transgressive act of crossing borders meant to exclude, of breaking the law’, such a reading is only possible if we ignore the historical context of slavery. Drownings in the Mediterranean are not therefore simply the result of bad FRONTEX (European Border and Coast Guard Agency) policies which require reforming; they are historically continuous practices which follow slavery, the
28 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration abolition of which can only come from a serious reckoning with Europe’s colonial past (see also Hansen and Jonsson 2014). Similarly, Vergara-Figueroa (2018) develops an analysis of forced migration in Colombia which reconceptualizes ‘displacement’ as ‘deracination’ (uprooting from the land) and shows how Afrodescendent deracination has been ongoing over many generations since slavery and colonialism arrived in Latin America (on the concepts of forced and voluntary migration, see also Bakewell in this volume, Chapter 10). Such analyses refocus those interested in migration governance away from the immediate context of contemporary displacement events, and force us to consider these displacement events in the context of colonialism and racism, past and present. The point here is to gain deeper insights into the relationships between the governance of mobility, and immobility, as a consequence of looking to history.
MAN, HUMAN AND HUMAN RIGHTS Looking to history forces us to reconsider some of the most foundational concepts of our field because we are confronted with the parochial origins of apparently inoffensive, even universal, categories. The categories ‘man’, and more broadly ‘human’, are illustrative of this. While the theory of the universal human is popular in today’s world, and indeed is enshrined in international law (see also Hart in this volume, Chapter 8), in practice not all human beings are treated as though they are equally deserving of dignity and respect (Mignolo 2009; Trouillot 1995; Wynter 2003). The distinction between those who are treated as fully human and those who are not follows the same patterns as in the colonial era and appears to contain a strong racial logic. Nowhere is this more visible than in the governance of international migration. White mobility is rarely governed as a problem, and is almost unfettered, while black and brown mobility is constrained, and in general terms is governed as a problem. Despite the provincial European intellectual history of the concept, ‘man’ is made to seem natural, and not at all the product of human actions and decisions (Headley 2005). The Man vs. Human struggle is, for decolonial theorist Sylvia Wynter (2003) the struggle of our time. For her, the ‘usually excluded and invisiblized’ are ‘defined at the global level by refugee/economic migrants stranded outside the gates of the rich countries’ (2003: 261). The exclusionary betrayal of human rights was clearly articulated by Frantz Fanon when he famously wrote ‘you are making us [the colonized] into monstrosities; your humanism claims we are at one with the rest of humanity but your racist methods set us apart’ (Fanon 1967: 8). Because in a normative sense human rights are purportedly universal, these are the only rights that one has simply on the basis of being human, irrespective of the state in which you were born, the colour of your skin, or of your passport. And yet in practice they are anything but. Many countries in the world have signed and ratified international human rights agreements and Western countries were the initiators, authors and first signatories of the original human rights documents. Despite expressing pride in this history in recent decades, those with vast empires were not necessarily enthusiastic signatories to the original human rights agreements. Indeed, Wynter’s work, amongst others, reminds us that when human rights were conceived not all people were considered equally human, let alone equal. Rather, a postcolonial lens draws attention to the fact that at the founding of the human rights conventions (including the refugee convention), the colonial powers went to great lengths to exclude colonized peoples from accessing these new, supposedly universal, rights (Mayblin 2014, 2017).
Postcolonial perspectives on migration governance 29 The idea of ‘man’ emerged in Europe through the Renaissance. Yet, at the same time as developing theories of man and human, European men were ‘conquering, killing, dominating, and enslaving other beings’ in the colonies (Trouillot 1995: 75). Multiple schemas were developed by European colonials for classifying human beings. They were always hierarchical, always based on physical characteristics, always ‘scientific’, and always set white Europeans at the top and black Africans at the bottom. Right from these philosophical beginnings, then, ‘the rights of man and of the citizen were not meant for black and enslaved people’ (Mignolo 2011: 39). The ‘other’ to man is not therefore woman, it is those categories of people who are negatively marked as not fully human (Wynter 2000). Yet this otherness, this liminality, makes possible the Western concept of the human in that man is defined by what he is not. The racially marked person, therefore, is ‘the deviant other to being human’ within the terms of this logic of ‘man’ (Wynter 2000: 25). And so ‘man’ does not refer to everyone (he is not ‘human’ in an inclusive sense). Nevertheless, ‘human rights’ was originally for this circumscribed group of people categorized as ‘man’, not for humanity (Mazower 2009; Simpson 2004). ‘Humanity’, then, is a place-specific (not universal), historically emergent (not eternal), concept which has its origins in European colonial activities and philosophies (see also a discussion of humanitarianism by Hart in this volume, Chapter 8). These insights shed a very different light on the human rights framework which governs forced migration in particular in the present. They are important not only for historical accuracy, but because acknowledging them changes the terms of debate in the present. When we focus on abstract humanity our analysis becomes disconnected from history and ‘turns questions of responsibility, guilt, restitution, repentance, and structural reform into matters of empathy, generosity, and hospitality’ (Danewid 2017: 1675). The result is twofold for Danewid; first, it leads to calls for the protection of endangered ‘others’ as an abstract moral imperative, a ‘politics of pity’. Second, ‘nothing is done to challenge the established interpretations that see Europe as the bastion of democracy, liberty and universal rights’ (ibid). Our starting point should not therefore be that migrants are strangers, whether as charitable subjects, or uninvited guests. Instead, it should be the colonial historical ‘umbilical cord’ of connected history ‘that links Europe to the migrants washed up on its shores’ (see Bhambra 2010 on connected histories). This, Danewid argues, moves us away from a politics of pity, towards a politics of justice. In this sense, then, a post- or decolonial perspective on international migration governance requires that we rethink the basis for all of our assumptions. In his classic text Black Skin White Masks, Frantz Fanon describes the world as being comprised of two zones: the ‘zone of being’, and the ‘zone of non-being’ (Fanon 2008). These zones are not so much geographical as differentiating one’s positionality in terms of global racial or ethnic hierarchies between centres and peripheries, and within centres and peripheries. These zones are above and below the line of the human. Those above the line of the human, who exist in the zone of being, count as full humans. Their movement across borders is unconstrained, they have access to human rights, and racial privilege (whether they recognize it or not). Those in the zone of non-being are racialized as inferior, are the subject of policies of geographical containment, and do not have access to the full suite of human rights. This framework, contextualized within 500 years of coloniality, is one way of theorizing international migration governance in the contemporary period. Critical decolonial sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos has developed a similar framework which he terms ‘the abyssal line’ (Santos 2017; see also Grosfoguel et al. 2015 for a dialogue between the two). In this schema Santos distinguishes between the way in which
30 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration conflicts are managed above and below the line. Above the line (in the zone of being) people are considered equally human and conflicts are resolved through regulation (codes of rights, negotiation) and emancipation (discourses of liberty, autonomy and equality). Here, conflicts are, in general, resolved through non-violent means. Below the abyssal line people are dehumanized, and conflicts are more commonly administered through violence and appropriation or dispossession. This renders populations in the global South more readily displaced, at the same time as their displacement is represented as a problem for orderly migration governance. Equally, their containment and immobilization becomes reasonable because they exist in the zone of non-being. These ‘zones’ thus give us a framework through which to analyse international migration governance from the perspective of debates over the exclusivity of the human category.
EUROCENTRISM An important issue for postcolonial and decolonial scholars has been the concept of ‘Eurocentrism’. This section addresses Eurocentrism to the extent that debates on this topic relate to the study of migration governance, though there is certainly a gap in the literature in relation to specific discussions of what Eurocentrism means in migration studies (for example, is it epistemic or geographical?) and how it might be overcome. Indeed, much postcolonial work within migration studies centres on Europe: hegemonic European identity, European policies vis-à-vis migrants, European racism, all set within a colonial context. This is important work since former colonies are popularly represented as postcolonial spaces, while the former metropoles tend not to be seen as postcolonial in the same sense, and the legacies of colonialism are rarely foregrounded in academic or political debate on immigration in these places. In this sense, migration studies requires ‘decolonising’. Nevertheless, the disproportionate focus on Europe and the broader global North within migration studies, with South–South migration often relegated to area studies (though this is certainly changing), is an issue for the field to contemplate and potentially address in the coming decades (Koh 2015). With this in mind, postcolonial and decolonial approaches would advise that researchers looking at any geographical context be mindful of debates around epistemic Eurocentrism and their implications for scholars everywhere (Quijano 2000). Epistemic Eurocentrism refers to the worldview which simultaneously represents European history, knowledge and values as ‘normal’, and as superior. This in turn serves to justify the global economic and intellectual dominance of Europe, and the European white settler colonies in North America and Australasia (often referred to as ‘the West’ or ‘the global North’). Eurocentrism in this context is in part a critique of the tendency to take concepts developed in Europe at a particular time in history (humanity, human rights, democracy, scientific rationality, for example) and to then represent them as universal and timeless, but also as superior to other intellectual projects (Amin 1988; Kothari 2009). The first step for postcolonialists is therefore to provincialize European thought (Chakrabarty 2000) and see it as the product of one intellectual culture or tradition amongst many. That is not to suggest that theoretical perspectives such as the ideal of the universal, individuated human cannot be applied to the global South, or that they cannot be appropriated as a political strategy by migrants from the global South. It is simply to acknowledge both the problematic colonial origins of the European conception of the human, as discussed above, and the fact
Postcolonial perspectives on migration governance 31 that many societies have theorized what it means to be human and these theories may or may not corroborate European accounts. Alternative conceptualizations therefore both exist and are not necessarily inferior. This work is already being done (for example, Alatas 2006; Bortoluci and Jansen 2013), but the extent to which migration studies as a field is taking account of it is not clear. Koh (2015: 435) explains that the implications for migrationists are significant, however, and that we must question whether key concepts ‘that have been derived from the Anglo-Western experience – such as liberal citizenship categorizations of migrants, particular forms of migration movements and the meanings of “development” in the context of migration – are appropriate and meaningful for people in Asia’, or indeed elsewhere. The corrective is not to adapt Anglo-Western frameworks to ‘other’ contexts, but perhaps to begin again. For example, since the whole concept of ‘development’ only makes sense within the context of coloniality/ modernity (also see Kabbanji in this volume, Chapter 6), we might abandon it altogether and instead develop more just frameworks which start from the position of rectifying colonially embedded structural inequality in the world economy and the role that migration (and migration governance) plays in such a politics of reparation. Related to this in migration studies, and buttressing the intellectual Eurocentrism noted above, is the primacy given to histories of European migration over and above other world historical migrations (Mckeown 2004). From the English language literature on migration studies one gathers that the key events in the history of migration were of white people on the move. These include white Europeans migrating for economic reasons (to ‘new Worlds’, or rightfully moving within empires), or then the forced migration of such groups as the French Huguenots and German Jews. The harms of settler colonialism and its particular implications for how we might analyse migrations past and present to states such as Australia and Canada are here strategically minimized and depoliticized (see Tuck and Yang 2012; Veracini 2015). Black and brown migration then tends to be represented as more recent, and therefore unprecedented (Mayblin 2017). The silencing of ‘other’ migration histories thus has the effect of rendering invisible the racialized nature of migration governance past and present. Mohapatra (2007: 110) observes that, in general, migration histories are ‘premised on the categorical differences and segmentation of the global migration flows between European and non-European types’. By contrast, a postcolonial or decolonial perspective would demand that we make a series of changes. First, that we incorporate non-European migrations into our migration histories. In the case of refugee studies this would mean acknowledging the displacements caused by settler colonialism, Atlantic slavery, and decolonization, as major world-historical forced migrations (or ‘deracinations’ with Vergara-Figueroa 2018; also see Bakewell in this volume, Chapter 10). Second, it would involve recognizing those connected histories which explain many chains of migration from South to North but also may arguably permit migrants from Africa and Asia to lay claim to settlement rights in Europe (Achiume 2019). Third, it would necessitate globalizing our migration histories to incorporate more than simply movements to or from the West. These changes in historical understanding would then have implications for critical analyses of the politics and governance of migration, not least because it shows how the coloniality of power has long shaped mobility patterns, possibilities and inequalities. Being mindful of debates on Eurocentrism might therefore lead us in a variety of directions: to either acknowledge the provincial nature of European origin theories of migration, to de-naturalize the hostile response of Western nation states to migrants from the ‘third world’,
32 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration or to contemplate completely de-centring Europe, North America and Australasia in our empirical research.
MIGRATING IN THE POSTCOLONIAL PRESENT As many scholars have observed, globalization and transnationalism appear to have facilitated increased opportunities for people to pursue social mobility through international migration. And yet, as Koh (2015) observes in the Asian context, this new ability to exercise agency is structured by power inequalities and by social stratifications which are indebted to colonial ways of organizing societies across the world. She explains that ‘by using postcolonial approaches to scrutinize migration in Asia, we can clearly see how difference – on the basis of race/ethnicity, social class, gender, religion, nationalism, etc., has found new forms of materialization in this era of globalization and transnationalism’, not least in relation to migration governance and access to citizenship rights in both sending and receiving states (ibid.: p. 433). Equally, though researchers have recently found that there has been some diversification in terms of the countries of origin of migrants to Europe, there are nevertheless ‘pre-existing migration flows and migrant networks [between former empires and their former colonies] that continue to thrive and develop with the passage of time’ (Koh 2015: 434; see also Bosma et al. 2012). As Bosma et al. (2012) explain ‘there is no clear-cut definition of the postcolonial migrant’. This quote demonstrates the distinction between work in postcolonial studies which explores migration in a wide range of contexts, and work in migration studies which tends more often to use the word ‘postcolonial’ to categorize those people who migrate(d) from the colonies to the metropole, following decolonization. Not all postcolonial migration flows are from former colonies to former metropoles and while research on the topic of ‘postcolonial migrants’ often focuses on those moving from colonial peripheries to centres following the end of formal colonialism (Dean 1987; Rex and Thomlinson 1979), it has been pointed out that postcolonial migrations also occurred between peripheries (Bosma et al. 2012), and that postcolonial analyses are applicable beyond Europe (Cohen 2012). Some scholars blur this line. For example, there is burgeoning postcolonial literature on ‘expatriates’, sometimes referred to as ‘highly skilled’ migrants, which draws attention to colonial/ modern practices and discourses in the present (for example, Fechter and Walsh 2010; Wang et al. 2014; on the skilled migration discourse, see Vasey in this volume, Chapter 14). Fechter and Walsh (2010), suggest that in focusing disproportionately on migrants moving from poorer countries to wealthier ones, researchers are producing skewed impressions of ‘who migrants are’, which can limit our understandings of migration processes as a whole. They argue, ‘postcolonial dis/connections are thrown into relief most sharply in the case of [privileged] Euro-Americans moving to developing countries or former colonies’ (p. 1198). For example, Armbruster (2010) has researched German immigrants in Namibia, which was formerly a German colony. Her informants follow well-established colonial tropes which draw on discourses of modernity and ‘development’. Namibian people and their cultural practices are represented in terms of chaos, disease, inertia and as not yet being ready to govern themselves. German ‘expats’, by contrast, see themselves as competent, capable and enabling ‘development’ in Namibia. These readings of German colonialism and contemporary German immigration to Namibia are not independent of the dominant narratives of international migration governance. The category ‘expats’ here sets the privileged apart from the category of ‘migrant’. Their mobility
Postcolonial perspectives on migration governance 33 is not governed as a problem, or at all; they are simply living outside their country of origin because they choose to. Indeed, when migration researchers and policymakers discuss migration governance, they are rarely representing white Western mobility as something which requires governing in any serious way (on the ambivalent notion of migration management, see Pécoud in this volume, Chapter 17). Rather, it is the migration of people of colour to ‘white’ majority countries in the global North which is framed as an almost ceaseless series of unprecedented crises in need of a response. For postcolonial and decolonial scholars, these unequal narratives of Western ‘expatriate’ migration as developmentally beneficial, and its opposite as the defining crisis of our time, cannot be understood without reference to the legacies of colonialism. Postcolonial perspectives always demand that we interrogate racial assumptions in relation to migration governance, and this often overlaps with broader debates around race and nation. Alyosxa Tudor has worked to theorize the interconnections of racism and migration in Europe, focusing on the differences and overlaps, contradictions and ambivalences of ‘migratizing’ and racializing strategies. Here, ‘migratizing’ refers to ‘the ascription of migration to certain bodies, and the construction of certain people as “at home” while others are constructed as migrants’ (Tudor 2018: 2). The ascription of being a migrant from this perspective does not necessitate an actual migration, and migration for some with racial privilege does not always entail becoming a migrant (see also Fechter and Walsh 2010). Black Europeans are often therefore constructed as non-Europeans, a phenomenon which only makes sense within the context of European coloniality/modernity. Importantly, gender and class are always present in everyday practices and experiences of migratizing, and mediate the ability of racialized actors to ‘belong’ in a given country at a given moment (Tudor 2018). The discourse of migration and immigration is therefore important in drawing out inequalities in migration governance. For example, migrants racialized as white tend to be described as highly skilled economic migrants, expats, and cosmopolitans, while migrants racialized as black or brown are refugees, asylum seekers, undocumented, ‘illegal’, or low-skilled economic migrants. These linguistic associations have consequences for who is identified as an object of governance and how they are then governed. This is most obvious in the necropolitics of migration governance – literally governing migration through death – at Europe’s borders (Davies et al. 2017; Davies and Isakjee 2018; Mbembe 2003).
CONCLUSION While postcolonial perspectives are not common in migration studies, Koh (2015) and Tudor (2018) both predict a ‘postcolonial turn’ within the field. If such a turn is in motion it will be slow to come to fruition. Take a look in the index of any book seen as a key text in migration studies, or any edited collection surveying the field (excluding this one of course) and it is unlikely that you will find entries for ‘colonialism’ or ‘decolonization’ let alone ‘postcolonial’ or ‘decolonial’ theory. This chapter has outlined what it would mean to take a postcolonial or decolonial perspective on migration governance, and has provided some examples of scholars who are already doing this work. Such perspectives require us to rethink many of the categories that we take for granted, and to consider these categories in light of the uneven, often racially hierarchical, power relations which exist in the wake of colonialism(s). These perspectives implicitly question some of the previous focus areas of migration scholarship and bring up new and exciting subjects for discussion.
34 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration
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Postcolonial perspectives on migration governance 35 Koh, S. Y. (2015), ‘Postcolonial Approaches to Migration in Asia: Reflections and Projections’, Geography Compass, 9 (8), 432–44. Kothari, U. (2009), ‘Postcolonialism’, in Tim Forsyth (ed.), Encyclopedia of International Development, London: Routledge, pp. 541–3. Mayblin, L. (2014), ‘Colonialism, Decolonization, and the Right to be Human: Britain and the 1951 Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees’, Journal of Historical Sociology, 27 (3), 423–41. Mayblin, L. (2017), Asylum After Empire: Postcolonial Legacies in the Politics of Asylum Seeking, London: Rowman and Littlefield International. Mazower, M. (2009), No Enchanted Palace: The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Mbembe, A. (2003), ‘Necropolitics’, Public Culture, 15 (1), 11–40. Mckeown, A. (2004), ‘Global Migration: 1846–1940’, Journal of World History, 15 (2), 155–89. Mignolo, W. (2000), Local Histories/Global Designs, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Mignolo, W. (2007), ‘DELINKING: The Rhetoric of Modernity, the Logic of Coloniality and the Grammar of De-Coloniality’, Cultural Studies, 21 (2), 449–514. Mignolo, W. (2009), ‘Who Speaks for the “Human” in Human Rights?’ Hispanic Issues On Line, 5 (1), 7–24. Mignolo, W. (2011), The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Mohapatra, P. (2007), ‘Eurocentrism, Forced Labour, and Global Migration: A Critical Assessment’, International Review of Social History, 52 (1), 110–15. Nair, P. (2013), ‘Postcolonial Theories of Migration’, in Immanuel Ness (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, Chichester: Blackwell, pp. 2452–9. Quijano, A. (2000), ‘Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism and Latin America’, Nepantla: Views from South, 1 (3), 533–80. Rex, J. and S. Thomlinson (1979), Colonial Immigrants in a British City: A Class Analysis, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Said, E. W. (1995 [1978]), Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient, London: Penguin. Santos, B. S. (2017), ‘The Resilience of Abyssal Exclusions in Our Societies: Toward a Post-Abyssal Law – Montesquieu Lecture’, Tilburg Law Review, 22, 237–58. Saucier, P. K. and T. P. Woods (2014), ‘Ex Aqua: The Mediterranean Basin, Africans on the Move, and the Politics of Policing’, Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory, 61 (141): 55–75. Shohat, E. (2002), ‘Area Studies, Gender Studies, and the Cartographies of Knowledge’, Social Text, 20 (3): 67–78. Simpson, A. W. B. (2004), Human Rights and the End of Empire: Britain and the Genesis of the European Convention, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Spivak, G. C. (1999), A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Trouillot, M.-R. (1995), Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Tuck, E. and K. W. Yang (2012), ‘Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor’, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1 (1): 1–40. Tudor, A. (2018), ‘Cross-fadings of Racialization and Migratization: The Postcolonial Turn in Western European Gender and Migration Studies’, Gender, Place & Culture, DOI: 10.1080/0966369X.2018.1441141. Veracini, L. (2015), The Settler Colonial Present, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Vergara-Figueroa, A. (2018), Afrodescendant Resistance to Deracination in Colombia: Massacre at Bellavista-Bojaya-Choco, Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Wang, C., S.-L. Wong and V. Zheng (2014), ‘Postcolonial Border Crossing: British Skilled Expatriates in Post-1997 Hong Kong’, Asian Population Studies, 10 (1), 75–95. Wynter, S. (2000), ‘Africa, the West, and the Analogy of Culture: The Cinematic Text After Man’, in J. Giovanni (ed.), Symbolic Narratives/African Cinema: Audiences, Theory and the Moving Image, London: British Film Institute & Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 25–75. Wynter, S. (2003), ‘Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, after Man, its Overrepresentation – an Argument’, The New Centennial Review, 3 (3), 257–337.
3. Nationhood and citizenship: from producing states to enacting rights Flávia Rodrigues de Castro and Carolina Moulin
INTRODUCTION Citizenship has played an ambivalent role as both a formal set of criteria of sociopolitical membership and as an ethical project. As membership, it is associated with the ability to claim rights, the obligation to perform duties and having a voice within a community. As an ethical project, it is associated with claiming and aiming for a ‘good life’ with others. Modern conceptions of citizenship have historically been entangled with nationhood and state-building practices. This entanglement highlights the limits of ‘community’ as a central aspect of citizenship as an ethical project. The national ‘territorial trap’ (Agnew 1994) has provided the boundary for much of the discussion on what citizenship was and what it could do for individuals and ‘their’ communities. Modern conceptions of citizenship were articulated with the production of ideals of homogeneity inside national borders and regulation of movement across international borders (Torpey 2000). Exclusive ideals of community – connected to definitions of peoples as nations and their territories – created exclusionary political practices. Modern citizenship was, as such, limited by reference to national citizenship and statist frameworks of community. The entanglement between citizenship, nationhood and state-building was an extremely violent process through which the search for the ‘homogenisation of peoples’ (Rae 2002) legitimized a ruthless combination of political belonging, and ideas of moral communities that produced expulsions, genocide and mass killings (Arendt 1973; Rae 2002). In the context of globalized international relations and in an effort to restore citizenship as an ethical project, an analysis of what Ong (2006) has called ‘mutations in citizenship’ has become crucial, to elucidate the tensions and ambivalence of forms of ‘fractured’ political belonging captured in conventional understandings of citizenship. A plurality of debates has focused, then, on how new forms of political participation, rights and belonging in transnational times are challenging the national dimension of citizenship. These indicate possibilities of post-national and denationalized citizenship (Sassen 2002; Tambini 2001), multicultural citizenship (Kymlicka 1995; Triadafilopoulos 1997), dual citizenship (Spiro 2019) and strategic citizenship (Harpaz and Mateos 2019; Joppke 2019), among others. In such work, we have seen the emergence of different attempts to make sense of increasingly heterogeneous, volatile and profoundly unequal attachments to diverse modalities of territorial and political belonging. Some scholars moved up the scale towards humanist, universal conceptions of cosmopolitan citizenship (Linklater 2004; Nussbaum et al. 1996) – but according to its critics, this approach did not resolve the problem of enacting rights (Walzer 1996). This in turn led to the emergence of theoretical attempts to think about citizenship as a negotiated process that requires a ‘descent into the ordinary’ (Das 2007) and engages with everyday life as much as with abstract principles. 36
Nationhood and citizenship: from producing states to enacting rights 37 Citizenship has also become a crucial point of theoretical discussions specifically in the context of critical mobility approaches to migration and its governance. If citizenship were to be rescued from its modern and statist boundaries in order to remain relevant as a political project and concept, one way of doing it is precisely to put ‘citizenship in motion’. This approach focuses on the impact of transversal, mobile and circulatory systems and forms of belonging (Mezzadra 2004), in which the intricate relation between a politics of membership and a politics of movement has regained centrality (Nyers and Rygiel 2012). In these debates, citizenship can be a site of contestation and ambivalence with the potential to transform the boundaries of contemporary political communities, and the politics of movement can produce new forms of citizenship and of being political (Isin 2008; McNevin 2013; Nyers and Rygiel 2012). The displacement of citizenship, from its closed location in the state to new spaces of claims-making, especially related to mobility rights, has allowed for the possibility of imagining new forms of being political and enacting diverse and complex citizen subjectivities. With this in mind, the chapter proceeds as follows. First, we provide a brief overview and critique of the violent entanglement between nationhood and citizenship. Next, we explore the emergence of ideas around variegated modes and models of citizenship and forms of ‘fractured’ political belonging in transnational times. Finally, we examine how approaches focusing on the relationship between mobility and citizenship recast the politics of belonging as a set of practices – rather than a fixed marker – and as a disputed terrain of everyday struggles. Rather than abandoning the concept of citizenship, putting citizenship ‘in motion’ can cast light on how contemporary forms of enacting citizenship have been connected to, and disruptive of, the boundaries shaping social justice, rights and equality.
TERRITORY, SECURITY AND CITIZENSHIP Citizenship and nationhood can be described as two aspects of a long and ambivalent sociopolitical process: the production of the modern nation state. The transition to modern statehood is intimately related to the development of institutional capacities and the transformation of states into domains of sovereign territorial rule. In the firmly established, yet plural, political theory tradition, this process is widely described as an experience of expropriation or extraction that allowed states to control not only the ‘means of violence’, as in the Weberian account, but also taxation, administration, military service and the policing of society (Giddens 2008; Spruyt 2002; Thomson 1994; Tilly 1990; Weber 1974). The development of modern states and their growing capacity for resource extraction are commonly understood as a crucial to state intervention in different aspects of social life. The capacity to reach into society, through public education and conscript service, for example, is an important aspect of a process that led to ideals of homogeneity and uniformity in modern states – and to the transformation of subjects into citizens. Nonetheless, the growing capacity to rule is only part of the explanation of this transformation. Another important aspect is the change in the logic of state organization (Spruyt 2002). The state became synonymous with sovereign territorial rule. Sovereignty, as a theoretical concept and as a political practice, had originated in Roman law and it is usually defined as a claim to final jurisdiction (Hinsley 1986). In this sense, the sovereign is the ultimate authority and source of law. A genealogy of sovereignty discussion is commonly perceived as dating back to the writings of Jean Bodin and Emer De Vattel, and the emergence of sovereign
38 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration territorial rule is usually ascribed to the Peace of Westphalia (1648) – although an articulation of its principles had started even before the peace treaties. Sovereign territorial rule meant that ‘mutually recognized borders circumscribed the extension of political authority. Within such borders, authority would be exclusive’ (Spruyt 2002: 134). A sovereign authority was conceived as a constitutive feature of modern statehood. Indeed, it has become almost impossible to conceive rule as non-territorially demarcated. In practice, this modern representation of national citizenship was fraught with discontinuities and heterogeneous experiences, many of which were based on mobile forms of rule-making and subject production. Modern European states were as much a product of processes within Europe as they were of the constitution of colonial spaces externally. Imperialism and coloniality have had a profound impact in imbricating ideas of nation, citizenship and race, by marking who could participate, claim rights, and exercise rule and authority, and by differentiating territories and circulations within these spaces and societies (see Mayblin in this volume, Chapter 2). Citizenship was – and to a large extent still is – born out of the intersection between national racial and imperial structures that are constitutive of a spatially differentiated territory of rights and exclusion (Schueller 2009). Explaining the emergence of the modern state through the consolidation of sovereign authority and the growing capacities of resource extraction is described by Torpey (2000) as a ‘penetrationist’ approach. He promotes an alternative view, that the development of the modern territorial state is closely related to the production of citizenship and the expropriation by the state of the legitimate ‘means of movement’ (Torpey 2000: 4). In order to be able to penetrate societies effectively, states have, first, to embrace them. Here, to embrace society means to be able to ‘grasp’ it in the sense of registration or identification. With the aim of embracing societies, the development of a registration system, along with documents such as passports and identity cards, has played a crucial role in practices through which ‘states hold particular persons within their grasp, while excluding others’ (Torpey 2000: 12). The consolidation of the states’ exclusive right to authorize and regulate movement went hand in hand with the production of a national community of citizens. This community must be more than ‘imagined’, as in Benedict Anderson’s (1991) discussion on nationhood; it must be identified through documents (Torpey 2000). The expropriation of the legitimate means of movement, through procedures and mechanisms for identifying persons and making distinctions between citizens and aliens, is intrinsic to the construction of the modern state. Thus, ideals of homogeneity and uniformity inside the polis were intimately related to the regulation of movement across international borders (see also El Qadim in this volume, Chapter 19). Nonetheless, the idea of political belonging as a relationship between state, citizen and territory (McNevin 2006) cannot be reduced to a formal or bureaucratic status of passport-holding (Tambini 2001), only affecting human mobility. Another relevant dimension, with important non-formal effects, is the development of a politics of recognition through formal membership allowing the achievement of the ‘allocative function’ (Turner 1997: 6) of citizenship entitlements. As a national status, citizenship has been linked to the idea of being part of a nation as ‘the main determinant of access to resources, rights and to the institutions of political participation’ (Tambini 2001: 196). The formal membership of a nation was established, then, as key to practices of allocating rights and resources. According to Turner (1997), citizenship can be conceived as a form of controlling the access of individuals and groups to scarce resources in society, such as social security, retirement packages, healthcare assistance, education and individual freedoms. Thus, citizenship membership indicates not only the prevailing formal
Nationhood and citizenship: from producing states to enacting rights 39 criteria for practices of inclusion and exclusion inside the polis, but also the access to rights which impact the everyday lives of citizens and non-citizens (Turner 1997). The institutionalization of nationhood in state bureaucracies and its connection with citizenship rights was an extremely violent process. The search for the homogenization of peoples, in Rae’s (2002) terms, legitimized virulent combinations of political belonging and ideas of moral communities that produced expulsions, genocide and mass killings. Historical examples of such violence abound: the exchange of peoples between Greece and Turkey in the 1920s (a central moment to the formation of these ‘modern’ states), the denationalization of Jews in the mid 1930s as a fundamental mechanism in their expulsion of the space of rights in Nazi Germany, as well as more contemporary experiences in much of the world, such as Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda and ongoing minority issues in several countries. Although citizenship is supposed to capture how people of different races, sexualities and classes belong to the state (Weber 2008), its practices of formation and everyday reinforcement indicate a sociopolitical process of differentiated inclusion. This presupposes a fundamental ‘exclusionary dimension’ (Chauvin and Garcés-Mascarenãs 2012: 241). Thus, different scholars (Brubaker 1992; Isin 2002; McNevin 2006) have emphasized the practices of exclusion that constitute the foundation of citizenship with the ‘subordination of those categorized as nonmembers, noncitizens, minors or foreigners’ (Chauvin and Garcés-Mascarenãs 2012: 241). Isin (2002) extends this argument, conceptualizing citizenship as an enactment of political privilege and marginalization. Traditional narratives of citizenship as expanding over time, to gradually include former slaves, the working class, colonial subjects, women and indigenous populations, tend to erase how political membership is also responsible for exclusionary practices. Rather than a linear and expansive set of practices, for Isin, citizenship has always enacted an unequal double movement, within and outside national state boundaries. Political communities have been premised on differentiated access to citizenship rights, either conceived in formal terms (for example, in the right to vote or stand for election, which has historically excluded numerous groups) or in more substantive terms (access to social and cultural policies, right to political and social organization and mobilization). These exclusionary dimensions of citizenship enactment have produced forms of lumpen citizenry both within and across national communities (Linklater 2004). Across national borders, citizenship produced its Others as aliens, strangers – those that inhabit the exterior borders of the community. Such spatial striation of citizenship has been accompanied by moral conceptions on the nature of non-citizens, subsumed into ideas of uncivility. Those deemed uncivil presented as not following and abiding to rules of engagement, of putting at risk the balance between individual and collective forms of life and, frequently, as threatening the core values that constitute moral ideals of community (ideals taken to be constitutive of the very notion of being a citizen). Established as the very condition for the production of the modern nation state, the homogeneity of populations functioned as an ideal involved in the violent ‘treatment of those deemed “political misfits’” (Rae 2002: 14). This permitted the targeting of minority groups for expulsion, assimilation or extermination (Arendt 1973; Rae 2002). With the conquest of the state by the nation, to use Arendt’s terms, practices of ‘pathological homogenization’ have played an important role in the constitution of a system based on the distinctions between insiders and outsiders. These practices of demarcation and containment of difference (Inayatullah and Blaney 2004), are often marked by the most violent forms of mistreatment and exclusionary practices (Rae 2002). Beyond the borders of the political community, the difference is constituted as the Other who is left on his own, who is denied entry or who is colonized within the
40 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration state, the difference is governed by a plurality of practices of eradication, assimilation, expulsion, tolerance and marginalization/hierarchy (Inayatullah and Blaney 2004). Differentiation depends on the construction of national identities crafted out of bureaucratic practices of state-building (census, registration and documentation, for example) and ongoing management of social and cultural markers of belonging (based, more often than not, on race and ethnicity and on knowledge of historic and contemporary forms of ‘civility’, exemplified perhaps more crudely nowadays in national citizenship exams). Sameness is the ideal; violence is the means. The violent and antagonistic underpinnings of the history of modern citizenship have produced, in the context of the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, and of an increasingly interdependent and mobile world, efforts to conceptualize alternative forms of citizenship and belonging. The last decades have witnessed an effort to resignify citizenship and, in some cases, rescue it from its nationalist and statist original foundations. Whether in the form of an adjectival modulation of citizenship (for example, cosmopolitan or post-national citizenship) or in a stronger critique of the project of citizenship, embracing its heterogeneous and ambivalent traces, these debates remain a central part of contemporary reflections on the future(s) and possibilities of political belonging and becoming.
CITIZENSHIP IN TRANSNATIONAL TIMES Rethinking citizenship as a critical (and progressive) sociopolitical project requires divesting its national character and downplaying dogmatic and formulaic conceptions of what constitutes political membership. This task assumes great relevance in a context shaped by global flows of markets, technologies and populations that challenge the entanglement between citizenship and nation state (Ong 2006). In increasingly transnational contexts, what Ong (2006) has called ‘mutations in citizenship’ can be perceived as the growing disarticulation between elements or dimensions of citizenship, such as rights, entitlements, state and territoriality, and its rearticulation with diversified and universalizing forces defined by markets, neoliberal values or human rights. The territorial limits of a nation state cannot be conceived as the exclusive domain for political mobilizations and claims made by diverse actors who invoke de/re/territorialized notions of citizenship as a new ground for resources, entitlements and protection (Ong 2006). The challenges to national conceptions of citizenship and the possibilities for multiple dimensions of political belonging emerge in the context of globalized international relations. Saskia Sassen (2002: 277) contends that ‘it is becoming evident today that far from being unitary, the institution of citizenship has multiple dimensions, only some of which might be inextricably linked to the national state’. She attributes to the transformation of the concept of citizenship two major conditions: the globalization process, with dynamics such as economic privatization and the consolidation of the international human rights regime, and the emergence of a plurality of actors and groups unwilling to identify automatically with the nation state. For Sassen, the formation of cross-borders networks helped to conceive alternative forms of political belonging and membership, giving rise to post-national and denationalized notions of citizenship. These alternative political imaginations indicate new possibilities for citizenship outside the confines of the modern nation state (Sassen 2002). One might argue that part of the literature on citizenship studies has attempted to guide our contemporary political imagination towards a more humanist, universal conception of
Nationhood and citizenship: from producing states to enacting rights 41 citizenship. Ideals of cosmopolitan citizenship presuppose an ambitious project of detaching citizenship from the sovereign state in order to reinforce a strong sense of moral commitments to the whole of humanity (Linklater 2004; Nussbaum et al. 1996; compare, on the influence and limits of humanitarianism, Hart in this volume, Chapter 8). This entanglement between cosmopolitanism and citizenship acknowledges that states are not the only moral agents in global politics and individuals have crucial moral obligations to the rest of humanity (Linklater 2004). Conceptions of cosmopolitan citizenship entail a sense of moral obligation that surpasses the borders of the national political community in order to allow a just and equal treatment for humanity. Eloquent challenges to the idea of cosmopolitan citizenship have been proposed. According to Richard Falk (1996: 57), cosmopolitanism risks ‘indulging a contemporary form of fuzzy innocence’. He stresses the danger of conflating neoliberal globalism with cosmopolitan expectations, which then promotes a pernicious and ethically deficient market-driven globalism, fostered by actors such as transnational corporations and banks. Others, like Himmelfarb (1996: 76), called attention to the fact that some specific principles and policies associated with cosmopolitanism, such as social programmes, religious liberty and tolerance, or the prohibition of racial and sexual discrimination, ‘depend not on a nebulous cosmopolitan order but on a vigorous administrative and legal order deriving its authority from the state’. Michael Walzer’s (1996: 125) critique argues that national citizens usually have not only a sense of belonging to a political community, but also precise rights and duties which are constitutive of their formal membership. Thus, the national domain provides real meaning and significance to the idea of citizenship, while aspirations to cosmopolitanism risk having no obvious implications for our everyday life. Importantly, Walzer stresses the importance of enacting rights, arguing, for example, that refugees should become citizens with the same rights as members of the moral and political community. Walzer’s criticism casts light on what Veena Das (2007) has observed as a necessary ‘descent into the ordinary’ – the engagement with daily life as a fundamental condition to deal with violent practices. Citizenship, as a negotiated process, is concerned with the tensions and ambivalences of different forms of political belonging. And this presupposes an immersion into the recesses of everyday life. In light of contemporary challenges to political belonging, both in theory and in practice, we are all embedded, simultaneously, in fragmented and incongruous enactments of citizenship, in multiple and overlapping forms of membership. Rather than dispensing with national citizenship altogether, some scholars have defined this shift towards a reconfigured politics of belonging as strategic citizenship (Harpaz and Mateos 2019; Joppke 2019). This trend can be understood as ‘the worldwide rise of instrumental practices pertaining to the acquisition and use of citizenship, along with a concomitant instrumental-strategic attitude to nationality’ (Harpaz and Mateos 2019: 843). Groups and individuals enact citizenship possibilities as a tactical way of making sense of their lives and to appropriate formal and bureaucratic rules relating to claiming and accessing rights. According to Harpaz and Mateos, strategic approaches to citizenship are modulated by acquisition strategies (how one becomes a citizen); instrumental uses (how one accesses the rights and duties pertaining to citizenship); and perceptions (how one becomes seen as a member of a community). The authors use, for example, the idea of citizenship as a premium, where, based on familial lines or economic resources, citizenship is obtained as a way of acquiring a certain status before an original community (dual citizenship as a highly valued social trait in certain societies, for example) or as enabling mobility (through access to passports and resi-
42 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration dency permits, usually in developed countries). What these cases have in common is a context marked by a global hierarchy of nationalities within which individuals search for another membership as a way to have access to economic advantages, global mobility or an improved social status. Thus, national citizenship is experiencing a sociopolitical process of becoming a market commodity by carrying strategic values independently of national ties (Harpaz and Mateos 2019; Joppke 2019). Epistemologically, the strategic citizenship perspective sheds light on the pragmatic, ‘bottom-up’ dimension of citizenship, highlighting how individuals and groups appropriate ideas of belonging and negotiate its terms in relation to their needs, dreams and projects (Das 2007). What Harpaz and Mateos (2019) have called ‘the commodification of citizenship’ helps to elucidate the previous arguments on post-national (Sassen 2002; Tambini 2001), denationalized (Sassen 2002) and dual citizenship (Spiro 2019). It emphasizes the desacralization of membership and the growing acceptance of multiple and complex rights through instrumental attitudes towards citizenship. It is important to note here that strategic citizenship has not been valued for the possibilities of gaining access to political rights or even social welfare, but especially for the benefits in terms of global mobility, reinforcing the relevance of mobility rights and the centrality of passports in the current dynamics of membership (Harpaz and Mateos 2019). Although the idea of expanding mobility rights could be seen as a reason to celebrate, the ‘instrumental turn’ in citizenship (Joppke 2019) also elucidates the likelihood of deepening inequalities in non-Western countries and contributing to the consolidation of a global elite (Harpaz and Mateos 2019). A plurality of debates on citizenship has focused, then, on how new forms of political participation, rights and belonging in transnational times are challenging the national dimension of citizenship, indicating possibilities of post-national and denationalized citizenship (Sassen 2002; Tambini 2001), multicultural citizenship (Kymlicka 1995; Triadafilopoulos 1997), dual citizenship (Spiro 2019), and so on (see also Fischer in this volume, Chapter 4, on transnationalism). Although each one of these approaches has its own particularities, they all have in common the impossibility of a return to ideals of national citizenship under contemporary conditions. Different sociopolitical processes, such as economic globalization, cultural denationalization, new migrations, and the consolidation of transnational institutions, indicate that national citizenship, as conventionally established, is experiencing a decline in terms of its ability to provide rights, participation and belonging in a world beyond the exclusive domain of the nation state (Tambini 2001). Rather than seeing citizenship as a sacred national and statist doxa or, conversely, as a cosmopolitan moral ground for a borderless human community, a growing debate on the citizenship has been more attentive to the experienced, lived constitution of political communities and the multiple and variegated ways in which it is enacted. Thus, theorists of new conceptions of citizenship can help elucidate the tensions and ambivalences of forms of ‘fractured’ political membership, making sense of increasingly heterogeneous, volatile and profoundly unequal attachments to modalities of belonging.
CITIZENSHIP IN MOTION Citizenship as a focal point of theoretical discussions has become crucial in the context of mobility critical approaches to migration and its governance. Different scholars have emphasized how citizenship can be a site of contestation and ambivalence that has the potential
Nationhood and citizenship: from producing states to enacting rights 43 to push and transform the boundaries of contemporary political communities, and how the politics of movement can produce new forms of citizenship and of being political (Isin 2008; McNevin 2013; Nyers and Rygiel 2012). For Nyers and Rygiel (2012: 3), ‘the governing of mobility is directly connected to constructions of citizenship, not only as a legal and political institution and status, but also related to practices, daily living and subjectivities related to and constitutive of being political’. As such, citizenship is constituted through (im)mobility in an ontological and biopolitical way: citizenship rights and their articulation with membership in particular states presuppose the condition of immobility and the biopolitical investment in governing desirable and undesirable populations through the politics of movement (Moulin 2012; Nyers and Rygiel 2012). With this in mind, it becomes possible to rethink citizenship through mobility – putting citizenship as a concept ‘in motion’ (Nyers and Rygiel 2012). The displacement of citizenship, from its closed location in the state to new spaces of claims-making, allows for the possibility of imagining new forms of being political – many examples could be found in refugee protests and campaigns of activism initiated by migrants that enact a form of citizenship grounded in active participation in community and demands for access to ‘the commons’ (compare, on political mobilization, Ataç and Schwenken in this volume, Chapter 30). Nyers and Rygiel (2012) point to these new forms in their analysis of migrant activism and the enactment of citizenship ‘from below’. By being political and making rights claims from a position not defined by the state, non-citizen migrants are creating new forms of citizen subjectivities. By the same token, they are blurring boundaries as the binary citizen/non-citizen has become less important, in relation to daily living practices (Nyers and Rygiel 2012). This theoretical effort can help illuminate new ways of being political that are not subsumed under traditional national and statist modes of belonging, useful for thinking and enacting other forms of solidarity in relation to issues such as social justice, rights and equality. Isin (2008) highlights new possibilities of reimagining what citizenship is about, by focusing on its performative dimensions, and claims-making practices, especially related to one’s ability to move within and across spaces (compare, on rights-based legal forms of migrant mobilization, Kawar in this volume, Chapter 31). He develops the conceptual tool of ‘acts of citizenship’ and ‘activist citizenship’ to grasp emerging citizen subjectivities as potentially disruptive acts that are not limited to traditional citizenship roles, such as voting and paying taxes. Isin highlights the importance of the rupture with the politics of modern liberal citizenship, developing an approach focused on ‘those moments when, regardless of status and substance, subjects constitute themselves as citizens – or, better still, as those to whom the right to have rights is due’ (Isin 2008: 18). From this perspective, an ‘act of citizenship’ concerns assertions to be (considered as) political subjects, seen through production of (activist) citizens and their others. Thus, subject positions – such as citizens, strangers, outsiders and aliens – are always in flux or in motion instead of being conceived as immobile identities. Similarly Nyers (2015) develops the concept of ‘migrant citizenships’. Instead of adopting a formal and legalistic approach to the relationship between mobility and citizenship (traditionally antagonistic – migrant vs. citizen), Nyers foregrounds the practices and political struggles of migrants and the impact of their claims in terms of membership and political belonging. He recognizes a disruptive potential, intrinsic to a critical concept of citizenship. He emphasizes the possibility of rethinking political subjectivity and community from the standpoint of everyday struggles and the claims of individuals and groups for recognition, regardless of their formal status. Thus, for Nyers (2015: 34), the notion of ‘migrant citizenships’ challenges
44 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration our conventional wisdom that citizenship is but a “technology of governance, exclusion, and differentiation”’. To think citizenship from the point of view of the ‘migrant’ forces us to blur commonplace distinctions of citizen/non-citizen. Viewing these categories as mutually constitutive illuminates a viable alternative to nationhood as a determinant and necessary dimension of political belonging. By analysing complex processes and dynamics that produce irregular subjects, Nyers (2011) also explores how citizens and non-citizens ‘take rights’ and transform the boundaries of political belonging through irregular paths. He refers to this as ‘irregular citizenship’. Here, irregularity is understood as a condition produced by complex and multiple ‘political struggles over status, rights and belonging’ (Nyers 2011: 189). This mobility-critical approach shows how citizens are being made irregular, deprived of membership rights through (often racialized) politics of exclusion. But it also highlights how citizens and non-citizens embody the experience of irregularity through political contestations over ‘the right to have rights’. The conceptual intertwining of citizenship and mobility, as proposed by Isin and Nyers, enables a transformative reading of the practice of community building and reorients our conception of political belonging. Two moves are central to this endeavour. Firstly, that claims to citizenship are produced, disputed, and negotiated in the ongoing circulations of individuals and groups and in their encounters with governance structures (be they national governments, cities, international organizations and so on). Secondly, that citizenship is constituted as a normative and material framework through which individuals and groups become subjects or, in other words, rights-claiming and rights-bearing members of political communities. Belonging is a continuous and disruptive process of becoming that has profound consequences not only for individuals but for ideas of political membership writ large.
CONCLUSION This chapter has articulated three arguments that have been central to the constitution of modern citizenship and its contemporary reconfiguration. Firstly, modern citizenship was indelibly connected to the rise of the modern nation state and to its spatial conception of political life. Historically, this has meant that citizenship was imbricated in statecraft practices devoted to producing a homogeneous population and to regulating and managing those deemed different both inside and outside national territories. For those included, at least in theory, citizenship enabled the possibility for accessing rights and duties, for having a voice within a bounded community, for envisioning the potential of a just, orderly and good life. Secondly, the production of modern citizens has justified practices of violence that have themselves structured much of our social and political life. Genocide, expulsions, wars, but also revolutions and liberation struggles, have been based on different claims on, and projects of, citizenship. Citizenship has functioned historically both as an ideal and as a set of practices that has modulated the possibilities of our being in the world, in relation to others and to structures of power. Thirdly, citizenship can be best understood as a site of ambivalence and as a permanently incomplete and contested project and conceptual tool. Although the sociopolitical construction and reinforcement of citizenship is strongly marked by violent exclusions and technologies of governance, engaging with critical perspectives casts light on the possibilities of imagining other forms of ‘being political’ and of enacting citizen subjectivities. Therefore, and building on an analysis focused on putting citizenship
Nationhood and citizenship: from producing states to enacting rights 45 ‘in motion’, this chapter has shown how different authors understand what it means to think about political belonging in contemporary times and what lies on the horizon of citizenship as a negotiated terrain of constitutive inequalities. Rather than an either/or set of historically situated practices, citizenship helps us understand the fragmented and variegated ways in which individuals and groups fight for belonging and articulate the possibilities of living in and across communities. By focusing on those on the move, particularly in contexts of exclusion and of unequal access to rights, citizenship studies has been able to incorporate the centrality of its own outside (that is, non-citizens) to reconfigure what it means to belong today. Migrant citizens have routinely disrupted the boundaries of nations, states and political communities by tactically claiming rights, by autonomously enacting their own mobile projects and, more often than not, by forcing citizens to bear witness to their own exclusions and violence. Stateless peoples, displaced persons and ‘non-status’ communities all over the world attest, sometimes in the most dire and inhumane conditions, to what excluding notions of citizenship can produce. Assuming that citizenship is not limited by a fixed and state-centric nature, but it is still connected to racialized identities and modes of political belonging, opens up a potentially complex and creative fissure for grasping multiple transformations both historical and contemporary (Nyers 2015). This chapter has shown some of the lenses through which we can start to make sense of such a politics of belonging – as well as why we need to do so.
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46 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration Isin, Engin (2008), ‘Theorizing acts of citizenship’, in Isin Engin and Greg Nielsen (eds), Acts of Citizenship, New York: Zed Books, pp. 15–43. Joppke, Christian (2019), ‘The instrumental turn of citizenship’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 45 (6), 858–78. Kymlicka, Will (1995), Multicultural Citizenship, New York: Oxford University Press. Linklater, Andrew (2004), The Transformation of Political Community: Ethical Foundations of the Post-Westphalian Era, Cambridge: Polity Press. McNevin, Anne (2006), ‘Political belonging in a neoliberal era: the struggle of the sans-papier’, Citizenship Studies, 10 (2), 135–51. McNevin, Anne (2013), ‘Ambivalence and citizenship: theorising the political claims of irregular migrants’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 41 (2), 182–200. Mezzadra, Sandro (2004), ‘Citizenship in motion’, MakeWorlds, 22 February, http://makeworlds.net/ node/83. Moulin, Carolina (2012), ‘Ungrateful subjects? Refugee protests and the logic of gratitude’, in Peter Nyers and Kim Rygiel (eds), Citizenship, Migrant Activism and the Politics of Movement, London and New York: Routledge. Nussbaum, Martha C., Joshua Cohen and Immanuel M. Wallerstein (eds) (1996), For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism, Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Nyers, Peter (2011), ‘Forms of irregular citizenship’, in V. Squire (ed.), The Contested Politics of Mobility, London: Routledge, pp. 184–98. Nyers, Peter (2015), ‘Migrant citizenships and autonomous mobilities’, Migration, Mobility, & Displacement, 1 (1): 23–39. Nyers, Peter and Kim Rygiel (2012), Citizenship, Migrant Activism and the Politics of Movement, London and New York: Routledge. Ong, Aihwa (2006), ‘Mutations in citizenship’, Theory, Culture & Society, 23 (2–3), 499–505. Rae, Heather (2002), State Identities and the Homogenisation of Peoples, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sassen, Saskia (2002), ‘Towards post-national and denationalized citizenship’, in E. F. Isin and B. S. Turner (eds), Handbook of Citizenship Studies, London: Sage, pp. 277–91. Schueller, M. J. (2009), Locating Race: Global Sites of Post-Colonial Citizenship, Albany: State University of New York Press. Spiro, Peter J. (2019), ‘The equality paradox of dual citizenship’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 45 (6), 879–96. Spruyt, Hendrik (2002), ‘The origins, development and possible decline of the modern state’, Annual Review of Political Science, 5, 127–49. Tambini, Damian (2001), ‘Post-national citizenship’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 24 (2), 195–217. Thomson, Janice (1994), Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Tilly, Charles (1990), Coercion, Capital and European States, AD 990–1990, Cambridge: Blackwell. Torpey, John (2000), The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship, and the State, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Triadafilopoulos, Triadafilos (1997), ‘Culture vs. citizenship? A review and critique of Will Kymlicka’s Multicultural Citizenship’, Citizenship Studies, 1 (2), 267–77. Turner, Bryan (1997), ‘Citizenship studies: a general theory’, Citizenship Studies, 1 (1), 5–18. Walzer, Michael (1996), ‘Spheres of affection’, in Martha C. Nussbaum, Joshua Cohen and Immanuel M. Wallerstein (eds), For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism, Boston, MA: Beacon Press, pp. 125–30. Weber, Cynthia (2008), ‘Designing safe citizens’, Citizenship Studies, 12 (2), 125–42. Weber, Max (1974), Ensaios de Sociologia, Rio de Janeiro: Zahar.
4. Transnationalism and diaspora as epistemology and practice Carolin Fischer
INTRODUCTION Transnationalism and diaspora are important subfields in the study and governance of international migration. As such, they received much attention from scholars and policymakers. However, the study and governance of transnationalism and diaspora is not free of contestation. I argue that an important area of contestation, which has been largely omitted from the focus of academic debate, is situated at an epistemological level.1 It derives from the paradox that a transnational perspective transcends nation state-based epistemologies, whereas the notion of diaspora – as a specific transnational phenomenon – tends to receive an essentialist framing. As a result, diaspora studies often reify nation state-based framings and explanations of social phenomena which a transnational perspective strives to dismantle. This raises the question how and with what effects forms of migration governance and concomitant policies address or respond to this paradox. To tackle this puzzle, the chapter begins with an overview of key developments in scholarship on transnationalism and diaspora. It focuses particularly on overlaps and disconnections to specify the paradox. Subsequently, it examines how this epistemological problem plays out in forms of practical migration governance that target diaspora populations either implicitly or explicitly. To this end, the chapter zooms into two specific areas of intervention: (i) diaspora institutions and diaspora policies and (ii) immigrant integration. Both areas of governance relate to the phenomenon of diaspora in different and contradictory ways, whilst reifying nation state biases in terms of underlying assumptions and in terms of the actors involved. Hence, different approaches to the political governance of diasporas as particular forms of transnational populations clash with a transnational epistemology. An exclusive focus on state-led politics, however, obscures diaspora as a subject of transnational claims and meaning making. The final section of the contribution therefore proposes an actor-centred approach to entanglements of transnationalism and diaspora. Drawing on the so-called reflexive turn in migration studies (Nieswand and Drotbohm 2014), I argue for an unbiased and open-ended approach to the meanings that individuals assign to their cross-border relations with people and places. This actor-centred approach broadens our understanding of the political in the sense that it moves away from a purely institutional focus. Conceptually, this actor-centred approach has significant parallels with Amelina’s analytical concept of ‘doing migration’ (Amelina 2017; see also Fischer and Dahinden 2019). The analysis of ‘doing diaspora’ offers a counterweight to state-led forms of practical diaspora governance as it sheds light on meanings and positionalities that often remain eclipsed. At the same time, I situate constructions of diaspora and diaspora engagement in concrete socio-political and discursive contexts.
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48 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration
THE EMERGENCE AND CONTRIBUTIONS OF A TRANSNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE To a large extent, migration in the modern age is inherently transnational as it happens in a world that is organized in nation states (see also Rodrigues de Castro and Moulin, Chapter 3 and El Qadim in this volume, Chapter 19). As part of their mobility practices, people cross nation state borders. Transnational migration has thus been an empirical fact since the foundation of the modern nation state. But it was not until the mid 1990s that scholars adopted an explicitly transnational perspective to study and better understand forms, contexts and implications of contemporary migration. In 1995 Glick Schiller et al. drew attention to ‘the processes by which immigrants forge and sustain multi-stranded social relations that link together their societies of origin and settlement’ (Glick Schiller et al. 1995: 48). They defined these processes as transnationalism. Building on this definition, subsequent scholarship broadened the scope beyond the bi-polar space that spans migrants’ country of origin and settlement. Increasingly, transnational migration was framed as taking place within fluid social spaces that are constantly reworked through migrants’ simultaneous embeddedness in more than one society and geographical locality, respectively (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004; Pries 2005). In addition to migrants’ home and host countries, these fluid social spaces were found to often include other sites around the world that connect migrants to their co-nationals and other social groups. Such an extended understanding of transnationalism acknowledges that both migrants and non-migrants shape existing or create new, transnational social spaces, which they inhabit and give meaning to (Dahinden 2009). This is because the flow of people, goods, ideas, norms and practices also shapes the lives of those who do not physically move themselves (Levitt 2001; Levitt and Jaworsky 2007). There are variations in the dimensions and forms of relationships that unfold between people and places (Levitt and Jaworsky 2007; Yeoh et al. 2003). To capture different articulations and implications of transnationalism, Levitt and Glick Schiller (2004) propose a distinction between transnational ways of being, meaning activities, practices, networks, etc. and transnational ways of belonging. The latter include ideas of solidarity, reciprocity and belonging which are crucial for the establishment and maintenance of transnational fields. It is important to acknowledge, however, that cross-border kinship or solidarity networks as well as collective representations of ethnicity and groupness are neither given, nor necessarily durable (Brubaker 2002). Rather they are ‘done’ or ‘undone’ in transnational space, within and between generations, and they are closely linked to local contexts which provide constraints or resources (Faist 2000; Moret 2018). A transnational perspective stands for endorsing a particular approach to migration as an empirical phenomenon, which widens the scope of research that views ‘immigrants as persons who uproot themselves, leave behind home and country and face painful processes of incorporation into a different society and culture’ (Glick Schiller et al. 1995: 48). As such, it brings to light processes which traditional migration research fails to capture. This includes simultaneous identification with multiple places; complex perceptions of belonging; and forms of social and political engagement across nation state borders. However, the emergence of a transnational perspective was more than an added dimension to the study of migration. Indeed, the transnational perspective on migration as an empirical phenomenon contributes to social science more generally (Faist et al. 2013; Glick Schiller 2015). Dahinden (2017: 1481) argues that ‘[t]he main merit of the “transnational turn” in the 1990s […] is that it triggered a para-
Transnationalism and diaspora as epistemology and practice 49 digm shift within migration research, away from the study of migrant “transnationalism”’. As exemplified by Wimmer and Glick Schiller’s seminal critique of methodological nationalism (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2003), embracing a transnational perspective becomes a way to develop explanatory frameworks for current transformations and to revise traditional social theory. Thus, a transnational perspective is of deep, epistemological significance. The paradigm shift to which Dahinden alludes is part of a broader development that scholars recently began to frame as the reflexive turn in migration and mobility studies (Amelina 2017; Nieswand and Drotbohm 2014). The focus is on how migration became a subject of scientific inquiry (Nieswand 2018). This implies that the naturalization of borders and the privilege of sedentarism over mobility are being called into question (Amelina 2017). Proponents of a reflexive approach argue that any scientific analysis is marked by a specific methodological standpoint (Nieswand and Drotbohm 2014), as a result of which researchers contribute to shaping their research objects (Schinkel 2018). One important advancement of reflexive approaches to migration and mobility consists in drawing attention to the fact that state-centred regimes reproduce categories such as migration, mobility, refugees or diaspora (see also El Qadim in this volume, Chapter 19). Nation states as bounded territorial entities thus shape instances of knowledge production (Pott et al. 2018; cf. Jeandesboz in this volume, Chapter 27). A transnational perspective not only adopts a broader and more inclusive focus on migration and mobility as subjects of empirical inquiry. It also transcends the nation state-centred framework of analysis in which the study of migration has traditionally been situated.
SITUATING DIASPORA IN TRANSNATIONAL STUDIES The concept of diaspora is at the same time an empirical manifestation of transnationalism while exemplifying prevailing nation state-based epistemologies. Conceptually, transnationalism and diaspora have different genealogies but both are related. Diaspora is a historical notion that goes back to the Jewish, Greek and Armenian experiences of forced displacement and dispersal (Cohen 2008; Tölölyan 1991, 2012). Diaspora populations are marked by several distinctive features which Brubaker subsumes as follows: dispersion, homeland orientation and boundary maintenance (Brubaker 2005: 5–6). As such, it has clear overlaps with transnationalism as a description of an empirical phenomenon in the sense Glick Schiller et al. (1995) originally coined the term. However, not every person leading a transnational life is therefore part of a diaspora. Likewise, the category of transnationals does not exclusively include migrants. Many former migrants in turn may not maintain transnational lives and activities. Diasporas thus constitute a subset of transnationals whereas both transnationals and diasporas intersect with migrants (Bakewell 2008). Lacroix (2019: 174) holds that diasporas do not emerge from mere mass emigration. Rather, diaspora-formation involves the maturation of a shared identity that comes out of different exchanges, confrontation, associational mobilization and artistic expression. Similar to transnationalism, the concept of diaspora transcends the old assimilationist, immigrationist paradigm. However, it also reiterates Glazer and Moynihan’s observation that ‘the point about the melting pot … is that it did not happen’ (1963, v). Regardless of human mobility being historically constitutive of societies across the world, migration and the presence of migrant others are not accepted as normal in modern society (see, for example, Schinkel
50 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration 2018). If migration was not considered as an anomaly, there would be no point in speaking about diaspora in the first place. Regardless of globalization and the constant cross-border movements of people, goods and ideas (Appadurai 1991), we are far from having surpassed the age of the nation state in exchange for de-territorialized identities and a non-essentialist idea of the relationship between politics and culture and territory (Brubaker 2005). Hence, grand claims about radical breaks and epochal shifts should be treated with caution (Favell 2001). To date, the nation state is the primary concept against which diaspora is defined – and often celebrated (Clifford 1994; Tölölyan 1991). As a result, discussions of diaspora tend to be informed by a strikingly idealist, teleological understanding of the nation state, which is seen as an unfolding of the idea of nationalizing and homogenizing the population. The paradox in the relationship between diaspora and transnationalism thus derives from the multi-layered implications that are tied to the notion of diaspora. Diasporas, according to the paradigmatic definition, constitute an inherently transnational phenomenon. They emerge through transnational processes while representing complex transnational processes themselves. In many ways they exemplify what has been described as transnational ways of being and transnational ways of belonging. At the same time and due to its nation state-centred underpinnings, diaspora has come to reify the idea of bounded communities that are united in their shared culture and shared national origins (Brubaker 2005).
TRANSNATIONALISM AND DIASPORA IN THE GOVERNANCE AND POLITICS OF MIGRATION The paradoxical relationship between diaspora and transnationalism is not only reflected in scholarly accounts. It is also at the heart of different areas of migration governance (see, for example, Agunias and Newland 2012). For example, two areas marked by the governing role of the nation state are diaspora institutions and integration policies. Both areas of governance (implicitly) target diaspora populations, albeit in very different ways. Whilst the former are based on the extension of access and membership across borders, the latter limit membership and its signifiers to territorially bounded nation states (El Qadim, Chapter 19; on border regimes, see also Rajaram, Chapter 15, both in this volume). Hence, while diaspora policies embrace the idea of transnationalism, immigrant integration constitutes a fundamental contradiction to transnationalism as an epistemological position. The concept of diaspora thus highlights the merits and pitfalls of a transnational perspective with regard to migration governance. Diaspora Institutions Diaspora institutions are defined as ‘formal state offices dedicated to emigrants and their descendants’ (Gamlen 2014: 182). In this broad definition, Gamlen (2014: 182) includes ‘full or shared ministries, governmental departments, and interdepartmental committees, […] legislative-branch institutions, such as parliamentary standing committees, dedicated seats in the upper or lower house of the legislature, and councils formally appointed to advise on legislation affecting diaspora groups’. Diaspora institutions are an established phenomenon that can be traced back to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with countries such as Mexico, Poland and Italy being early examples (Délano 2011; Smith 2003). However, diaspora insti-
Transnationalism and diaspora as epistemology and practice 51 tutions have spread exponentially in recent decades. In 1970, fewer than ten states worldwide maintained diaspora institutions; the number rose to 40 by 2000 and in 2014, 110 of the 193 United Nations member states maintained at least one diaspora institution, and at least 47 states had more than one (Gamlen 2014: 185). Diaspora institutions encompass a broad range of governance practices. For example, migrants and their descendants are courted in campaigns to encourage financial remittances and investments (Aparicio and Meseguer 2012; Brinkerhoff 2008, 2012). They are granted new categories of extra-territorial citizenship and voting rights, sometimes with dedicated representatives in origin state legislatures (Bauböck 2009; Collyer 2014; Gamlen et al. 2019; Lafleur 2011) and harnessed through heritage tourism campaigns (Abramson 2019; Mahieu 2019). These and other government initiatives to engage diasporas have come to represent a regular feature of twenty-first-century politics and migration governance more specifically (Faist 2010; Gamlen et al. 2019; Østergaard-Nielsen 2003). Another area of diaspora governance has emerged in the context of international development cooperation. Many governmental or non-governmental institutions have set up initiatives which seek to engage diaspora groups in ‘home country development’ action (Sinatti and Horst 2014; Stielike 2017). Fields of practical engagement include local development initiatives in countries of origin, humanitarian aid and emergency responses, as well as networking and capacity building in countries of settlement (see, for example, DRC 2019; GIZ 2018). Key purposes of diaspora institutions are to extend domestic politics and issues beyond national borders, to shape migrants’ senses of self, and to reconfigure the spatiality of states beyond the idealized form of the territorially discrete nation state unit (Agnew 2003). Diaspora institutions represent ‘state-led transnationalism’ (Margheritis 2007) in that they project states’ domestic policies beyond their borders into populations that both reside abroad and also remain involved at home (Gamlen 2014: 189). Such policies embrace transnationalism instrumentally. At the same time, however, they reify the nation state, because diaspora is understood as a form of dispersed belonging defined by nation states (Cohen 1996; Gamlen 2014). Diaspora institutions thus contribute to perceptions of emigrants and their descendants as a category of belonging defined by, rather than in opposition to, the origin state (Délano Alonso and Mylonas 2019; Gamlen et al. 2019; Ragazzi 2009). A closer look at diaspora policies and diaspora institutions as one specific form of migration governance reveals the controversial link between transnationalism and diaspora. The controversy derives from the disjuncture between transnationalism as cross-border politics, identifications and practices (Levitt and Jaworsky 2007) and transnationalism as an epistemological stance (Dahinden 2017; Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2003). Whilst the former is both a precondition and an inherent feature of diaspora institutions and diaspora policies, the latter remains largely absent from this specific area of migration governance and the way it has been studied thus far. First, diaspora policies and diaspora institutions are transnational because they build on and strive to further enhance livelihoods and loyalties that transcend nation state borders. The underlying aim of such state-led outreach activities, in turn, is to foster transnational identifications and encourage transnational flows of money or social remittances. Diaspora institutions and policies thus strive to craft both transnational ways of being as well as transnational ways of belonging (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004). They acknowledge that different forms of cross-border exchange form a vital dimension of peoples’ everyday lives and transnational relations and flows can involve multiple places and thus resemble a multi-nodal network
52 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration (Levitt and Jaworsky 2007). Such recognition of and attempts to further expand transnational ways of being and transnational ways of belonging, however, are instrumentalist. State actors seek to benefit from transnational identifications and transnational practices of those considered part of the diaspora. Diaspora institutions and policies are designed to capitalize on the administrative fact that emigrants often remain nationals of their country of origin. At the same time, it is the state that defines who is included or excluded from the diaspora. Nationality is conflated with an idea of belonging to an extended community of citizens and concomitant loyalty. Diaspora institutions and policies reify the idea of diasporas as bounded entities. This is unsurprising because states aim to retain their credibility, authority and representativeness of what is believed to be their people. Acknowledging heterogeneity in terms of political opinions and agendas, class backgrounds and loyalty, as well as concomitant ruptures and contestations, put states at risk of losing credibility and authority. Attempts of the Turkish state to represent its citizens abroad, for example, contrast sharply with Alevi attempts to organize around a distinct religious and cultural identity (Özkul 2019). Second, more recent accounts of diaspora politics embrace transnationalism epistemologically. Such contributions recognize the need to move away from static, state-centred categories when studying diaspora politics. Scholars such as Délano Alonso and Mylonas (2019; see also Fischer and Dahinden 2019) examine the various actors within and beyond the state that participate in the design and implementation of policies categorized as ‘diaspora engagement’. Efforts to engage migrants and their descendants are also shaped by global norms about how best to manage migration for mutually beneficial development, and how best to respect migrant human rights in destination states. International organizations such as the United Nations or the World Bank, for example, have been making efforts to promote certain forms of diaspora engagement in specific global regions. Such initiatives and underlying norms have developed in the absence of a centralized, universally supported and thus binding global migration governance framework. Scholars have also examined how emigrant or co-ethnic groups are constituted (or not) by government bureaucracies at different levels, as well as by political parties, diaspora entrepreneurs and diaspora groups, or by international organizations as ‘diasporas’ (Délano Alonso and Mylonas 2019). Such forms of diaspora governance are less state-centred as far as the actors involved are concerned. However, the populations targeted by non-state actors are still framed as members of bounded nation state-based communities. Regardless of the approach taken to the study of diaspora institutions, the persons assumed to form part of a diaspora are perceived as belonging to a certain national entity. Immigrant Integration Immigrant integration is a second field of migration governance that targets those perceived as members of a diaspora. It relates to transnationalism in a very different way than diaspora institutions. Across industrialized countries of the global North, integration became ‘the most widely used general concept for describing inclusion of migrants and ethnic minorities in national communities as primary target of post-immigration policies’ (Bommes and Morawska 2005: 44). In the absence of an agreement about what constitutes integration, most scholarly attention has focused on migrants’ adjustment and the ways in which integration outcomes might be understood or measured (Grzymala-Kazlowska and Phillimore 2018; Penninx and Garcés-Mascareñas 2016). Integration is both means and ends in the sense that the concept refers to both an accomplished condition, and to the process of getting there (Rytter 2019:
Transnationalism and diaspora as epistemology and practice 53 682). Immigrant integration policies are not specifically designed for perceived members of diasporic groups. They aim, however, at supporting peoples’ immersion into the society of settlement, thus addressing immigrant groups as others based on their ascribed identity, such as the (ancestral) origin. While integration policies and discourse primarily target persons who migrated themselves, they also set the benchmarks for perceptions and evaluations of migrant descendants (Alba and Foner 2015; Favell 2016). Talk of and demands for integration in public and political discourse rest on, produce and reproduce specific imaginaries of culture, race and belonging that often disqualify certain groups of immigrants per se and cast them as inferior and suspect (Rytter 2019: 680). As a policy goal, integration posits society as a static object over individuals whose being signifies a certain degree of ‘integration’ as an individual-level trait and task. ‘Integration’ is the state of an individual, and hence – in line with the neoliberalization of migration and integration policies (van Houdt et al. 2011) – ‘integration’ becomes a matter of ‘individual responsibility’ (Schinkel 2018: 3) Integration policies do not form a unique set of interventions. There is a multitude of national models of integration policies, which focus on education, language skills, labour market participation, as well as social and cultural practices (Ager and Strang 2008). Regardless of national specificities of policy frames and policy measures, many of the programmes in place have been criticized for their primary focus on migrants rather than society as a whole. They overlook the importance of transnationalism and local levels (Penninx and Garcés-Mascareñas 2016). Integration policies revolve around dialectic ideas of differences and sameness. However, differences are exclusively attributed to ‘others’. They are cast as signs of problems posed by those considered as introducing these differences from the outside into an otherwise unscathed inside. Integration policies suggest that despite all mobility, ‘there is still a “society” that is not mobile, that can be circumcised out of the super-diverse chaos of movements, trajectories, backgrounds and origins’ (Schinkel 2018: 10). Hence, contemporary migration is predicated on the existence of an international system of nation states, which promotes the production of migrant others as particular subjectivities (Korteweg 2017; El Qadim in this volume, Chapter 19). Such critical accounts demonstrate not only that integration constitutes an important dimension of migration governance. They also unpack how the idea of integration reifies the nation state as a natural unit of belonging and social organization. However, there is a fundamental disconnect between research on the links between and compatibility of transnationalism and integration, and integration as subject and objective of migration governance. Whilst the former underlines that people can live, belong and engage in multiple national spheres, the latter rejects transnationalism both as an epistemological position and as a form of being and belonging. This clash in objectives between integration policies and diaspora institutions and policies can be summarized as group maintenance vs. disappearance of groups. The idea of diaspora features centrally in different areas of migration governance, even if the notion of diaspora is not explicitly used, as is the case for most immigrant integration policies. However, debates on the interplay of transnationalism and immigrant integration tend to ignore that both areas of governance are based on essentialist ideas and assumptions of belonging as a result of which people are framed as members of a specific bounded group. While diaspora institutions and policies implicitly underline the idea of lasting differences and distinctions based on national origin, integration policies seek to erase such differences. Yet, the very attempt to dismantle differences reinforces them at the same time. In principle, diaspora and immigrant integration policies target the same – imagined – groups of persons and forms of migration-induced
54 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration difference. However, both areas of governance are fundamentally incompatible as far as their objectives and anticipated effects on such difference are concerned. Diaspora policies capitalize on the assumption of transnational belonging, while immigrant integration policies cast transnational belonging as a problem. Those targeted are thus caught in the tension between the encouragement of transnational belonging, on the one hand, and the expectation to exchange transnational belonging with national immersion, on the other hand.
WAYS FORWARD: PROPOSING AN ACTOR-CENTRED APPROACH TO TRANSNATIONALISM AND DIASPORA So far, I have been reviewing two areas of migration governance that target ideas of transnationalism and diaspora in different – even contradictory – ways. Notwithstanding these differences, it emerges that ultimately immigrant integration as well as diaspora institutions and policies are based on a state-centred epistemology. Both areas of governance are there to serve the interests of nation states, be it control over groups of nationals that live outside the state territory and secure ‘diasporic’ support for economic prosperity, political influence, etc. (diaspora institutions) or the maintenance of imagined homogeneity (integration). To this end, they build on the assumption that there are clear-cut groups that identify and act along ethnic lines. Such ethnic conceptualizations disregard diaspora as a site of and subject to individual meaning-making. At the same time, both fields of migration governance exemplify what Amelina (2017: 5) refers to as state-led instances of ‘doing migration’, meaning that certain markers of identification and notions of national belonging are inscribed in forms of migration governance. In the analysis of diaspora institutions and immigrant integration policies, I have demonstrated how diaspora and transnationalism can be used as heuristic tools to trace how modes of governance draw on certain constructions of social reality. A critical focus on the epistemological underpinnings of the links between transnationalism and diaspora in migration governance certainly sharpen our analytical lens. However, can such a critical approach also contribute to rethinking the link between transnationalism and diaspora, and help to develop new avenues for migration governance? I argue that the nation state-centred bias that is inherent to diaspora institutions and integration policies begins to crumble once we adopt an actor-centred approach to explore who uses notions like diaspora and to what ends. How do (im)mobile subjects define their own identifications and practices? And how does transnationalism contribute to shaping them? By addressing such questions, an actor-centred approach helps to reveal the socially generated quality of phenomena such as diaspora, and it adds complementary dimensions to their meanings and articulations. In an empirically grounded contribution to the discussion on transnationalism and integration, Bivand Erdal (2013) argues for analysis through migrants’ own expressions of phenomena like integration or transnationalism. She bases her plea on identified tensions between different understandings of integration and points at a fundamental shortcoming of integration policies. Based on her actor-centred analysis, Bivand Erdal (2013: 996) underlines that integration policies often lack a transnational perspective that could acknowledge the transnational lived experiences of migrants themselves. To complete the picture and balance hegemonic, state-led representations, it is therefore important to also access instances of meaning-making from a migrant-led bottom-up perspective. Such an approach is transnational in the sense that it does not draw forgone conclusions based on a person’s national or ethnic
Transnationalism and diaspora as epistemology and practice 55 background. In fact, we can apply Amelina’s idea of ‘doing migration’ (Amelina 2017) to doing diaspora respectively. It enables us to highlight the intentions and objectives at play whenever the notion of diaspora is used and to explore specific ways of transnational being and belonging that are tied to notions of diaspora which different actors employ. Dominant conceptions of diaspora not only omit important dimensions and articulations of diaspora. They may also be met by contestation of those to whom the label is applied. Only a few studies have looked at transnational identifications and governance implications in combination. Fischer and Dahinden (2019), for example, explore instances of doing diaspora that involve different actors. To identify and contextualize diverse meanings of diaspora, we focus on how and with what effects different actors use the notion of diaspora as a category of practice. Based on a study of Afghan migration to Europe, we highlight the processes and objectives at play whenever the notion of diaspora is used as a category of self-identification or external classification. We find that persons of Afghan origin may either positively or negatively identify with a wider Afghan diaspora or the idea of such a diaspora. Identification constitutes an act of self-positioning amidst co-nationals of Afghan origin and vis-à-vis society and public discourse more broadly (Fischer 2017). Conversely, external actors may apply diaspora as a social category when referring to Afghans outside Afghanistan. We find that the notion of diaspora is used to distinguish between those perceived as established and well-integrated persons of Afghan origin, on the one hand, and recently arrived Afghan refugees with different socio-economic backgrounds and different needs, on the other. Newly arrived refugees are assessed and classified against the backdrop of an assumedly well-integrated Afghan diaspora population (for example, Skodo 2017; Wilhelm 2015). Rather than confirming the existence of a certain group that can be targeted by specific policies, we show that the notion of diaspora constitutes a rich but fluid resource. It can be mobilized for self-identification and positioning, and for political ends. Using the notion of diaspora as a flexible tool rather than a fixed category enables us to explore applied notions of diaspora that often go far beyond the mere classification of a specific migrant population. What does such an actor-centred approach imply for modes of governance and policy-making? While it is unlikely to change dominant forms of governance, it helps us identify the underlying framings and social constructions that inform those policies in the first place. Adopting an actor-centred approach to doing diaspora signals that diaspora is a result of interactive individual, organizational and institutional repetitive practices and routines (Amelina 2017). At the same time, it allows us to scrutinize who is affectively addressed in the first place and whether and in what ways certain fields of migration governance respond to the interests and concerns of its subjects, that is, migrants who are either required to integrate or targeted as members of a wider diaspora. An analysis of migrants’ own reflections on issues such as transnationalism, diaspora or integration sheds light on transnational realities in a dual sense. First, it illuminates the transnational – in terms of multi-local – context in which people and their experiences are embedded. Second, it sheds light on migrants’ emic reflections on state-led policies and their objectives. An actor-centred approach thus helps us refine our understanding of the role transnationalism plays in shaping peoples’ identifications and sense of belonging. It also helps specify to what extent and to what ends people self-identify as members of diasporas. Ultimately, an actor-centred approach helps us trace how certain definitions of migration, diaspora or integration have emerged, stabilized and become inscribed in political regulations and social routines that have effects on mobile and immobile individuals. It enables us to retain the usefulness of diaspora as a concept by unpacking in what ways and with what effects it is linked to the teleology of different actors.
56 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration
CONCLUSION Today we see increased cross-border flows of different nature: persons, information, knowledge, goods and trends (Appadurai 1991). They constitute the basis for both diaspora institutions and policies, and immigrant integration as two distinct fields of migration governance. Both areas of governance target diaspora populations because they are seen as members and representatives of a particular nation state. They do not acknowledge diaspora as a category of practice, an idea and principle that actors strategically employ to position themselves in the context that constitutes their daily environment. Migration governance is a heterogeneous field of different individual policies and their underlying objectives. The same migrant population may be subject to the policies of different state and non-state actors. Diaspora policies and integration policies exemplify such entanglements and their inherent contradictions. The above sections demonstrate how both policy fields potentially target the same constructed migrant or ethnic minority groups. However, we are faced with the contradicting aims to amplify the visibility and transnational engagement of diasporic groups, on the one hand, and to support their disappearance, on the other hand. Regardless of their different objectives, however, both policy fields rest on the same basic parameters and nation state-centred epistemologies which promote the construction of migrant groups in terms of their ethnic and national origin. At the same time, diaspora policies and immigrant integration policies reflect two dimensions of the political zeitgeist in migration governance: on the one hand, people are expected to be of political or economic use to their (ancestral) country of origin. On the other hand, they are expected to integrate and become invisible in their country of residence. Both these perspectives are utilitarian in the sense that they prioritize state interests over the interests and needs of those forming part of perceived diasporas. However, this state-led way of doing migration needs to be juxtaposed with a migrant-centred approach to social identification, engagement and lived experience, which offers an important corrective to the dominant view and its implications. Revisiting the links between transnationalism and diaspora reveals how widespread modes of knowledge production on migration and mobility both affect, and are reflected in, instances of migration governance. In line with recent debates on knowledge production in migration studies (also see Jeandesboz in this volume, Chapter 27), this contribution has demonstrated how a transnational epistemology, in conjunction with a ‘doing migration’ approach, proposes original ways to revisit the underpinnings and inherent contradictions of specific areas of migration governance.
NOTE 1. I use the notion of epistemology as a reference to the nature and production of knowledge and to the sources and scope of justified belief more specifically. Epistemology is thus an answer to the question ‘How do we know what we know and why do we consider our knowledge as justified?’
Transnationalism and diaspora as epistemology and practice 57
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Transnationalism and diaspora as epistemology and practice 59 Penninx, R. and B. Garcés-Mascareñas (2016), ‘The concept of integration as an analytical tool and as a policy concept’, in B. Garcés-Mascareñas and R. Penninx (eds), Integration Processes and Policies in Europe: Contexts, Levels and Actors, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 11–29. Pott, A., C. Rass and F. Wolff (eds) (2018), Was Ist Ein Migrationsregime?, Wiesbaden: Springer. Pries, L. (2005), ‘Configurations of geographic and societal spaces: a sociological proposal between “methodological nationalism” and the “spaces of flows”’, Global Networks, 5 (2), 167–90. Ragazzi, F. (2009), ‘Governing diasporas’, International Political Sociology, 3 (4), 378–97. Rytter, M. (2019), ‘Writing against integration: Danish imaginaries of culture, race and belonging’, Ethnos, 84 (4), 678–97. Schinkel, W. (2018), ‘Against “immigrant integration”: for an end to neocolonial knowledge production’, Comparative Migration Studies, 6 (1), 31. Sinatti, G. and C. Horst (2014), ‘Migrants as agents of development: diaspora engagement discourse doi .org/ 10 .1177/ and practice in Europe’, Ethnicities, 1–19, accessed 6 January 2021 at https:// 1468796814530120. Skodo, A. (2017), ‘How Afghans became second-class asylum seekers’, accessed 21 September 2017 at http://theconversation.com/how-afghans-became-second-class-asylum-seekers-72437. Smith, R. (2003), ‘Diasporic memberships in historical perspective: comparative insights from the Mexican, Italian and Polish cases’, International Migration Review, 37 (3), 724–59. Stielike, L. (2017), Entwicklung Durch Migration? Eine Postkoloniale Dispositivanalyse Am Beispiel Kamerun-Deutschland, Bielefeld: Transcript. Tölölyan, K. (1991), ‘The nation-state and its others: in lieu of a preface’, Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, 1 (1), 3–7. Tölölyan, K. (2012), Diaspora Studies: Past, Present and Promise, 55, Oxford: International Migration Institute. van Houdt, F., S. Suvarierol and W. Schinkel (2011), ‘Neoliberal communitarian citizenship: current trends towards “earned citizenship” in the United Kingdom, France and the Netherlands’, International Sociology, 26 (3), 408–32. Wilhelm, M. (2015), ‘Gebildet, fleissig, unauffällig’, Tages-Anzeiger, 13 November, accessed 9 August 2017 at http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/schweiz/standard/gebildet-fleissig-unauffaellig/story/31491264. Wimmer, A. and N. Glick Schiller (2003), ‘Methodological nationalism, the social sciences, and the study of migration: an essay in historical epistemology’, International Migration Review, 37 (3), 576–610. Yeoh, B. S. A., K. D. Willis and S. M. A. K. Fakhri (2003), ‘Introduction: transnationalism and its edges’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 26 (2), 207–17.
5. The politics of conceptualizing border/security Karolina Follis
INTRODUCTION In the twenty-first century, in most states of the global North, and in many of the global South, few political issues rival the mobilizing power of claims around the status and security of national borders. The idea that borders of powerful states and economically prosperous regions are vulnerable to many forms of breach has long helped rally publics to support ever more advanced securitizing initiatives (see also Guia in this volume, Chapter 33). These range from the well-publicized construction of walls and fences, to the less visible forms of remote control and the manipulation of jurisdictional boundaries. These state responses have not halted human mobility. Instead, they have created lethal conditions in which phenomena such as human smuggling (cf. Thibos and Howard in this volume, Chapter 12), concentration camps for would be migrants (cf. Turner in this volume, Chapter 23), and deaths from drowning on the maritime borders have become routine. The social and political sciences responded to these developments by elaborating a range of critical approaches to contemporary bordering processes. Some scholars, particularly soon after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, focused on border security as part of the toolkit of national security (for example, Ackleson 2005; Amoore 2006). A larger body of work considers it within the context of migration management and immigration policy, unpacking these concepts in the process (for example, Andreas 2009; Bigo 2002; Mountz 2010; Walters 2006; see also Pécoud in this volume, Chapter 17). Others have been interested in the historical changes in models of border control (Zaiotti 2011; Zolberg 2008), and still others bring Foucauldian and post-Foucauldian attentiveness to the mutations of biopolitical power at the border (Vaughan-Williams 2017; Walters 2011; see also Jeandesboz in this volume, Chapter 27). Drawing on rich empirical data and insights of postcolonial, gender and Marxist theory, authors across the disciplines have contributed nuanced accounts of the contemporary border/security nexus and its deleterious effects (cf. Rajaram in this volume, Chapter 15). This chapter explores what I see as three distinct lines of contestation in this rich literature. The first one centres on sovereignty and its contemporary modalities. The second one concerns security and the practices it underwrites. The third one focuses on risk, and its relative merits as a measure informing border policy. Events of the mid-2010s constitute the empirical context for this discussion. In that period, for a host of political and economic reasons, irregular movements along certain migratory routes intensified. This was the case particularly between the Middle East and North Africa and Europe, where, in 2015, the number of arrivals exceeded one million.1 The global media supplied international publics with crisis imagery of human flows. This helped fuel the anti-immigrant rhetoric of right-wing parties in Europe and beyond (cf. Guia in this volume, Chapter 33). The rising political fortunes of these parties can be attributed, in large part, to their nationalist and authoritarian leaders’ effective exploitation of border security themes. These developments call for a fresh examination of established arguments. I examine the 60
The politics of conceptualizing border/security 61 themes of sovereignty, security and risk in the context of the renewed nationalism and authoritarian politics in many parts of Europe, the United States and beyond, asking how critical scholarly discussions on borders are changing in light of these political trends.
BORDERING: SPECTACULAR AND DIFFUSE To set the scene for exploring the lines of contestation we might ask what we have learned, empirically, about the policies and practices of border security in the twenty-first century. On the cusp of the new millennium, Andreas and Snyder called the forceful systems of control ‘along the geographic fault lines diving rich and poor regions’ the ‘wall around the West’ (Andreas and Snyder 2000: 1). In the past two decades this ‘wall’ evolved in important ways. From the literature we learn of two strategies of bordering deployed by states and state-like actors like the European Union (EU). Drawing on De Genova’s work, we may term one of them ‘spectacular bordering’, connoting the ‘spectacle of enforcement at “the” border whereby migrant illegality is rendered spectacularly visible’ (De Genova 2013: 1181). ‘Spectacular bordering’ entails ostentatious displays of the state’s border enforcement capacity. These spectacles can involve the construction of actual walls and fences, but also, away from the geographical boundary itself, militarized patrols, immigration raids, deportation flights and other instances where state agents act visibly on perceived infractions. They do so not simply to stop, deter or prevent irregular movement but also symbolically to represent state authority, ‘to communicate the state’s commitment to marking and maintaining the borderline’ (Andreas 2009: 8). While spectacular bordering focuses on territory and its points of entry and exit, the other strategy, which we may call ‘diffuse bordering’, is deterritorialized and less visible. It is concerned with deterrence and containment rather than with the straightforward maintenance of boundaries. It targets individuals or populations and encompasses policies and practices such as large-scale predictive surveillance, risk assessment and incentivizing third countries to cooperate with the migration policy goals of their wealthier neighbours. In the past two decades, states and state-like actors have combined both strategies, the spectacular and the diffuse, to assert control over who can gain access to the states and territories of the global North, and who must be excluded. But for the anti-immigrant nationalists gaining ground in North America and Europe, spectacular bordering is the preferred tactic.2 Some of the loudest nationalist populists of the 2010s continue to call for border walls, often prompting vigorous protests, but also drawing support from anxious constituencies seeking comfort in narratives of protection. Diffuse bordering meanwhile continues to be enacted in the background. In Europe in particular, politicians emphasize that this is done not only in the name of controlling movements, but also under a humanitarian pretence, ostensibly to pre-empt departures of more migrant boats and thus to prevent loss of life at sea. The relationship of specific policies to the numbers of irregular arrivals and, indeed, deaths can be difficult to disentangle from other factors, such as conflict in regions of origin (see Steinhilper and Gruijters 2018 on Europe; Hiemstra 2017 on the United States; cf. Hart, Chapter 8 and Squire, Chapter 11, both in this volume). For example, in the EU, many states continue to grapple with the political fallout of the increased arrivals of 2015, but since 2016 the numbers have dropped continuously. The total number of irregular arrivals at the southern coasts of Europe in 2018 was 138,882. The equivalent figure for 2017 was 172,301.3
62 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration The overall fall is usually attributed to the EU’s cooperation with Turkey, which brought to a halt arrivals in Greece, and to the changing situation in Libya where the authorities have been incentivized to support European migration control objectives (Baldwin-Edwards and Lutterbeck 2018). A decrease in arrivals, however, does not entail a slowdown in bordering initiatives. At or away from borders, combating illegality requires ‘capacity building’ and generates demand for technologies, equipment and specialized knowledge. Official agencies, the security industry and international organizations involved in bordering join forces in what Andersson has called the ‘illegality industry’, a cluster of public and private bodies which draw profit from fighting irregular movement, and are thus invested in their own reproduction (Andersson 2014; Garelli et al. 2018).
SOVEREIGNTY TODAY In the 2010s, right-wing parties and movements in North America and Europe have embraced a common ‘playbook’ (Hogan and Haltinner 2015), where sovereignty is one of the key concepts. They have effectively mobilized support around the idea that sovereignty must be ‘taken back’, after it has been frayed by globalization and ostensibly undermined by regional economic and political integration. One sure way to do it, according to these actors, is to ‘take control’ of national borders, which are said to be persistently violated. In this context, restating the question about sovereignty’s locus and its modalities makes analytic and historical sense. The global resurgence of nationalism, upheavals in regional blocs (EU, NAFTA) and uncertainties over the future shape of the international order prompt questions of how and on whose behalf the sovereign ‘takes back control’ (cf. on the return of ‘nativism’ Guia in this volume, Chapter 33). The historically established concept of Westphalian sovereignty refers to a ‘political organization based on the exclusion of external actors from authority structures within a given territory’ (Krasner 1999: 4). This definition, as scholars of globalization have pointed out, is difficult to uphold in an era of enhanced global flows and interdependencies (Agnew 2005; Sassen 1996), while it also rendered invisible colonial relations that marked national state development in Europe (see Mayblin in this volume, Chapter 2). Nonetheless, as an idea, it exerts a powerful hold on the nationalist imagination. Defenders of sovereignty (national, popular or otherwise inherent in the state) reject not just external intervention, but also declare hostility to all or most legally or politically binding commitments that would restrain sovereign power from the outside, for example in the name of human rights. What this view of sovereignty obscures, is that the marker of sovereign power is not primarily emancipation from external rules, but rather the capacity to suspend law altogether, that is, to decide on the exception. Students of Agamben’s political thought in the field of migration and border studies have long reminded us of sovereign power’s biopolitical dimension, that is, its capacity to exclude ‘bare life’ from the juridico-political order of the state (Agamben 2005; applications in this volume include Turner, Chapter 23 and Lindberg and Khosravi, Chapter 29). ‘Bare life’ connotes the mere fact of being alive, as distinguished from the life of the citizen who enjoys a legally and politically recognized ‘social presence in the world’ (Fassin 2005: 367). In the twenty-first century, unwanted border crossers are increasingly reduced to ‘bare life’, through political rhetoric and the de facto suspension of rights. They can be ‘detected, intercepted or
The politics of conceptualizing border/security 63 rescued’ but not fully recognized as rights-bearing subjects (Schindel 2016: 221). Prerogative power to suspend the law was traditionally understood to operate in wartime and in imperial territories. In fact, in contemporary states, the application of the exception extends to any situation that the sovereign defines as a crisis, whether it be described as a ‘migration’, or a ‘humanitarian’ or ‘economic’ crisis (Arnold 2011). Invoking such emergencies in relation to the movements of people justifies exceptional measures, such as the denial of the right to asylum or calling in the military to police borders in peacetime. Within the logic of ongoing crises, exceptional responses become the norm. They manifest themselves as a security discourse, where specific groups (in this case migrants) are constructed as a threat and routinely subjected to the withdrawal of legal and political protections (on related technologies of control, see Jeandesboz in this volume, Chapter 27). But this effect does not require unilateral, top-down acts of a sovereign ‘taking control’. Instead, it is constantly produced through the dispersed actions of the polymorphous bureaucratic and policing apparatus at the sovereign’s disposal (Feldman 2012). The agents implicated in ‘bare life’-generating border practices may represent a nation state, or act on behalf of a state-like quasi-sovereign like the European Union, or another non-state actor empowered to act on behalf of states. But the self-professed guardians of sovereignty on the contemporary political right view these dispersed arrangements as dysfunctional. They seek to repatriate and recentralize control (Klaus 2017). They want to exercise their sovereign right to shut out unwanted others without regard to international agreements, political pressures to ‘share the burden’ of migrant and refugee arrivals, or binding commitments that would impose on them humanitarian or human rights obligations. In his recent essay on populism, Müller reminds us that, in Europe, political developments in the post-war period tended towards the fragmentation of political power and placing constraints on the sovereign: ‘the architects of the post-war Western European order viewed the ideal of popular sovereignty with a great deal of distrust; after all how could one trust people who had brought fascists to power or extensively collaborated with fascist occupiers?’ (Müller 2016: 94).4 Constraints on popular will were placed on domestic institutions in the form of checks and balances and a strengthened role for judicial institutions. International organizations, including those protecting human rights, grew in power and influence, even if nominally they were built on the principle of respect for international legal sovereignty. European integration, however, went beyond that principle. It was ‘part and parcel of this comprehensive attempt to constrain the popular will: it added supranational constraints to national ones’ (ibid., 95) in this way compromising the Westphalian model.5 Thus, when in 2018, the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, titled his State of the European Union address ‘The Hour of European Sovereignty’ (European Commission 2018), he was in fact attempting to consummate the process initiated in the 1950s. He affirmed the value of ‘pooled sovereignty’ in the EU and rebuked those who claim that the will of the people is to pursue unilateral policies of reinforcing borders and strengthening security. At the same time, the ‘European sovereign’ conducts its own border enforcement operations in the Mediterranean Sea, utilizing the EU Naval Force (EU NAVFOR Med) to transform the maritime border into a militarized zone, whereas, of 2018, non-governmental organizations are barred from participating in search and rescue, and the control of movement is outsourced to Libyan forces (Cuttitta 2018). Does it matter, then, what is the nature of the sovereign enforcing borders against what De Genova and others have called ‘the autonomy of migration’, that is, the ‘sheer incorrigibility
64 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration of migrant and refugee subjectivities and their mobility projects’ (De Genova 2017: 5)? When it comes to the control of movement across borders, we ought to ask what distinguishes liberal democratic systems, where power is both fragmented and constrained, from illiberal ones. Does it make a material difference in terms of life and death if the enforcer is an unconstrained national sovereign, harbouring a distrust of international institutions, and committed to the erection of walls and a culture war in defence of ‘Western civilization’? The answers to these questions are not yet clear. Arguments unfold in different directions. For some, all border regimes, whether it is the European one (administered jointly by member states and agencies of the EU), or the one developed along the US–Mexico border, or in Australia’s ‘Pacific Solution’, are ‘profoundly interconnected to the ongoing reconfigurations of an effectively planetary regime dedicated to the neoliberal and postcolonial government of human mobility and the border struggles that are ever increasingly manifest around the world’ (De Genova 2017: 24: see also Mezzadra and Neilson 2013). Others are prepared to argue the relative merits and deficiencies of migration management practices of liberal democracies (Carens 2013) or to document discontinuities in the implementation of refugee law, human rights and humanitarian considerations (Kallius 2017; Minns et al. 2018). To some extent, these perspectives converge in the debates on open borders, where scholars and activists articulate the case for safe passage across borders and explore the moral, philosophical and economic arguments for unimpeded movement (Bauder 2014; Jones 2018). Notwithstanding such critiques, it is an empirical fact that hard-line nationalist discourses fuel the rise of new border fortifications and contribute to the evisceration of the fundamental right to seek asylum around the world. These developments can be understood as ‘pieces in complex sovereignty contests between national and post-national powers of political determination, economic arrangements and demographic composition’ (Brown in Jones et al. 2017: 4). They are evidence that even if in fact it is fragmented, disaggregated, pooled or shared, sovereignty remains a durable object of desire, claimed through acts of bordering and persisting in spite of scant evidence of its viability in any pure form.
SECURITIZATION AND ITS LIMITS Connected to the discussion of sovereignty are the ways in which scholars conceptualize the objectives of bordering, declared and actual. One central role of the sovereign is to protect citizens by means of policing boundaries and externalizing threats. If that is the case, then the concept of securitization as a lens on bordering practices appears to offer purchase on why and how borders have turned lethal in recent years. Research on security discourses and practices in relation to border control gained momentum in the 1990s, but it was in the aftermath of 9/11 that scholarship began in earnest to explore how states recognize, name and combat dangerous people and things, usually resorting to extraordinary means (Bigo 2002; Fassin 2011; Jensen and Stepputat 2013). However, does the lens of security remain as effective today for understanding border policy and practice as it might have been a decade or so ago? The quest for security, understood broadly as a set of exclusionary rules targeting unfamiliar people and forces, typically goes hand in hand with the attempts of many states to try to reclaim specifically national sovereignty (cf. El Qadim in this volume, Chapter 19). To understand the renewed political mobilizations around questions of migration and borders, we must account for the changing perceptions of what it means to be, or feel, secure.
The politics of conceptualizing border/security 65 Building on the basic insight of securitization theory that security problems are constructed through the politicized process of defining certain subjects as dangerous (Balzacq 2010), a burgeoning body of literature documents how the figure of the migrant as an economic, cultural and potentially terrorist threat justifies an unprecedented expansion of peacetime practices that are defined as ‘security measures’. These works complement and expand on the Agambenian analyses of states of exception discussed above. When bordering practices are undertaken in the name of security, they acquire a non-negotiable status, exempt from the ordinary confrontation of democratic politics (Aradau and van Munster 2008). Nancheva argues that ‘[b]y constructing migrants as a physical and ontological threat, by redrawing borders as barriers against otherness, by reaffirming the identity-maintenance aspects of citizenship, the securitization of migration and the lumping of asylum together with migration … has enabled the rationalization of protection from asylum seekers’ (Nancheva 2016; emphasis in original). Nancheva’s essay concerns Bulgaria, but the observation is applicable to any state where securitizing discourses have dominated border politics in the past 20 years. In most of the global North, bordering, whether spectacular or diffuse, has been framed as being essentially about the necessary protection of national citizens (their physical safety, economic interests and so on) rather than explicitly about social or political exclusion of particular racially different and economically disadvantaged groups. This framing has rendered categorical exclusion of vast groups of non-citizens acceptable, even necessary, regardless of their international protection needs. In this context, contemporary incarnations of political fear superimposed on the Western postcolonial imaginary and its racial hierarchies generated powerful mechanisms of othering (cf. Mayblin in this volume, Chapter 2). These mechanisms affected those migrants, predominantly from the global South, who have successfully crossed borders into Europe, North America and Australia. At the same time, the tens of thousands of people who died while crossing borders have been widely depicted as victims of their own ill-advised pursuit of a ‘better life’, or as unfortunate ‘collateral damage’ in the struggle against human smuggling, trafficking, organized criminal and terrorist networks, and other unspecified threats. Scholars have pushed back against such representations showing that in many cases the deaths were consequences of policy (De León 2015; Gammeltoft-Hansen and Tan 2017; Spijkerboer 2007; Steinhilper and Gruijters 2018). As such, they are better thought of as the effect of state-sanctioned, institutionalized violence or, in Albahari’s compelling rendering, as ‘crimes of peace’ (Albahari 2015). There is no stasis in border regimes. The escalation of the ‘war on smuggling’ (Garelli and Tazzioli 2018) and the deployment of increasingly sophisticated military technologies for the purposes of migration management have prompted research on the militarization of border control (cf. Jeandesboz in this volume, Chapter 27). Many observe the increasingly common reliance on military tactics, personnel, technologies, discourse and practices in North America and Europe (Bigo 2014). Securitization had already blurred the boundary between policing and military defence, and now they appear to be morphing into an ‘all-encompassing logic of perpetual war, surveillance and security’ (Jones and Johnson 2016: 188; see also Gregory 2011). In this context, Brown proposed an interpretation of spectacular bordering as a sign of ‘waning sovereignty’ (Brown 2010). In her reading, governments invest in walls and fences to perform control. In this way they deflect attention from what is otherwise a weakened capacity to assert sovereign power vis-à-vis global forces and flows. Against Brown’s thesis, Jones and Johnson (2016: 188) read the militarization of borders as an expression of retrenchment,
66 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration ‘a spatial re-articulation of sovereign power, not as evidence of its demise’. Far from registering inevitable decline under globalizing pressures, states engaged in border violence are reasserting themselves and their interests. This argument helps clarify the rising political stakes of bordering. It also suggests that there is a difference between technocratic and militarized securitization. The former is based on the rule of unaccountable experts and belief in technological solutions to security problems. The latter involves the state formally authorizing its agents to use lethal force. Contemporary border regimes rely on elements of both (Pallister-Wilkins 2015). But military deployments are increasing, symbolically better suited to the combative approaches that appear politically palatable today. From the repeatedly renewed EU NAVFOR Operation Sophia active in the Central Mediterranean since 2015 (Heller and Pezzani 2016), to Operation Faithful Patriot (the deployment of 5,600 US troops to the US–Mexico border in October 2018 to protect against the migrant ‘threat’), the reliance on armed forces in border security appears to be increasing. And yet contemporary borders are not just sites of death and repression, but also of rescue and pastoral care. Where does the idea of the humanitarian border fit between securitization and militarization? Defined by Walters as an ‘an uneasy alliance of a politics of alienation with a politics of care, and a tactic of abjection and one of reception’ (Walters 2011: 145), it has been widely invoked in the literature to capture the paradox of rescue through interdiction. Official treatment of refugees and migrants attempting illicit crossings is informed by ideas derived from the distinct but interrelated traditions of humanitarianism (Fassin 2011; cf. in this volume, Hart, Chapter 8; Thibos and Howard, Chapter 12; and Crawley and Setrana, Chapter 16) and human rights (Dembour and Kelly 2011). Humanitarianism appears to offer a moral orientation and a set of practices focused on human suffering. It aims to offer help regardless of the status of those in need. Human rights propose the notion of inalienable rights inherent in all human beings. Those ideals, even though enshrined in international and national laws, remain in a tense relationship with the politics of border control (see Hart in this volume, Chapter 8). Alongside the legal principles of refugee protection, humanitarianism and human rights have created a contradiction at the heart of Western governments’ border policies. These actors nominally embrace the injunction to respect the human rights of migrants, but this commitment ultimately yields to the sovereign logic of exception which dictates prioritizing control (Moreno-Lax 2018). Unauthorized crossers on the US–Mexican border were until recently given water and blankets even as they are driven away into detention with little recourse to any rights. Until recently, Italian and joint EU patrols in the Mediterranean widely publicized the numbers of ‘lives saved’ at sea, referring to migrants who were brought to shore. Those migrants were subsequently either detained and removed or, more often, left in prolonged states of legal uncertainly (on the temporal dimension of migration governance see Griffiths in this volume, Chapter 26), many ultimately joining the ranks of the sans-papiers. Humanitarian bordering is neither wholly repressive nor fully benevolent. It also produces unintended effects: the patrols rescue living persons and not merely ‘lives’. This means that there is always the potential for struggle and political mobilization of migrants and their allies against the dehumanizing effects of hardening border regimes (Montagna 2017; see also, Ataç and Schwenken, Chapter 30; Kawar, Chapter 31; and Piper, Chapter 32, all in this volume).
The politics of conceptualizing border/security 67
RISK OR DANGER? Security produces its own negative. Protection of specific subjects is injurious to specific other subjects, in this way deepening collective insecurity. People left at sea to die or condemned to detention and other interminable ‘status determination procedures’ are people caught up in socio-technologies of insecurity, that is, ‘the material and discursive infrastructures that hold the logics of (in)security in place’ (Suchman et al. 2017). The ongoing investment in these infrastructures is self-perpetuating but the tools and discourses change, adapting to shifting politics. Until recently, border security arrangements (particularly but not exclusively in Europe) were a response to quantified and qualified risk of irregular border crossings, human trafficking, transnational crime and related phenomena. Since 2015, when the images of hundreds of thousands of non-white people arriving in Europe were exploited to foment fear, bordering took on a new urgency. Rather than merely counter risk, it is expected to guard against what many on the populist right see as an existential threat, which must be met with vigorous defence. Aradau and colleagues argue that ‘[r]isk based perspectives to security differ considerably from their threat based counterparts in how they approach the question of security and in the policy prescriptions and governmental technologies they instantiate’ (Aradau et al. 2008: 148). Historically associated with advanced modernity and the post-Cold War era, risk is ‘a peculiar intermediate state between security and destruction, where the perception of threatening risks determines thought and action’ (Beck 2000). It is an estimation of prospective danger, a few steps removed from threat. Risk, in other words, is associated with contingency and the need to quantify, qualify and balance multiple sources of danger. Risk-based security carries the imperative to manage and mitigate adverse outcomes without aspiring to their total elimination. It is a logic that inspires the concept of ‘migration management’, that is, the technocratic idea that human flows are ‘risky and complex things [that] should be managed’ (Andrijasevic and Walters 2010: 981), and that following this logic borders are above all ‘objects of technical expertise and intervention’ (ibid.; see also Paul 2017; Pécoud in this volume, Chapter 17). The concept of threat, on the other hand, ‘brings us into the domain of the production, management and destruction of dangers’ (Aradau et al. 2008: 148). It relies on ‘continual reproduction of fearful images, where security comes to signify secured and militarized borders’ (Stabile and Rentschler 2005: xiii). Phenomena defined as dangerous inspire fear focused on specific categories of people, who are seen as sources of threat. In the context of borders and migration this means stigmatizing ethnically, racially and culturally different non-citizens as threatening in the economic, criminal and terrorist sense (cf. in this volume Mayblin, Chapter 2 and Mofette, Chapter 28). It can also mean representing these groups as posing a danger to the survival of entire nations, and of Western civilization itself. A threat so framed calls for direct, immediate and decisive action. It justifies exceptional, ‘emergency’ or ‘crisis’ measures and leads to border control as political spectacle, manifest for example in shutting down border crossings, the construction of border walls or publicly broadcast brutal apprehensions of ‘illegal migrants’. Security based on perceptions of threat is thus associated with militarized bordering practices, and protectionist and nationalist discourses (cf. Guia in this volume, Chapter 33). Pressing matters for future research are therefore the emerging relationships between risk-based and threat-based modes of border security, and the different ‘universes’ of border control professionals who embrace them (Bigo 2014). How are their practices contested and
68 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration elaborated in the context of shifting global politics? This means, for example, asking how the EU’s Justice and Home Affairs agencies tasked with supporting member states’ border control efforts fare in the era of nationalist retrenchment. Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, is often ascribed an outsize role in what migrant rights activists call ‘Europe’s war on migrants’. On its own, however, Frontex does not have the capacity to wage war. In his analysis of the origins of Frontex, Neal raises the key question of whether, in an emergency or otherwise, ‘any of the EU institutions have the constitutional, institutional, political or legal capacity to “use extraordinary means” or “violate rules that otherwise would bind”’ (Neal 2009: 337). This, he concludes, is unlikely. Instead, Neal shows how Frontex came to conceptualize its mandate in terms of risk management. ‘The prevalence of the concept of “risk” is one of the most intriguing aspects of Frontex, as it seems to represent a move away from the political spectacle of the security emergency in favour of a quieter and more technocratic approach’ (ibid.: 348). Risk analysis both anticipates future movements of people, and assesses the capacity of states to respond. It relies on large-scale, technologically advanced surveillance (as of 2013 integrated in the Eurosur system) and voluntary cooperation of member states’ border agencies. In a more recent intervention, Paul observes that such risk-based governance promises rationalization understood as ‘efficiency, effectiveness and transparency gains and a de-politicization of decision-making’ (Paul 2017: 690). This can serve further ‘to justify increased coordination efforts – including potentially a more relevant role for EU-level actors – without challenging member state competencies in a weakly integrated and much contested domain’ (ibid.). Future research will have to ask how this seemingly non-confrontational win-win approach holds up in the face of states’ unilateral border control moves, such as those witnessed in Europe since 2015. What are the implications for the risks borne by border crossers themselves? They, after all, have no ‘risk models’ at their disposal to make decisions that could mean life or death (Holmes 2013). Instead, they experience acutely and on an everyday basis the consequences of incalculable risk turning into personal harm.
CONCLUSION: POLITICS FIRST This chapter has engaged with contemporary literature on the border/security nexus to explore questions of sovereignty, securitization and militarization, and risk and danger within the context of the rising tide of nationalist right-wing politics in Europe and the United States. To conclude, I ask what can be taken away from considering these three themes together. Where do we go from here in terms of research and critical inquiry? The mounting death toll at international borders is the consequence of deliberate policies to restrict migrant arrivals in the name of security. Until recently, however, repressive forms of border control uneasily coexisted with the humanitarian demand to ‘save lives’ and to respect fundamental rights of migrants. The difficulty of reconciling these imperatives reflects a contradiction at the heart of liberal democracy, which, on the one hand, insists on universal rights and equal moral worth of all human beings, while, on the other, seeks to foster political communities, which by nature are bounded and therefore exclusionary. This is as much an empirical as it is a theoretical point. It is a question of practice and process, of who is excluded, how and with what consequences. In spite of ‘fundamental rights safeguards’ and ‘humanitarian protections’, barring some people from access to certain territo-
The politics of conceptualizing border/security 69 ries and resources is a violent enterprise, which inevitably produces harm. Sovereignty, security and risk are ideas circulated in the public sphere to rationalize the exercise of control over the movement of people and to justify violence. Analytically, these concepts enable scholars to understand historically situated bordering discourses and practices. As I have shown above, the literature has registered a progressive withdrawal of humanitarian commitments, which goes hand in hand with mobilization around the notion of unitary and specifically national sovereignty. Contemporary regimes for the control of movement are co-constituted by states and other actors who exercise state-like capacities. But in North America and Europe we have seen advancing political movements that want to assert or wrestle back control, in the process shedding internal and external constraints on their power. Many governments seem no longer satisfied with the idea that irregular migration ought to be governed as a form of risk (cf. Squire in this volume, Chapter 11). Instead, they embrace the view that it constitutes a direct threat to nations and their citizens. Emblematic of this process is the increasing militarization of border control. In these conditions, borders, until recently framed by official discourses as de-politicized objects of technical intervention and expertise (cf. Jeandesboz in this volume, Chapter 27), emerge as sites of political contestation bursting out of those frames. Recent nationalist upheavals re-politicized borders, or rather reminded us that they have always been political (cf. Guia in this volume, Chapter 33). In the face of these developments, critical scholars of borders, advocates and migrants themselves can be heard arguing not only against dehumanizing policies and their effects, but also explicitly in favour of open borders and safe passage. How far can these arguments be pushed? Which actors and forces are they up against? In the post-Cold War era, borders became a profitable business and a subject of expert knowledge. The mainstreaming of ‘take back control’ nationalism no doubt will transform this business in ways we have yet to grasp. It is a critical task for the scholarly community to do so, and to focus our attention on the ways in which spaces of bordering are, as Cuttitta puts it, ‘a political stage’ (Cuttitta 2017: 10). From this stage different actors make their voices heard. When they are prevented from speaking, they return anyway. They come back to haunt anxious citizens who sense that (border) security carries within it the seeds of its own destruction.
NOTES 1. All numerical data on arrivals obtained from the UNHCR Data Portal, https://data2.unhcr.org/en/ situations/mediterranean. 2. Of the abundant examples we could point to, Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini’s closing, in 2018, of Italian ports to vessels carrying migrants rescued at sea, the Hungarian government’s investment in a ‘border barrier’ on the frontier with Serbia and Croatia (2015), and the immigration raids and child separation policy under the Trump administration in the United States (2018). 3. See Note 1. 4. Postcolonial scholars note in this context that the critique of violence and (Nazi) oppression, which is considered central to the reconstruction and integration in Europe after 1945 ‘does not usually extend to the contemporaneous colonial relationships of European states with other parts of the world’ (Bhambra 2009: 74). 5. The United States, whose history begins with asserting its own sovereignty over and against its own indigenous population, heavily influenced the Western European model of post-war liberal
70 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration democracy. This model was exported further after 1989. But while the US Constitution enshrined an internal system of checks and balances, in international relations the US made no compromises on its sovereignty, following an exclusively free trade (NAFTA) rather than political path of regional integration (Arnold 2011).
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The politics of conceptualizing border/security 71 De Genova, Nicholas (2017), ‘Introduction: the borders of ‘Europe’ and the European question’, in Nicholas De Genova (ed.), The Borders of ‘Europe’: Autonomy of Migration, Tactics of Bordering, Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press. De León, Jason (2015), The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail, Berkeley: University of California Press. Dembour, M.-B. and T. Kelly (eds) (2011), Are Human Rights for Migrants? London: Routledge. European Commission (2018), State of the Union 2018: The Hour of European Sovereignty. Available at https://ec.europa.eu/commission/sites/beta-political/files/soteu2018-speech_en.pdf (accessed 19.01.2021). Fassin, Didier (2005), ‘Compassion and repression: the moral economy of immigration policies in France’, Cultural Anthropology, 20, 362–87. Fassin, Didier (2011), ‘Policing borders, producing boundaries: the governmentality of immigration in dark times’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 40, 213–26. Feldman, Gregory (2012), The Migration Apparatus: Security, Labor, and Policy Making in the European Union, Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Gammeltoft-Hansen, Thomas and Nikolas F. Tan (2017), ‘The end of the deterrence paradigm? Future directions for global refugee policy’, Journal on Migration and Human Security, 5 (1), 28–56. Garelli, Glenda, Alessandra Sciurba and Martina Tazzioli (2018), ‘Mediterranean movements and the reconfiguration of the military–humanitarian border in 2015’, Antipode, 50 (3), 662–72. Gregory, D. (2011), ‘The everywhere war’, The Geographical Journal, 177 (3), 238–50. Heller, Charles and Lorenzo Pezzani (2016), ‘Ebbing and flowing: the EU’s shifting practices of (non‑)assistance and bordering in a time of crisis’, Near Futures Online 1. Available at http:// nearfuturesonline.org/ebbing-and-flowing-the-eus-shifting-practices-ofnon-assistance-and-bordering -in-a-time-of-crisis/ (accessed 09.01.2019). Hiemstra, Nancy (2017), ‘Displacement, not deterrence’, Journal of Latin American Geography, 16 (2), 171–3. Hogan, Jackie and Kristin Haltinner (2015), ‘Floods, invaders, and parasites: immigration threat narratives and right-wing populism in the USA, UK and Australia’, Journal of Intercultural Studies, 36 (5), 1–24. Holmes, S. M. (2013), ‘“Is it worth risking your life?”: ethnography, risk and death on the U.S.–Mexico border’, Social Science & Medicine, 99, 153–70. Jensen, Stefan and Finn Stepputat (2013), ‘Notes on securitization and temporality’ in M. Holbraas and M. A. Pedersen (eds), Times of Security: Ethnographies of Fear, Protest and the Future, New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 213–22. Jones, Reece (ed.) (2018), Open Borders: In Defense of Free Movement, Athens: University of Georgia Press. Jones, Reece and Corey Johnson (2016), ‘Border militarization and the re‐articulation of sovereignty’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 41 (2), 187–200. Jones, Reece, Corey Johnson, Wendy Brown, Gabriel Popescu, Polly Pallister-Wilkins, Alison Mountz and Emily Gilbert (2017), ‘Interventions on the state of sovereignty at the border’, Political Geography, 59 (C), 1–10. Kallius, Annastiina (2017), ‘The speaking fence’, Anthropology Now, 9 (3), 16–23. Klaus, Witold (2017), ‘Security first: new right-wing government in Poland and its policy towards immigrants and refugees’, Surveillance and Society, 15 (3–4), 523–8. Krasner, Stephen D. (1999), Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Mezzadra, Sandro and Bret Neilson (2013), Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Minns, John, Kieran Bradley and Fabricio H. Chagas-Bastos (2018), ‘Australia’s refugee policy: not a model for the world’, International Studies, 55 (1), 1–21. Montagna, Nicola (2017), ‘Dominant or subordinate? The relational dynamics in a protest cycle for undocumented migrant rights’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 41 (5), 785–803. Moreno‐Lax, Violeta (2018), ‘The EU humanitarian border and the securitization of human rights: The ‘Rescue-Through-Interdiction/Rescue-Without-Protection’ Paradigm’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 56 (1), 119–40.
72 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration Mountz, Alison (2010), Seeking Asylum: Human Smuggling and Bureaucracy at the Border, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Müller, J.-W. (2016), What is Populism? Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Nancheva, Nevena (2016), ‘Bulgaria’s response to refugee migration: institutionalizing the boundary of exclusion’, Journal of Refugee Studies, 29 (4), 549–67. Neal, Andrew (2009), ‘Securitization and risk at the EU border: the origins of FRONTEX’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 47 (2), 333–56. Pallister-Wilkins, Polly (2015), ‘Bridging the divide: Middle Eastern walls and fences and the spatial governance of problem populations’, Geopolitics, 20 (2), 438–59. Paul, Regine (2017), ‘Harmonization by risk analysis? Frontex and the risk-based governance of European border control’, Journal of European Integration, 39 (6), 689–706. Sassen, Saskia (1996), Losing Control? Sovereignty in an Age of Globalization, New York: Columbia University Press. Schindel, Estela (2016), ‘Bare life at the European borders: entanglements of technology, society and nature’, Journal of Borderlands Studies, 31 (2), 219–34. Spijkerboer, Thomas (2007), ‘The human costs of border control’, European Journal of Migration and Law, 9 (1), 127–39. Stabile, Carol A. and Carrie Rentschler (2005), ‘States of insecurity and the gendered politics of fear’, National Women’s Studies Association Journal, 17 (3), vii–xxv. Steinhilper, Elias and Rob J. Gruijters (2018), ‘A contested crisis: policy narratives and empirical evidence on border deaths in the Mediterranean’, Sociology, 52 (3), 515–33. Suchman, Lucy, Karolina Follis and Jutta Weber (2017), ‘Tracking and targeting: sociotechnologies of (in)security’, Science, Technology, & Human Values, 42 (6), 983–1002. Vaughan-Williams, Nick (2017), Europe’s Border Crisis: Biopolitical Security and Beyond, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Walters, William (2006), ‘Border/control’, European Journal of Social Theory, 9 (2), 187–203. Walters, William (2011), ‘Foucault and frontiers: notes on the birth of the humanitarian frontier’, in Ulrich Bröckling, Susanne Krasmann and Thomas Lemke (eds), Governmentality: Current Issues and Future Challenges, London: Routledge, 138–64. Zaiotti, Ruben (2011), Cultures of Border Control: Schengen and the Evolution of European Frontiers, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Zolberg, Aristide (2008), A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
6. Rethinking migration and development as a hegemonic project Lama Kabbanji
INTRODUCTION The migration and development (M&D) nexus has shaped migration-related research and policy since at least the 1990s (Geiger and Pécoud 2013; Nyberg-Sørensen et al. 2002). Positive assessments of this nexus suggest that migrant workers can (and even should) remit their money and skills in order to reduce poverty, improve local livelihoods and ultimately develop their countries of origin. They also frequently assert that in doing so today’s migrants will reduce incentives for migration in the future. In this chapter I argue that this narrative of the M&D nexus – which shifts responsibility for development onto migrants and away from economic and political institutions, particularly the state (de Haas 2010; Skeldon 2008) – has become hegemonic. It is promoted not just by states, but by a profusion of other actors including international organizations, NGOs, experts and the media as well. It is also embedded in current mainstream neoliberal economic development paradigms and in the framing of migration as something to be ‘managed’ (see also Pécoud in this volume, Chapter 17). This narrative echoes the spread of the use of the concept of resilience since the 1990s as a ‘buzzword’ adopted in several public policy areas, including development (Ancey et al. 2017), migration and humanitarian policy (Anholt and Sinatti 2020; Hilhorst 2018) to reframe responses to ‘uncertainty, risks and crisis facing modernity’. Its focus lies on the capacities of individuals or societies to adapt to new realities and recover quickly from external shocks. By doing so, it denies the role of structural factors – particularly the capitalist economy – in explaining countries’ development inequalities and possibilities of social transformation in the ‘global South’. The neoliberal narrative on M&D emerged in a context of increased awareness of the immense scale of migrant remittances, which often outpace official development assistance to many countries (Rosewarne 2010; World Bank 2005), and at a time when development policy was being subordinated to an increasingly securitized migration policy (Bigo 1998; Duffield 2001; Humphrey 2013; compare Jeandesboz in this volume, Chapter 27). It is powerful but not beyond reproach. Indeed, critical migration scholars have by this point called every aspect of its analysis into question. Numerous studies have underlined the ideological background of this narrative and found flaws with the prescriptive way that it analyses and understands the M&D nexus (Bakewell 2008; de Haas 2012; Gamlen 2014), often in contradiction to empirical evidence. In the sections that follow I will unravel the power dynamics shaping the politics of M&D in order to demonstrate how the narrative has changed over time, what underlies its strength today, and which actors are propelling it forward. To this end, Gramsci’s concepts of hegemony and the integral state provide useful analytical tools. We cannot understand the 73
74 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration significance of the M&D nexus without looking at the broad range of agencies involved and without analysing the hegemonic project they sustain. It is only by looking at mechanisms of consent and coercion that we can understand, for example, why African and Arab states accept reductions in emigration even though their economies benefit greatly from remittances. Or why NGOs and migrants’ associations accept and assist European states in expelling migrants even though this contradicts the interests of the people they are supposed to defend. The following section examines how the discourse on the M&D nexus has evolved. It goes into greater detail about the dynamics of the current phase of the debate and explores its current hegemony. The third section discusses how consent to the neoliberal framing of M&D is manufactured, and how this in part relies on enrolling actors with antagonistic claims. Research from West Africa is used to illustrate these processes in action. The fourth section explores how core parts of this narrative have now been transferred to the ‘management’ of forced migration. It illustrates this new development–displacement nexus through examples from Jordan and Lebanon.
SETTING A HEGEMONIC NARRATIVE ON MIGRATION AND DEVELOPMENT The academic and political debates around the M&D nexus have oscillated between optimism and pessimism for over 60 years (de Haas 2010; Faist 2009). At times, migration has been seen as a boon to development and at others as a hindrance. Why has consensus remained so elusive? This section seeks to uncover the politics behind these lively debates using the Marxist and Communist philosopher Antonio Gramsci’s key concepts of ‘hegemony’ and ‘integral state’.1 In contrast to theorists who focus solely on political domination through coercion, Gramsci stresses the importance of hegemony. He sees the state not only as an instrument of class violence but as an organizer of mass consent (Keucheyan 2012: 35–6). He also sees it as comprising more than the (repressive) state apparatus, and his conceptualization of the ‘integral state’ includes civil society institutions such as the Church, schools, trade unions and the press. For Gramsci, these also had roles to play in the establishment and consolidation of hegemony (Keucheyan 2012: 16). Relying on these theoretical tools, this chapter explores how an international hegemonic agenda on M&D has been produced, disseminated and adopted by a majority of social and political actors, including those who are partially antagonistic to that agenda. Historical Development of Discussions on the Migration and Development Nexus According to de Haas (2010: 229), the fault lines apparent in historical discussions on M&D reflect ‘deeper paradigmatic divisions in social theory (that is, functionalist versus structuralist paradigms) and development theory (that is, balanced growth versus asymmetric development paradigms)’ as well as ‘ideological divisions between neoliberal and state-centrist views’ (see also Faist 2009). The prevailing view has also fluctuated over time in line with changing political and economic conditions (Gamlen 2014). In the 1950s and 1960s migration was thought to positively impact development. This was a period of economic expansion and modernization, and the functionalist neoclassical economic theories of the time assumed an inversely proportional relationship between income
Rethinking migration and development as a hegemonic project 75 gaps and volumes of migration (Todaro 1969). At the micro level, migration was understood as an individual utility maximizing response to salary differences between regions or economic sectors. At the macro level, it was argued that migration would reallocate production factors and thereby help modernize newly decolonized countries (Stark and Sirageldin 1987). The movement of people and resources between rural and urban areas or between countries would ‘naturally’ restore the balance between labour-rich but capital-poor origin countries and inversely endowed destination countries (Lewis 1954; Richards and Martin 1983). This discourse emerged during the post-war economic boom, when industrialized countries urgently needed a cheap workforce to meet their labour market needs. The neoclassical model was hence presented as a win-win strategy: guest worker programmes would ensure economic growth in Western countries while loans, aid and remittances would fuel development in countries of origin (Gamlen 2014). Under this approach the ‘underdevelopment’ of these countries was assumed to be a result of capital constraints rather than unequal relations between countries or the previous actions of colonial powers. This whole period was characterized by increased migration from developing to developed countries. Scholars began to challenge this optimistic neoclassical assessment in the 1970s. Rather than promoting development, dependency and world system theorists argued that migration itself was a possible cause of ‘underdevelopment’ (Amin 1977; Frank 1967; Wallerstein 1976). They substantiated their claims with empirical evidence that migration was enhancing development disparities rather than reducing them (Martin and Papademetriou 1991). Meanwhile, Marxist perspectives provided an alternative to neoclassical explanations of migration. In a context of rapidly expanding globalization, these analysed labour migration as the product of political and economic structures rather than as the outcome of individual decisions (Piché 2013). The issue of ‘brain drain’ – the negative impact of highly skilled emigration on countries of origin – was a dominant research theme (Bhagwati and Hamada 1974). This period coincided with the economic crisis of the 1970s and the introduction of increasingly restrictive immigration policies in developed countries. During the late 1980s and 1990s, new theoretical approaches – the new economics of labour migration (on the new politics of ‘skilled’ migration see Vasey in this volume, Chapter 14), transnational perspectives in migration studies (see Fischer in this volume, Chapter 4) and livelihood perspectives in development studies – challenged these structuralist perspectives. They emphasized heterogeneity of experience and the need to take both structure and agency into account (de Haas 2010). Research on the relationship between M&D exponentially increased, and in 2012 Taylor and Francis started a dedicated journal for the field: Migration and Development. The Current Hegemonic Narrative on Migration and Development A second ‘optimistic’ phase began during the 1990s against the background of a new economic boom and renewed demand for migrant workers (Gamlen 2014). This quickly developed into the current narrative that is now hegemonic in both academic literature and policy discourse. Key to this new understanding is the positive role played by transnational financial and social remittances in the development of countries of origin (Durand 1996; Ratha 2003; Shain 1999; Taylor 1999). So, too, are recently coined concepts such as brain gain, mobility and circulation, all of which stress the positive impact of highly skilled migration on countries of origin (Meyer 2001). This discourse is embedded in a neoliberal understanding of the M&D
76 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration nexus, where the state is no longer the main actor but only a ‘service provider for markets and partly for communities’ (Faist 2008: 25). Migrants and their organizations are seen as agents of development for their home countries, sharing common interests and possessing a moral responsibility towards the communities they left behind (Gabriel 2013; Raghuram 2009; Rodriguez and Schwenken 2013). This discourse has been largely disseminated by international organizations such as the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The 1994 Conference on Population and Development was a key turning point for how the M&D nexus was understood and it reflected the more general neoliberal turn of that time period. It was argued that development required the liberalization of trade in countries of origin and the creation of an attractive environment for investors (UNFPA 2004). Recommended measures included the promotion of foreign direct investment, the relocation of companies, the creation of free trade areas, and the involvement of the diaspora in development projects. The action plan adopted during this conference furthermore argued that the development of countries of origin should ultimately curb irregular migration and allow people to remain at home. In short, the wish was to eliminate income gaps between sending, receiving and transit countries without tackling their root causes – capitalism and the international division of labour (Wise 2017). This approach effectively subordinated migration to the imperatives of the global capitalist economy (Kabbanji 2013; see also Azmeh in this volume, Chapter 18). The recommendations made by the 2003 Global Commission on International Migration demonstrate how quickly this narrative consolidated over the following years. One suggestion was that temporary worker programmes and the facilitation of highly skilled migration should be used to fill gaps in the global labour market. Another was that sustainable jobs and livelihoods should be created to reduce emigration from the global South (compare Azmeh, Chapter 18 and Vasey, Chapter 14, both in this volume). And yet another was that remittances, return migration and circular migration should be encouraged (compare Fischer in this volume, Chapter 4). More recently, the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration – a 2018 intergovernmental agreement rooted in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – ‘strives to create conducive conditions that enable all migrants to enrich our societies through their human, economic and social capacities, and thus facilitate their contributions to sustainable development at the local, national, regional and global levels’ (United Nations 2018: 3). The Global Compact includes among its 23 objectives the aim to ‘invest in skills development and facilitate mutual recognition of skills, qualifications and competences’ and to ‘create conditions for migrants and diasporas to fully contribute to sustainable development in all countries’ (United Nations 2018: 6). The hegemonic narrative on M&D is not without a research base – there is a body of scholarship which reaffirms its assumptions and supports its prescriptions. However, there is also a substantial body of scholarship that criticizes its analysis (see, inter alia, the Migration between Africa and Europe project (MAFE); de Haas and Fransen 2018; Gamlen 2014; Glick Schiller 2012; Wise 2017; see also Fischer, Chapter 4 and Pécoud, Chapter 17, both in this volume). For example, the hegemonic narrative leans heavily on the assumption that development will curb emigration, yet in doing so it ignores the academic literature that demonstrates the absence of a linear relationship between migration and development (de Haas and Fransen 2018; Massey 1988; Zelinski 1971) and the tendency of economic development to increase emigration (Clemens 2014; de Haas 2010).
Rethinking migration and development as a hegemonic project 77 A second assumption is that the ‘developmental’ potential of migrants can act as a substitute for state policies (Weinar 2017). This, however, ignores the key observation of more critical work that migration is primarily an individual or family strategy for improving living conditions (Beauchemin et al. 2013). It also disregards studies that show how remittances can decrease productivity (Chami et al. 2005; Gubert 2002) and increase inequalities (Barham and Boucher 1998), particularly in the poorest areas (Gonzalez-Konig and Wodon 2005). So, while migration can clearly improve specific lives under the right conditions, it is crucial to remember that migrants do not adopt strategies to reduce social inequalities between households, create jobs or improve public services. They are no replacement for the state. Despite these contrary findings, the neoliberal approach to the M&D nexus has dominated policy analyses and prescriptions in this field for over 30 years. The construction of this new hegemonic agenda on M&D is connected with two other aspects of the neoliberal expansion that took place over this period: the consolidation of regional migration networks and the convergence of economic and security interests in migration governance (Overbeek and Pellerin 2001). The main objective of multilateral migration governance is to strike a balance between the movement of migrants, the needs of markets and the international rules of economic competition. In North America and Western Europe, regional cooperation in migration management has two main aspects: state and non-state actors work together to control and restrict most migration while at the same time facilitating the mobility of specific categories of migrants (Delgado Wise and Covarrubias 2008; El Qadim 2017; Kabbanji 2013; Pellerin 2004; see also Vasey, Chapter 14 and El Qadim, Chapter 19, both in this volume). Globalization has also reconfigured the relative power of interest groups (agricultural industries, manufacturing, non-governmental organizations, trade unions, etc.) and non-state actors involved in migration governance (Sassen 1998; see also Azmeh, Chapter 18 and Piper, Chapter 32, both in this volume). It is within that global context of the development of capitalism that the link between M&D became an international ‘management’ issue. The emergence of a hegemonic agenda for M&D has to be analysed in light of this transformation in international migration governance, and in particular the increase of multilateral and regional ‘management’ initiatives (see Pécoud in this volume, Chapter 17). This currently fashionable term is used to smooth over power struggles, unequal relations between countries and capitalist causes of uneven economic development. It suggests that multilateral cooperation in controlling migration from the global South is needed to make migration beneficial for everyone. Hence, the migration ‘management’ narrative – which has also become hegemonic – could be described as a neo-colonial project that seeks to normalize the imposition of particular forms of governance in these countries (on postcolonialism and neo-colonialism in migration policy, see Mayblin in this volume, Chapter 2). This narrative also relies on a fundamental contradiction within the liberal migration policy-making agenda: attempting to promote migrants’ money and skill transfers while simultaneously attempting to restrict and control migration (Levatino et al. 2018). Hollifield (2004) conceptualized this ‘liberal paradox’ as one that sets domestic security concerns in opposition with international economic forces pushing for the free circulation of goods, services and people (see also Natter in this volume, Chapter 9).
78 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration
MANUFACTURING CONSENT ON MIGRATION AND DEVELOPMENT In order to understand how the hegemonic narrative on M&D has been produced, disseminated and operationalized, let us return to Gramsci’s concept of the integral state. This concept allows us to explore more precisely the role of non-state actors in manufacturing consent. Political and economic elites and dominant sectors of the state and civil society (what Gramsci calls the Integral State) have defined a narrative of ‘migration management’ and made it hegemonic through both coercion and the association of actors with antagonistic claims. To do this, various political and financial mechanisms have been implemented to either constrain or extract consent. This has brought key actors on board despite their conflicting interests regarding migration, such as state agencies of origin and destination countries, UN agencies, the World Bank, NGOs, and migrants’ associations. Manufacturing Consent at the International Level Civil society institutions have played a key role in the framing and dissemination of the hegemonic narrative of migration management, of which the M&D nexus is a key element. International organizations like the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the World Bank are the most direct examples. Furthermore, since the 1994 Cairo International Conference on Population and Development, a series of UN-backed international conferences have advocated strongly in favour of a multilateral approach to migration and actively promoted the hegemonic narrative on M&D. These include the High-Level Dialogues on Migration and Development in 2006 and 2013 as well as the Global Forum on Migration and Development held regularly since 2007. Twenty-two UN agencies were brought together as the Global Migration Group in 2006 to create ‘a high-level inter-institutional group of agencies involved in migration-related activities’.2 This was replaced in 2018 by the UN Network on Migration, coordinated by the IOM.3 An alliance between multi-sectoral UN agencies and private actors has been forged in and through these forums, one which has been vital to the legitimation of the capitalist and neo-colonial project of multilateral migration ‘management’. The production of specific knowledge on migration has been one of the prime ways that this alliance, which includes not only UN agencies but powerful philanthropic actors such as the Ford Foundation, MacArthur Foundation and Open Society Foundations, has achieved this legitimation. Since the 1990s, these private foundations have increased the share of their budget dedicated to M&D-related activities in several geographic areas, such as the funding of universities or research centres working on this topic, or NGOs’ participation, or to international conferences on M&D (Beaujeu 2019). UN agencies increased their funding of studies and reports as well as their rosters of dedicated ‘experts’. The World Bank has produced a set of publications on migrants’ remittances as a possible alternative to public investments and UNDP has highlighted the M&D nexus in its Human Development Reports (see especially UNDP 2009, ‘Overcoming barriers: human mobility and development’). More recently, UNHCR published a joint report with the World Bank on the link between development and displacement. This states that ‘the development approach is centred on such concepts as economic opportunity, medium-term sustainability, and cost-effectiveness. It sees the forcibly displaced and their hosts as economic agents who make choices and respond to incentives.’
Rethinking migration and development as a hegemonic project 79 It also notes that the development approach ‘relies on partnerships with and between governments, the private sector, and civil society’ (World Bank and UNHCR 2017: 2, 5). International agencies and private foundations have further influenced the transnational field of mobilization around M&D by funding the participation of smaller NGOs and migrants’ rights activists in multilateral initiatives (Beaujeu 2019). The MacArthur Foundation, for instance, paid for several NGOs and other non-state actors to attend the Cairo Conference and the Global Forums on Migration and Development. While this funding has enabled NGOs to engage in international advocacy, their financial dependency has made it difficult for them to concretely question the hegemonic narrative. Manufacturing Consent in West Africa As we have seen, the hegemonic migration ‘management’ project is a neoliberal approach that links together global security, migration and economic development. This approach has been mainly designed by national and regional state agencies (particularly those in charge of interior security and foreign affairs) in the United States and Western Europe as well as international organizations (which are also mostly led by the USA and European states). It has allowed these agencies to shift from a security-based discourse to one which includes other aspects of international migration management that are more attractive for third countries. In this section, the example of Euro-African cooperation on migration management is used to illustrate how consent on M&D is manufactured. The European Union has been working to develop a strategy for African migration since it released its ‘Global Approach to Migration: Priority Actions Focusing on Africa and the Mediterranean’ in 2005. And since 2006, development has featured in its various initiatives to strengthen Euro-African partnerships on migration ‘management’. The integration of the M&D nexus into this policy agenda alongside promises of more opportunities to legally migrate has proven an effective way to get African partners to collaborate on issues such as border controls and readmission agreements (Kabbanji 2013). M&D has also been presented in the Euro-African regional political agenda as a way of reducing the number of ‘illegal’ sub-Saharan migrants ‘invading’ Europe – primarily by creating jobs in origin countries for African youth. To bring African partners on board, the European Union launched a series of bilateral and multilateral political negotiations, in particular with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) (Kabbanji 2017). An EU–ECOWAS working group was set up that included state agencies as well as representatives of the Sahel and West Africa Club, the OECD and the IOM. ECOWAS adopted its ‘Common Approach on Migration’ in January 2008 and endorsed a strategy that seeks to control and restrict migration. In doing so it ignored one of ECOWAS’s main raisons d’être, namely, to ensure intra-regional freedom of movement for ECOWAS citizens. An analysis of projects implemented during the last two decades in Senegal under the umbrella of M&D further illustrates how European states brought civil society institutions into their hegemonic project and imposed a division of tasks among the different actors (Kabbanji 2013; Toma and Kabbanji 2017). Programmes were generally designed by international organizations such as the IOM and state agencies from France, Spain and Italy – the main countries of destination for Senegalese migrants. European countries or the EU funded the majority of these programmes, while Senegalese government institutions were usually involved as partners in managing the projects. Private and charitable organizations in both
80 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration Senegal and the donor countries were generally contracted to implement the projects. The projects themselves were designed to promote migrants’ investments in so-called ‘productive’ sectors, skills transfer and return migration. The local and international NGOs that distanced themselves from the dominant discourse saw their external funding evaporate. Externally led policy initiatives hence served to reinforce the hegemonic narrative, and the asymmetric power relations between European and international organizations on the one hand, and Senegalese organizations on the other hand. The Senegalese case illustrates quite well how consent is manufactured through policy agreements and funding, and how particular forms of governance are imposed upon origin countries reflecting ongoing neo-colonial relations (the role of France, the former colonial power, is prominent in these policies).
THE EXTENSION OF THE HEGEMONIC NARRATIVE TO FORCED DISPLACEMENT The core tenants of the M&D nexus and the ‘management’ approach have been applied in recent years to the project of managing forced displacement. A new displacement– development nexus has now emerged. The main idea, developed particularly in the context of Syrian displacement to neighbouring countries, is that refugees should be put to work as a response to protracted displacement. This emphasis on the economic potential of refugees – and the promise of additional aid in return for opening up labour markets to them – has been used to obtain the consent of the actors involved. This idea has now found its way into the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR). Launched in 2018, the GCR represents a shift in the global refugee regime from a rights-based approach to an approach based on burden sharing. This change follows the same ideology as the migration ‘management’ paradigm (see Crawley and Setrana in this volume, Chapter 16). Once again, a wide range of actors – UN agencies, humanitarian and development actors, international and regional financial institutions, and faith-based organizations – are involved. So are a wide range of so-called experts. In 2015, Alexander Betts and Paul Collier, both at the University of Oxford, published an article in Foreign Affairs that argued for a radical change in refugee policy. Taking Jordan as a case study and supported by UNHCR, these two ‘leading global thinkers’ – according to the same magazine4 – advocated for the integration of Syrian refugees into the Jordanian labour market in order to solve the protracted refugee situation (Betts and Collier 2015, 2017). A new deal based on Betts and Collier’s ideas was subsequently developed by the West Asia–North Africa (WANA) socio-economic think tank and negotiated between the World Bank, the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), and the Government of Jordan. This ‘would see Jordan receive concessional loans from the World Bank – subsidized by international donors – in return for removing some of the barriers preventing Syrian refugees from entering the labour market’ (Howden et al. 2017). Local governmental actors, such as Jordan’s Ministry of Planning, and private local organizations, such as the Jordanian Business Association, subscribed to the scheme because they also thought they could benefit from it (Lenner and Turner 2019). The experimental ‘Jordan Compact’ was launched in 2016 and it has since been used as a model in other countries such as Ethiopia and Lebanon. It was presented as a win-win strategy that would integrate Syrians into Jordan; reduce the burden
Rethinking migration and development as a hegemonic project 81 on the host country while boosting its economy; and decrease both aid to Jordan and Syrian movement to Europe. However, Lenner and Turner show that this strategy did not have the expected effects due to ‘a relative detachment from the realities of, respectively, the Jordanian labour market and the lives and perspectives of Syrian refugees’ (Lenner and Turner 2019: 90). During the same period, a much less ambitious compact was signed between Lebanon, another country hosting a large share of displaced Syrians, and the EU.5 In it the EU promised to provide Lebanon with €400 million for the years 2016–17 to improve its socio-economic and security situation. In return, Lebanon committed to facilitate the stay of refugees by granting them work and residence permits. The results so far have been minimal – in 2017 the Lebanese Ministry of Labour issued only 200 work permits (Howden et al. 2017). The main impediment to progress has been the controversial issue of creating jobs for Syrian refugees in a country where local unemployment rates are high, job opportunities are low, and social inequalities prominent (Chaaban and Khoury 2016). Similar to what happened in Jordan, the compact in Lebanon has failed because it did not take the political economy of the country or internal political divisions into account (Kabbanji and Kabbanji 2018). Despite the conceptual and practical shortcomings of these agreements, the development– displacement nexus has become a new, powerful incarnation of the M&D narrative. This second nexus, presented as a new tool to ‘manage’ forced migration, seems to be little more than another way to steer refugee policy-making in sending and transit countries and to impose neoliberal economic policies on societies in the global South. It ignores asymmetry of power between the actors involved and ‘fails to mention the responsibility of third States, in particular Western countries, for recent outflows of refugees linked to their acts of intervention’ (Chimni 2019: 630).
CONCLUSION This chapter has shown how a political agenda has been elaborated over more than three decades by state and non-state actors to disseminate a hegemonic neoliberal narrative on M&D. This narrative, which is at the heart of the migration ‘management’ tool kit, has three main objectives: share the costs of migration control with migrant sending countries; regulate competition among industrialized countries for highly skilled workers; and impose economic restructuring and particular forms of governance in the global South. To do this, various political and financial mechanisms have been implemented to either constrain or extract consent from several actors involved. Similar mechanisms have now been put to use to manage forced displacement, forming a second development–displacement nexus. Despite the substantial influence that state institutions and elite economic interests have over civil society, there is still room for contestation. For Gramsci, civil society is a battleground. It is dominated by the state but never completely under its control. A Gramscian understanding of the relationship between the state and civil society and of the mechanisms through which consent is obtained can thus help identify areas of contestation and possibilities for transforming the existing order (for more on mobilizations vis-à-vis hegemonic migration governance, see Ataç and Schwenken, Chapter 30; Kawar, Chapter 31; and Piper, Chapter 32, all in this volume). Hegemony in this area also serves to invisibilize the struggles of migrants and those acting in solidarity with them. One step to resist this would be to record practices that challenge hegemonic narratives around the M&D nexus (Agustín and Jørgensen 2016; Birey et al. 2019; Marfleet 2019).
82 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration As we have seen, the link between M&D has been defined in different ways over the decades. The global context is currently changing and characterized by a crisis of capitalism and bourgeois bloc hegemony. At the time this chapter was written, popular uprisings underpinned by socio-economic demands and anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist discourse were taking place from Chile, Haiti and Iraq, to Lebanon and Sudan. These events may once again redefine the M&D relationship. So, too, may current trends towards decolonizing knowledge (Apffel-Marglin and Marglin 1996; Jansen 2019; cf. Mayblin in this volume, Chapter 2). Intellectuals have played an important role in constructing a hegemonic discourse on the M&D nexus. If this movement is successful then we may yet see a wholesale reversal of the way the M&D nexus is framed and operationalized.
NOTES 1.
2. 3. 4. 5.
Gramscian concepts have inspired several authors in the field of international relations, in particular research on the international order, regionalization processes and the governance of migration (see, for example, Bieler and Morton 2001a, 2001b; Bonzom 2015; Gill 2008; Overbeek 2000; Overbeek and Pellerin 2001). See https://globalmigrationgroup.org. On the key role of the IOM in the multilateral governance of international migration, see the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies’ 2018 special issue on ‘Researching the International Organization for Migration’. See https://www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/news/alexander-betts-and-paul-collier-named-among-foreign-policys -leading-global-thinkers-2016. See http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2016/11/15/eu-lebanon-partnership/.
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7. Climate migration between conflictive discourses and empirical realities Ingrid Boas and Hanne Wiegel
INTRODUCTION Climate change and the environment are amongst the core set of drivers that induce and shape human migration (Black et al. 2011). Yet, precisely how influential climate change is in driving migration, what form the subsequent migrations take, and who they involve, remains highly contested (ibid.). Precisely because of these contestations and uncertainties, there is much space for different discursive understandings that frame the issue in a particular manner and may not always be based on empirically driven insights. This is even more so as much of the debate concerns the future. As argued by Baldwin et al. (2014: 121): Thus far, the debate about climate-induced migration has been dominated by its futurology. It has led to the question of whether or not predictions about climate-induced migration are true, how many climate-induced migrants will have to be expected and how the consequences of climate change will interact with other drivers of flight and migration.
This chapter offers a critique of the most prominent discourses on climate migration, which have found support by academics, the media and in political circles. On the one hand, there is the dominant ‘alarmist’ discourse (Gemenne 2009) which has largely framed the issue of climate change-induced migration as a potential threat. Simply put, its main storyline warns of millions of people from the global South on the run for their lives, fleeing sea-level rise, extreme storms, water scarcity, trying to reach safe havens in Western Europe or Northern America (for critiques, see Bettini 2013; Boas 2014; Hartmann 2010). On the other hand, there is the migration-as-adaptation discourse, which has framed climate migration as a legitimate individual adaptation strategy which people can use to self-manage their situation under a changing climate (for critiques, see, for example, Bettini 2017a, 2017b). As opposed to the alarmist discourse, the latter presents the subject in more neutral and positive terms (Methmann and Oels 2015). We argue that these two discourses rely on not always empirically founded assumptions about how the relation between environmental change and migration materializes (for example, assuming there will be mass climate migration); about who the migrant is (for example, a passive and reactive agent, posing a potential threat for receiving societies versus an active and self-reliant migrant self-governing their situation). Meanwhile, such understandings are not neutral but have real repercussions for governance. From the position of the more alarmist discourse, for example, measures could be designed to manage or pre-empt the so-called threat of incoming “climate refugees” (Hartmann 2010) or to protect the passively affected through top-down interventions (McAdam and Loughry 2009). Following the migration-as-adaptation discourse, a governance approach could instead be to refrain from 86
Climate migration between conflictive discourses and empirical realities 87 interventions and adopting a laissez-faire approach under which local communities protect themselves (Bettini et al. 2017). In the remainder of this chapter, we contrast these discourses with the experiences, perceptions and day-to-day realities of affected communities and migrants. We place our critique within a wider set of social theories on mobilities. This mobilities approach highlights that we should not presume what migration looks like in the context of a changing climate, or what its implications are. In contrast, we should critically assess what it means to move, or not move, and how this takes shape in practice. Doing so helps to uncover the diverse ways in which people try to cope with environmental changes through their mobility, and highlights the need for more awareness to underlying social inequalities shaping people’s vulnerability and mobile capacities. Adopting such an approach could make political discourse and governance of the environmental change–human mobility nexus more attuned to the diversity of local needs and to capturing underlying inequalities, without neglecting attention to global responsibilities or injustices. Contested Discourses on Climate Migration ‘Climate refugees’ and the alarmist discourse The issue of climate change-induced migration, or environmental change-induced migration more broadly – referring to migrations in the context of significant changes in the natural environment – has gone on and off the political radar over the last two decades. It became particularly popular in the early 2000s when climate change turned into an issue of high politics, particularly in Europe (Boas 2015; Trombetta 2008). At that time, most writings on the climate change–migration nexus, both academic and non-academic, portrayed the issue in what has later been labelled as an alarmist way (see discussions in Bettini et al. 2017; Gemenne 2009). Within academia, most such writings came from those working on environmental studies, seeking to highlight the gravity of environmental change by referring to its implications on society (Gemenne 2009). For example, Norman Myers (Myers and Kent 1995; Myers 2002), as an environmental specialist, warned of 200 million environmental refugees by 2050, largely caused by sea-level rise. Such estimates have later been critiqued for being ‘at best, guesswork’ (Parry et al. 2007: 365) and have thus far not been supported by empirical evidence (Gemenne 2011). Nevertheless, this estimate has been adopted by several policy documents and NGO reports on climate change and migration (for example, Christian Aid 2007; Stern 2006) and is still today referred to during policy conferences held on the subject.1 As such, these high numerical estimates have the political function to gain attention and to create a sense of urgency around the issue of climate change-induced migration. Indeed, supported by a discursive lexicon of alarming phrases, such as ‘climate refugees’, ‘mass migration’, ‘climate conflict’ and ‘chaos’, national governments, the United Nations, NGOs, think tanks, and some academics also tried to put the issue of climate change-related refugees and migrants on the political radar (Bettini 2013; Boas 2015; Warner and Boas 2019). One of the authors of this chapter employed this framing in previous work, emphasizing the vulnerability of ‘climate refugees’ in order to stress the existing lack of legal protection (Biermann and Boas 2010). This was (perhaps naïvely) done without considering the discursive implications of framing the subject in such a fashion, which, rather than helping refugees by signalling the gravity of the situation, can support a fearsome imagining of ‘climate refugees’ as ‘barbarians at the gate’ trying to make their way into Europe (see Bettini 2013 for this
88 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration critique). Such a framing can result in an apocalyptic imagining of the subject matter through which the ‘envisioning of an ultimate threat (the tsunami of climate refugees), … raises the imperative “If I don’t do this … some unspeakably horrible X will take place”’ (Žižek, cited in Bettini 2013: 65). A number of humanitarian NGOs such as Christian Aid have, in trying to convince policy-makers to act on both climate change and migration to avoid a future crisis, indeed adopted such a scaremongering discourse by framing climate refugees as the threatening ‘Other’ posing risks to the stability of the international community (Bettini 2013; Boas 2015). It is on this basis that they have then argued for more interventionist action in the fields of climate mitigation, adaptation and conflict prevention work, with the rationale to prevent future risks from unfolding (for example, Boas and Rothe 2016). Yet, in this discourse, ‘climate refugees’ are not only framed as a threat, but simultaneously as passive victims of changes in the environment (on a similar discursive tension between migrants as threat or victims, see Thibos and Howard in this volume, Chapter 12, on human trafficking). To make the argument that the international community should help protect affected ‘climate refugees’ (for example, Biermann and Boas 2010), these so-called ‘refugees’ are often depicted as having low adaptive capacities and limited agency to protect themselves. This framing has received much criticism, not least by those being framed in such a manner. For example, inhabitants and politicians from the Pacific small island states of Kiribati and Tuvalu reject the label ‘refugees’, since for them it ‘evokes a sense of helplessness and a lack of dignity that contradicts their very strong sense of pride’ (McAdam and Loughry 2009). Furthermore, the definition of refugees in the 1951 Geneva Convention signals persecution or lack of protection from one’s government, which is not necessarily applicable in the case of climate change-induced migration (cf. Hart, Chapter 8 and Crawley and Setrana, Chapter 16, both in this volume). These concerns about the alarmist discourse have been supported by a wave of criticism coming mainly from academics specializing in migration studies or in discourse theory. Migration scholars highlighted the multi-causal nature of migration and the persisting scientific uncertainties around the impact that climate change, or environmental changes more broadly, have or can have on migration (Black 2001; Castles 2002). These scholars argued that other factors, such as economic, political, demographic and social factors, are intertwined with environmental drivers of migration in a complex manner, so that in most cases it is impossible to single out the impact of climate change on migration decisions (Black et al. 2011). In addition, many migration studies have noted the multiple and diverse ways in which people respond to climate impacts: whereas some may decide to migrate to more distant places, many others prefer to stay or to move only temporarily or locally, whilst again others may remain unwillingly ‘trapped’ in dangerous situations as they do not have the means to move away (Foresight 2011). For instance, in New Orleans, USA, those most affected by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 were those without access to a car, who, having to rely on a failing public transport system, got ‘trapped’ in New Orleans when the hurricane hit (Hannam et al. 2006). This shows that moving away does not necessarily reflect vulnerability. Instead, it is the ability to move or to stay, and the inequalities experienced in that process, which are crucial to understand (Gill et al. 2011). Several scholars have also demonstrated that the political effectiveness of the apocalyptic framing of climate change-induced migration is questionable (Boas 2015; Hulme 2009; O’Neil and Nicholson-Cole 2009). Presenting an issue as a major threat does not necessarily result in more action. Indeed, it can further induce scepticism amongst an already sceptical audience
Climate migration between conflictive discourses and empirical realities 89 (Boas 2015), or make people and decision-makers feel that climate change is too big an issue for them to manage (Hulme 2009; Methmann and Rothe 2012; O’Neil and Nicholson-Cole 2009). As argued by O’Neil and Nicholson-Cole (2009: 371), it can lead to ‘denial of the problem and disengagement with the whole issue in an attempt to avoid the discomfort of contending with it’. Despite the strong criticism, the alarmist discourse continues to be influential. In particular, the 2015 ‘European refugee crisis’ brought projections of ‘future waves of climate refugees’ firmly back on the radar of influential organizations and governmental agencies. It has resulted in numerous news headlines, ranging from those emphasizing the dangerous impacts of climate change (for example, ‘Climate change key in Syrian conflict – and it will trigger more war in future’ (The Independent 2015)2) to those using it to warn about future migration (for example, ‘Calais migration crisis is a taste of what a warmer world may bring’ (New Scientist, 2015)3). This shows that the apocalyptic imagining continues to re-emerge as a strong political message, even when it has been shown to be empirically unfounded (Bettini 2013). The migration-as-adaptation approach In response to the alarmist discourse on migration in the context of climate change, several migration scholars in conjunction with specific migration and development organizations (such as the International Organization for Migration, and the Asian Development Bank) proposed an alternative approach to migration in the context of climate change (see, for example, Kniveton et al. 2008; McLeman and Smit 2006; Warner and Afifi 2014; for critical reviews, see, for example, Bettini and Gioli 2015; Methmann and Oels 2015). It highlights that migration should not be considered an exceptional or alarming phenomenon. Rather, they argue, it should be considered as a legitimate adaptation strategy through which affected people self-manage their situation. For example, a central narrative is that through seasonal migration, migrants can diversify their skill sets and income sources, providing options to send remittances home, which could in turn strengthen the resilience of those in places of origin (see also Medland in this volume, Chapter 22). In Ghana, for example, where fish stocks are increasingly scarce as a result of several environmental changes, fishery communities migrate seasonally within or outside the country in response to seasonal and spatial distribution of fish stocks, such as during upwelling events in coastal waters (Kraan 2009). Migration is thus seen as a mechanism of adaptation to (environmental) changes. This so-called migration-as-adaptation discourse has gained much support, particularly from 2010 onwards when the critique on the alarmist discourse became more pronounced. It has, for example, shaped much of the focus, framing and outcomes of one of the largest and most influential studies that has been conducted on this subject: The Foresight Report on Environmental Change and Human Migration, issued by the UK Government for Science, led by the migration specialist Richard Black (Black et al. 2011; Foresight 2011). The migration-as-adaptation discourse became the underlying logic of many policy initiatives and academic articles that focus on livelihood diversification and resilience-building in local contexts (for example, ADB 2012; IOM 2014; Warner 2012; Warner and Afifi 2014). However, while this migration-as-adaptation rationale has been important in widening the focus on climate migration studies beyond the alarmist discursive frame, it also faces its own problems. For example, even under such neoliberal narratives of self-responsibility, the migration-as-adaptation discourse is far from promoting free movement. Instead, it assumes the figure of a ‘docile, resilient migrant’ (Bettini 2017a: 85) who follows the pre-described
90 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration governed paths of labour migration agreements in order to send home remittances to self-fund resilience-building. Experiences from literature on the migration–development nexus show, however, how such assumptions of remittances decreasing local vulnerabilities are often too simplistic to represent complex local realities, including power inequalities within communities (see also Kabbanji in this volume, Chapter 6). Another main point of critique is that this approach locates the responsibility to adapt with the individual household or community (see critiques by Bettini 2013; Bettini et al. 2017; Bettini and Gioli 2015; Methmann and Oels 2015). Ownership of the problem is thereby shifted from the state to private actors and individuals (Joseph 2013). ‘Whereas alarmist climate conflict storylines […] legitimize sovereign forms of power, such as state-driven migration management or political/military interventions in climate hot-spot regions (Hartmann 2010), resilience promotes government at a distance’ (Boas and Rothe 2016: 616–17; see also Methmann and Oels 2015). Failure to adapt then becomes individual failure (for a wider discussion of the resilience discourse in EU migration governance and its framing of migrants as needing to adapt locally, cf. Paul and Roos 2019). Under this neoliberal discourse of self-responsibility, global inequalities between greenhouse gas emitters and those most vulnerable to the effects of climatic and environmental changes are largely neglected, as are local inequalities that render some people more vulnerable than others (Bettini et al. 2017). As Bettini (2017a, 2017b), Klepp and Herbeck (2016) and others have highlighted, the migration-as-adaptation approach is de-politicizing in that it does not address the underlying power structures that determine vulnerability patterns as well as adaptive capacities. Thereby, the issue of climate justice and global responsibility is muted. Furthermore, it enables large emitting states to render invisible the fact that their greenhouse gas emissions are a primary cause of the climate impacts affecting local communities. Instead, this discourse represents climate change-induced migration as a neutral, local, phenomenon that can be – and should be – self-managed by those affected (Boas and Rothe 2016; Methmann and Oels 2015). Such a framing normalizes the implications of climate change by rendering them manageable and, in the case of migration for adaptive purposes, even positive. This allows major emitters and richer states to evade their responsibilities for both the mitigation of and adaptation to climate change Despite this critique, the migration-as-adaptation discourse succeeded (at least temporarily) in reframing the issue of climate migration as not being the responsibility of defence and immigration/border control agencies (Boas 2015; Boas and Rothe 2016; Methmann and Oels 2015). As climate migration was no longer portrayed as a threat, but as a mechanism through which communities affected by climate change could adapt locally, the issue became of less interest to governments and the media, at least in the global North (until the 2015 European ‘refugee crisis’). In this way, the climate change–migration nexus became invisibilized as an issue of global political interest. This is illustrated by the following quote from a UK Home Office official, who took a disinterested and distanced position on the subject of climate migration by arguing: ‘People could not afford to come to the UK and why would they? People’s adaptation strategy is to move upstream, locally, and then move back to their places’ (author interview with UK Home Office 2011).
Climate migration between conflictive discourses and empirical realities 91 Towards a Better Understanding of Migrants’ Experiences: a Mobilities Perspective With the European ‘refugee crisis’, the optimism of the migration-as-adaptation approach decreased somewhat as notions of securitization came again to dominate the political agendas (Bettini 2017b; on securitization generally, see Follis in this volume, Chapter 5). Nevertheless, particularly in academia, calls for a re-orientation and re-politicization of environmental migration are becoming stronger. This is in response to both the alarmist discourses about threatening climate migrants and the neoliberal notions of the migration-as-adaptation discourse as outlined above. As Klepp (2017) highlights, this shift is also reflected in the changing research foci applied in this field: whereas the first wave of climate migration literature (1990s–early 2000s) largely concerned itself with (the now heavily criticized) numerical predictions, the second wave (mid-2000s onwards) focused on the complexities of interrelated migration drivers. Currently, the third wave is mostly concerned with ethnographic work highlighting the voices and perceptions of those experiencing climate change. As opposed to the first two waves, this form of research allows for a detailed understanding of local contexts and zooms into the role of unequal power relations in shaping people’s vulnerability to climate change. It seeks to understand the issue from the perspective of those affected, trying to capture what it means to be immobile or having to move in the context of a changing climate. In doing so, it seeks to bring the study and understanding of environment–migration interactions back to the here and now and thus avoids an over-reliance on assumptions about future risks and implications. Instead, by focusing on who is affected, how people are affected and how that relates to human mobility in diverse ways, we can obtain a more empirically grounded understanding of the subject area, allowing migration governance to become better attuned to present and real-life needs. This third wave of research on environmental migration is embedded in a set of established social theories that aim to provide a more contextualized understanding of migration and adaptation. Examples of these are translocality studies (Keck and Sakdapolrak 2013; Sakdapolrak et al. 2016), transformative adaptation (Klepp and Chavez-Rodriguez 2018), and mobilities (Boas et al. 2018; Gill et al. 2011). In the remainder of this section, we want to demonstrate particularly how the mobilities approach, originating from the disciplines of sociology and human geography, offers several conceptual tools to better capture the day-to-day and diverse realities of migration in the context of environmental changes. The mobilities paradigm in social theory studies the complex interrelations between mobilities and immobilities of people, materials, knowledge, ideas, technologies, communications, risks, etc. (Hannam et al. 2006; Sheller and Urry 2006). Most importantly, the mobilities approach allows us to understand migration as something more than a linear movement from origin to destination. This implies that in studying environmental migration, it is necessary to inquire how mobility may or may not have been part of people’s lives, independent of environmental influences on migration decisions. Persons moving might also be ‘repetitively mobile, gradually mobile, seasonally mobile and locally mobile’ which ‘point[s] towards the development of mobility as a way of life rather than an exceptional event in response to climate change’ (Gill et al. 2011: 305). For instance, for many pastoralist groups in Central and West Africa, local or even transnational mobility is a way of life to cope with seasonal changes in the environment. For them, the exceptional event might rather be a prolonged phase of immobility
92 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration due to enhanced droughts as a result of climate change, land politics and bordering issues (for example, De Bruijn et al. 2016). Nevertheless, this does not mean that we should see migration as necessarily voluntary or even as something positive. Not all people or communities have an equal relationship with mobilities, and while for some it might be a choice to become mobile, for others it might be the only option. As Gill et al. (2011: 304) write, it is crucial to understand that there can be ‘as much un-freedom in mobility as there is in fixity’, romanticizing neither the sedentary nor the mobile. To study the diverse realities of migration, Gill et al. (2011) write how the mobilities approach is particularly useful in studying how mobility and immobility interact. Indeed, Sheller and Urry (2006) highlight how these condition each other in a dialectical fashion, as, for example, the mobility of some family or community members might require the stability of others. By not victimizing those who move, nor generically celebrating them as some form of cosmopolitan subjects, the mobilities perspective can thus be understood as an invitation to dig deeper into the context-specific motives and interpretations of moving and remaining. This also gives us more room to understand why people are not mobile: while the 2011 Foresight Report introduced the concept of ‘trapped populations’ to describe those most vulnerable to environmental changes desperately lacking the means to move away, the notion that some people might not want to be mobile and decide to remain in their current location has received less attention from environmental migration scholars. A noteworthy exception comes from the research by Adams (2016) who demonstrates how, in the face of harsh environmental conditions (such as both extremes of low and high temperatures and excessive rains), people from highland Peru do not want to leave due to their positive attachment to place. Approaching environmental migration with the mobilities approach also offers a different political perspective. As opposed to the alarmist discourse, a mobilities lens highlights the everyday and local realities of the migrants in question, showing highly localized, contextualized and diverse patterns of mobility. This stands in contrast to the alarmist projections of mass movements and large-scale intercontinental migration. In contrast to the migration-as-adaptation discourse, the mobilities approach focuses on daily realities of climate vulnerability and human mobility, without labelling these in neoliberal terms such as ‘adaptation’ or ‘self-management. Even more so, this approach explicitly refrains from understanding migration in neutral terms, by paying attention to underlying inequalities and the role of power relations that determine the experiences of mobility. In this manner, a mobilities approach can be a potential starting point for a diversification and re-politicization of the issue of environmental migration. Furthermore, as argued earlier in other work (Boas et al. 2018), using a mobilities approach helps to understand governance and governance gaps from the perspective of the mobilities, in this case the environmental or climate migrants. ‘A mobilities perspective asks us to look at who is moving, how people are moving, and why they are moving, as the starting point of thinking about governance. When doing so, we can identify multiple profiles of environmental migrants that each have different governance needs’ (Boas et al. 2018: 118). This allows us to understand why governance structures are in place to address one form of environmental migration, whilst lacking in another case. For example, governance action and assistance are present where people are displaced by sudden-onset disasters, such as cyclones. This is because many people get suddenly displaced for a certain period at time, which is often of such a scale that it receives much media, political and donor attention. Meanwhile,
Climate migration between conflictive discourses and empirical realities 93 there is a lack of governance action in cases where people have to move on a more gradual basis, as a result of environmental changes that worsen at a slower rate (for example, erosion or sea-level rise). These slow-onset environmental changes affect populations gradually and therefore attract less urgent attention. As a result, these instances of migration do not receive a similar amount of assistance. Instead, they largely remain the domain of self-governance by the affected communities. To sum up this final point, a mobilities perspective helps to signal that there are different types of movements associated with environmental change, requiring a varied response, whilst highlighting how and why some become marginalized in global migration governance frameworks (see Boas et al. 2018 for more details on this argument). Insights from Bangladesh To briefly illustrate a mobilities approach within the ‘third wave’ of research in environmental migration, we draw on some empirical examples taken from fieldwork conducted by Ingrid Boas in coastal Bangladesh, during August–December 2017. Below we briefly reflect on some general findings from two areas: the island Kutubdia (Chittagong District in South-East Bangladesh), and the local union Char Fasson (South of Bhola Island, Barisal District, Central-South Bangladesh).4 To start with, it is important to note how mobility in Bangladesh is not something novel in the context of present-day climate change. Given the dynamic delta it is, mobility – including forced mobility – has long been common in Bangladesh. For centuries, land has been changing, with certain parts disappearing and other parts newly emerging.5 On top of that, there are ongoing rural–rural and rural–urban migration dynamics shaping mobility decisions. These stem from a diverse set of factors, including environmental change, economic pressures, urbanization dynamics, and the rise of communication technology facilitating long-distance connections. This also means that under the environmental dynamics and pressures brought about by current anthropogenic climate change, people move in the context of those mobility patterns that have long existed in Bangladesh. Indeed, in many of the migration trajectories traced during the fieldwork, migrants were moving or had moved to places where they have prior connections (Boas 2020). For example, they move to nearby cities where relatives are based, or they move to some of the freshly emerged lands in the rivers (so-called char lands) where land is wet but more affordable. From a governance perspective, this means that the design of top-down proposals and pre-held assumptions about how and to where people move do not resonate with local realities and do not align with ongoing ways of moving and living in Bangladesh. A fairer and more effective way forward could be to examine essential protection needs from the perspectives of the communities and migrants in question, making sure that assistance and governance schemes are well attuned to the cultural and local ways in which people move and try to stay. That being said, options on where to move are often constrained. For example, moving to char lands can be a highly political matter (Haque and Zaman 1989). It can depend on the person’s political connections and voting preferences whether or not they will be provided a place on these lands. This can be illustrated by the case of a newly built village in Char Fasson for displaced persons, made feasible by NGOs and governmental aid funds. In this case, it was those who had good connections with local chairmen who gained priority in receiving land or
94 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration a house, rather than those needing it the most. This case shows that decisions on where and how to move are not just shaped by environmental processes but are inherently political. Alongside a focus on those having to leave or not being able to do so, many also want to return. For example, in Mohammadpur village in Char Fasson, some of the men who had previously moved to urban centres for work are now actively returning home. This has become possible as the government, after 20 years of a more ad hoc approach, is now working on a permanent river embankment to better protect the area against erosion and floods. This has led to a return of investments and work in Mohammadpur village and is inspiring many who emigrated earlier to return (Boas 2020). This example shows that in understanding the politics of environmental migration, we need to open up the concept of mobility. Some may want to migrate; some may want to stay or even try to return home. Being sensitive to such diversity in responses, and exploring how government decision-making has local implications, can result in a fairer and more representative framing and form of governance. These insights from Bangladesh demonstrate how environment-related migration is multi-causal; local, contextual and diverse; a mix of non-movement, forced movement and temporal movement; and above all shaped by existing patterns of mobility and structural power dynamics. It shows how people are often constrained in their choices and that moving away is not necessarily a solution in the eyes of the migrants. This offers a more contextualized understanding of the subject, highlighting the need for global and local governance responses to be better attuned to the diverse needs of those most affected whilst being sensitive to how policy actions and decisions have local implications.
CONCLUSION In this chapter, we have outlined the development and contested nature of various discourses around climate change-induced migration. We have discussed the emergence of the alarmist discourse on ‘climate refugees’, which has been heavily criticized for ignoring the multi-causal dimensions of migration and for presenting climate migration as a threatening and mass-like phenomenon possibly causing chaos and distress in receiving areas. It has been succeeded by the migration-as-adaptation discourse, which in turn has later been critiqued for placing the responsibility to adapt with those affected, and as a result disregarding issues of climate justice. The re-emergence of the alarmist discourse as the dominant perspective post-2015, especially in political and policy circles of the global North following the European ‘refugee crisis’, exemplifies how the focus in the field of environmental migration is constantly shifting, strongly influenced by underlying political agendas and processes. To move the academic and policy debates beyond their entrenched opposition, and beyond semantics into concrete actions, the mobilities approach might well be the alternative way forward with the perspective of the migrant as a common denominator. It seeks to understand and study human mobility from the perspective of those experiencing it, and thus examines what it means to migrate – or not to migrate – in the context of a changing climate, and what its implications are. As such, instead of focusing only on the presumably highly mobile ‘environmental migrant’, this allows us to recognize and attend to a much wider range of relevant cases under the environmental change–im/mobility nexus. This includes sensitivity to the ways in
Climate migration between conflictive discourses and empirical realities 95 which immobilities and mobilities are interconnected across local, regional and global scales, and how this is related to questions of inequality and injustices. This approach, therefore, is in line with the increasing calls for diversification and re-politicization of this field by critical researchers, and is a crucial step towards developing suitable support mechanisms and policy solutions more tailored to the challenges encountered by people facing migration pressures.
NOTES 1. 2.
Personal observations during policy conferences on the subject in the Netherlands in 2016–18. See https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/climate-change-key-syrian-conflict -and-it-will-trigger-more-war-future-10081163.html. 3. See https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27989-calais-migrant-chaos-is-a-taste-of-what-a -warmer-world-may-bring/. 4. Based on regular field observations, explorative visits, and over 50 interviews in these areas. 5. This is well illustrated in Deltares’ Aqua Monitor: see http://aqua-monitor.appspot.com.
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8. Humanitarianism in principle and practice Jason Hart
INTRODUCTION On 17 December 2018, the UN General Assembly approved the ‘Global Compact on Refugees’. This non-binding document is intended to serve as the basis for deliberation amongst governments about ‘burden-sharing’ towards achievement of four key objectives: to ease pressure on countries hosting large numbers of forced migrants; to promote the self-reliance of refugees; to increase the opportunities for resettlement; to support efforts that make return to countries of origin safe and dignified.1 The text of the Global Compact includes several affirmations of common purpose, of ‘international community’, and of shared concern for human rights and protection. Such language is familiar from a plethora of UN declarations, conventions and resolutions. On the ground, however, resettlement programmes run by Western nations are being scaled back; the line between ‘forced’ and ‘voluntary’ return is increasingly blurred, and obstacles preventing the movement of desperate people to countries of relative safety have been strengthened. Rather than ‘burden-sharing’, many UN member states enact exclusionary policies, in no small part driven by support amongst their citizenry for the xenophobic populism of the (far) right and ‘nativist’ politics (see Guia in this volume, Chapter 33). In this chapter, I consider the challenge for humanitarians obliged, on the one hand, to uphold universalistic principles and, on the other, to act in accordance with the self-interested agendas of major donors and host governments. I label the form of humanitarian effort currently negotiating this tension as ‘modern’. This specific manifestation of response to human suffering has dominated both action around the globe and popular imagination for at least a century. The principal exponents of ‘modern humanitarianism’ are United Nations agencies, such as UNHCR, UNICEF and the World Food Programme (WFP), together with international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) including Save the Children, Oxfam, CARE, MSF, and the International Red Cross and Red Crescent movement. I begin by offering a brief account of ‘modern humanitarianism’ – institutionalized, Western-originating and secular – that emerged in the latter half of the nineteenth century; grew in significance through and immediately after the First World War; and came fully into play in the aftermath of the Second World War. The chapter then proceeds to offer a tentative categorization of literature according to the manner in which authors engage with this specific manifestation of humanitarian activity. In the subsequent discussion I draw upon two specific case studies – the response to non-Syrian refugees in Jordan and the pursuit of the so-called ‘Self-Reliance Strategy’ in displacement camps in East Africa – in order to illustrate how the central dilemma of this form of humanitarianism is playing out on the ground. As I shall argue, the evidence suggests serious compromise by many agencies of the humanitarian principle of independence which, in turn, renders adherence to the principles of humanity and impartiality especially difficult. The chapter concludes with discussion of the longer-term implications for ‘modern humanitarianism’ and considers emerging alternatives. 98
Humanitarianism in principle and practice 99
WHAT IS ‘HUMANITARIANISM’? The history of humanitarianism has conventionally been told in a singular manner: its origins traced to 1859 and the battlefield of Solferino in northern Italy. Here, the troops of the Franco-Sardinian Alliance were pitted against the Austro-Hungarian Army. An estimated 300,000 soldiers took part. Henri Dunant, a Swiss businessman travelling for his work, came upon the field directly following the battle and was shocked by the sight of as many as 23,000 wounded soldiers left to die. This experience moved Dunant to write the Memory of Solferino (1862). His book and efforts to promote it prompted the creation of the Red Cross (1863). Resisting the ‘seductions of a single event’ (Redfield and Bornstein 2010: 15) a number of scholars have in recent years traced the origins of humanitarianism back further – to at least the late eighteenth/early nineteenth century in Europe (for example, Barnett 2011; Calhoun 2008). They draw attention to the fact that the term itself entered common parlance around the start of the nineteenth century and referred, in general, to actions intended to relieve suffering whether ‘at home’ or ‘abroad’. From this perspective we can see, for example, the effort to abolish slavery and to remove young children from hazardous work, respectively, as part of the history of humanitarian endeavour. Some argue that the first humanitarian organization was not, as commonly believed, the Red Cross but rather the Anti-Slavery Society (later Anti-Slavery International) founded in Britain in 1823. Disagreement over the precise date of the emergence of humanitarianism as a field of action is more than just dry academic debate. It reveals a tension between competing visions that endures today. The first, associated most particularly with the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement, we might call ‘remedial’, and the second we can label ‘preventative’ (Barnett 2011: 10). The former is concerned with the alleviation of immediate suffering. The latter, by contrast, is focused on tackling suffering at its roots. The provision of food to a population subject to a blockade would illustrate remedial work and advocacy efforts to get the blockade lifted or, going further, to introduce a ban on the imposition of blockades globally, a preventative approach. The move from a singular to a bifurcated telling of its history opens up understanding of humanitarianism. Nonetheless, the resulting picture still has significant limitations. Firstly, humanitarianism is reduced by these two histories and their distinct visions to the activity of institutions. If we accept the broadest definition of humanitarian action as efforts to ease the suffering of others then we must also acknowledge the ad hoc ways in which ordinary citizens assist forced migrants in their midst, or that suffering populations help one another. A moving example comes from the mid-nineteenth century when the displaced and decimated Choctaw Native Americans, in an act of support and solidarity, gathered funds to send to Irish people suffering the devastating effects of the potato famine.2 Secondly, the evidence of efforts – both institutional and ad hoc – to alleviate the suffering of others caused by conflict and socio-natural disasters is global (Barnett 2011; Redfield and Bornstein 2010). For this reason, it is important to remain mindful that the ‘modern’ form of humanitarian action that has come to dominate thinking and practice is Western-originating (see also the wider debate of postcolonial migration governance in Mayblin in this volume, Chapter 2). There is nothing inevitable about the dominance of this form, as demonstrated by the arrival of new institutional players motivated by a range of philosophical and ideological dispositions. Most notable of these is China (Krebs 2014).
100 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration Thirdly, the two historical narratives of Western-originating humanitarianism both relate to the institutionalization of humanitarian action that is primarily secular in orientation. Drawing upon Redfield and Bornstein (2010: 7–13), I employ the notion of ‘secular’ to denote a manifestation of a humanitarian impulse with two distinguishing characteristics. Firstly, that assistance is provided solely on the basis of need: a position underwritten by conviction in human community and inherent equality. This contrasts with initiatives by some faith-based organizations to relieve the suffering of co-religionists alone or primarily (for example, Orji 2011). Traditions of intra-community humanitarian effort within the major faiths include the Islamic zakat, Jewish tzedakah and Hindu dāna. Secondly, ‘secular’ humanitarianism is concerned solely with addressing immediate physical and psychological needs. This is described by Redfield and Bornstein (2010: 6) as a ‘presentist’ logic. Some faith-based efforts, by contrast, include a strong focus on spiritual salvation. The secular logic of modern humanitarianism can be discerned in the principles that have been widely embraced by UN agencies and INGOs, the most fundamental of which are humanity, impartiality, neutrality and independence. In keeping with the secular logic of modern humanitarianism these principles express an ethos of universality and human family. The targeting of specific populations due to their religion, ethnicity, nationality or other such factor is antithetical to these principles (see also Rodrigues de Castro and Moulin, Chapter 3 and El Qadim, Chapter 19, both in this volume). Inevitably, a dichotomy between ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ becomes blurred in practice. Many faith-based humanitarian organizations operate in accordance with a secular logic. Conversely, the aim of this form of humanitarianism – the alleviation of immediate suffering on the basis of need alone – has been forged, in part at least, by religious teachings, such as those of Christianity concerning universal brotherhood.
A BRIEF SORTING OF THE LITERATURE Recognition that there is nothing inevitable about the dominance of an institutionalized, Western-originating and secular form of humanitarianism prompts critical reflection upon the scholarship of recent decades. Humanitarianism has become a field of academic enquiry populated by a growing number of disciplinary perspectives. Some disciplines have tended to question the underlying premises of the currently dominant form of humanitarianism while others have reproduced its norms and practices unquestioningly. Therefore, the quest to understand the particular position and challenges faced by modern humanitarianism draws upon certain lines of scholarship while problematizing and de-centring others. To explain this further, I offer a tentative and non-exhaustive systematization of strands of the literature to illustrate, in inevitably generalized terms, how some of the most prominent disciplines relate to the ‘modern’ (institutionalized, Western-originating and secular) form of humanitarianism per se. Firstly, we may group together a number of disciplines including psychology, social work, medicine and engineering that, in their different ways, all seek to enhance the efficacy of humanitarian endeavours. The approach shared by these disciplines is technocratic. The particular form of modern humanitarianism is naturalized: the political, cultural and economic forces that perpetuate the dominance of this form – in rhetoric if not in practice – are rarely held up to scrutiny. Immediate physical and psychological survival is prioritized; spiritual
Humanitarianism in principle and practice 101 needs, the importance of justice and of community are commonly overlooked. The secular orientation of the dominant model is thereby reinforced. Secondly, there is a growing body of historical work. Examples of such scholarship have already been cited. Here, enquiry has been focused on the evolution of humanitarianism as an organized field of human endeavour, in some cases with a broad overview (for example, Barnett 2011; Barnett and Weiss 2011) and in others through a close examination of a specific time period or location (for example, Cabanes 2014; Watenpaugh 2015). One effect of this scholarship is to highlight the historical contingency of the currently dominant form of humanitarianism and to reveal internal divisions and contradictions. Thirdly, there is a relatively limited corpus of invaluable writing about the principles of humanitarianism. Hugo Slim is a leading expert in this field. His writings enable understanding of the normative basis of institutionalized, Western-originating, secular humanitarianism and the reasons for contestation over interpretation of widely agreed codes of conduct (for example, Slim 2015; see also Redfield 2010). While the work of Slim and others helps us to understand the complexities in interpretation of humanitarian principles from a theoretical perspective, a significant body of ethnographic work illustrates the challenge of implementing those principles on the ground: for example, how impartiality is achieved, or not, in practice (for example, Harrell-Bond 1986; Malkki 1996; Terry 2002). Furthermore, research of this kind enables understanding of the common lack of fit between the secular and culturally specific assumptions of UN agencies and INGOs, on the one hand, and the values and needs of intended beneficiaries, on the other. Such research extends far beyond the short-term ‘participatory’ enquiry typically undertaken by humanitarians. Finally, the most explicit questioning of the dominant form of humanitarianism comes from scholars working in the fields of politics and political economy. Authors such as Donini (2012), Hopgood (2019) and Hyndman (2000) locate the pursuit of modern humanitarianism amidst political and economic forces, in many cases connecting the local to the national and global. In doing so, they reveal the constraints placed upon agencies by governmental and, increasingly, corporate donors: constraints on working in accordance with core humanitarian principles. Combined with the ethnographic accounts of action on the ground, this body of work calls into question the sustainability of the currently dominant form of humanitarianism. I elaborate on this point in the following, focusing primarily on efforts to assist displaced populations. The reasons that people may be forced to migrate, internally or across national borders, are numerous, and include the conditions produced by climate change and environmental degradation (see Boas and Wiegel in this volume, Chapter 7). For the purposes of this brief chapter, however, the focus will be upon displacement in contexts of armed conflict and political violence.
INDEPENDENCE As a means to interrogate the current state of ‘modern’ humanitarianism, caught between established principles and political-economic pressures, I take the theme of independence. This is one of the four core humanitarian principles (Slim 2015: 71–3). The 1994 Code of Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and NGOs in Disaster Relief explains this principle as follows:
102 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration Non-governmental humanitarian agencies are agencies which act independently from government. We therefore formulate our own policies and implementation strategies and do not seek to implement the policy of any government, except insofar as it coincides with our independent policy.3
More than 600 humanitarian agencies around the globe have signalled their commitment to this Code of Conduct. Although not signatories themselves, UN agencies should act in accordance with the working principles of the General Assembly that are based on the four core principles. Maintaining an autonomous position, not subject to the control of host and donor governments, is a challenging task in practice for NGOs and UN agencies alike. While finance is the most obvious means by which the work of humanitarian agencies can be influenced, such control may be exercised by donors and host governments through other means as well. For example, in settings where the host government is both a major cause of human suffering and a valued ally of donor states, the pressure upon humanitarian organizations to desist from advocacy efforts or simply voicing concerns may be considerable. The principle of independence has been framed conventionally in relation to governmental control. However, awareness of the influence of corporations and private sector philanthropy is growing (for example, Adams and Martens 2015). In recent years, humanitarian and development organizations have courted multinational companies as sources of funding for their work (Hopgood 2008). The resulting relationships are often couched in the language of ‘partnership’ in line with Goal 17 of the Sustainable Development Goals. The websites of many of the largest non-governmental and UN humanitarian organizations feature lists of multinationals currently funding their work, including companies in the banking, finance, pharmaceutical, fast food and fossil fuel sectors. Some of these have been directly responsible for environmental damage or for destabilizing societies and national economies, thereby contributing to mass displacement. There are also corporate partners that derive profit from the supply of goods and services that contribute to human suffering in humanitarian settings. For example, Hewlett Packard has provided technology and support to the Israeli authorities enabling their control over the movement of Palestinians living under occupation: constraining access to services, employment and family life and thereby increasing the pressure to move.4 This company, through its charitable foundation, has also been a significant donor to Save the Children – an organization mandated to work for the protection of Palestinian children.5 To date, little research has been conducted into the impact upon the independence of humanitarian organizations of funding arrangements such as these.
LACK OF INDEPENDENCE: ITS IMPLICATIONS IN PRACTICE The absence of loss of independence can have significant consequences for populations in need of basic protection and assistance. In order to illustrate this point, I offer examples organized around two issues: firstly, the determination of who receives humanitarian assistance, and secondly the nature of the support provided. This is one amongst many possible ways to consider how lack of independence may impact work on the ground, often entailing compromise of other humanitarian principles.
Humanitarianism in principle and practice 103 Who to Help? The US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 led to an exodus of civilians fleeing violence, many of whom found sanctuary in Jordan. Donor money flowed to the government and humanitarian agencies. However, by the time that large-scale unrest began in Syria, in 2011, such support for Iraqi refugees was waning. As large numbers of Syrians began to arrive donor funds flowed again. Humanitarian organizations already present scaled up their operations, and further agencies set up operations. However, while Syrians received support in the form of cash assistance, access to basic services and the provision of various non-food items, refugees without Syrian nationality were mostly left by the large agencies to fend for themselves. These included Iraqis who were still coming across the border due to ongoing violence, as well as a growing number of Sudanese, Somali and, more latterly, Yemeni refugees. The situation of Sudanese and Somali refugees was especially tough due to discrimination on the basis of skin colour. Recent studies in Jordan have described the humanitarian response to the situation of refugees in accordance with their nationality and the impact upon those not offered support on an equitable basis (for example, Johnston et al. 2019). The relative lack of assistance to some groups of displaced people has been labelled as the product of a ‘network of disregard’ (Hart and Kvittingen 2016: 12). Lack or loss of donor support for refugees of certain nationalities contributed to antipathy from the host government towards those groups. Humanitarian efforts consequently shifted away from certain population groups and onto others. While some personnel may strive to broaden the outlook of their organization, the task of achieving equity in response is beyond the capacity of individuals. Explaining what would be necessary to change the situation so that non-Syrian refugees (in this case Iraqis) might receive support on an equitable basis, one experienced NGO officer stated: You need people who have time to go and fight though the media to convince the international community. You need people for big lobbying to go to New York and Geneva. And that needs money. That’s why things are left as they are. (Hart and Kvittingen 2015)
In Jordan it has been left largely to small, local organizations to support groups of displaced people of certain nationalities that are no longer, or never were, considered for aid on an equitable basis with Syrian refugees. The funding for these organizations typically consists of a mix of small grants and donations by individuals. This enables a degree of independence unattainable by agencies that are reliant on governmental and multilateral donors. The example of humanitarian response to refugees in Jordan demonstrates how major organizations’ lack of independence results in some people receiving support that is systematically denied to others simply on the basis of nationality. We can see here that the failure to uphold independence as a core principle of modern humanitarianism entails the violation of another: the principle of impartiality: ‘Aid is given regardless of the race, creed or nationality of the recipients and with adverse distinction of any kind. Aid priorities are calculated on the basis of need alone’ (Code of Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and NGOs in Disaster Relief 1994).
104 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration How to Help? Over recent years a significant shift has been witnessed in policy and debate around the nature of assistance to forced migrants. The shift entails scaling back humanitarian assistance in favour of increased attention to developmental initiatives focused, principally, on livelihoods. To this end, a rhetoric of ‘self-reliance’, ‘autonomy’, and ‘dignity’ has been deployed: displaced populations are to be ‘empowered’ to help themselves rather than allowed to continue relying on aid. In a controversial book, Refuge (see also, inter alia, Pascucci 2017), Betts and Collier exemplified the thinking when they argued: … refuge must be understood as not only a humanitarian issue but also one of development. Put simply, it is not just about indefinitely providing food, clothing, and shelter. It has to be about restoring people’s autonomy through jobs and education, particularly in the countries in the developing world that repeatedly host the overwhelming majority of refugees. If this is done well, we argue, everyone stands to gain and refugees can be empowered to help themselves and contribute to their societies. (2017: 10)
In fact, there is nothing new about the effort to involve displaced people in livelihood projects. However, as Easton-Calabria (2014) has argued, the specific approach undertaken over the last couple of decades differs from earlier initiatives in its top-down character and in its focus on individuals rather than the collective. The ‘Self-Reliance Strategy’ (SRS), a term coined in the late 1990s and applied since to work in support of refugee livelihoods, has been particularly pursued in refugee camps in East Africa. It is a clear example of what Hilhorst (2018) refers to as ‘resilience humanitarianism’, a concept we return to later. UNHCR has played a central role in efforts around the SRS (for a discussion of the global refugee regime, see Crawley and Setrana in this volume, Chapter 16). This endeavour has been framed by both academics and practitioners in relation to the difficulties of offering assistance to a large and growing number of long-term displacees. Some commentators make explicit the link between the focus on self-reliance and the increasingly limited access to each of the three so-called ‘durable solutions’ – return, permanent resettlement and integration in the country of first asylum. As the resettlement programmes offered conventionally by Western nations are shrunk and countries of first asylum seek to prevent the full integration of refugees, so the focus on entrepreneurship and autonomy has intensified. Over the last two decades a trenchant critique of SRS has evolved which commonly features some or all of three key points. Firstly, the livelihoods promoted by UNHCR and others are often not viable, for example owing to poor soil or lack of access to local markets. Secondly, people hitherto dependent on aid but unable to pursue livelihoods are rendered more vulnerable by the shift of attention onto self-reliance. Thirdly, the achievement of stable livelihoods requires enjoyment of basic rights, including freedom of movement, that are often not extended to displacees (Easton-Calabria and Omata 2018; Ilcan and Rygiel 2015; Meyer 2006). UNHCR is strongly implicated in what critics view as the frequent failure of SRS in East Africa. Involvement in promoting such an approach has been attributed to the financial pressure from its major donors. UNHCR’s lack of independence has simultaneously attenuated that organization’s role in protection. Easton-Calabria and Omata (2018: 1467) argue that funding and the need to maintain the favour of donor governments may ‘supersede the well-being of people whom the organization is mandated to assist’.
Humanitarianism in principle and practice 105 The lack of equity in the humanitarian response to Syrian and non-Syrian refugees in Jordan has been invoked in order to illustrate compromise of the principle of neutrality. By contrast, the Self-Reliance Strategy pursued in displacement camps in East Africa indicates how lack of independence is implicated in potential non-adherence to the principle of ‘humanity’: the cornerstone of modern humanitarianism.
FROM PRINCIPLES TO RESILIENCE The systematic compromise of principle suggested in the two cases offered here may be located within a larger shift in the project of modern humanitarianism as a whole. Hilhorst (2018: 1) has described this as a move from the ‘classical, Dunantist paradigm’ of aid, based on humanitarian principles, to a ‘resilience paradigm’ in which promotion of ‘local response capabilities’ becomes a central focus. This shift brings with it the opportunity for ‘political actors and the international community’ to sidestep their responsibility to ‘protect and garner the resources required to provide protection’ (ibid.: 8). A key feature of the shift from ‘classical’ to ‘resilience’ humanitarianism is the move from seeing crisis in exceptional terms – a period of aberration from the norm – to acceptance that crisis is ‘the new normal’ (ibid.: 5). Resilience is the assumed quality required in such a world: ‘the fundamental property which peoples and individuals worldwide must possess in order to demonstrate their capacities to live with danger’ (Evans and Reid 2014: 2). Such a view now informs policy amongst a range of national and multilateral agencies, signalling loss of optimism and a growing sense that crisis is inevitable. For example, the 2016 European Union Global Strategy on foreign and security policy asserts that ‘we live in times of existential crisis’: a statement that reflects the impact of a decade and more of frustrated EU efforts to achieve peace and development in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan even as new crises – Syria, Libya, Yemen, etc. – emerge (Wagner and Anholt 2016: 417). The promotion of resilience may be seen as a response to ‘the complete absence of straightforward solutions’ (ibid.: 418). The mood of resignation should be seen in relation to the neoliberal rationality of governance that has become hegemonic in Anglo-Saxon nations most particularly. This latter constitutes an ideological basis for the transfer of responsibility from the state to the private sector and citizenry. In the context of humanitarianism it additionally entails the transfer of responsibility from Western donors (who may also be parties to conflict, for example, Israel/ Palestine, Iraq, Libya, Yemen) to the governments of countries where conflict occurs or displaced people take refuge (Joseph 2018). The logic resulting from the failure of liberal interventionism combined with neoliberal governmentality indicates that people should be supported to the point that they develop the resilience to fend for themselves amidst a state of permanent crisis. Meanwhile, the withdrawal of official aid in the name of resilience, austerity and small government finds a supportive constituency amongst the ascendant populist right, both politicians and citizens, who share a visceral mistrust of global cosmopolitanism. This is viewed by them, correctly or not, as manifest in modern humanitarianism. The move towards short-term efforts to promote resilience represents a profound challenge for organizations pursuing modern humanitarianism based upon secular principles and international law. A further challenge comes in the form of governments of countries host to refugees or parties to conflict that have grown increasingly uninhibited about expelling or
106 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration denying entry to agencies that criticize them for their violations of international law. This is evidenced in countries that include Sudan (Charbonneau 2009), Pakistan (Sayeed 2018) and Turkey (Smith 2017). There may, however, remain a role for humanitarian organizations providing that they are prepared (a) to maintain silence about violations of the rights of forced migrants and (b) to undertake efforts to promote resilience. This would take pressure off host governments and international donors and may even create opportunities for corporate profit. The ‘Jordan Compact’ offers an example of this. The 2016 Compact brought together the Jordanian government, Western bilateral donors and the World Bank to create work opportunities for Syrian refugees. The EU promised trade concessions for an initial ten-year period on goods manufactured within the Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in which the refugees would work. Although the results have thus far fallen short of the fanfare and ambitious aims (Barbelet et al. 2018; Lenner and Turner 2019), there are plans afoot to replicate the Jordan Compact in other countries hosting large displaced populations. In consequence, humanitarian agencies may find that their role is largely limited to efforts to promote self-reliance amongst forced migrants while inserting them in the global economy. Such an outcome would represent a major divergence from the ethos of modern humanitarianism and the core principles intended to guide assistance.
CONCLUSION: WHERE TO NOW? An underlying premise of this chapter has been that the hitherto dominant form of humanitarianism – Western-originating, institutionalized and broadly secular – has always been only one possible means to alleviate human suffering in contexts of conflict and displacement. The motivation to take action for the sake of suffering others may manifest in innumerable ways and has never been exclusive to the West. In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to humanitarian assistance as an aspect of ‘South–South cooperation’. Such assistance has involved individuals as well as formal institutions. For example, Fiddian-Qasmiyeh (2016) describes the support offered by residents of a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon to other Palestinians displaced from a different camp, as well as to Syrian refugees. At a larger scale, the Cities of Solidarity initiative – launched as part of the 2004 ‘Mexico Plan of Action’ with assistance from UNHCR – has brought together municipalities across Latin America in a shared endeavour to support refugees and facilitate their integration (Varoli 2010). Within the global North, examples also exist of citizens mobilizing in support of refugees. Often mindful of structural global inequalities, and provoked by the growing xenophobia and exclusionary policies of many governments (see Guia in this volume, Chapter 33), citizens in Europe and elsewhere are engaging with refugees in fresh ways. Actions range from community sponsorship within existing programmes of refugee resettlement to the efforts of groups that bring together immediate material aid with political activism aimed at challenging the status quo around migration (Ataç et al. 2016; Karakayali and Kleist 2016; see also Ataç and Schwenken in this volume, Chapter 30). At the more radical end of the spectrum, commentators speak of the emergence of social movements involving refugees, asylum seekers and citizens. The impact of South–South cooperation and of grassroots mobilization in the global North upon the turn towards ‘resilience humanitarianism’ remains to be seen. As noted, the focus on resilience typically entails the withdrawal of material support and the responsibilization of
Humanitarianism in principle and practice 107 host governments and the displaced themselves to manage the challenges arising from mass displacement. Is it feasible to imagine that humanitarian-activists could disrupt the governance rationality centred on resilience that is now shared by UN agencies, the EU and donor governments? To do so would require a broad mobilization of actors around the globe committed to creating an alternative vision and ethos to that of modern humanitarianism with its increasingly fragile relationship to its own foundational principles. If an alternative is not realized, there is a risk that actions pursued in the spirit of ‘equality, partnership, justice and solidarity’ (Quadir 2013: 335) by humanitarian-activists are subsumed within the programmes of the very organizations promoting resilience. Or worse: such actions trigger a reactionary backlash that entails further harm. It is notable that Athens, where the mayor established a European version of the Cities of Solidarity initiative in 2016, has recently witnessed a brutal crackdown on migrants and activists (Speed 2019). For displaced people left chronically exposed to harm or destitution due, as in the Jordan case, to their nationality or, as witnessed in East Africa, to their inability to achieve self-reliance, the support offered by humanitarian-activists might be invaluable. In providing this support, however, they may end up in the same position that the institutions of modern humanitarianism now find themselves: enabling processes of governance focused primarily on the containment of displaced people and the management of crisis. This would be a far cry from the solidarity for which Bauman calls and that many humanitarian-activists strive to realize: ‘I don’t believe there is a shortcut solution to the current refugee problem. Humanity is in crisis – and there is no exit from that crisis other than the solidarity of humans’ (Bauman 2016).
NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
See https://www.unhcr.org/uk/the-global-compact-on-refugees.html, accessed 3.10.19. See https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/choctaw-generosity-to-famine-ireland -saluted-by-varadkar-1.3424542, accessed 6.10.19. See https://www.icrc.org/en/doc/assets/files/publications/icrc-002-1067.pdf, accessed 17.1.20. See https://www.amostrust.org/palestine-justice/campaign-activities/hewlett-packard/, accessed 20.11.19. See https://www.savethechildren.org/us/about-us/become-a-partner/corporations/emergency -partners, accessed 30.9.19.
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108 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration Barnett, M. and T. Weiss (2011), Humanitarianism Contested: Where Angels Fear to Tread, London: Routledge. Bauman, Z. (2016), ‘The refugee crisis is humanity’s crisis’, New York Times, 2 May. Betts, A. and P. Collier (2017), Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System, London: Allen Lane. Cabanes, B. (2014), The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, 1918–1924, New York, Cambridge University Press. Calhoun, C. (2008), ‘The imperative to remove suffering: charity, progress and emergencies in the field of humanitarian action’, in M. Barnett and T. Weiss (eds), Humanitarianism in Question: Politics, Power, Ethics, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, pp. 73–97. Charbonneau, L. (2009), ‘NGO expelled from Darfur considered ICC cooperation’, Reuters, 16 March, accessed 20.12.19 at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sudan-warcrimes-ngo/ngo-expelled-from -darfur-considered-icc-cooperation-idUSTRE52F6SX20090316. Donini, A. (2012), ‘Introduction’, in A. Donini (ed.), The Golden Fleece: Manipulation and Independence in Humanitarian Action, London: Kumarian Press. Easton-Calabria, E. (2014), ‘Innovation and refugee livelihoods: a historical perspective’, Forced Migration Review, September, 20–21. Easton-Calabria, E. and N. Omata (2018), ‘Panacea for the refugee crisis? Rethinking the promotion of “self-reliance” for refugees’, Third World Quarterly 39 (8), 1458–74. Evans, B. and J. Reid (2014), Resilient Life: The Art of Living Dangerously, Cambridge: Polity Press. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. (2016), ‘Refugees hosting refugees’, Forced Migration Review, 53, 25–7. Harrell-Bond, B. (1986), Imposing Aid: Emergency Assistance to Refugees, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hart, J. and A. Kvittingen (2015), ‘Tested at the margins: the contingent rights of displaced Iraqi children in Jordan’, UNHCR Research Paper No. 272, https://www.unhcr.org/uk/research/working/54cf8de29/ tested-margins-contingent-rights-displaced-iraqi-children-jordan-jason.html. Hart, J. and A. Kvittingen (2016), ‘Rights without borders: learning from the institutional response to Iraqi refugee children in Jordan’, Children’s Geographies, 14 (2), 217–31. Hilhorst, D. (2018), ‘Classical humanitarianism and resilience humanitarianism: making sense of two brands of humanitarian action’, International Journal of Humanitarian Action, 3 (15), 1–12. Hopgood, S. (2008), ‘Saying “no” to Wal-Mart: money and morality in contemporary humanitarianism’, in M. Barnett and T. Weiss (eds), Humanitarianism in Question: Politics, Power, Ethics, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Hopgood, S. (2019), ‘When the music stops: humanitarianism in a post-liberal world order’ Journal of Humanitarian Affairs, 1 (1), 4–14. Hyndman, J. (2000), Managing Displacement: Refugees and the Politics of Humanitarianism, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Ilcan, S. and K. Rygiel (2015), ‘Resiliency humanitarianism: responsibilizing refugees through humanitarian emergency governance in the camp’, International Political Sociology, 9 (4), 333–51. Karakayali, S. and J. O. Kleist (2016), ‘Volunteers and asylum seekers’, Forced Migration Review, 52, 65–7. Johnston, R., A. Kvittingen and D. Baslam (2019), ‘Realising the rights of asylum seekers and refugees in Jordan’, unpublished report for Norwegian Refugee Council, Amman. Joseph. J. (2018), Varieties of Resilience: Studies in Governmentality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Krebs, H. B. (2014), ‘Responsibility, legitimacy, morality: Chinese humanitarianism in historical perspective’, HPG Working Paper, September, London: Overseas Development Institute. Lenner, K. and L. Turner (2019), ‘Making refugees work? “The politics of integrating Syrian refugees into the labor market in Jordan”’, Middle East Critique, 28 (1), 65–95. Malkki, L. (1996), ‘Refugees, humanitarianism and dehistoricization’, Cultural Anthropology, 11 (3), 377–404. Meyer. S. (2006), ‘The “refugee aid and development” approach in Uganda: empowerment and self-reliance of refugees in practice’, UNHCR: New Issues in Refugee Research, Research Paper No. 131. Orji, N. (2011), ‘Faith-based aid to people affected by conflict in Jos, Nigeria: an analysis of the role of Christian and Muslim organizations’, Journal of Refugee Studies, 24 (3), 473–92. Pascucci, E. (2017), ‘Refuge: transforming a broken refugee system’, Fennia, 195 (2), 197–201.
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9. Beyond the dichotomy of liberal and illiberal migration governance Katharina Natter
INTRODUCTION What shapes migration policymaking across the globe? Is migration governed in fundamentally different ways by democracies and autocracies? Does liberal democracy have an in-built drive towards expansive immigration policies? These questions go to the core of the scholarly debate on the role of political regimes in migration governance. This chapter critically reviews the scholarly debate as it has unfolded since the early 1990s. It starts by outlining how the dominant scholarly focus on ‘Western liberal democracies’ has created a set of assumptions about the effects of political regimes in immigration policy. Most importantly, the ‘liberal paradox’ argument has tied the institutions and practices of democracy (assumed to be in ‘the global North’) to liberal immigration policy, and – by implication – it has suggested that autocracies (assumed to be in the ‘global South’) have an in-built tendency to produce immigration restrictions. Since the 2000s, research has started to overcome this Western-centric worldview by investigating migration politics in Latin America, Asia and Africa. Some scholars have advanced the argument that there is an ‘illiberal paradox’ of autocratic migration governance, in order to capture the contradictory dynamics that autocracies face when designing their immigration and emigration policies. However, both research strands – on ‘Western liberal democracies’ as well as on ‘autocratic’ regimes – remain ultimately within a binary logic that splits the world into ‘global North/global South’ or ‘democracy/autocracy’. They are also often influenced by methodological nationalism and therefore overlook the transnational dynamics that shape migration governance within and between countries. This prevents the cross-fertilization of empirical insights, as well as theory-building across political regimes and political geographies. To pave the way for a global study of migration governance, the chapter mobilizes insights from postcolonial studies to discuss the political economy of knowledge production that underlies this methodological nationalism and binary worldview dominating much of the migration literature. It ends by outlining the pillars of a critical research agenda that deliberately ‘crosses boundaries’ to highlight the fluidity and ambiguity of migration governance practices and to identify similarities in policymaking across political regimes, as well as variations within a particular polity. Such research could, for instance, shed light on illiberal migration policy practices in formal democracies or on liberal migration policy practices in formal autocracies. It could also advance theorizing on the increasingly selective nature of immigration policies along skill, class, nationality and vulnerability criteria, which is obscured by homogenizing concepts such as ‘restrictiveness’ or ‘openness’ that miss the differentiated inclusion/exclusion dynamics at play. This would open up new perspectives on contemporary migration politics worldwide. 110
Beyond the dichotomy of liberal and illiberal migration governance 111
THE ROOTS OF THE DEBATE: THE STATE FORMATION– MIGRATION POLICY NEXUS If we look back in time, migration governance – the formal laws and informal practices that regulate the entry and stay of foreigners, and the exit of citizens – emerged together with the modern nation-state. Feudal empires were defined through their (geographical and political) centres and often had shifting or porous territorial borders. Political belonging and allegiance could change over a person’s lifetime and was largely determined by which sovereign could guarantee economic survival and offer effective protection from physical violence. In contrast, the modern nation-state that became the dominant form of statehood in the nineteenth century conceived sovereignty as the monopoly of political power over a specific human community and within a given territory (Weber 2009 [1919]: 78). This shifted the focus from the state’s centre to its borders and, over time, turned national territory and national population into core elements of statehood (Torpey 1997). Defining who is part of the nation and who is not, and controlling the movement of people across borders – nationals and foreigners alike – was thus crucial to the idea and formation of modern national statehood (see the extended discussion by El Qadim in this volume, Chapter 19). Until the mid-nineteenth century, migration control by European imperial states was mainly concerned with regulating the departure of citizens, because manpower determined the strength of the national army and many European nation-states were colonial empires that actively pursued the settlement of lands in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Thus, they were more concerned with encouraging emigration and regulating mobility through slavery and indentured labour than with controlling immigration (Zolberg 1978). Those states that did have active immigration policies in the nineteenth century – such as the United States, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Australia – encouraged the settlement of ‘racially desirable’ migrants from North and Western Europe who would ‘populate’ the (supposedly unpopulated) vast interior lands of these countries, exploit their fertile soils and contribute to the political project of ‘whitening’ the population. (The fundamental roles of colonization and colonialism to migration governance and politics are further discussed by Mayblin in this volume, Chapter 2.) Democratization claims in Western Europe and North America made it increasingly difficult to justify state control over the exit of citizens: after the 1789 French Revolution, for instance, the freedom to circulate on, and leave, French (including colonized) territory for Metropolitan French citizens was enshrined in the 1791 Constitution (Torpey 2000: 29). As we will see later, this tension between democratic demands, human rights imperatives and migration control ambitions remains to the present day. In addition, the spread of racist ideology from the 1870s onwards led to a “globalization backlash” (Timmer and Williams 1998): state priorities shifted from emigration to immigration control, passports were introduced and legislation enacted to ban the entry of people from certain races, origins or social classes – such as the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act in the United States or Australia’s Immigration Restriction Act of 1901, which excluded all ‘non-white’ people from immigrating and prohibited the entry of criminals and prostitutes. Immigration controls became even more central to nation-state building when the geography of global migration was reversed with decolonization in the 1950s and 1960s: while Europe was a continent of emigration over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it became a continent of immigration after the Second World War, with migrants coming from an increasingly wide range of countries (de Haas et al. 2019). With Europeans emigrating less, immigration
112 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration to the United States and Australia became increasingly Latin American and Asian, respectively. In the Arabian Peninsula, the discovery of large oil reserves in the 1970s transformed Gulf countries into major immigration hubs for workers from the Middle East and Asia. At the same time, migration within the Soviet bloc was actively encouraged by political leaders during the Cold War, through formal student exchanges and recruitment programmes between Cuba, Vietnam, Mozambique, the German Democratic Republic and Czechoslovakia. More recently, Asian countries such as South Korea, Singapore and Malaysia have become major immigration destinations, and recurrent wars and civil conflicts have turned Middle Eastern and East African countries such as Uganda, Sudan, Lebanon and Turkey into the world’s largest refugee hosts. Together, these migration trends have created new incentives for nation-states around the world to regulate immigration, to develop ever-more sophisticated policies to monitor borders and to differentiate entry rights of migrants according to origin, class or skills (de Haas et al. 2018). This historical context of nation-state formation, within which migration governance emerged and developed, also crucially informed the study of migration politics – which questions were asked, what cases studied – and, ultimately, produced the biases underlying the idea of an il/liberal paradox in migration governance.
THE CORE OF THE DEBATE: THE LIBERAL PARADOX The nexus between nation-state formation and the emergence of migration governance raises the following question: do specific nation-state features – such as the definition of political membership or the type of political regime in place – shape the way in which migration is regulated, and if so, how? Looking at emigration policy, the answer seems to be yes. As mentioned earlier, the abolition of exit controls for citizens of European states was tightly linked with democratization tendencies and the protection of human rights, and (originally) colonial expansion. Even in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, democratically elected leaders have a hard time justifying why the state can limit the freedom of movement of its citizens, as the ‘right to leave’ is enshrined in article 13 of the United Nations’ 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is also telling that countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia rapidly dismantled exit restrictions after the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, in the context of democratization, and that most countries who continue to restrict exit – such as North Korea, Eritrea and Saudi Arabia – are fully-fledged autocracies (de Haas and Vezzoli 2011). The link between political regimes and immigration policy is more contested. In the early 1990s, a scholarly debate emerged about how liberal democracy shapes immigration policy. At that time, migration scholars in Western Europe were trying to understand the ‘liberal turn’ they observed in labour and family immigration policies: why did political leaders continue to progressively liberalize immigration policies – by creating new immigration opportunities and expanding migrants’ socio-economic and political rights – despite citizens’ political opposition to such liberalization? Hollifield (1992) introduced the ‘liberal paradox’ concept to account for the difference between citizens’ political demands and enacted migration policies. He argued that liberal democracies were confronted with contradictory forces when designing immigration policies: on the one hand, the ‘democratic’ component of liberal democracy would motivate politicians
Beyond the dichotomy of liberal and illiberal migration governance 113 to adopt restrictive stances on immigration because of nationalist, protectionist demands by citizens and political leaders’ dependence on re-election. On the other hand, the ‘liberal’ component of liberal democracy would push politicians to adopt open immigration reforms because the state’s insertion in global capitalist market economies required political leaders to meet businesses’ labour needs, and because the adherence to international human rights standards and liberal norms would limit the state’s possibilities of migration control. The two facets of liberal-democratic politics – liberalism and democracy – thus seem to work in different directions when it comes to immigration: pro-immigration reforms are credited to national business interests or (international) human rights norms, while anti-immigration reforms are ascribed to election cycles, party politics and public opinion (cf. Guia in this volume, Chapter 33). This dynamic would also explain why there is a ‘discursive gap’ between the tough anti-immigration rhetoric that many policymakers adopt in public and the generally more liberal immigration regulations that are ultimately enacted – as the policymaking process in-between requires decision-makers to take into account a range of different and often diverging interests (Czaika and de Haas 2013; Massey et al. 1998). Migration policy research since the 1990s has provided valid reasons to criticize and nuance the ‘liberal paradox’ argument. For instance, public opinion is not necessarily always against immigration (Bonjour 2011: 111) and economic actors might in fact not lobby for immigration liberalization, as they prefer to hire irregular migrant workers who lack socio-legal protections (Piore 1979; Ruhs and Anderson 2010). Also, Acosta Arcarazo and Freier (2015) have shown that, in Brazil and Argentina, the discourses of democratically elected leaders on immigration have – at least up to the mid-2010s – been more liberal than the policies implemented on the ground (see also Guia in this volume, Chapter 33) which is the reverse of what Hollifield’s ‘liberal paradox’ would predict. Most importantly, perhaps, the ‘liberal paradox’ homogenizes immigration policies and fails to attend to their inherently differentiated and selective nature (de Haas et al. 2018). Indeed, various levels of immigration openness and closure coexist next to each other, because the categorization of migrants as, for example, asylum seekers, family members, or high- and low-skilled workers, creates varied dynamics of inclusion and exclusion (see Bakewell, Chapter 10; Bonjour and Cleton, Chapter 13; Vasey, Chapter 14, all in this volume). Regardless of these limitations, however, the ‘liberal paradox’ has become one of the most important concepts in political science migration studies over the past decades and spurred a wealth of research and debate on the drivers of immigration policy in liberal democracies. To explain why, over the 1990s, the liberal, pro-immigration component ultimately seemed to prevail over the democratic, anti-immigration component, scholars have advanced a series of theoretical explanations. These all put the institutional dynamics and practices of liberal democracy centre stage: Freeman (1995) argued that “client politics” dominates immigration policymaking in liberal democracies, with the two main clients making opposing demands. According to him, employers and migrant associations (the “beneficiaries of immigration”) tend to favour immigration liberalization, while the wider electorate (that “bear[s] the costs of immigration”) is likely to favour immigration restrictions. Policymakers, in turn, tend to privilege the interests of those who can lobby effectively. In the 1990s, these were the pro-immigration advocates, whose lobbying capacity within the state bureaucracy by far exceeded that of the electorate, which at the time remained at a structural disadvantage to make its voice heard.
114 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration Joppke (1998) and Guiraudon (1998) have complemented this political economy argument with an institutionalist perspective, stressing the rule of law as an important explanation for the ‘liberal turn’. According to them, national courts and judges have played a key role in enshrining migrants’ rights to permanent residency, family reunification or social protection against attempts from other institutions, such as the Ministries of Interior or Social Affairs, to restrict those rights (see the discussion on legal mobilization in Kawar in this volume, Chapter 31). The judgments of American courts that cancelled certain immigration restrictions enacted by the Trump administration since 2017 offer prime examples of this dynamic. Also, supra-national courts such as the European Court of Justice (ECJ) have regularly overturned national legislation and policy practices, most prominently in the area of family reunification, where the ECJ has consistently upheld the right to family life enshrined in article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights. Although they zoom into different dynamics within the policymaking process, these theoretical explanations all emphasize the role of liberal democracy in constraining the possibilities of nation-states to restrict immigration. Ultimately, scholars have suggested the existence of a ‘regime effect’ by tying immigration liberalization to particular institutional and political dynamics within democracies, such as the role of courts, employers or civil society activism. Some have even explicitly argued that “accepting unwanted immigration is inherent in the liberalness of liberal states” (Joppke 1998: 292). This has two important theoretical consequences: it suggests not only that (1) immigration governance in autocracies is driven by fundamentally different dynamics that require a separate set of analytical tools and theories, but also (2) that in countries where such ‘unwanted’ immigration is no longer accepted, the liberalness of liberal democracies is at stake.
THE BIAS OF THE DEBATE: A FOCUS ON ‘WESTERN LIBERAL DEMOCRACIES’ In contrast to the global nature of migration, the academic discussion on migration governance, certainly outside ‘forced migration studies’, has largely focused on immigration policymaking in consolidated liberal democracies across Western Europe and North America (Boswell 2007; Castles 2004; Hampshire 2013). Research on ‘counterfactuals’ that would systematically investigate immigration policymaking in autocracies or ‘non-Western’ democracies remains very limited and its incipient insights scattered across disciplines or world regions. This is not only problematic because almost one out of two international migrants live in the ‘global South’ and nearly half of the countries worldwide are classified as autocracies or hybrid regimes. This bias is also problematic because it means that the argument of a ‘regime effect’ in immigration policymaking is based on researching ‘one side of the coin’ only – ‘Western liberal democracies’. These biases and the claim of Western liberal democracies’ exceptionalism, reflect two assumptions deeply rooted in scholarly and political migration debates, namely (1) that the world is split into immigration countries in the economically advanced ‘global North’ and emigration countries in the developing ‘global South’ and (2) that there is an overlap between political systems and political geographies, with countries in the ‘global North’ assumed to be liberal democracies and countries in the ‘global South’ autocracies or at best malfunctioning democracies. These assumptions are misleading. They ignore that some of the world’s major
Beyond the dichotomy of liberal and illiberal migration governance 115 immigrant destinations (such as Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Jordan and Singapore) are by no means ‘Western liberal democracies’. In addition, this binary worldview hides the existence of liberal democracies in the ‘global South’ (such as Uruguay, India – until recently – and Botswana), as well as recent autocratic histories and contemporary autocratic tendencies in ‘Western liberal democracies’ (most prominently in Hungary or the United States). Ultimately, the liberalness of liberal democracy is not as stable as is often implicitly assumed in the debate. The rationale for separating the ‘West’ from the ‘Rest’ is thus primarily rooted in global power dynamics and not in the analytical utility of these concepts. The term ‘global South’ covers countries as economically, politically, geographically and culturally different as Morocco, Indonesia and Kazakhstan. Also, depending on the indicator chosen – income levels, human development, geography or geopolitical alliances – the lines demarcating ‘global North’ from ‘global South’ constantly shift (Bakewell 2009). The ‘global South’ is thus not defined substantially, through a shared set of characteristics, but relationally, through its opposition to and history of colonialization by the ‘global North’ (Comaroff and Comaroff 2012: 127). Similarly, or perhaps even more so, the ‘global North’ is rarely explicitly defined or theorized. This term is generally used as a shortcut to capture an ‘exclusive club’ of countries – essentially North and Western Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand, sometimes also Southern and Eastern Europe or South Korea and Japan (Natter 2018b). This conceptual homogenization disregards that actual political systems across those countries display large variations with regard to electoral rules and party systems, not to mention the difference between parliamentary and presidential systems or the existence of constitutional monarchies. Ultimately, both the ‘Western liberal democracy’ and the ‘global North/global South’ categories are deceptive; not only because they misrepresent reality, but mainly because they do not offer productive intellectual tools to understand migration governance in the past and today, as they conceal differences within and similarities among those reified groups. They are often methodologically nationalist, and therefore risk missing the transnational policies and practices that shape migration governance within and between countries (also see Fischer in this volume, Chapter 4). A short detour on the political economy of knowledge production is necessary to explain the consequences of such a biased terminology for social scientific theory-building.
THE CHALLENGE: DEFYING THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION Social theory is about making sense of what is out there in the world by uncovering patterns in social behaviour. Like novels, whose particular stories can speak to readers across space and time if they get to the core of human and societal relations, social theory can be universal in scope. At the same time, it is never finished. It continuously evolves as new people join the scientific endeavour and bring in their worldviews and experiences. Yet, not all experiences and worldviews are given similar weight in knowledge production. The effect of global inequalities is particularly strong when it comes to which research questions are investigated, and who can contribute to theory-building. With most scientific resources concentrated in Europe and North America, the political economy of migration research can largely explain the disproportionate attention given to immigration policymaking in ‘Western liberal democracies’ and the concomitant claim of their exceptionalism (for an early critique of such knowledge
116 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration production dynamics in the field of refugee studies, see Chimni 1998). It is in this way that social theory, and the concepts it produces, reflect global power structures. Criticism of such Western-centrism in social theory is not new (Wallerstein 1997). Over the past decades, postcolonial scholars – both from within and outside the West – have challenged the Western monopoly of knowledge and the assumption that a ‘universal social theory’ could be based on Western experiences only. There are two main suggestions within post-colonial social science on how to move beyond Western-centrism: On the one hand, scholars have highlighted the diversity of epistemologies around the globe and advocated the need to ‘decolonize’ theory (Mignolo 2002) or to ‘provincialize’ knowledge (Chakrabarty 2000). The idea of provincialized theories is appealing, but it ultimately abandons the ambition of generalizability and continues to analyse experiences around the world through separate theoretical lenses. On the other hand, scholars have called for ‘opening up’ the social sciences by expanding theories from a Southern perspective and moving towards a more global social science (Bhambra 2014; Connell 2007). Here, the focus lies on creating dialogue between different ways of analysing the world. The ideal outcome of such a dialogue would not be to merely add new elements to existing theory, but to (re)build theory with global relevance through connecting and integrating previously side-lined empirical and conceptual knowledge (Bhambra 2014; compare Mayblin in this volume, Chapter 2). But what does it mean in practice to move towards a more global social science? First, it requires breaking the unidirectional application of theory from ‘North’ to ‘South’ and to foster theoretical innovation through ‘reciprocal comparisons’ that “view both sides of the comparison as ‘deviations’ when seen through the expectations of the other, rather than leaving one as always the norm” (Pomeranz 2000: 8). Second, moving towards a more global social science requires opening our eyes to, and systematically looking for, similarities where we would not expect them. Indeed, it is not enough to denounce the political dynamics that underlie binary worldviews. In order to discard such categories, scholars need to prove their empirical irrelevance for explaining real-life patterns and dynamics. In migration studies, scholars have started to investigate the dynamics and drivers of migration politics in countries commonly categorized as ‘Southern’ or ‘autocratic’. Such studies of ‘the other side of the coin’ have played an important role in redressing the ‘Western’ bias in migration research. Yet, they often remain trapped within a binary worldview and therefore prone to similar limitations than research on ‘Western liberal democracies’, namely methodological nationalism and cultural essentialism. More recently, therefore, scholars have started designing research that deliberately crosses the boundaries that structure migration research in order to highlight the fluidity and ambiguity of migration governance practices and to showcase similarities in immigration policymaking across pre-set categories. The final two sections introduce these emerging literatures, showcase their innovative insights as well as their limitations, and outline the novel questions they raise.
INVESTIGATING ‘THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN’: THE ILLIBERAL PARADOX Since the mid-2000s, scholars started to redress the bias towards ‘Western liberal democracies’ in migration studies, first by investigating emigration and diaspora policies (Brand 2006; Gamlen 2008), then also by studying immigration and refugee policies in Africa, Asia and
Beyond the dichotomy of liberal and illiberal migration governance 117 Latin America. Their research challenges the existence of a clear ‘regime effect’ that would tie liberal immigration policies to democratic political systems, and restrictive immigration policies to autocratic regimes. For example, FitzGerald and Cook-Martín (2014) compared immigration policymaking in the Americas over the past two centuries and demonstrate that racist selection criteria in immigration policies were in fact promoted by democratic institutions in late nineteenth-century North America, while it was precisely the autocratic nature of governments in Brazil or Mexico during the 1960s and 1970s that allowed them to abolish ethnic discrimination and adopt anti-racist immigration policies – at least on paper. Looking at refugee politics in Tanzania, Guinea and Kenya, Milner (2009) also shows that democratization can lead to restrictive policy changes while autocracies sometimes have more leverage to enact liberal policies towards refugees. Other scholars have zoomed into autocratic countries’ migration politics, highlighting trends that seem to diverge from those observed in ‘Western liberal democracies’. Thiollet (2016), for instance, shows that – in contrast to the cosmopolitan, liberal character of transnationalism discussed in the mainstream literature – transnational private actors and states in the oil-rich Gulf have actually fostered regional integration through restrictive migration governance, a trend she coins ‘illiberal transnationalism’. And Norman (2016) has argued that autocratic leaders in Morocco, Turkey and Egypt deliberately pursued a policy of ‘ambivalence’ towards migrants (by granting them rights through ad hoc or informal decisions instead of legal changes) to increase their leeway to cancel these rights in the future (see also Natter 2021, Stel 2020). Looking at immigration policy developments in a range of ‘Western liberal democracies’ over the 2010s, however, these dynamics seem less tied to the political regime in place than expected at first. In Southern European countries, immigration regulations have often remained at the level of informal practices and ad hoc policy changes, while, in the United States, immigration restrictions have often been enacted through presidential decrees or other executive instruments and not through parliamentary law-making. In addition, the restrictive immigration policies enacted by democratically elected governments in Hungary, the UK, Denmark and Italy seem to have fostered a particular kind of European regional integration – based on nationalism and an anti-immigration rhetoric – that resembles Thiollet’s ‘illiberal transnationalism’ in the Gulf. Bringing together these empirical insights and mobilizing the ‘liberal paradox’ concept, scholars have suggested the existence of an ‘illiberal paradox’ in autocratic migration governance. On emigration and diaspora policies, Tsourapas (2019: 4–5) has argued that autocracies face a trade-off between maximizing the economic gains of emigration and safeguarding national security as well as domestic regime survival. He shows that authoritarian states that do not seek to attract economic remittances by emigrants are likely to restrict their emigration policies to prevent people from leaving in the first place (such as North Korea and the former Soviet Union). In contrast, states that privilege the economic gains of emigration will likely refrain from restricting emigration and instead focus on controlling their diasporas to limit political claims-making from abroad (such as Eritrea, Morocco and China). With regard to immigration policies, Natter (2018a) has argued that autocracies are bound by global economic liberalism in similar ways than liberal democracies and thus face the same incentives for immigration openness. However, they are more independent from democratic dynamics that are said to drive immigration restrictions – such as election cycles and public opinion – or from the legal activism of national courts that seem specific to countries with a strong rule of law. Although autocratic leaders also have to reconcile the diverging interests
118 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration of economic and institutional actors, ultimately they can enact open immigration reforms more easily than their democratic counterparts. This is the core of the ‘illiberal paradox’ hypothesis: it does not imply that autocracies do enact more liberal policies than democracies, but it suggests that autocracies can liberalize their immigration rules more easily than democracies if they wish so, that is, if it fits the broader economic goals, foreign policy agenda, or domestic political priorities of the regime in place. Libya is a case in point: over the 1990s, Libya has actively pursued an open-door policy towards migrant workers from sub-Saharan Africa, as part of Ghaddafi’s turn in foreign policy from pan-Arabism to pan-Africanism (Paoletti 2011). As a result, over 2.5 million foreigners, most of them from sub-Saharan Africa, were living in Libya at the turn of the twenty-first century. Similarly, the liberal immigration reform launched by the Moroccan king in September 2013 was mainly driven by foreign policy interests: the two regularization campaigns for undocumented migrants and the granting of socio-economic rights to migrants broke with the restrictive approach of the previous decades and allowed Morocco to reposition itself geopolitically in front of both European and African partners (Natter 2018b). These instances show the extent to which autocratic policymaking allows state actors to privilege strategic and foreign policy interests over domestic demands and thus to liberalize migration without the fear of future electoral losses. However, the ‘illiberal paradox’ argument has three main limitations that in part mirror those of its counterpart, the ‘liberal paradox’: first, welcoming discourses might primarily fulfil a symbolic role, leading to a ‘discursive gap’ between open discourses on immigration and the often more restrictive policy practices on the ground. Second, because autocracies are less bound by legal constraints than democracies, liberal immigration reforms are particularly vulnerable to sudden restrictive backlashes and to shifting state priorities. Third, immigration and integration rights do not automatically go hand in hand. As Ruhs (2013) has argued with regard to low-skilled labour immigration, states are faced with the choice of allowing high immigration and restricting integration rights, or limiting immigration and offering integration rights. Because of this numbers vs. rights trade-off, enacting liberal immigration reforms might be particularly attractive for autocracies with low immigration numbers or where political leaders can avoid that open entry policies spill over into a general liberalization of migrants’ rights.
THE WAY FORWARD: CROSSING BOUNDARIES The aim of such conceptual debates around ‘transnational illiberalism’ or the ‘illiberal paradox’ is to specify the role of autocracy in migration governance. Yet, while studies that look at ‘the other side of the coin’ redress the Western liberal-democratic bias of mainstream migration governance research, they still operate within a binary worldview that essentializes categories such as ‘global North/global South’ and ‘democracy/autocracy’. This ultimately limits the questions that can be asked and the insights that can be gained, as it disregards the complexity and ambiguity of migration governance across political regimes and political geographies. This section outlines two research strategies that allow migration scholars to more effectively overcome such bias: (1) looking at variations in policymaking within a given polity and (2) studying countries comparatively across assumed divides.
Beyond the dichotomy of liberal and illiberal migration governance 119 The first research strategy that can contribute to critical theory-building on migration governance is to zoom into the variations of migration policy dynamics within a specific polity. Not all policy issues around immigration are subject to the same dynamics: the institutional, international and civil society actors engaged in refugee integration are different from those engaged in low-skilled labour migration or student mobility. The interests pursued and ideas mobilized by those actors vary, as do the legal, economic and moral foundations that frame policymaking on a particular issue. Not acknowledging coexisting policies of closure (for some) and openness (for others) represents a significant blind spot in the mainstream political science literature (on the complexity and dynamism of border regimes see also Rajaram in this volume, Chapter 15). Immigration policy research could therefore benefit from a more systematic and fine-grained analysis that unpacks homogenizing concepts of ‘overall restrictiveness’ or ‘overall openness’ (see de Haas et al. 2018) and attends more closely to the variation in political and policymaking dynamics according to the migrant categories or policy areas at stake. As I have suggested elsewhere (Natter 2018b), theory-building on immigration policymaking could be advanced through the following, three-fold typology that distinguishes generic, issue-specific and regime-specific policy processes: (1) ‘Generic’ policy processes are at play regardless of the political regime in place or the policy issue at stake, because they emerge out of the very essence of policymaking and power dynamics in modern states. For instance, policy analyses will always have to pay attention to the discrepancies between policy discourses, policies-on-paper and policies-in-practice. (2) ‘Issue-specific’ policy processes are inherently linked to what immigration does to state sovereignty and interest alignment, but are present across political regimes and vary according to the specific policy issue at stake. Take, for instance, bureaucratic dynamics. No matter whether in a democracy or autocracy, Ministries of Interior are likely to follow a security-driven agenda on irregular migration, while Ministries of Health might be more sympathetic to opening services to undocumented migrants given the imperative of securing public health. (3) Lastly, ‘regime-specific’ policy processes are intrinsically tied to specific features of political systems. These are the dynamics where the regime effect kicks in. For instance, the weight of legal actors in immigration policy is, by definition, more important in liberal democracies than in autocracies where judges are often not independent. Substantiating this three-fold typology could be one promising avenue to advance more systematic and fine-grained theory-building on migration politics. The second research strategy is to focus on actual political practices and to deliberately design studies that compare cases across pre-determined categories. For example, Garcés-Mascareñas (2012) compared policies on (irregular) labour immigration in Malaysia and Spain, showing that policy practices on the ground did not differ as much as expected based on these countries’ official policy documents. Also, scholars have investigated bottom-up mobilization on immigration in Israel and Singapore (Kemp and Kfir 2016) and in Morocco and Turkey (Üstübici 2015), differentiating civil society strategies that are at play across countries from those that are context-specific. Such studies make it possible to detect similarities in policymaking across political regimes and to unveil policy practices that were previously hidden – such as bottom-up, pro-migrant mobilization in autocracies and illiberal transnational policy dynamics in democracies. A focus on political practices across pre-set regime types would ultimately allow the identification of autocratic practices in democracies and democratic practices in autocracies (Glasius 2018). What does this mean exactly? On the one hand, not all policy practices in democracies
120 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration are in fact democratic, that is, subject to popular control or legislative approval. Executive orders or ministerial decrees, for instance, bypass discussions in parliament, among parties, or with the public. On immigration, travel visa requirements provide governments with a convenient tool to regulate immigration according to economic or diplomatic priorities, as they can be introduced or removed through executive measures and thus circumvent lengthy and politicized law-making procedures (de Haas et al. 2019). The decision of former US President Trump to use his executive powers and enact the so-called ‘Muslim ban’ (a visa ban for citizens coming from seven predominantly Muslim countries) through a presidential decree in January 2017 is a case in point. In addition, even within democracies with a strong rule of law and low corruption, there is always more leeway for informality and arbitrariness in policy implementation than suggested by research that looks at institutional decision-making only. On the other hand, autocratic regimes also need to secure their domestic legitimacy by taking into account economic lobbies or public opinion (Brooker 2014; Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003). This questions the widespread myth of the all-powerful dictator. The dynamics around visa liberalization in Ecuador illustrate this: only a few months after Ecuador removed visa restrictions for all nationalities in June 2008, the government reintroduced visas for citizens from specific countries, such as China, Afghanistan and Nigeria. As Freier (2013: 16) argued, despite the autocratic nature of the regime, “[President] Correa faced internal political pressure from within his administration, from the political opposition and the media to revoke universal visa freedom”. In addition, research has revealed the limited, yet real margin of manoeuvre of civil society to lobby for migrants’ rights in countries such as Morocco and Iran (Moghadam 2018; Üstübici 2015). This shows that even political contexts with limited freedom of expression offer opportunities for political action and for contesting formal institutions and policies. These insights into democratic dynamics within autocracies and autocratic dynamics within democracies suggest that, when looking at political practices, there might be more similarities in migration politics than expected from a political regime perspective. Ultimately, states around the world are structured in strikingly similar ways: they are organized around ministries with distinct portfolios; separate executive, legislative, and judicial institutions (even if only on paper); and a bureaucratic apparatus that links central decision-makers and local implementers. Despite wide variations in how states work on the ground, state actors are always internally fragmented and pursue potentially diverging interests. Regardless of the political regime in place, more than one actor is involved in developing, taking, or implementing policy decisions, and each actor is faced with a range of policy options that cater to different economic, political or societal interests. As Castles (2004: 865) writes, “political systems are complex and contradictory in themselves […] even less democratic receiving states find that migration control comes up against competing interests”. It is in these spaces of competing interests that power dynamics unfold across political regimes and political geographies, and it is on these competing interests that research should focus. In addition, all states – regardless of the political institutions in place – are operating within the same world system, characterized by globalized capitalist economies and neoliberal pressures on (labour) markets that structure interests on migration and, thus, migration policymaking, in fundamentally similar ways. These insights provide compelling reasons to question the assumption that immigration policymaking intrinsically differs across democratic and autocratic regimes, and to pay more attention to dynamics of convergence across and variation within polities. Such a research agenda would provide much-needed, novel perspectives on the inherent ambiguities and contradictions of real-life migration governance across the globe.
Beyond the dichotomy of liberal and illiberal migration governance 121
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PART II THE POLITICS OF CATEGORISING MIGRATION
10. Unsettling the boundaries between forced and voluntary migration Oliver Bakewell
INTRODUCTION There is little doubt that migrants’ experiences of leaving their homes and travelling to settle in a new place will be profoundly affected by the extent to which they are acting as free agents, with the capacity to decide when they leave, where they go and how long they stay. At one extreme, we see members of the wealthy, well-educated and globally connected elite who can relocate from job to job across the world. These are the archetypal voluntary migrants, free to settle where they choose. At the other extreme, there are those expelled from their countries at gunpoint and forced to seek asylum in another country. Those fleeing under such conditions are the archetypal forced migrants, who have no choice about their fate. For the vast majority of people moving across the world, their migration experience is unlikely to match either archetype. Moreover, in practice, the attempts to draw boundaries between forced and voluntary migration produce somewhat arbitrary and inconsistent outcomes. Nonetheless, the distinction between them permeates academic, policy and popular discourse. In many contexts, how the lines are drawn is critically important. It may mark the difference between being allowed to stay in a country or facing deportation to one’s place of origin. It may shape the way people are received in the society to which they move and their prospects of ever returning to their place of origin. However, as I will show, there is no uniform relationship between the ‘type’ of migration and particular outcomes. Depending on the context, forced and voluntary migrants may be seen very differently and face widely varying policies. Refugees may be (relatively) welcome where economic migrants are seen as a threat; in another setting, the opposite may hold. This makes it dangerous to rely on broad generalizations, especially unqualified claims about forced or voluntary migrants across the world. In this chapter, I look more closely at these concepts of forced and voluntary migration, exploring the relationship between the formal definitions elaborated in policy and legal frameworks, the academic approaches and the way the terms are used in everyday public discussion. While the terms forced and voluntary migration often appear to be self-explanatory, when one prods them to try to find their core, they prove to be somewhat opaque. We can ask what counts as forced migration, and when we can say that migration is voluntary. As I will show in the next section, to some extent the responses depend on who is doing the asking, when they ask and in what conditions. These definitions matter as they mark out categories of people and can have huge implications for these people’s lives. Hence, the third section examines the significance of the distinction between forced and voluntary migration. Recognizing its importance in terms of policy and the arbitrary impact on people’s lives, the fourth section argues that we should be challenging the ‘taken for granted’ significance of the distinction. Drawing on the idea of 124
Unsettling the boundaries between forced and voluntary migration 125 labelling, it argues that describing either people’s movement as forced or voluntary, or the people themselves as forced or voluntary migrants, can trap them in a category that belies their situation (especially with the passage of time) and may preclude potentially productive approaches that could improve their lives.
DELIMITING FORCED AND VOLUNTARY MIGRATION What counts as voluntary and forced when it comes to migration? There is no straightforward answer. The person fleeing from their home in the face of threats of violence, leaving all their possessions behind, is likely to be identified as a refugee. Depending where they are given asylum, they may in due course obtain a new citizenship. Nonetheless, if we think about their migration, we can say it was forced. However, we may no longer be talking of them as a forced migrant as they are now simply citizens. If they choose to use this new citizenship to move elsewhere, this now looks like voluntary migration. Or what happens when a refugee gains asylum in one place and decides to move on to another in search of better, perhaps safer, living conditions? This makes things less clear; this secondary movement has taken place as a result of the ‘free’ decision of the refugee. Their trajectory is no longer one of only forced migration. Hence, whether migration is seen as forced or voluntary will vary depending on which part of their overall movement is considered and at what time the assessment is made (on the significance of time for migration governance, see Griffiths in this volume, Chapter 26). In many cases, we can see one person as both a forced and voluntary migrant at the same time. We must also call into question the idea of voluntary migration. If someone moves to escape desperate living conditions in the hope of finding a better income elsewhere, to what extent is this voluntary? It is not clear where the line should be drawn. The graduate who has trained for years but has no prospect of finding a job using her skills in her country of origin may feel she has no choice but to emigrate in search of a more fulfilling role. She moves in search of a better quality of life, albeit moving from one position of privilege perhaps to another. Is this voluntary? Such reflections, along with abundant empirical examples (Aidani 2010; Bakewell 2011; Crawley and Skleparis 2018; Long 2013) show that the boundaries between forced and voluntary migration are inherently blurred and their analytical value is limited. Nonetheless, the terms play a fundamental role in the discourse of migration, shaping policies and lives. Therefore, it is important to look more closely at the origins of the distinction and the associated definitions. During the great age of migration, from the last quarter of the nineteenth century to the start of the First World War, there were massive movements of people across the world, in particular from Europe and Asia towards the Americas, across the Asia-Pacific and Central Asia regions. Whether people were seeking their fortune in the New World, fleeing violent pogroms against minority groups, or trapped in the exploitative, near slavery conditions of bonded labour, they were all seen as migrants, differentiated by race, national origin and class rather than by the level of coercion involved in their movement. This changed through the first half of the twentieth century as the situation of refugees became a major concern for the emerging international community. First, in response to the chaos in Europe generated by the aftermath of the First World War and the Russian Revolution that left hundreds of thousands of people stateless, the League of Nations created the post of
126 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration High Commissioner for Refugees in 1921. Its first commissioner, Fridtjof Nansen, introduced a travel document, which came to be known as the Nansen Passport, that enabled refugees to move to countries where they could join family members or find employment to sustain themselves. ‘In other words, refugees were to be helped to become migrants: exile and destitution could be solved through continued movement’ (Long 2013: 9). The focus of response changed in the aftermath of the Second World War that created millions of refugees across the continent. This prompted the establishment of the United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Refugees in 1951 (Skran and Daughtry 2007; see also Crawley and Setrana in this volume, Chapter 16). While the Nansen passport offered refugees in the interwar period the solution of freedom to move, post-war refugees were offered three durable solutions, all focused on settlement: voluntary repatriation, settlement in the country of first asylum or resettlement in a third country. Refugees were now marked out as a special category of international migrants: those who are outside their country of nationality and unable to return to it or claim protection from it, ‘owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion’ (UN 1951). It is worth noting that the emphasis of the definition is not on why people left their country – whether their departure was forced or voluntary – but the reasons for which they cannot return to it. To a large extent, the emergence of the refugee regime was a product of the Cold War; in the developing world millions of refugees were created by proxy wars driven by the struggle between East and West; in the West, refugees from the East were received as allies against the Soviet threat (Keely 2001). Their geo-political significance helped to ensure that refugees were the primary focus of any discussions about forced migration until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Others displaced in the upheaval of decolonization outside the Cold War hotspots – in particular, with Partition in the India sub-continent – were never counted as part of this emerging refugee regime (Chimni 1998). Also, those who were forced to move for other reasons, such as earthquakes, floods, drought or other natural disasters had no similar protection under international law. Likewise, those forced to move by conflict or repression but who did not cross international borders – internally displaced persons (IDPs) – remained outside the ambit of the refugee regime. In due course, such considerations pushed academics and policy makers to look beyond the narrow focus on refugees (as defined by the UN definition) to the broader field of forced migration. This shift has been accompanied by vigorous debates. Among academics, some (for example, Hathaway 2007) have argued that refugees are marked out from other forced migrants by their unique position in international law: folding them into the broader category of forced migrants along with IDPs, those displaced by environmental change and others, risks undermining refugee protection. Others (such as DeWind 2007) have taken a more open position, arguing that it is important to understand the interactions between refugees and other forced migrants – and migrants more generally (for a more detailed discussion of these debates, see Bakewell 2011). To a large extent, the latter position has gained more ground. We have moved, then, from the relatively closed field of refugee studies, bound by a legal definition, to the much broader realm of forced migration studies, where the edges are extremely fuzzy. These academic debates have reflected and influenced major shifts in international policy. This has clearly been seen in the formal adoption of the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement by the UN in 1998, which, while lacking the legal force of the UN refugee convention, established a set of international norms for states to respond to internal displacement.
Unsettling the boundaries between forced and voluntary migration 127 More recently, there have been active debates about whether and how a similar approach should be adopted to provide protection for those forced to move by climate change (Bettini 2013; Manou et al. 2017; compare, Boas and Wiegel in this volume, Chapter 7). The boundaries of forced migration have been further blurred in the policy response to large-scale irregular population movements towards wealthy regions of the world, such as the mass movement of Syrians towards Europe in 2015 and the migrant caravans heading towards the USA in 2018. The extent to which these populations comprised those fleeing war and political oppression (that is, refugees), those forced to move by other factors such as impoverishment and environmental degradation, or those who were looking for new opportunities (that is, economic migrants) has been a subject of great political debate (see Crawley and Skleparis 2018). In the Horn of Africa for example, practitioners, policy makers and some academics have adopted terms such as ‘mixed migration’ to describe such flows of people (for example, see RMMS 2014). Moreover, rather than simply talk of refugees, with the implication of recognition under international law, they launch programmes to respond to displacement. The description of the €4.5 billion European Union Emergency Trust Fund for Africa launched in 2015 shows how displacement can be conflated with irregular migration within the same programme: The European Union Emergency Trust Fund for stability and addressing root causes of irregular migration and displaced persons in Africa (EUTF for Africa) was created to address the root causes of instability, forced displacement and irregular migration and to contribute to better migration management. (https://ec.europa.eu/trustfundforafrica/index_en, accessed 12 December 2019, emphasis added)
While the world of forced migration has become more complicated since the early days of refugee studies, when we turn to voluntary migration, things are even fuzzier. To a large extent, voluntary migration has been taken as the obverse of forced migration – it is simply all those movements that are not identified as forced. In some of the migration literature, general claims about migration bracket out forced migration; authors seeking to explain why people move take it as self-evident that their theories do not apply to forced migrants (Piguet 2018: 21). While there is a common sense logic to this, it means that there is very little analysis of the areas where even those identified as forced migrants may exercise agency, such as the decision about when to leave, how to move and where to go. While bracketing out forced migration, some structuralist analyses of migration suggest it is driven by national and global processes, such as capitalist development and globalization, that leave people no option but to leave their homes in search of wage employment (for examples, see also Azmeh, Chapter 18 and Thibos and Howard, Chapter 12, both in this volume). While individual migrants may see themselves as acting autonomously, they are trapped in a labour migration system that steers them to move in the directions that best serve capital (Delgado Wise and Covarrubias 2008; Piore 1979). From this perspective, it seems perfectly reasonable to describe their migration as forced; however, the nature of the force involved is very different from the explicit threat of immediate violence that drives the movements of many refugees. As a result, few would refer to labour migrants as forced migrants, whatever the structural inequity of the labour market that has given rise to their need to move (a similar discussion surrounds climate-change induced migration: see Boas and Wiegel in this volume, Chapter 7). They may not be forced migrants, but are they voluntary migrants? This brings us to a question that is all too rarely addressed; when we refer to voluntary migration, how do we define voluntary? Ottonelli and Torresi (2013) tackle this head-on
128 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration by proposing a set of criteria to assess if a person’s migration is voluntary. The most basic condition is that there should be no coercion involved in the migration processes. While many may accept this as enough to demonstrate voluntariness, Ottonelli and Torresi set out three further requirements. First, there must be reasonable alternatives to moving available at home that would enable potential migrants to achieve an adequate quality of life. This means if the alternative is to starve, be exploited or live in conditions where their basic rights are violated, their migration cannot be seen as voluntary. It is also important to recognize that this condition is referring to the area of origin. People move into situations of gross exploitation and rights violations (see examples on migrant exploitation at workplaces and in homes: de Lange, Berntsen and de Sena, Chapter 24 and Marchetti and di Bartolomeo, Chapter 25, both in this volume), but this does not render their migration involuntary. Second, those who migrate must have viable exit options to change the condition of their movement. For example, it must be possible for people to take action such as changing employer or deciding to return home at some bearable cost. This condition means that indentured labourers would not be seen as voluntary migrants. Third, those who move must have adequate information about the journey on which they embark. In particular, they should not be moving at the behest of traffickers who may promise them jobs and then sell them into slavery; neither should they be beguiled by the distorted stories of successful migration that create unrealistic expectations. At the same time, it is important to recognize that whatever information is available, people may exercise an element of self-deception, disregarding risks and over-estimating their likelihood of success (see Thibos and Howard in this volume, Chapter 12). This seems to lay out a reasonable basis for thinking through the voluntary nature of someone’s overall decision to migrate. However, it is far from a clearly specified set of criteria that can be readily applied in practice. For example, what actually counts as an adequate alternative option to migration (Bartram 2015)? How do we recognize a reasonable exit option? Perhaps a more telling critique is that this approach focuses on particular elements of the migration process: the decision to leave or the prospects of exit having moved. I may be choosing to move to get a better life with perfectly reasonable expectations of what I may find and no compulsion to stay. However, the structural constraints of law or geography may severely limit the destinations that I can possibly reach, or they may force me to follow very risky routes. The journey itself may impoverish me, leaving me open to exploitation and trapped without the resources to contemplate return. For example, in Morocco, many sub-Saharan African migrants who may have had ambitions to reach Europe find themselves stuck with no option but to settle in Moroccan cities (Berriane et al. 2013). In such ways, voluntary migration can all too easily be transformed into involuntary. These reflections show that there is an important gap between voluntary and forced migration; they cannot simply be taken as antonyms: that is, if migration is not voluntary, it must be forced and vice versa. Most people’s migration narratives include some episodes in which they exercise free choices, alongside others where they are forced to take particular actions. Moreover, given that migration is often undertaken by families, different members may perceive things in different ways (Belloni 2020; Hoang 2011); in particular, we need to look carefully at the situation of children, who are obliged to move with their families (see Bonjour and Cleton in this volume, Chapter 13).
Unsettling the boundaries between forced and voluntary migration 129
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE DISTINCTION As we have seen, it is easy to raise arguments that challenge the idea of there being clear distinctions between forced and voluntary migration. Nonetheless, when it comes to policy and practice, lines are routinely drawn to separate forced from voluntary migrants. Which side of the line one falls on can have huge, life-changing, sometimes life-threatening consequences for individual migrants and their families. In many countries – until recently we might have said particularly Western liberal democracies, but that is changing (see below) – those who are eventually recognized as refugees are granted enhanced rights and support to enable them to settle as part of the legal and humanitarian response to their plight (on the politics of protection see Hart, Chapter 8 and Crawley and Setrana, Chapter 16, both in this volume). By contrast, economic migrants may be viewed as a threat to the livelihoods of citizens and may face many barriers to entry, only surmountable by their demonstrating that they will bring a net ‘benefit’ for their chosen destination (mainly discussed through the concept of skills, compare Vasey in this volume, Chapter 14). How this is assessed is a subject of much debate. Economic analysis may show that migrants create jobs or pay more in taxes than the cost to the host state of providing education, healthcare and other services for their families. A social analysis may focus more on their impact on different parts of the community, educational achievement and so forth (chapters in Brettell and Hollifield 2015 show these different perspectives). In other settings, it may be refugees who are seen as the larger threat, especially if they are associated with the violence and insecurity in the country from which they are fleeing. This is more often the case for countries bordering the unstable region; a clear example is the huge concern in Kenya about the presence of Somali refugees. In the Gulf Economic Council countries of the Middle East, there is little acceptance of refugees, but the arrival of economic migrants is welcomed as they provide the labour power which is essential for the functioning and growth of the regions’ economies (De Bel-Air 2018). As the discussion in the previous section showed, there are no clear defining characteristics for forced and voluntary migrants. Some of those forced to move may bring with them huge resources; they are not all poor and powerless refugees. Among voluntary migrants, we may include both low-skilled wage labourers and elite ‘lifestyle migrants’ (Benson and O’Reilly 2009). It is, therefore, important to challenge the stereotypes and generalizations that often pervade the discussions. How far individuals will be identified and/or identify themselves as forced or voluntary migrants and the ensuing consequences will depend on their particular circumstances and the legal, social and political conditions into which they move. In the rest of this chapter, I focus on three ways in which this may have profound impacts on the lives of migrants: their access to rights; the social and political attitudes that they face; and their social trajectory as they look to their future.
ACCESS TO RIGHTS AND FORMAL STATUS As people move across borders or, in some cases, administrative zones within countries, in order to enter and settle in these new places, they must establish some form of relationship with the authorities and societies that they encounter there. Their reception may depend critically on how they are perceived: in particular, how their motivations for moving are understood. There
130 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration are ancient roots to the practice of controlling movement in and out of territory, predating the idea of the nation state (for the emergence of modern nation states and their exclusionary concepts of belonging, see Rodrigues de Castro and Moulin, Chapter 3 and El Qadim, Chapter 19, both in this volume). For example, in fourteenth-century England, laws were enacted to prevent labourers moving away from the land of their feudal overlords without written authority that stated why they were moving and how long they planned to be away. Sharp distinctions were established between those with legitimate reasons for mobility and vagrants, who may have moved in search of work and failed to find it. The latter, the economic migrants of their day, were subject to harsh punishment and possible return to their masters (Anderson 2013: 13–20). Such practices laid the foundation of the concern of modern states with their sovereign right to control movement across their borders. And they have always distinguished between migrants on the basis of their reasons for moving. These are echoed in the distinction between voluntary and forced migrants. While procedures for identifying who should be recognized as a refugee (status determination) vary across the world, they share some common features. First, they examine the conditions under which people left their country, looking for evidence of violence and rights violations – ‘a well-founded fear of persecution’ – that may have compelled them to leave. Second, once they have determined that a person matches the criteria and they are recognized as a refugee, they gain special rights, usually including the right of entry and always the right not to be returned to their country of origin (the principle of non-refoulement). The UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees grants refugees the right to work, own property and freedom of movement within the country of asylum. How far these rights are upheld varies enormously across the world. In many countries of Africa (for example Kenya and Tanzania) and Asia (for example Thailand and Malaysia), refugees are required to live in designated settlements (camps) and have little or no access to paid employment (Jacobsen and Fratzke 2016: 12–13; compare Turner in this volume, Chapter 23). Across Europe, North America and Australasia, the rights under the convention may be fully upheld: those who are recognized as refugees are likely to gain preferential access to welfare and public services such as healthcare, education and housing, compared with other migrants. However, the process of gaining this recognition is tightly controlled and getting ever stricter (see Crawley and Setrana in this volume, Chapter 16). Some countries have other categories that may provide some similar but lesser protection for those who are seen as only partially meeting the criteria for refugee status. This is not the place to elaborate on these different approaches (Carmel and Paul 2013 provide a more detailed analysis of the variations across European states). The critical point here is that if one’s migration is formally recognized as ‘forced’, it brings special rights and privileged access to resources. Apart from these processes of formal status determination, those identified as forced migrants are frequently the targets of aid interventions in response to the particular hardships they face. This is likely to cover a much broader set of forced migrants than the refugees and asylum seekers recognized by states. In particular, it includes IDPs, a category of forced migrant whose numbers across the world far exceed the number of refugees (40 million IDPs compared with 25 million refugees in 2019 – UNHCR1). It may also include those displaced by other disasters, such as drought, floods or earthquakes, rather than the violent conflict and persecution associated with refugee status. Depending on the contexts, these aid interventions may include meeting basic needs for food, water, shelter and healthcare; supporting people into jobs or other income generation
Unsettling the boundaries between forced and voluntary migration 131 activities; education and training especially in languages; psychosocial support to address the trauma of displacement; and legal advice and support to help people secure their rights. The range of issues addressed will vary enormously across the world and even spaces within countries such as camps versus urban settings (see, for example, Turner in this volume, Chapter 23). In many developing countries, they may be more focused on basic needs; in most OECD countries, the state is more likely to cover basic needs and aid interventions tend to offer supplementary support, such as language training or legal services. This may be offered by UN and international organizations (such as UNHCR or ICRC), local, national and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs), faith groups (such as the Catholic Church, local mosques) and other civil society organizations. Whatever the type or source of the support, it is only provided to those who can show that they are forced migrants according to the criteria set by the organization concerned. Of course, there may be a significant gap between the lived experience of moving with all the confusion and messiness discussed above, and the clear narrative presented to ‘prove’ that the migration is forced. The mechanisms for determining who should be recognized as a forced migrant are usually built on a set of stereotypical assumptions about how a forced migrant should behave and suspicions about the credibility of their story of their migration (Sigona 2014). For migrants who fail to perform according to the required script of victimcy (O’Higgins 2012; Utas 2005) and whose case is rejected, the consequences can be dire: potentially deportation, destitution, and even death. Moreover, the maze of legal definitions and bureaucratic rules that delineate between different categories of migrants can present an incredibly complex set of pathways for migrants to navigate. As their lives unfold in ways that do not fit with the patterns envisaged in legislation, their decisions about how and when to describe their experiences to the authorities can have unforeseen legal consequences, shaping whether they are granted refugee status, some form of subsidiary protection, or are classified as economic migrants (Carmel and Paul 2013; see also Mofette in this volume, Chapter 28).
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL ATTITUDES So far, we have only referred to the significance of securing recognition as a forced migrant. While there is no equivalent legal, administrative or aid category associated with voluntary migration, in popular discourse those whose migration is deemed not to be forced are widely perceived as voluntary migrants – often using terms such as economic migrants. In the eyes of many, while forced migrants deserve help and protection, those who have chosen to move must take responsibility for their own fate. If they are thought to have tried to cheat the system, by trying and failing to claim rights or benefits as a forced migrant, they may face public hostility. This bifurcation in response and attitudes between ‘refugees’ and ‘economic migrants’ is seen very clearly in many parts of Europe as significant numbers of migrants from poor and conflict-affected areas use irregular routes to cross borders. While refugees may be accepted, those identified as economic migrants are often vilified by hostile media and sections of the public, accused of criminality, stealing jobs, and draining social welfare. However, the acceptance of forced migrants itself has its limits, as was demonstrated by the hostile response from some sections of the German public to the country’s admission of relatively large numbers of Syrian refugees in 2015 (see Borneman and Ghassem-Fachandi 2017).2
132 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration There are very different attitudes towards those most voluntary of migrants – the wealthy, well-educated elites, who freely move around the world to take up ‘high-skilled’ jobs or establish businesses (Favell 2008). While poor unskilled migrants face increasing barriers to entry and widespread hostility, the ‘best and brightest’ are the subject of a global competition for their talents (Kapur and McHale 2005; see also Vasey in this volume, Chapter 14). Because they are free to move, there is enormous pressure on states from businesses and universities, among others, to ensure that they can make it easy for such migrants to enter the country and to settle there. As a result, across the world, there has been an overall reduction in visa restrictions for these ‘desirable’ migrants, while restrictions have increased to deter the ‘undesirable’ poor voluntary migrants (de Haas et al. 2016). As a growing body of research is demonstrating, while these approaches are often presented as neutral and technical ways of recognizing skills and granting rights of admission and settlement, in practice they serve to reinforce longstanding structures of inequality based on race, gender, religion and class (Ellermann 2019; see also Mayblin in this volume, Chapter 2). While being recognized as a forced migrant may elicit more sympathy and acceptance in some settings, in others, particularly in developing countries, it is associated with poverty and shame. Across most of Africa and many countries in Asia, the responses to refugees and IDPs are focused around camps (Bakewell 2014). Refugees may face restrictions on their movements outside the camp, have special identity cards that mark them out, or be associated with the violence of the conflict they have fled. Moreover, there is a widespread discourse of refugees as a burden on the hosting state and society (Kreibaum 2016). Hence, we find that some people who have fled violence and meet the criteria for recognition as refugees or IDPs may try to avoid being categorized in this way. For example, few Iraqis in Jordan seek recognition from UNHCR as they see the costs outweighing the benefits (Chatelard 2010). In Somalia, those who have more resources when they were displaced were able to settle in the cities to which they fled rather than joining the mass of IDPs who were housed in special camps on the edge of town (EUTF-REF 2018: 40). So far, this discussion has highlighted how the distinction between forced and voluntary migration affects social attitudes. However, where xenophobic attitudes prevail and there is violent hostility towards foreigners in general or towards a particular national group (compare Guia in this volume, Chapter 33), the mob makes no such distinction: forced and voluntary are equally targeted. This can be clearly seen in South Africa, where thousands of Somalis and Zimbabweans have suffered xenophobic attacks on their homes and businesses regardless of whether they moved as economic migrants or were seeking refuge from the political violence in their countries of origin (Crush et al. 2015)
SOCIAL TRAJECTORY Being recognized as a forced migrant may bring benefits – access to rights and resources – that are critically important in the short term, but over time, the category may become something of a trap. For example, across much of Africa, refugees face larger obstacles to gaining citizenship than other migrants (Manby 2016); in some countries, such as Uganda and Zambia, there is no effective pathway to citizenship for refugees (Bakewell 2018; Hovil and Lomo 2015: 46). As a result, they may be seen as temporary visitors who are provided with asylum until they are able to return to their country. However, in many cases the conflicts have continued over
Unsettling the boundaries between forced and voluntary migration 133 many years, so those identified as refugees or IDPs – and often their children born in exile – are caught in limbo, unable to go ‘home’ or to make the place where they live a new home (Aleinikoff 2015; Brun and Fábos 2015). As a result, being marked out as a forced migrant can have profound impacts on people’s ideas for the future (on insecurities of status stretching through time, see Griffiths in this volume, Chapter 26). Research among IDPs in Colombia has shown how the experience of displacement has long-reaching impacts on people’s social and cognitive landscapes, creating enduring social boundaries between the displaced and their non-displaced neighbours and profound difficulties in establishing a sense of home (Celestina 2018; Perez Murcia 2019). In wealthier parts of the world, where the numbers of refugees are much smaller, those who are granted asylum have often been able to move forward to citizenship, bringing to an end their refugee status and enabling them to settle in the same ways as any other immigrants. This is changing as states introduce more temporary statuses with fewer rights, including more restricted access to citizenship. For example, Germany established three different humanitarian admission schemes for Syrians, which, while seeming generous in allowing people to enter the country, offered fewer rights than those available to refugees protected by the UNHCR 1951 Refugee Convention (Tometten 2018). This legal uncertainty is overlaid with increasingly hostile public discourse that represents refugees and asylum seekers as a threat to national identity, the economy and security (Holzberg et al. 2018; Pruitt 2019; compare Guia in this volume, Chapter 33). This creates huge insecurity for forced migrants and makes their pathway to settlement much harder to follow.
CHALLENGING THE DISTINCTION As we have seen, there are no sharp lines between forced and voluntary migration in terms of people’s experiences. At the same time, these categories play a very important role in policy and practice and have a huge impact on people’s lives. While it is easy to denounce the simplistic and inappropriate response of the states that do not recognize the complexity of people’s stories, it is much harder to give a constructive alternative (short of the argument for open borders) that ensures the principle of humanitarian protection. There is perhaps a discussion to be had about whether those principles (as they are currently worked out) are worth the injustices that they create. My inclination would be to stick with the principles and refine and improve how they are put into practice. If humanitarian protection is to have any value, it has to have boundaries that define who is to be protected. However, these need to be transparent and consistent rather than open to capricious change at the unchallenged whim of political expediency. As things stand, we seem to be a long way from this position. Too often people are trapped in categories of forced and voluntary migration that are a reflection of where, when and how a state, NGOs or other actor determined their eligibility. This creates huge inconsistencies in migrants’ access to rights and support across the world. As scholars engage in the challenge of seeking better approaches, they need to be very cautious about using forced and voluntary migration as categories of analysis (Bakewell 2008). The fact that a set of individuals has been formally identified as forced (or voluntary) migrants does not tell us much about their different experiences or characteristics. As we have seen above, these may vary widely, and we cannot assume that refugees share distinctive qualities that mark them out (for example in terms of background, wealth or skills) simply because they
134 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration are refugees. These are grounds to question critically the value of any idea of the ‘refugee community’ or the ‘refugee experience’. Alongside questioning of the categories, it is also important to challenge the way that the forced and voluntary migration are often analysed using separate theories. Given the mix of motivations and patterns of movements that underpin any migration, whether it is seen as forced or voluntary (as outlined above), it is important to look both at the conditions that may have forced the voluntary migrant to move, and the choices made by the forced migrant. It is important to find a balance here. If too much agency is ascribed to forced migrants, this may be taken as grounds to negate their rights to asylum. However, failing to recognize people’s agency means that we deny their autonomy – obscuring their choices and strategies and presenting them as victims (on victimization, see also Thibos and Howard in this volume, Chapter 12). At the same time, we have to learn better to listen to the voices of migrants as we seek that balance. While we do not all share the personal experience of migration, each of us perhaps shares the assumption that we can make decisions for our own lives, albeit recognizing the structural conditions shaping our choices, and expect these decisions to be respected. It should not be hard to extend the same outlook to many migrants, rather than assume that their decisions must have been forced upon them.
NOTES 1. See www.unhcr.org/globaltrends2018. 2. This hostility shifted into the mainstream and took on exacerbated racial and gendered tones after the sexual assaults in Cologne on New Year’s Eve, which resulted in the portrayal of Syrian male refugees as a racialized threat to German women.
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136 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration Hoang, Lan Anh (2011), ‘Gender Identity and Agency in Migration Decision-Making: Evidence from Vietnam’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 37 (9): 1441–57. doi: 10.1080/1369183X.2011.623618. Holzberg, Billy, Kristina Kolbe and Rafal Zaborowski (2018), ‘Figures of Crisis: The Delineation of (Un) Deserving Refugees in the German Media’, Sociology, 52 (3): 534–50. doi: 10.1177/0038038518759460. Hovil, Lucy and Zachary A. Lomo (2015), ‘Forced Displacement and the Crisis of Citizenship in Africa’s Great Lakes Region: Rethinking Refugee Protection and Durable Solutions’, Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees, 31 (2): 39–50. Jacobsen, Karen and Susan Fratzke (2016), Building Livelihood Opportunities for Refugee Populations: Lessons from Past Practice, Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute. Kapur, Devesh and John McHale (2005), Give Us Your Best and Brightest: The Global Hunt for Talent and Its Impact on the Developing World, New York: Center for Global Development. Keely, Charles B. (2001), ‘The International Refugee Regime(s): The End of the Cold War Matters’, The International Migration Review, 35 (1): 303–14. Kreibaum, Merle (2016), ‘Their Suffering, Our Burden? How Congolese Refugees Affect the Ugandan Population’, World Development, 78: 262–87. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2015.10.019. Long, Katy (2013), ‘When Refugees Stopped Being Migrants: Movement, Labour and Humanitarian Protection’, Migration Studies, 1 (1): 4–26. doi: 10.1093/migration/mns001. Manby, Bronwen (2016), Citizenship Law in Africa: A Comparative Study, New York: Africa Governance Monitoring and Advocacy Project, Open Society Justice Initiative, Open Society Institute. Manou, Dimitra, Andrew Baldwin, Dug Cubie, Anja Mihr and Teresa Thorp (eds) (2017), Climate Change, Migration and Human Rights: Law and Policy Perspectives, London: Routledge. O’Higgins, Aoife (2012), ‘Vulnerability and Agency: Beyond an Irreconcilable Dichotomy for Social Service Providers Working with Young Refugees in the UK’, New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 2012 (136): 79–91. doi: 10.1002/cad.20012. Ottonelli, Valeria and Tiziana Torresi (2013), ‘When Is Migration Voluntary?’, International Migration Review, 47 (4): 783–813. doi: 10.1111/imre.12048. Perez Murcia, Luis Eduardo (2019), ‘“The Sweet Memories of Home Have Gone”: Displaced People Searching for Home in a Liminal Space’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 45 (9): 1515–31. doi: 10.1080/1369183X.2018.1491299. Piguet, Etienne (2018), ‘Theories of Voluntary and Forced Migration’, in R. McLeman and F. Gemenne (eds), Routledge Handbook of Environmental Displacement and Migration, pp. 17–28, Abingdon: Routledge. Piore, Michael J. (1979), Birds of Passage: Migrant Labor and Industrial Societies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pruitt, Lesley J. (2019), ‘Closed Due to “Flooding”? UK Media Representations of Refugees and Migrants in 2015–2016 – Creating a Crisis of Borders’, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 21 (2): 383–402. doi: 10.1177/1369148119830592. RMMS (2014), Going West: Contemporary Mixed Migration Trends from the Horn of Africa to Libya & Europe, Mixed Migration Research series, explaining people on the move – paper 5, Nairobi: Regional Mixed Migration Secretariat. http://www.mixedmigration.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/ 008_going-west.pdf. Sigona, Nando (2014), ‘The Politics of Refugee Voices: Representations, Narratives, and Memories’, in E. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, G. Loescher, K. Long and N. Sigona (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, pp. 369–82, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Skran, Claudena and Carla N. Daughtry (2007), ‘The Study of Refugees before “Refugee Studies”’, Refugee Survey Quarterly, 26 (3): 15–35. doi: 10.1093/rsq/hdi0240. Tometten, Christoph (2018), ‘Resettlement, Humanitarian Admission, and Family Reunion: The Intricacies of Germany’s Legal Entry Regimes for Syrian Refugees’, Refugee Survey Quarterly, 37 (2): 187–203. doi: 10.1093/rsq/hdy002. Utas, Mats (2005), ‘West-African Warscapes: Victimcy, Girlfriending, Soldiering: Tactic Agency in a Young Woman’s Social Navigation of the Liberian War Zone’, Anthropological Quarterly, 78 (2): 403–30.
11. The construction and contestation of illegality Vicki Squire
INTRODUCTION How have people on the move come to be defined as ‘illegal’ or ‘irregular’, and in what ways has this emerged over time and across various contexts? What effects has such a construction had on the lived experiences of people migrating, and how are these effects manifest in relation to different migratory groups? By what means has the categorization of people on the move as illegal been contested, and with what success? And in what ways might critical scholars contribute to a shift beyond an approach in which migration is constructed as illegal? This chapter addresses these questions by emphasizing the importance of scholarship that focuses on the irregularization or illegalization of migration. First, it reflects on the historical and geographical emergence of the ‘problem of illegality’, to consider how various authorities across a range of regions and states have become implicated in governing migration in such terms. Second, it explores the ways in which dynamics of illegalization have developed over time, showing how externalized practices of migration control perpetuate the condition of illegality through processes of securitization and technologization that are increasingly global in their reach. Third, the chapter draws attention to the ways that processes of illegalization and experiences of deportability generate conditions under which people on the move experience increased precarity or precariousness. Finally, it charts some of the ways in which the categorization of people as illegal has been contested by wider pro-migration solidarity movements as well as by those migrating themselves. In so doing, the chapter makes the case for a critical research agenda that rejects illegality as a category of analysis. Specifically, it argues for an approach that advances appreciation of the ways in which people who migrate or seek to migrate engage – and are engaged – in political struggles, which challenge longer-standing dynamics through which migration is governed in profoundly unequal terms.
PRODUCING ‘ILLEGALITY’ In 2017 it was estimated that, out of 158 million international migrants, 58 million live in precarious situations as ‘irregular migrants’ (IOM 2018). It is doubtful that such an estimation is accurate given the complexities of measuring ‘hidden populations’ yet, if it is, then this means that collectively a group of people almost the size of the Italian population has crossed international borders without clearance to enter, or has remained beyond the terms of their visa to live and work without authorization in states other than their own (Düvell 2006a). Regardless of whether or not there has been an increase in people crossing borders clandestinely or ‘overstaying’ visa limitations, a question arises as to how the ‘problem of illegality’ or of ‘illegal (im)migration’ has come to be such a defining feature of our times. This chapter addresses this question by drawing on a critical body of literature that has focused attention on the ways in which contemporary governing practices ‘manufacture’ migration as illegal (Essed and 137
138 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration Wesenbeek 2004). Such works point to the ‘legal production of illegality’ (De Genova 2002: 429), whereby illegality as a social condition is understood as an effect of immigration laws along with the discursive formations within which these are embedded (ibid.: 431; compare Dauvergne 2008; Willen 2007). Illegality in this regard is better understood as a constructed or produced phenomenon (Squire 2011); one that differentiates between those who migrate and/or remain in a state with authorization and those who do not, and which ultimately reflects a conflictual political response towards ‘unwanted migrants’ on the part of ‘host states’ (Düvell 2006a, 2006b). Illegality is often assumed to form a problem for states of the global North, with fears about migration from the global South driving restrictive responses from the 1980s and 1990s (see Chimni 1998). The USA and the European Union (EU), along with states such as Australia, developed increasingly exclusionary approaches from this time, driving forward the construction of illegality while legal measures were advanced to address the issue in international terms (see Dauvergne 2008). In the USA, for example, concerns surrounding the role of ‘illegal aliens’ in the workforce intensified in the 1980s and 1990s (Wachter 1980), as routes to asylum for those fleeing conflicts in central America were increasingly closed down (Behrman 2005). The EU began to roll out ‘externalized’ border controls towards so-called ‘transit states’ from the 1990s, with the aim of preventing unauthorized and unwanted arrivals (Düvell 2010). Reference to perceived ‘threats’ such as ‘bogus asylum seekers’ in the UK (Squire 2009) or ‘queue jumpers’ in Australia (Gelber 2003) were broadly referenced as justification for increasingly restrictive policy responses. Nevertheless, trajectories of illegalization during this period emerged across a range of states in the global North and were by no means uniform, given differences in migratory and governing contexts. In Japan, for example, ‘overstayers’ formed the primary concern, with those remaining beyond the terms of their visa facing an increased likelihood of apprehension since the mid-1980s and early 1990s (Morita and Sassen 1994). In the EU, southern states such as Spain and Italy largely tolerated unauthorized entry in the 1990s, by contrast to states in the north, with periodic amnesties for those in irregular situations running from the 1970s through to the early 2000s (Chauvin et al. 2013; Moffette 2018). Regularization programmes – the process of an individual or group gaining a legal right to reside in a particular state and the rights associated with this – also differed, with Spain only institutionalizing a permanent individual regularization mechanism from the mid-2000s onwards (Chauvin et al. 2013: 120). This contrasted with states such as France and the UK, which engaged in regularization on an individual case-by-case basis (Ambrosini 2018: 15). Far from a generic process, illegalization in this regard emerged in variable terms across and within different regions of the global North throughout the 1980s and 1990s in particular. The situation in the global South was also highly variable in terms of the illegalization of migration during this period. In South Africa, for example, the 1990s saw an increase in low-skilled migration post-apartheid, which was met with anger and hostility as well as an increase in removals (Adepoju 2000: 390). An economic downturn in Côte d’Ivoire from 1995 similarly led to increased deportations, contrasting starkly with the increased immigration seen during the post-independence period (ibid.: 391). Nevertheless, deportations were not new to the African continent during this period. Following a 1966 coup, the Ghanaian government organized the mass expulsion of mainly Nigerian migrants who had been working informally in the cocoa industry, and who functioned as scapegoats in a context marked by increased repression, a declining economy and growing unemployment (Bakewell and de Haas 2007: 104). Nigeria similarly engaged in a series of deportations under conditions of
The construction and contestation of illegality 139 economic decline during the mid-1980s (ibid.). Such expulsions can be understood as integral to processes of state-building in a ‘post-colonial’ context, with the deportation of migrant populations facilitating the formation of ethnically defined national citizenships. Indeed, similar dynamics are evident across states of diverse regions, including more recently in the Gulf state of Kuwait, which in 2018 increased deportations in an attempt to ‘rebalance the country’s population’ from the high level of around 70 per cent of the 4.5 million population (Gulf Business 2018). In contrast with many African states that have experienced regional migration, however, Gulf states have seen large numbers of temporary migrant workers entering from outside the region since the 1970s. This has operated under the kafala system of employer sponsorship, which provides a legal migratory route that ties each migrant worker to an individual employer. As well as being highly costly for those making the journey, this has meant that workers are often exposed to exploitation and to a level of precarity that many refer to as a form of ‘new slavery’ (see Gardner 2010). Those attempting to escape such situations are subsequently thrown into an irregular situation, experiencing what De Genova (2002) refers to as a generalized condition of ‘deportability’, whereby the possibility of being removed from a given state is continuously present and creates the conditions of exploitation even where deportation does not actually occur. Indeed, it is worth noting that legality is not a permanent condition, just as regularization does not simply mean that people straightforwardly move out of illegality. Illegality is in itself a complex and ambiguous condition (Squire 2011), which often involves elements of legality as people move between legality/illegality over time, across space, and through the various roles or positionalities that they embody (see Rigo 2011). Moreover, the process of regularization is not irreversible, with legal status often remaining precarious (see Basok and Rojas Wiesner 2018). Regularization has become an increasingly temporary reprieve from illegality over recent years (Chauvin et al. 2013), with amnesties in themselves serving as a condition of possibility for ‘new or recurrent’ waves of illegalization (Garcés-Mascareñas 2010: 83). Routes to legal status or regularization involve family reunification processes, labour programmes, and humanitarian or asylum processes (Ambrosini 2018: 21). Nevertheless, Chauvin et al. (2013) suggest that labour programme regularization has become increasingly predominant over recent years, as people are assessed according to ‘civic performance’. As we will see in the penultimate section, this often leads to a situation whereby employment precariousness becomes both the source and the consequence of legal precariousness (ibid.). Regularization in this regard is directly implicated in the increasingly generalized condition of deportability and the correlative exploitation of migrant labour power to which De Genova (2002) points. Although they focus on EU states, the dynamics that Chauvin et al. point to are by no means unique to states of the global North. In 2018, over 45,000 ‘illegal immigrants’ were arrested in Malaysia and detained for irregular employment and minor criminal offences (New Straits Times 2018). Moreover, in excess of 70,000 were denied entry, marking a shift from Malaysia’s relatively open approach to migration (with restricted membership), towards an increasingly regulated entry system (Garcés‐Mascareñas 2010: 800). Such an emphasis on preventing ‘illegal migration’ has become increasingly prominent over a range of contexts during recent years, albeit in differentiated and context-dependent terms.
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PERPETUATING ‘ILLEGALITY’ What the brief overview of divergent processes of illegalization in the last section suggests is that, while deportations as well as regularizations have been present across a range of regions and over a longer duration, the problem of illegality only emerged as a major concern on the global scene from the 1990s onwards (compare De Genova 2002: 419–20). Indeed, scholars have shown how the illegalization of migration has been perpetuated since this time by concerns surrounding the purported ‘threat’ that irregular movements of people posed to ‘host’ societies (Huysmans 2006). Hastie and Crepeau suggest that there has been a ‘slow and steady progression towards restrictive immigration policies in the Twenty First Century … in a world where goods capital and people have greater access to movement than ever before in history’ (Hastie and Crepeau 2014: 213). They argue that this restrictive approach became increasingly prominent on the global scene following the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001, as political rhetoric focused even more intensively on the ‘existential threat’ posed by ‘illegal migration’ (ibid.). While scholars have debated whether or not 9/11 directly resulted in the securitization of migration (Boswell 2007; Squire 2015), what the growing association of migration with terrorism has nevertheless facilitated is a rolling out of security and policing measures with new levels of intensity (see also Follis, Chapter 5, Jeandesbosz, Chapter 27 and Mofette, Chapter 28, all in this volume). Identifying and disciplining those travelling to and residing within a state without authorization has become a key concern in this context, with emergent new surveillance mechanisms ranging from biometric border security technologies in airports (Amoore 2006) to counter-terrorist strategies embedded in the reporting processes of national healthcare systems (Heath-Kelly and Strausz 2017). Indeed, as mobility checks have been increasingly technologized over recent years, an increasing range of authorities and actors have been enrolled in practices of migration control (Dijstelbloem and Meijer 2011). The securitization and technologization of migration control following 9/11 is a significant development that represents a marked intensification of processes of illegalization. However, such dynamics are by no means new, nor are they limited to states of the global North. Focusing on the US context during the 1980s, Coutin (2003) highlights how a range of actors were involved in the illegalization of migration – from localized authorities, through to charitable organizations and even private citizens who played a role in identifying those subject to deportation. Frowd (2018) goes further to explore the range of actors involved in implementing contemporary border surveillance technologies in Western Africa, highlighting the ways in which postcolonial states such as Senegal and Mauritania draw on EU funds in an effort to advance control over their populations. Such an analysis importantly highlights the ways in which the ‘externalization’ of migration control drives processes of illegalization that play out in context specific ways. A range of scholars have shown how border security and migration management has been ‘off-shored’ to third countries via mobility partnerships and juxtaposed controls (Bialasiewicz 2011, 2012). Yet such practices of externalized control and technologies that render unwanted movements of people as illegal also have a much longer history. For example, the modern passport along with its precursors was integral to securing the safety and the legitimacy of travellers on an international scale from the early twentieth century and formed an integral dimension of colonial rule (Salter 2003: 20–24). Governing practices that produce illegality are in this regard both contextually specific as well as connected to global dynamics of a longer duration, in which migration has been governed in profoundly unequal terms.
The construction and contestation of illegality 141 In the contemporary context, the United Nations Global Compact for Migration is a key initiative by which to understand practices of governing of migration on the global scale. Though non-binding, this compact was signed by 164 states in December 2018. It advocates the engagement of international development for the purposes of migration management and focuses on ensuring that people’s movements across international borders remain ‘safe, orderly and regular’ (United Nations 2018). This emphasis on rendering cross-border migration orderly is also reflected in another significant development in the field of migration from the mid-2000s, the Global Approach to Migration and Mobility (GAMM). GAMM is the EU’s 2005 external programme of action in the field of migration, which focuses on fostering ‘well managed mobility’ and which seeks to ‘prevent and combat irregular migration’ (European Commission 2019a). The European Commission has recently built upon this approach through the 2015 European Agenda on Migration, the first pillar of which is designed to ‘reduce the incentives for irregular migration’ (European Commission 2019b).1 Notably, development has been advanced as a central tool within such a framework alongside trade and security tools, reflecting a significant move on the part of the EU as well as the UN to advance development ‘solutions’ to the ‘problem of illegality’ (on trade cooperation and migration governance, see Azmeh in this volume, Chapter 18). Nevertheless, such an approach has also been controversial, with conflict over migration disrupting solidarity mechanisms within the EU, and with seven EU states as well as the USA refusing to sign the UN compact in 2018 (Squire 2019). The USA has much more explicitly engaged a security framework in addressing ‘illegal migration’ over recent years, such as through extending the US border wall, increasing apprehensions and deportations, and engaging central American states in preventing arrivals to its southern border (Dombrowski and Reich 2017).2 Nevertheless, the securitization- and development-focused approaches are by no means incompatible (Squire et al. 2021), with a range of regions and states involved in the production and perpetuation of illegality in such terms. As we will see in the next section, such developments have the effect of intensifying the precarity of various groups of people who are driven to migrate under precarious conditions.
INTENSIFYING PRECARITY While the previous sections have focused attention on the ways in which different authorities across a range of regions and states produce and perpetuate ‘illegality’, this section focuses attention to the ways that such processes intensify the experience of precarity for people who migrate in ‘disorderly’ or ‘irregular’ terms. Precarity is understood here as a multidimensional condition that involves insecure forms of mobility, residence and labour or other social activities. While precariousness can be understood as a shared existential condition, precarity refers to an uneven experience that is intensified through the production and perpetuation of illegality (see Squire 2018). Precarity thus involves legal vulnerabilities for people who travel without authorization or who remain in a given state following the expiration of their visa, as well as a range of social vulnerabilities. For example, Garcés-Mascareñas highlights the co-constitution of workplace precarity and legal precarity by drawing attention to the way in which illegality arises from the ‘intractable antagonism between demands for migrant labour and demands for closure’ that occur within a state-based framework (2010: 82). The generalized condition of deportability is in this regard implicated in the formation of state power and legitimacy, while also reflecting economic or business interests that drive the exploitation
142 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration of migrant workers. States in the global South are involved in such processes as are states of the global North, particularly where nation-building is strained and where cheap labour associated with a ‘surplus’ migrant workforce is required to meet international market demands. The exploitation of what De Genova (2002) calls migrant labour power is thus integral to the production and perpetuation of illegality on a global scale, with those who are subjected to situations of irregular employment disempowered and unable to benefit from the rights accessed by regularized workers (see Gardner 2010). Illegality as a produced condition in this sense intensifies precarity in social as well as legal terms, with the risk of deportation closing down opportunities to access the rights that are afforded to those in regular situations, and rendering those deemed to be ‘illegal’ increasingly vulnerable to stigmatization and discrimination (Jones et al. 2017) (see also Griffiths, Chapter 26 and Lindberg and Khosravi, Chapter 29, both in this volume). It is not only those who are rendered illegal or deportable as undocumented workers whose precarity is intensified through processes of illegalization. People travelling to claim asylum similarly face suspicion and hostility in a context whereby cross-border movement is highly regulated, and whereby a range of barriers to protection are imposed by states that seek to contain unwanted migration at source or en route. In this context, people claiming protection are increasingly forced to take refuge in states that are not signatories of the Geneva Convention, including those that are governed under undemocratically elected regimes (Gammeltoft-Hansen 2011). Scholars have shown how the limited scope of asylum as a route to protection is grounded in racialized hierarchies, which reflect longer-standing colonial histories and relations of global inequality (Mayblin 2016; see also Mayblin in this volume, Chapter 2). Indeed, such histories and their ongoing legacies draw attention to the limitations of legalized definitions of who counts as a refugee, particularly in a context whereby the distinction between economic and political or forced and voluntary migration is contested (Squire et al. 2021; compare Bakewell in this volume, Chapter 10). The production of those seeking protection as illegal in this regard might be understood in what van Houtum (2010) refers to as a system of ‘global apartheid’, which is characterized by legally sanctioned barriers to free movement such as that embodied within the highly racialized EU visa regime. Yet more than simply a legal regime, processes of illegalization also rely on concrete barriers to migration: barriers which are not only imposed through technological means (as we saw in the last section), but also through physical or environmental means. This is evident in the ways in which deserts, rivers and seas have emerged as barriers to movement over recent years, operating in lethal terms on the bodies of those migrating without authorization (Doty 2011; Squire 2017; Sundberg 2008). While lethal processes of illegalization have become starkly evident as deaths have spiralled across the Mediterranean Sea over recent years (Cuttitta and Last 2019), similar dynamics have been in motion in the USA since the mid-1990s. Dunn describes how in 1993 ‘some four hundred agents [were positioned] directly on the banks of the Rio Grande in a high-visibility fashion to deter unauthorized (or illegal) border crossings’, with officials acknowledging that this would lead to crossers being diverted to ‘more hostile [desert] terrain’ (2010: 1–2; see also Nevins 2010; Squire 2015). Illegalization in this regard intensifies precarity in physical as well as in social and legal terms, particularly for those whose journeys are driven by conditions that are already highly precarious. As we will see in the next section, that people continue to migrate in this context might be understood as nothing less than a contestation over the production and perpetuation of illegality, despite the intensification of precarity that such processes involve.
The construction and contestation of illegality 143
CONTESTING ‘ILLEGALITY’ In the last section we saw how processes of illegalization involve racialized processes of precaritization, which have become particularly lethal along the ‘fault lines’ or at the ‘frontier’ between the global North and global South as well as more broadly (Weber and Pickering 2011). Running alongside works that focus on the intensification of precarity through illegalization, an increasing number of scholars also point to the ways in which the production of illegality is contested by people on the move as well as by wider solidarity movements. Some focus on the ways in which people who are rendered illegal reject the exclusionary formation of national citizenship. For example, McNevin (2011) shows how the advance of claims to membership and belonging by undocumented migrants in Australia, France and the USA exposes the limits of state-based forms of citizenship and involves a rejection of their construction as ‘illegal outsiders’. Others focus on the ways in which those who are refused refuge challenge the limitations of asylum and international protection mechanisms. For example, Moulin and Nyers (2007) show how Sudanese refugees facing repatriation from Egypt demand political voice and express disagreement surrounding the politics of protection and care. In addition, scholars highlight the ways that citizens unite with noncitizens in order to challenge state illegalization practices. For example, Nyers (2003) examines the ways in which anti-deportation movements in Canada form communities of solidarity and protection that challenge the power of the state to exclude. Collectively, such works draw attention to the ways in which processes of illegalization serve to maintain an exclusionary, contingent, yet ultimately contested conception of citizenship or political belonging (Rygiel 2010) (see also Ataç and Schwenken in this volume, Chapter 30). In so doing, they point to the ways in which conditions of legal, social and physical precarity are exposed and challenged by people on the move, as well as by those operating in solidarity with them. Contestations of illegality question the ways in which states manage the conflicting demands of open migration (to meet economic pressures) and closed borders (to meet national citizenship pressures) (Garcés-Mascareñas 2010). Illegality in this regard can be understood in as a form of resistance, which enables precarious acts of escape from situations of exploitation (see Gardner 2010), or from the state’s regulation of the labour system (see Garcés-Mascareñas 2010: 84). Beyond this, illegality can also be understood as a mode of contestation that rejects the closure of asylum routes and the mobilization of environmental forces in efforts to prevent unwanted migration. As indicated in the previous section, processes of illegalization have become increasingly lethal over recent years, particularly in the Mediterranean where border deaths have been highest (Missing Migrants 2018). In this context, search and rescue operations have become a key area of contention over recent years, as NGO vessels have undertaken operations directly in response to the failure of state authorities to prevent deaths at sea. Scholars have shown how different search and rescue NGO groups enact different types of politics: from those embedded within a more paternalistic form of humanitarianism (see Hart in this volume, Chapter 8), to those gesturing toward a more radical no borders position (Stierl 2018). In addition, various acts of ‘grief activism’ have emerged in which public enactments of mourning and commemoration mark the deaths of people migrating at sea (Stierl 2016). Scholars have shown how these pull between a humanitarian politics in which people migrating are rendered as victims, and more critical interventions that bear witness to the violence of state practices and reject the production of non-grievable lives (Squire 2017). As Mazzara argues, diverging politics are also evident in artistic and media productions that engage with
144 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration the lethality of the migratory journeys, with some promoting a politics of pity and others provoking a ‘perceptual shock’ that invites those witnessing border deaths to reflect more critically on the production of illegality (2019: 220). What these various analyses draw attention to are the ways in which activist movements risk overlooking the ways in which unauthorized migration in itself involves a form of contestation over the intensified precarity that emerges where illegalization is enacted in physical as well as social and legal terms. In particular, a humanitarian politics of pity that reduces people on the move to victims is insufficient in challenging the dynamics that lead to situations of precarity. That irregularity or the act of irregular migration can in and of itself be understood as a challenge to processes of illegalization that render people precarious is a point developed by Achiume, who argues that contemporary migration can be understood as a form of ‘decolonization’ that emerges in response ‘to the asymmetrical … structure of co-dependence’ forged on the basis of migration from Europe during the colonial period (2017: 142). This resonates with works discussed in the previous section, such as Mayblin’s (2016) analysis of the hierarchical grounds of contemporary asylum regimes which highlights how irregularization involves racialized processes of migration control of significance over a longer duration. Achiume argues that the act of crossing borders involves ‘fleeing or rejecting severe political-economic conditions and the fall-out of these conditions’, thus representing an important first step toward decolonization (2017: 145, original emphasis). Indeed, scholars engaging the testimonies of people on the move have shown precisely how the act of migrating often involves claims to justice and to the equal right of migration with reference to the racialized inequalities associated with colonial legacies (Squire et al. 2021). Such works point to the importance of exploring contestations of illegality by those most affected by processes of illegalization and precaritization: people on the move themselves. Beyond this, they also highlight the increasing significance of such contestations for a range of authorities and actors complicit in processes of illegalization. The rejection and exposure of processes of producing illegality in this regard paves the way for an appreciation of the multiple ways through which those of different positionalities can come together to contest governing practices that perpetuate precarity. A critical research agenda that rejects ‘illegality’ as a category of analysis in this regard plays an important role in advancing appreciation of the ways in which people on the move engage – and are engaged – in political struggles that are both of historical and ongoing importance.
CONCLUSION This chapter has interrogated the construction of ‘illegality’ by highlighting the ways in which this is a produced condition, which emerges in contextually specific ways across various regions and states. While I have shown how a growing range of states and authorities are implicated in processes of illegalization, I have also highlighted the ways in which illegality is increasingly perpetuated by securitized and externalized practices of governing migration, particularly as these have been driven by the concerns of states in the global North. Although by no means new, such dynamics intensify the precarity of people on the move, including those who are exploited as cheap labour and those who are faced with legal, social and physical barriers on embarking on journeys in the search for peace and safety. Nevertheless, the chapter has also drawn attention to the ways in which people on the move as well as people acting in solidarity with them contest such processes of illegalization. The chapter has focused specif-
The construction and contestation of illegality 145 ically on the Mediterranean context, due to the EU’s role as a pioneer of a ‘global approach’ to externalized control and the increased lethality of illegalization in such a context. I have shown how a range of contestations in this context reject the closure of asylum routes and the mobilization of environmental forces in efforts to prevent unwanted migration. Showing how critical scholars distinguish between humanitarian interventions grounded in a politics of pity and solidarity movements that more directly engage irregularity itself as a form of contestation, I have highlighted the criticality of a research agenda that rejects illegality as a category of analysis. In addition, I have gestured towards the need for a postcolonial analysis of contestations over longer-standing racialized inequalities in global dynamics of governing migration – not least those that are advanced by people on the move directly. Critical here is a research programme that advances appreciation of the ways in which people on the move engage directly in political struggles over irregularity as a political stake (Squire 2011).
NOTE 1. Since the chapter was written, the EU’s 2020 ‘migration pact’ has been introduced. However, the Agenda on Migration remains an important precursor to the new pact. 2. There has been a change in the US administration since this article was written with early indicators of a less antagonistic approach to migration.
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146 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration Dauvergne, C. (2008), Making People Illegal: What Globalisation Means for Migration and Law, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. De Genova, N. (2002), ‘Migrant “Illegality” and Deportability in Everyday Life’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 31 (2): 419–47. Dijstelbloem, H. and A. Meijer (eds) (2011), Migration and the New Technological Borders of Europe, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Dombrowski, P. and S. Reich (2017), ‘Does Trump have a Grand Strategy?’, International Affairs, 93 (5): 1013–37. Doty R. L. (2011), ‘Bare Life: Border-crossing Deaths and Spaces of Moral Alibi’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 29 (4): 599–612. Dunn T. J. (2010), Blockading the Border and Human Rights: The El Paso Operation that Remade Immigration Enforcement, Austin: University of Texas Press. Düvell, F. (2006a), ‘Reframing the Irregular Migration Dilemma’, in F. Düvell (ed.), Illegal Immigration in Europe: Beyond Control?, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 223–43. Düvell, F. (2006b), ‘Irregular Migration: A Global, Historical and Economic Perspective’, in F. Düvell (ed.), Illegal Immigration in Europe: Beyond Control?, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 14–39. Düvell, F. (2010), ‘Transit Migration: A Blurred and Politicised Concept’, Population, Space and Place, 18 (4): 415–27. Essed, P. and R. Wesenbeek (2004), ‘Contested Refugee Status: Human Rights, Ethics and Social Responsibilities’, in P. Essed, G. Frerks and J. Schrijvders (eds), Refugees and the Transformation of Societies: Agency, Policies, Ethics and Politics, New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 53–65. European Commission (2019a), ‘Global Approach to Migration and Mobility’, Migration and Home Affairs, https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/international-affairs/global-approach -to-migration_en. European Commission (2019b), ‘European Agenda on Migration’, Migration and Home Affairs, https:// ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/european-agenda-migration_en. Frowd, P. M. (2018), Security at the Borders: Transnational Practices and Technologies in West Africa, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gammeltoft-Hansen, T. (2011), ‘Outsourcing Asylum: The Advent of Protection Lite’, in L. Bialiasiewicz (ed.), Europe and the World: EU Geopolitics and the Transformation of European Space, Farnham and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, pp. 129–52. Garcés-Mascareñas, B. (2010), ‘Legal Production of Illegality in a Comparative Perspective: The Cases of Malaysia and Spain’, Asia Europe Journal, 8 (1): 77–89. Gardner, A. M. (2010), ‘Engulfed: Indian Guest Workers, Bahraini Citizens and the Structural Violence of the Kafala System’, in N. De Genova and N. Peutz (eds), The Deportation Regime: Sovereignty, Space, and the Freedom of Movement, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 196–223. Gelber, K. (2003), ‘A Fair Queue? Australian Public Discourse on Refugee and Immigration’, Journal of Australian Studies, 77: 23–30. Gulf Business (2018), ‘Kuwait has Deported 13,000 Foreigners Since January’, 27 September, https:// gulfbusiness.com/kuwait-deported-18000-foreigners-since-january/. Hastie, B. and F. Crepeau (2014), ‘Criminalising Irregular Migration: The Failure of the Deterrence Model and the Need for a Human Rights-Based Framework’, Journal of Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Law, 28 (3): 213–36. Heath-Kelly, C. and Strausz, E. (2017), Counter-terrorism in the NHS: Evaluating Prevent Duty Safeguarding in the NHS (University of Warwick online report), https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/ research/researchcentres/irs/counterterrorisminthenhs/project_report_60pp.pdf. Huysmans, J. (2006), The Politics of Insecurity: Fear, Migration and Asylum in the EU, London: Routledge. IOM (2018), Global Migration Indicators: Insights from the Global Migration Portal, https:// publications.iom.int/system/files/pdf/global_migration_indicators_2018.pdf. Jones, H., Y. Gunaratnam, G. Bhattacharyya, W. Davies, S. Shaliwa, K. Forket, E. Jackson and R. Saltus (2017), Go Home! The Politics of Immigration Controversies, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Mayblin, L. (2016), Asylum after Empire: Colonial Legacies in the Politics of Asylum Seeking, Rowman and Littlefield.
The construction and contestation of illegality 147 Mazzara, F. (2019), Reframing Migration: Lampedusa, Border Spectacle and Aesthetics of Subversion, Oxford: Peter Lang. McNevin, A. (2011), Contesting Citizenship: Irregular Migrants and New Frontiers of the Political, New York: Columbia University Press. Missing Migrants (2018), ‘Latest Global Figures’, https://missingmigrants.iom.int/. Moffette, D. (2018), Governing Irregular Migration: Bordering Culture, Labour and Security in Spain, Vancouver, Canada: UBC Press. Morita, K. and S. Sassen (1994), ‘The New Illegal Immigration in Japan, 1980–1992’, International Migration Review, 28 (1): 153–63. Moulin, C. and P. Nyers (2007), ‘We Live in a Country of UNHCR – Refugee Protests and Global Civil Society’, International Political Sociology, 1 (4): 356–72. Nevins J. (2010), Operation Gatekeeper and Beyond: The War on Illegals and the Re-making of the US–Mexico Boundary, London: Routledge. New Straits Times (2018), ‘Total of 45,499 Illegal Immigrants Arrested by Immigration Department this Year’, by Teoh Pei Ying, 9 December, https://www.nst.com.my/news/nation/2018/12/439005/total -45499-illegal-immigrants-arrested-immigration-department-year. Nyers, P. (2003), ‘Abject Cosmpolitanism: The Politics of Protection in the Anti-Deportation Movement’, Third World Quarterly, 24 (6): 1069–93. Rigo, E. (2011), ‘Citizens Despite Borders: Challenges to the Territorial Order of Europe’, in V. Squire (ed.), The Contested Politics of Mobility: Borderzones and Irregularity, London: Routledge, pp. 199–215. Rygiel, K. (2010), Globalising Citizenship, British Colombia: UBC Press. Salter, M. B. (2003), Rights of Passage: The Passport in International Relations, London: Lynne Rienner. Squire, V. (2009), The Exclusionary Politics of Asylum, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Squire, V. (ed.) (2011), The Contested Politics of Mobility: Borderzones and Irregularity, London: Routledge. Squire, V. (2015), ‘The Securitization of Migration in the EU: An Absent Presence?’, in G. Lazaridis and K. Wadia (eds), The Securitization of Migration in the EU, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 19–36. Squire, V. (2017), ‘Governing Migration through Death in Europe and the US: Identification, Burial, and the Crisis of Modern Humanism’, European Journal of International Relations, 23 (3): 513–32. Squire, V. (2018), ‘Mobile Solidarities and Precariousness at City Plaza: Beyond Vulnerable and Disposable Lives’, Studies in Social Justice, 12 (1): 111–32. Squire, V. (2019), ‘A milestone missed? The global compact on migration and the limits of solidarity’, Global Affairs, 5 (2): 155–162. Squire, V., N. Perkowski, D. Stevens and N. Vaughan-Williams (2021), Reclaiming Migration: Voices from Europe’s “Migrant Crisis”, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Stierl, M. (2016), ‘Contestations in Death: The Role of Grief in Migration Struggles’, Citizenship Studies, 20 (2): 173–91. Stierl, M. (2018), ‘A Fleet of Mediterranean Border Humanitarians’, Antipode, 50 (3): 704–24. Sundberg J. (2008), ‘Trash Talk and the Production of Quotidian Geopolitical Boundaries in the United States–Mexico Borderlands’, Social and Cultural Geography, 9 (8), 871–90. United Nations (2018), ‘Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration’, Final Draft, https:// www.un.org/pga/72/wp-content/uploads/sites/51/2018/07/migration.pdf. van Houtum, H. (2010), ‘Human Blacklisting: The Global Apartheid of the EU’s External Border Regime’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 28: 957–76. Wachter, M. L. (1980), ‘The Labour Market and Illegal Immigration: The Outlook for the 1980s’, ILR Review 33 (3): 342–54. Weber, L. and S. Pickering (2011), Globalisation and Borders: Death at the Global Frontier, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Willen, S. (2007), ‘Toward a Critical Phenomenology of Illegality: State Power, Criminalisation, and Embodied Experience among Undocumented Migrant Workers in Tel Aviv, Israel’, International Migration, 45 (3): 8–38.
12. Trafficking as the moral filter of migration control Cameron Thibos and Neil Howard
INTRODUCTION The fight against ‘human trafficking’ has, since the 1990s, become a cause célèbre of modern politics. It is a bipartisan issue that everybody can be safely for and that nobody wants to be against (Quirk and Bunting 2014). It has been championed by high profile political figures as diverse as Theresa May, George Bush, Robert Mugabe and Ivanka Trump, and many thousands of NGOs around the world are working right now to eradicate it (ibid.). But, popular as the cause is, it is not without its critics. Today there are two broad camps within anti-trafficking work with academics, practitioners, policymakers and activists on both sides. One side views human trafficking first and foremost as a crime, perpetrated by individuals upon other individuals, which can be stopped through sufficient enforcement and prevention. The other side views trafficking as the far end of a spectrum of exploitation brought about by the regularly functioning, structural mechanisms of modern-day capitalism. Furthermore, it highlights the problematic governance effects of the trafficking frame. Firmly grounded in this second perspective, we argue in this chapter that the traction afforded to the discourse of human trafficking has made it a unique and powerful tool of migration governance. It operates primarily by creating a zone of exception within the broader landscape of labour migration. Inside this zone, we are told by anti-trafficking advocates, criminals move people forcibly or through deception in order to exploit them. This movement is said to constitute an egregious abuse of vulnerability, a violation of human rights, and a crime, and governments thus have a duty to prevent it. This framing has several effects. First, it gives states a morally high-grounded reason to treat mobility with suspicion, to patrol borders, and to return migrants to their countries of origin. Second, it reduces the field of concern to that zone of exception, rendering everything that falls outside of its narrow scope ‘unexceptional’ and thus unworthy of attention, resources and care. Third, it reinforces and complements damaging narratives around ‘illegal migration’ and ‘illegal migrants’, dichotomously positioning these against ‘human trafficking victims’ – if they are not victims then they have no excuse for breaking the law. As such, we argue that the concept of human trafficking performs a sorting function within migration management regimes. We show this by taking a close look at the three central categories that it creates – victims of trafficking, traffickers, and non-victims of trafficking. After detailing the genesis, trajectory and expansion of the trafficking concept over the past 150 years, we look at a series of short contemporary examples taken from the latest critical and ethnographic literature to demonstrate how those navigating the trafficking web interact with their categorization and the wider trafficking regime.
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Trafficking as the moral filter of migration control 149
THE ‘WHITE SLAVE TRAFFIC’ AND THE CREATION OF TRAFFICKING The origins of the concept ‘human trafficking’ date back to the mid-1800s, and for most of its history it has been exclusively associated with the movement of women and children for the purposes of prostitution. Today’s global anti-trafficking regime is the product of over a century of efforts in Europe and the United States to police female sexuality and/or abolish the sex trade. The second half of the nineteenth century saw greatly increased movement within Europe and the USA, and from Europe to the USA and the European colonies (Doezema 1999: 39). In particular, more unaccompanied women were on the move than before. This troubled social campaigners. They disapproved of single women living unchaperoned in foreign cities and feared that many would enter prostitution or behave otherwise ‘immorally’ as a result of their new autonomy. Made anxious by this loss of control and unable to conceive of it as a change that ‘good’ women would voluntarily embrace, activists on both sides of the Atlantic began calling for their governments to crack down on what they dubbed the ‘white slave traffic’ (ibid.: 41; Beckman 1983). This alarmist framing drew heavily on the trope of female victimization by foreign men to drum up support, setting the groundwork for a conceptualization of trafficking that is still with us today. The Categories of Trafficking The discourse created by and surrounding the white slave traffic categorized people in three main ways: those unknowingly trapped in a horrible fate (victims of trafficking); those involved in bringing about that fate (traffickers); and those responsible for their own suffering (non-victims of trafficking). These categories, which were racially and imperially coded, are still present. The people who have been slotted into them, however, have shifted over time. Victims of trafficking in this incipient phase were constructed as ‘white’, literally in terms of skin colour and figuratively in terms of innocence. The archetypal victims were, as US Senator Mann described them when arguing for the 1910 White-Slave Traffic Act, ‘those women and girls who, if given a fair chance, would, in all human probability, have been good wives and mothers and useful citizens’ (Beckman 1983: 1117). Similarly, for Europeans, ‘It was inconceivable that their female compatriots would willingly submit to sexual commerce with foreign, racially varied men. In one way or another these women must have been trapped and victimised’ (Guy 1992: 203). This framing, Doezema (1999: 28) argues, was crucial to the success of these early campaigns and helped generate popular support for reformers’ ultimate goal of abolishing all prostitution. Purity and victimhood were thus essentially linked in this conception. Women who willingly entered prostitution lost their perceived purity and with it their inscribed ‘whiteness’ (Lammasniemi 2017: 67). Those responsible for victimizing, those labelled as traffickers, were constructed as ‘non-white’. Campaigns portrayed foreigners, immigrants, and other racialized men as dangerous to young white women and held them responsible for the ‘traffic’ (Doezema 1999: 28; see also Leigh 2015). In the USA, this fear of the Other channelled a conservative reaction against changing cities in which immigrants, black Americans, and single white women started to mix and live alongside each other (Whyte 2013: 133), while in imperial territories the threat was seen lurking in the immorality of host societies as a whole (Guy 1991: 12). For reform-minded
150 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration campaigners, Whyte (2013: 133) argues, ‘White slavery narratives provided a perfect template for constructing the idea of the foreign menace.’ Non-victims of the white slave traffic were those individuals excluded from the circle of care because they were identified as non-white or somehow impure (and thus undeserving). Black prostitutes were of little concern for US campaigners (Mumford 1997: 14). And while the 1875 Page Act banned the entry of foreign prostitutes, especially from Asia, it certainly did not seek to help them (Pliley 2015). In British colonies such as Hong Kong, it was argued that Chinese prostitutes ‘were habituated to sexual slavery, owned and trained to the life’ (Howell 2000: 332). As such, they ‘did not deserve the tender heartedness of their benefactors, and whatever philanthropy they received was not based in any event on the ascription of liberal virtues’ (ibid.). In Britain itself, the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, which defined a trafficked woman in the UK for the first time, drew a sharp distinction between the unwilling victim and the willing prostitute. A woman could not be trafficked if she lived in a brothel. The Act further exempted ‘common prostitutes’ from its protections, making it ‘a misdemeanour to procure or attempt to procure “any girl or woman under twenty-one years of age, not being a common prostitute, or of known immoral character, to have unlawful carnal connexion, either within or without the Queen’s dominions”’ (Lammasniemi 2017: 69, emphasis added). Responding to the White Slave Traffic The advocacy and policy response to the white slave traffic focused on controlling women’s movement and punishing those abetting it. On the one hand, ‘Reformers sought to keep women at home and under [the] control of families by warning them of dangers of sexual exploitation abroad’ (Whyte 2013: 131). On the other, various laws and treaties sought to protect victims, punish perpetrators, and separate out non-victims from victims. Their main consequence, as is the case with contemporary anti-trafficking policy, was to intervene in women’s mobility while strengthening immigration controls and bureaucracies. Legal changes began with the passage of the 1875 Page Act in the USA and the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 in the UK. A series of immigration acts passed in the USA between 1903 and 1917, the US 1910 White-Slave Traffic Act, and the UK Aliens Act 1905, gave authorities on both sides of the Atlantic the power to monitor transit points for ‘undesirable’ women, detain them and those assisting them, and prosecute or deport them (Lammasniemi 2017; Pliley 2015). A series of international agreements were also concluded that committed governments to monitoring travelling women or girls who ‘were destined for an immoral life’ (United Nations 1904).1 They culminated in the 1950 Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others. This, like the agreements preceding it, associated the term ‘traffic’ exclusively with the movement of people for the purposes of prostitution and focused on punishing those facilitating that movement. Anti-trafficking activism subsided with the conclusion of the 1950 Convention, only to resurface 20 years later when radical feminists such as Kathleen Barry began to concern themselves with the global sex trade. However, it was not until the 1990s that the trafficking discourse once again gained substantial traction. When it did, the framings and ideas from its initial period were to prove critical. As Whyte (2013: 125) argues, ‘The construction of the white, innocent victim of prostitution so central to the “white slavery” in many ways shaped the construction and understanding of contemporary human trafficking.’
Trafficking as the moral filter of migration control 151
THE REDISCOVERY AND EXPANSION OF TRAFFICKING Popular and political interest in trafficking exploded over the course of the 1990s. Scholars have suggested a number of possible reasons why. The breakdown of the old Soviet Union (Berman 2003), the spread of neoliberal economic globalization (Limoncelli 2009; Sharma 2003), the rise in transnational organized crime (Derks 2000), and the increasing rigidity of Western immigration regimes (Anderson 2000; Andrijasevic 2010) have all been cited as key factors. Whilst competing narratives abound, there is general agreement on two key matters. On the one hand, a variety of economic, political and environmental processes combined to make the livelihoods of workers more precarious, prompting many to attempt migration. On the other, the space for their legal movement and protection by national governments diminished, resulting in greater illegalized movement and, with it, greater opportunities for exploitation (Sharma 2003; see also Squire in this volume, Chapter 11). The confluence of these and other factors not only put new wind in the sails of an old concept but expanded its scope to encompass other types of movement associated with coercion and exploitation. Specifically, child trafficking and labour trafficking were added to trafficking for sexual exploitation in this period. The Invention of Child and Labour Trafficking ‘Trafficking in children’, despite being a recent addition to the field, has roots in the same nineteenth-century, English, middle-class mores as its parent concepts, ‘child labour’ and ‘human trafficking’. British activists and politicians influenced by the Romantic Movement understood childhood as a time of bucolic innocence, play and rest. Work had little place in that conception. However, their Protestant concern for piety, social order and discipline made them also see children as creatures to be formed and controlled. Their solution was to campaign throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to replace children’s work with mandated formal education (Hendick 1997; see also Bourdillon et al. 2010). Their success is evident in the unquestioned dominance of this model in most rich countries today (Dahlén 2007; Fyfe 2007), as well as in the way this model is still pushed upon countries with other understandings of what is ‘normal’ for children – including through the imposition of the child trafficking concept. Child trafficking emerged as a distinct issue in the 1990s when these ongoing anti-child work campaigns began to mix with growing concern around children’s rights violations, especially children’s sexual exploitation. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted in 1989, the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) was set up in 1992, and the World Congress against the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children was held in 1996. This push culminated in 2000 when children were included within the Palermo Protocol on human trafficking (Howard 2017), the main piece of international legislation on trafficking that we discuss in further detail below. As these changes were taking place in the field of child labour, a growing number of feminist organizations were lobbying the Clinton Administration about the ‘sexual slavery’ of women both at home and abroad (Chuang 2006). Their efforts were paralleled elsewhere, greatly increasing global attention to trafficking during this period (Kempadoo et al. 2005). This vibrant engagement around the concept of trafficking came at a time when the number of people crossing borders to find work was on the rise, as was the involvement of organized
152 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration crime networks in facilitating that movement, prompting governments to see exploitative yet non-sexual migrant labour through the trafficking lens as well (Chuang 2006: 449; see also C.deBaca 2019). This was helped along by the work of some progressive NGOs, which, in order to push back against the exclusive association of trafficking with prostitution, were struggling to get a broader definition of labour trafficking on the agenda (Chuang 2014). The three strands came together in two policy instruments at the turn of the millennium which, together, represent the legal heart of global trafficking discourse and the base from which anti-trafficking policy has spread around the world. The Creation of the Contemporary Global Trafficking Regime In 1998, President Clinton responded to the political pressures and trends described above with a new anti-trafficking framework that emphasized the so-called three Ps: prevention, protection and prosecution (Chuang 2006: 449). It led, through the various stages of US law-making, to the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000. This established a series of domestic definitions around trafficking; a set of minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; a sanctions regime linking certain types of financial assistance to compliance with those standards; and a specialized office to monitor that compliance (ibid.). The influence of the TVPA on other countries has been immense. The TVPA has reinforced the categorical delineations first set out in the campaigns against the white slave traffic. Chapkis (2003: 924) describes how ‘the legislation works to neatly divide “violated innocents” from “illegal immigrants” along the lines of sex and gender … carefully differentiat[ing] between “innocent” and “guilty” prostitutes and provid[ing] support only to the innocent’ – those declared victims of ‘severe forms of trafficking in persons’. In separating these two groups on this basis of inscribed victimhood, she argues that the American government was able to justify limiting its concern to the first group and the punitive measures meted out to the second group. The trafficking regime was established at the international level on the back of the TVPA. In concert with these developments in Washington DC, the international community came together in Vienna to draft a convention on transnational organized crime, with an addendum protocol that would address human trafficking. Though deeply polarized debate raged about the final definitional content of this protocol (Chuang 2006; Ditmore and Wijers 2003), ultimately the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, Supplementing the Convention on Transnational Organized Crime was finalized in 2000. It came into force three years later. It revolves around three key elements: an action (recruit, transport, transfer, harbour, receipt); a means (threat or use of force or other forms of coercion); and a purpose (exploitation) (Kotiswaran 2014). In full, the current, international definition of trafficking found in the Palermo Protocol is as follows: a. ‘Trafficking in persons’ shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploita-
Trafficking as the moral filter of migration control 153 tion, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs; b. The consent of a victim of trafficking in persons to the intended exploitation set forth in subparagraph (a) of this article shall be irrelevant where any of the means set forth in subparagraph (a) have been used; c. The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of a child for the purpose of exploitation shall be considered ‘trafficking in persons’ even if this does not involve any of the means set forth in subparagraph (a) of this article; d. ‘Child’ shall mean any person under eighteen years of age.2 We use the common shorthand of ‘Palermo Protocol’ to refer to this definition in the remainder of the chapter. The contents of the Palermo Protocol remain a matter of great debate, and it is hardly the only operational definition currently in use (see Kotiswaran 2014). What is certain, however, is that its promulgation and subsequent ratification by countries around the world heralded an unprecedented global expansion of publications, media attention, project money, legal initiatives, and political rhetoric on trafficking. This has institutionalized, to an extent never before seen, the project of sorting ‘deserving’ from ‘undeserving’ migrants and using those categories as a basis for governing their further movement.
NAVIGATING THE TRAFFICKING REGIME The combined forces of the Palermo Protocol and the US TVPA expanded the concept of trafficking and led to an explosion of anti-trafficking policy and activism. This has made the three main categories of the trafficking paradigm – victim, non-victim and trafficker – more relevant to more people than ever before. However, recent ethnographic research, particularly into the dynamics of labour migration for precarious and informal work, demonstrates that, when lived, these categories are rarely – if ever – as clear cut as policymakers and certain activists suggest. Four brief examples give a taste of how these categories blur in practice, as well as the effects that they have on migrants’ social positions and lived experiences. They are taken from a large and growing body of critical and ethnographic scholarship that seeks to explain how exploitation functions in the global economy and why individuals end up in exploitative labour situations (see, for example, Squire, Chapter 11; Azmeh, Chapter 18; de Lange et al., Chapter 24; Marchetti and di Bartolomeo, Chapter 25; and Piper, Chapter 32, all in this volume). Similar examples can be found in this literature across a wide range of geographic and sectoral contexts (our project, Beyond Trafficking and Slavery on openDemocracy,3 contains an enormous repository of such accounts). These accounts show not only that, in contrast to the ideal triptych of victim, perpetrator and non-victim, reality is more complex, but also that the omission of this complexity by trafficking’s political categories renders individuals more vulnerable and thus more easily governable. In particular, we find that the perfect, agency-less victim is hard to find. Rather, the vast majority of workers on the move who are defined, policed or otherwise governed as victims of trafficking continue to exercise their agency while entering into, working under or resisting exploitative labour relations. Research shows time and time again that structural constraints rather than individualized force are almost always the dominant factor driving their decisions
154 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration (LeBaron et al. 2019). At the same time, it highlights how non-victims of trafficking frequently operate under many of the same structural constraints as declared victims. The two groups are separated more by who they are, where they come from and how they got there than by what they are going through. What studies exist on migration facilitation, meanwhile, demonstrate the enormous range of roles and motivations that putative ‘traffickers’ inhabit, and put the lie to any attempt to condense them into a single criminal box. Migrant Sex Workers in Europe Sex workers are some of the most organized and vociferous advocates of their own rights to be found anywhere within the global informal economy (for example, Comitato 2016; Vollbehr 2017). Despite performing a highly stigmatized job within a generally hostile legal landscape, they maintain a web of self-driven organizations that support workers internally and push their interests externally. As the paradigmatic trafficking victim, at least when cis female, sex workers have long been at the sharp end of anti-trafficking policy. Policies in which, in the words of Ava Caradonna and the X:Talk project, ‘We are criminalised, arrested, and rescued for “our own good’” (Caradonna and X:Talk Project 2016). For this reason, key to these organizations’ activities has been to advocate for the decriminalization of sex work while ‘critiq[ing] the trafficking paradigm that conflates representations of sex work, migration, and mobility’ – a stated priority area of the Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP 2019; see also ICRSE 2016; NSWP 2015). Despite sex work itself being legal in many parts of Europe, anti-trafficking and anti-prostitution policies severely restrict its practice by criminalizing many of the activities associated with the profession, like renting work space or being a client (Syndicat du travail sexuel 2016; Thesslund and Okyere 2018). Furthermore, the high proportion of migrants among sex workers means that, even where sex work is allowed, immigration status remains a second layer of criminalization and discrimination that excludes many workers from accessing this safer space (for example, Armstrong 2018). As Caradonna and X:Talk Project (2016) explain, undocumented sex workers in the UK face deportation upon discovery, and those with legal status can lose it ‘because engaging in sex work can be interpreted as a violation of the “good character” clause of UK immigration laws’. Sex workers from Germany report a similar situation, one which ‘inherently excludes migrants, asylum seekers and many of the other most vulnerable groups in society that consciously engage in sex work to simply survive’ (Berlin-Based Sex Workers 2016). Thus, ‘If we are caught in the act of working, our best immediate survival strategy is to argue that we were NOT working and that we were in fact coerced’ (Caradonna and X:Talk Project 2016; see also Plambech 2014). This leads to a confusing situation. Sex workers fully acknowledge the violence and exploitation that plagues the industry (Macioti and Geymonat 2016). Many nevertheless insist on and demonstrably exercise their agency by both overcoming the hurdles of their work and by self-organizing. Yet, because of their immigration status or other anti-prostitution laws, if they are arrested these same individuals must claim coercion, helplessness, and victimization in order to not be (as harshly) punished by the state.
Trafficking as the moral filter of migration control 155 Child Workers in West Africa In many ways, West Africa can be seen as ground zero in the so-called ‘war’ on child trafficking. Regularly depicted as a ‘hotspot’, it has been a testing ground for international anti-trafficking interventions, many of which have had disastrous consequences for children and their communities (Howard 2017; Huijsmans and Baker 2012; Okyere 2013). The dominant discourse found in media accounts and the policy world constructs child trafficking as a case of innocent victim minors tricked or trapped by unscrupulous adults willing to exploit them. Poverty and a racially-encoded ‘cultural backwardness’ often feature in the narrative, with the implication that non-white populations have not yet evolved appropriate child-rearing strategies and are too poor not to let their children be exploited (Okyere 2018). Predictably, the kinds of policies and projects attached to this discourse are interventionist, top-down, and at times heavily disciplinary. In West Africa, they centre on efforts to ban children from working and prevent the migration that leads to that work (Howard 2017). Under this model, children are always and necessarily victims, whose mobility must be curtailed for their own good. People across the region have been impacted by these interventions. Border arrests have become more frequent and many communities have stories of children’s adult companions being detained as traffickers. Children, too, have been detained, ‘rescued’ from work deemed exploitative and repatriated to places they left willingly. In short, tens of millions of dollars have been wasted on quixotic attempts to convince poor peasants that there really is no place like home (ibid.). Many remain unconvinced. Ethnographic research across the region has demonstrated how normal it is for adolescents to engage in short- or long-term labour migration as part of the transition to social adulthood and in order to earn the money necessary to achieve their varied goals. In Ghana, Hashim (2005) found youngsters on the move in an effort to save up for school; in Burkina, Thorsen (2007) found bicycles to be the goal; while in Nigeria, money or a motorbike were the reward (Howard 2017). In each case, anti-traffickers sought to prevent children’s mobility and in each case they went anyway, often with the help of individuals they see as facilitators and the anti-trafficking community as traffickers. These children’s actions expose as facile the simplistic discursive division of people who are victims of trafficking, people who are perpetrators, and people who are neither, and show their resistance to interventions that they see as a hindrance rather than a benefit to their well-being. Agricultural Labour in Italy Italian NGOs and trade unions argue passionately that exploitative conditions prevailing in the southern tomato growing district of Foggia are tantamount to trafficking and slavery. The Italian state has shown little inclination to apply this framing to the thousands of overwhelmingly young black men working in the fields, and with extremely few exceptions has treated this group as irregular migrants – as non-victims of trafficking. Recent ethnographic research by Howard and Forin (2019) shows that, while the workers agree they are exploited, they reject the suggestion that they are pure victims who have lost their agency in the process. As one West African worker interviewed said, ‘Some are exploited more than others, but in the end things are tough for most of us. Take me for example: after 18 years in Italy I am here working hard for very little money and without a proper contract. But that’s what I’ve decided
156 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration to do.’ Other workers pointed out that achieving their goals is made difficult by racism and, for many, a lack of papers. Thus ‘hustling at harvest time is often the best option they have’ (ibid.). Peano (2017), who has also conducted research in Foggia, describes this ‘ordinarily exceptional space’ as governed by ‘extra-legal arrangements operat[ing] side by side with a series of legal mechanisms to fragment, control and discipline labourers, their mobility and most aspects of their existence’. Yet, she found that the residential areas have also acted as hotbeds of protest and revolt. Dwellers of these spaces, in Foggia and elsewhere in Italy, have not only engaged in acts of spontaneous rebellion but, also, especially since 2015, started to self-organize in a more structured faction … concerning their legal status, residency rights, and police abuse. (ibid.)
In other words, exploitation is understood as part and parcel of the job in Foggia. Workers are not surprised to discover it, nor are they willing to tolerate it beyond certain bounds. Facilitators in Migration and Work The Palermo Protocol’s definition of what it means to engage in trafficking is so broad that it can conceivably encompass everybody from the most hardened criminals to a woman with an apartment for rent; a taxi driver hired to take somebody down the road; a travel organizer specialized in circumventing border controls; and a labour placement middleman. Scholars researching human smuggling and migration facilitation have found that smuggling networks have more to do with these latter types of people than with the crime boss puppet masters of the popular imagination. Networks are usually comprised of loose, decentralized collections of people performing small, mundane actions that slowly move people toward where they want to go (Achilli and Sanchez 2016). Their reasons for doing so are as varied as they are, yet increasingly severe penalties for trafficking make involvement in this business, regardless of how much they’re doing so ‘for the purpose of exploitation’, extremely risky. Achilli’s (2018) ethnographic research on the Turkish coast paints a picture of individuals using their networks and know-how to provide services overwhelmingly to people seeking those services. While accepting that ‘not all smugglers are good’, and that opportunities for exploitation exist and are sometimes taken, the men he interviewed position themselves as moral actors working to help people overcome the moral failings of government. One smuggler, who had also fled the war in Syria, framed his job as a duty of care: ‘We are different from many other smuggling groups. There are smugglers who don’t care about their customers. For us it is our duty to help them. These people are not only my customers: they are my brothers’ (ibid.). The labour middle men whom Howard and Forin (2019) found in the Foggian fields, the caporali, portray themselves in remarkably similar ways as the Syrian facilitators on the Turkish coast. They have secured a legal status, can speak both Italian and the languages of the workers, and have developed networks of farmers who require labour for the harvest. This sets them up in a privileged position vis-à-vis other workers. At the same time, they operate in an area where there are far more workers than work, and where everybody’s profit – except for the multinational grocery stores themselves – is extraordinarily low. This positions them as powerful arbiters over an inherently exploitative system. The caporali presented in this research portray themselves as ‘guides’ out to make money, but insist they do not transgress certain bounds and feel a duty of care to the other workers of the community. When asked what
Trafficking as the moral filter of migration control 157 could improve the situation, they laid the responsibility at the feet of the state: ‘Give everyone papers, give them work, and leave them alone’ (ibid.).
CONCLUSION These vignettes only scratch the surface of current research into the self-representation and self-care of those navigating the categories laid down by the trafficking regime: the passive victim, the agentic non-victim, and the criminal trafficker. While the lived realities for each are not nearly as clear cut as the dominant discourse would have them, each remains severely constrained by the category into which they fall. ‘Trafficking victims’ must deny their own agency to have a chance at accessing services and protections, or do their best to avoid detection by anti-traffickers when willingly migrating for work. They know their own desires and abilities will be counted against them if they are discovered. ‘Non-victims of trafficking’ are excluded from protections, regardless of how similar their working conditions are to those of the ‘victims’. As non-victims they are positioned as having no excuse for breaking the law and thus can expect deportation without ceremony when they are caught. And ‘traffickers’ operate under the threat of increasingly well-fortified legal frameworks and well-resourced law enforcement officers as they go about their business, even though most of them have neither the means nor the interest in exploiting migrants beyond making a profit. As such, one of the main governance effects of trafficking has been to collapse the nuance found in whole sectors of the economy – from sex work to tomato picking to facilitated irregular migration – into the monochrome palette of good and evil. This wreaks havoc on those caught up in its net. It also elides the fluidity of experience documented in ethnographic research that raises fundamental questions about human trafficking’s use as a tool for migration governance. An approach most closely aligned with the experiences of those on the move would begin by acknowledging that individuals move in and out of exploitative circumstances as they undertake migratory journeys. Depending on the moment they enter situations with more or less control, and can even move back and forth over the facilitator/facilitated dividing line when necessary. The concept of trafficking and its application in law and policy both rest on the notions of individualized exploitation, victimhood and criminality. But as the critical scholarship highlighted in this chapter demonstrates, this ignores the structural factors and economic realities that prompt people to seek work elsewhere, and, under the guise of ‘rescue’, generally sends them back to where they came from without asking. With few exceptions this helps neither the ‘victims’ nor the ‘non-victims’ and creates a never-ending demand for facilitators’ services in the process.
NOTES 1.
See the UN website for a complete list: https://treaties.un.org/pages/CTCTreaties.aspx?id=7&subid =A&clang=_en. 2. See https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/protocoltraffickinginpersons.aspx. 3. Beyond Trafficking and Slavery was started in 2014 as an academic outreach project seeking to publish critical research on labour exploitation around the world. It now contains well over 800 articles from nearly as many scholars. See https://www.opendemocracy.net/beyondslavery.
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Trafficking as the moral filter of migration control 159 Hendick, H. (1997), ‘Constructions and reconstructions of British childhood: an interpretative study: 1800 to the present’, in A. James and A. Prout (eds), Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood: Contemporary Issues in the Sociological Study of Childhood, London: Falmer Press, pp. 34–62. Howard, N. (2017), Child Trafficking, Youth Labour Mobility and the Politics of Protection, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Howard, N. and R. Forin (2019), ‘Migrant workers, “modern slavery”, and the politics of representation in Italian tomato production’, Economy & Society, 48 (4), 579–601. Howell, P. (2000), ‘Prostitution and racialised sexuality: the regulation of prostitution in Britain and the British Empire before the contagious diseases acts’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 18 (3), 321–39. Huijsmans, R. and S. Baker (2012), ‘Child trafficking: “worst form” of child labour, or worst approach to young migrants?’, Development & Change, 43, 919–46. ICRSE (2016), ‘For decriminalisation and justice: sex workers demand legal reform and social change’, openDemocracy, 29 February, accessed 24 September 2019 at https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/ beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/for-decriminalisation-and-j/. Kempadoo, K., J. Sanghera and B. Pattanaik (2005), Trafficking and Prostitution Reconsidered: New Perspectives on Migration, Sex Work, and Human Rights, Boulder, CO: Paradigm. Kotiswaran, P. (2014), ‘Law’s mediations: the shifting definitions of trafficking’, openDemocracy, 8 October, accessed 24 September 2019 at ghttps://www.opendemocracy.net/beyondslavery/prabha -kotiswaran/law’s-mediations-shifting-definitions-of-traffickin. Lammasniemi, L. (2017), ‘Anti-white slavery legislation and its legacies in England’, Anti-Trafficking Review, 9, 64–76. LeBaron, G., N. Howard, C. Thibos and P. Kyritsis (2019), ‘Confronting root causes: forced labour in global supply chains’, openDemocracy, 19 March, accessed 24 September 2019 at https://www .opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/confronting-root-causes/. Leigh, C. (2015), ‘Anti-trafficking campaigns, sex workers and the roots of damage’, openDemocracy, 26 March, accessed 24 September 2019 at https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking -and-slavery/antitrafficking-campaigns-sex-workers-and-roots-of-damage/. Limoncelli, S. A. (2009), ‘Human trafficking: globalization, exploitation, and transnational sociology’, Sociology Compass, 3 (1), 72–91. Macioti, P. G. and G. G. Geymonat (eds) (2016), Sex Workers Speak: Who Listens?, London: openDemocracy, accessed 24 September 2019 at https://cdn-prod.opendemocracy.net/media/documents/ BTS_Sex_Workers_Speak.pdf. Mumford, K. (1997), Interzones: Black White Sex Districts in Chicago and New York in the Early Twentieth Century, New York: Columbia University Press. NSWP (2015), ‘Why deciminalise sex work?’, openDemocracy, 29 July, accessed 24 September 2019 at https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/why-decriminalise-sex-work/. NSWP (2019), ‘Sex professionals of Canada’, accessed 24 September 2019 at https://www.nswp.org/ members/north-america-and-the-caribbean/sex-professionals-canada. Okyere, S. (2013), ‘Are working children’s rights and child labour abolition complementary or opposing realms?’, International Social Work, 56 (1), 80–91. Okyere, S. (2018), ‘Moral economies and child labour in artisanal gold mining in Ghana’, in J. O’Connell Davidson and L. Brace (eds), Revisiting Slavery and Antislavery: Towards a Critical Analysis, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 231–60. Peano, I. (2017), ‘Containment, resistance, flight: migrant labour in the agro-industrial district of Foggia, Italy’, openDemocracy, 15 November, accessed 24 September 2019 at https://www .opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/containment-resistance-flight-migrant-labour -in-agro-industrial-district-o/. Plambech, S. (2014), ‘Between “victims” and “criminals”: rescue, deportation, and everyday violence among Nigerian migrants’, Social Politics, 21 (3), 382–402. Pliley, J. R. (2015), ‘Sexual surveillance and moral quarantines: a history of anti-trafficking’, openDemocracy, 27 April, accessed 24 September 2019 at https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond -trafficking-and-slavery/sexual-surveillance-and-moral-quarantines-history-of-antitrafficking/.
160 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration Quirk, J. and A. Bunting (2014), ‘The politics of exception: the bipartisan appeal of human trafficking’, openDemocracy, 6 October, accessed 24 September 2019 at https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/ beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/politics-of-exception-bipartisan-appeal-of-human-trafficking/. Sharma, N. (2003), ‘Travel agency: a critique of anti-trafficking campaigns’, Refuge, 21 (3), 53–65. Syndicat du travail sexuel (2016), ‘The French state against sex workers: a security and racist logic’, openDemocracy, 2 March, accessed 24 September 2019 at https:// www .opendemocracy .net/ en/ beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/french-state-against-sex-workers-security-and-racist-logic/. Thesslund, E. and S. Okyere (2018), ‘The false promise of the Nordic model of sex work’, openDemocracy, 17 April, accessed 24 September 2019 at https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond -trafficking-and-slavery/false-promise-of-nordic-model-of-sex-work/. Thorsen, D. (2007), ‘“If only I get enough money for a bicycle!”: a study of child migration against a backdrop of exploitation and trafficking in Burkina Faso’, Occasional Paper at Centre for African Studies, University of Copenhagen. United Nations (1904), ‘International agreement for the suppression of the “White Slave Traffic”’, accessed 24 September 2019 at https://treaties.un.org/doc/Treaties/1920/09/19200907%2006–00 %20AM/Ch_VII_8p.pdf. United Nations (1950), ‘Convention for the suppression of the traffic in persons and of the exploitation of the prostitution of others’, accessed 24 September 2019 at https://treaties.un.org/doc/Treaties/1951/ 07/19510725%2010–37%20PM/Ch_VII_11_a_bp.pdf. Vollbehr, W. (2017), ‘Improving anti-trafficking strategies: why sex workers should be involved’, openDemocracy, 17 July, accessed 24 September 2019 at https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond -trafficking-and-slavery/improving-anti-trafficking-strategies-why-sex-workers-should-be-inv/. Whyte, C. (2013), ‘“Praise be, prostitutes as the women we are not.” White slavery and human trafficking – an intersectional analysis’, in V. Kallenberg, J. Meyer and J. M. Müller (eds), Intersectionality und Kritik, Wiesbaden: Springer, pp. 125–41.
13. Co-constructions of family and belonging in the politics of family migration Saskia Bonjour and Laura Cleton
INTRODUCTION Family migration is the largest migration category by far in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), representing 40 per cent of immigration to OECD countries between 2007 and 2015, while the combined share of labour and asylum immigration was never above 30 per cent (Chaloff and Poeschel 2017: 110–11).1 While comparable numbers are not available for other parts of the world, to the best of our knowledge all nation states across the globe acknowledge family ties as a ground for the admission of foreigners, be it to very different extents and under different conditions. Thus, the question which relationships qualify as ‘family’ in migration policy is key to defining who gets to migrate legally. Conceptions of who and what counts as ‘family’ and who gets to have ‘family’ vary across the globe and change over time. Families are ‘fictive’ (Lee 2013): they are construed socially and politically in ways that intersect crucially with constructions of ethnicity, race, nation and belonging. What is considered ‘proper’ family may be defined along narrow ethno-national lines or in more pluralistic ways and is subject to change over time – but across time and place, only relationships which are institutionally recognized as constituting ‘family’ provide ground for family migration rights. Understanding the politics of family migration therefore begins with conceptualizing ‘family’ not as a natural given, but as a site of political struggle. While family migration policies represent a major channel through which transnational families across the world are able to reunite, we should be careful not to confuse state constructions of family migration with the lived realities of transnational families. Families that are unable or unwilling to meet the state’s conditions for family migration are likely to seek and sometimes find other channels to live together (Luibhéid 2008 on the USA; Piper 2009 on Asia; Bonizzoni 2015 and Eremenko and González-Ferrer 2018 on Europe). However, in this chapter, we focus on states’ rather than on families’ constructions of ‘family’ and ‘belonging’. The chapter presents a survey of how families and belonging are co-constructed in family migration policies across the world, through an inevitably incomplete state of the art of English language scholarship, which reflects the focal points and hiatuses of this literature. In the next section of this chapter, we sketch the development of scholarship on family migration politics. The section after explores ‘who gets to have family’, that is, how the right to be united with foreign family members is stratified across different categories of citizens and resident migrants. The fourth section investigates ‘who counts as family’: which persons are considered ‘family members’ eligible for admission as a family migrant. In the fifth and final section, we seek to understand what counts as a ‘good’ family, i.e. how families are to perform and function in order for their migration claims to be considered legitimate. Throughout the chapter, we will inquire how these co-constructions of family and belonging result in unequal access to 161
162 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration family migration rights, as a result of what Yuval-Davis (2007: 565) has called ‘intersecting vectors of inclusion and exclusion’, notably ethnicity and race, gender, sexuality, and class.
FAMILY MIGRATION IS POLITICAL: THE LATE AND UNEVEN EMERGENCE OF SCHOLARSHIP Until 15 years ago, research on the politics of migration and citizenship focused on economic and identity rationales, on humanitarian and security perspectives, but never on family (Kofman 2004). Reflecting assumptions in political science more broadly, migration scholars seemed to regard the family as apolitical: a ‘natural’ given. Likewise, the admission of foreign family members was seen as a ‘self-evident’ phenomenon that did not command political scientific analysis. Empirically, this resulted in the virtual non-existence of studies of family migration policy. Theoretically, it contributed to the neglect of gender, family and sexuality in analyses of the politics of belonging, nationhood and migration. With the exception of some rare pioneers (Bhabha and Shutter 1994; Boyd 1997), scholarship on family migration politics only emerged in the mid-2000s. Inspired by feminist and queer theorizing of family, gender and sexuality as a key site of governance – ‘the personal is political’ (see also Marchetti and di Bartolomeo in this volume, Chapter 25) – this research showed that what counts as family and who gets to have family are crucially contested questions at the very heart of migration politics (de Hart 2006; Luibhéid 2008; van Walsum 2008; Wray 2011). This emerging scholarship was particularly influenced by feminist students of nationalism and empire, who have shown that from colonial times to the present day, defining collective identities and boundaries – be they cultural, racial or national – inevitably involves reference to proper roles of men and women, proper dress, proper parenting, proper loving and proper sex (Fischer and Dahinden 2016; Hajjat 2012; Stoler 2002; Yuval-Davis 2008 [1997]). Thus, the new scholarship on family migration politics put the relationship between the politics of belonging and the politics of intimacy centre stage. It has shown that defining collective identities – who ‘we’ are and who the ‘other’ is – inevitably involves reference to gender and family norms, that is, to ‘conceptions of what the roles of men and women ought to be, what marriage ought to be, what parenting ought to be and what family ought to be’ (Bonjour and de Hart 2013: 62). Europe in particular has witnessed the emergence of a vibrant new field of scholarship on the politics of family migration since the mid-2000s. This is directly related to the intense political salience of family migration in the 2000s in many North-Western European countries. Scholars have sought to understand how the heightened political focus on family migration was related to the resurgence of assimilationism and ethno-racial nationalism in European politics (see Guia in this volume, Chapter 33), and have critiqued the exclusionary effects of increasingly restrictive family migration policies (for an overview, see Bonjour and Kraler 2015; D’Aoust 2018). In other parts of the world, scholarly attention to the politics of family migration is still not self-evident. In North America and Australia, scholarship on family migration policies is dominated by legal scholars, although some political scientists and political sociologists have also engaged with the topic. In recent years, analyses of family migration policies in Asia have started to emerge, with a particular focus on South Korea, China and Japan. English-language scholarship on the politics of family migration in Africa and Latin America is virtually non-existent.
Co-constructions of family and belonging in the politics of family migration 163
SPONSORS: WHO GETS TO HAVE FAMILY? Family migration policies are different from other types of migration policy, in that they not only concern ‘outsiders’ knocking on the door requesting entry to the nation state; they also concern so-called ‘sponsors’, persons living in the nation state, requesting to be united there with their foreign family members. The extent to which such sponsors are considered ‘insiders’ to the nation state determines their family migration rights: the more sponsors are seen to ‘belong’, the lower the policy obstacles to their family unification. This ‘stratification’ of family migration rights has been subject of scholarly scrutiny, especially in Europe (Kraler 2010; D’Aoust 2018; for a critique of this stratification, see Honohan 2009; Kostakopoulou and Ripoll Servent 2016). The ‘membership’ of sponsors (Block 2015) is first and foremost assessed in terms of formal citizenship and residence status. In many countries, citizens therefore hold the strongest family migration rights, based on the principle that citizens should not be made to choose between living with their family and living in their country of citizenship (Carens 2003). Bonjour and Block (2016), however, observed a deterioration of these rights in Europe in recent years. They argue that this is due to a mismatch between ethno-racial conceptions of the national ‘imagined community’ and the formal citizenry: as more and more citizens of migrant background request family migration, policymakers question both these citizens’ belonging and the legitimacy of their family project, which results in a restriction of their family migration rights. In contrast, citizens’ rights are strengthened by free movement arrangements in the European and South American context, as both the European Union and MERCOSUR ensure strong rights to family reunification for citizens who migrate between signatory countries (Acosta Arcarazo 2015; Kostakopoulou and Ripoll Servent 2016; Strik et al. 2013). Acosta Arcarazo (2016), however, notes that in South America, the unclear definition of the ‘family’ in this non-binding treaty results in discretionary implementation in the various member states. States that recognize refugees’ right to protection generally also recognize their right to family migration. Since refugees would face persecution or violence if they were to return to their country of origin to be with their family, it is considered the host state’s duty to ensure that ‘the unity of the refugee’s family is maintained’, as the Final Act of the UN Plenary which adopted the 1951 Refugee Convention puts it (United Nations 1951). For instance, EU law on family reunification prohibits the imposition of housing, income, or pre-entry integration requirements on the family reunification of refugees. However, EU member states may limit the application of these strong family migration rights solely to refugees who apply for family reunification within three months (Council Directive 2003). In Europe, the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ in 2015 brought about a new form of restrictions to the right to family migration. Several EU member states, such as Germany and Sweden, allocated temporary protection status to Syrian refugees, rather than stronger refugee status. This effectively prohibited them from reuniting with their families and was clearly meant as a measure to deter further migration to Europe (see also Crawley and Setrana, Chapter 16 and Bakewell, Chapter 10, both in this volume). Migrants without refugee status but with a permanent residence permit are usually granted family migration rights, though often under less favourable conditions than citizens and refugees (see, for example, Lee 2013 and Enchautegui and Menjívar 2015 on the USA; DeShaw 2006 on Canada; OECD 2012 and Seol 2012 on South Korea). Family reunification is mostly difficult or even impossible for migrants on temporary residence permits, such as seasonal
164 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration workers, students or au pairs. However, some temporary labour migrants who are construed as especially ‘desirable’, such as ‘highly-skilled’ migrants, are granted relatively strong family migration rights (Cheng 2018; Seol and Skrentny 2009; Staver 2015; Teo and Piper 2009). Seol and Skrentny (2009) and Seol (2012) note that in Singapore, Japan and South Korea, dependent family visas are available only to various classes of professionals and ‘desired’ occupations. ‘Lower-skilled’ migrant workers, including domestic workers, are not eligible to reunify with family. In some extreme cases, such as Singapore, they are not even allowed to engage in relationships with citizens and risk being deported if a pregnancy is discovered (Koopmans and Michalowski 2017). South Korea’s migration policy excludes low-skilled workers’ families, to prevent their integration in what Lee (2010) calls the ‘ethnically homogenous country’, in terms of culture, race and class. These constructions of sponsors’ belonging are not only ethno-racialized and classed but also gendered. In patriarchal conceptions of gender and family roles, the husband and father, as head of the family, determines where the family belongs: what the citizenship and country of residence of his wife and children should be. This conception was reflected in family migration policies, laws and treaties worldwide, which facilitated the reunification of men with their foreign wives and children, while women were pushed to follow their husband abroad (Acosta Arcarazo 2018 on South America; Demleitner 2003 on the USA; de Hart 2006, van Walsum 2008, Wray 2011 on Europe). While formal gender equality in migration and citizenship law has been achieved in many countries, policy practices still reflect patriarchal gender norms. In some Asian countries, governments increasingly aim at countering low fertility rates by stimulating the immigration of foreign women who marry Asian men, ignoring citizen women with foreign husbands (Cheng 2018; Kim and Kilkey 2018; Yang 2011). In Europe and the USA, female citizens bringing in foreign husbands meet with much more intensive suspicions of fraud then male citizens with foreign wives: it is considered ‘natural’ for a woman to migrate for love, but a man who claims to migrate for love is suspected of hiding ulterior motives (Bonjour and de Hart 2013; Eggebø 2013; Longo 2018; Wray 2015). Beyond formal status, the ‘membership’ and ‘deservingness’ of sponsors is measured through several further requirements. In almost all countries covered in this chapter, sponsors are subject to a minimum age requirement of at least 18 years, and up to 24 years in Denmark. Also, in most countries sponsors should not have a criminal record, financial debts to the government, be subject to a removal order and/or must have lived for a certain number of years in the country of residence prior to application (from 18 months in France to two years in Australia) (Demleitner 2003; DeShaw 2006; Strasser et al. 2009). Most other requirements are financial, demanding sustainable income and housing (Cheng 2018 on China; Lee 2013 on the USA; Boucher 2014 on Canada and Australia; Kofman 2018 on Europe), which implies that the sponsor bears financial responsibility for his/her family members (Antognini 2014; Lee 2013; Luibhéid 2005; Strasser et al. 2009).
FAMILY MEMBERS: WHO COUNTS AS FAMILY? Which persons qualify as ‘family members’ for migration purposes? In most states, this is restricted to a narrowly defined concept of the nuclear family, which entails spouses and underage children. The exact definition of the nuclear family, however, varies to a certain extent between countries.
Co-constructions of family and belonging in the politics of family migration 165 In their study on family reunification in Europe, Strasser et al. (2009) note that although a significant number of European countries allow for reunification of non-marital partners in a longstanding relationship – both heterosexual and homosexual – a marital relationship is still the most accepted definition of a relationship. In Singapore, common-law partners are admitted but, unlike marital partners, denied permanent settlement (Teo and Piper 2009). Demleitner (2003) and Holt (2004) note that in the USA and Australia, common-law partners are often confronted with more suspicion and higher standards of proof of the genuineness of their relationship compared with marital partners, especially when same-sex partners are involved. Holt (2004) argues convincingly that although formally the requirements for heteroand homosexual relationships in Australia are similar, the definition of a relationship reflects a heteronormative norm (for a similar analysis, see Longo 2018 on the USA; Simmons 2008 on the UK; Fassin and Salcedo 2015 on France). Indeed, Yue (2008) shows that homosexual partners who met through internet chat rooms, gay saunas or lesbian nightclubs in Australia, are encouraged not to mention this during their application for family reunification, since it is not considered favourable to their chances. Children eligible for entry and stay as members of the nuclear family usually include biological children, adopted children and stepchildren. Holland (2008) argues that in the USA, additional requirements for non-biological children, such as adoption papers and proof of adequate care, reinforce a traditional conception of the marital, heterosexual family paradigm that fails to accommodate non-traditional family structures. A similar critique has been voiced with regard to DNA testing to prove family relationship, as introduced by various countries in Europe, but also Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the USA since the 1990s (Heinemann and Lemke 2013). Some scholars interpret such DNA testing as endorsement of a biological concept of family and kinship, sometimes called the ‘geneticization’ (ibid.) or ‘biologization’ of the family, which devalues other social forms of family (Moreno et al. 2017). Children eligible for reunification are subject to a maximum age limit, ranging from 15 in Denmark to 22 in Canada. One rationale for these thresholds is the concern that assimilation at older ages may be more difficult (Demleitner 2003), as reflected in the stipulation in EU law that the admission of children older than 12 may be subjected to integration conditions (Bonizzoni 2018; Council Directive 2003). Another rationale for the age limits is that children are eligible for reunification as long as they are dependent on their parents (Strasser et al. 2009). This explains why married minor children are not eligible for family reunification: they are considered to have started their own family and therefore to be ‘independent’ of their parents. Mustasaari (2015) critiques the assumption that children stop being part of their parents’ family when they start a family of their own, which reflects a narrow conception of ‘family’ as a nuclear, isolated unit. She points out that minors who marry and have children – be it voluntarily or under pressure or constraint – may be more dependent on their family’s support than unmarried minors. Some family reunification systems extend the definition of the nuclear family to family members beyond the spouse and minor children. In Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados, parents and grandparents of citizens and legally permanent residents are admitted without additional requirements. Storchevoy (1997) argues that this reflects the bigger role that parents and grandparents play in daily family life in large parts of the Caribbean. This is not a Caribbean particularity, however: the USA includes US citizens’ parents (aged over 21) in the category of ‘immediate relatives’ who are admitted without annual caps, while Canadian legislation uses the concept of ‘family class’, which also includes parents and grandparents
166 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration (DeShaw 2006). In contrast, most European countries do not consider (grand)parents of adult sponsors as core family members and provide few if any possibilities for their admission, because elderly immigrants are seen as an economic burden on the welfare state (Bonizzoni 2018; Horsti and Pellander 2015). Beyond the various definitions of the ‘core family’, other family members may be eligible for family reunification if additional requirements are fulfilled. In Europe, these possibilities are extremely limited. ‘Extended family’, including siblings, uncles and aunts, cousins but also adult children, are not admitted at all or only in cases of extreme financial or emotional dependency (Strasser et al. 2009; see also Hines 2010 on Argentina). Similarly, in Australia the ‘Aged Dependent Relative Visa’ lets a single older person, who relies on a relative for financial support for at least three years prior to the application, move to Australia. This stands in sharp contrast to the South American understanding of the ‘family’, where states recognize not only the nuclear family, but also parents, grandchildren, siblings and, depending on the country, other possible categories (Acosta Arcarazo 2018). In the USA, extended family members can be admitted under strict annual and national caps (Department of Homeland Security 2019) while Canada and Australia admit extended family members if the sponsor has no closer relative they might sponsor (Department of Home Affairs 2019; Government of Canada 2018, 2019). Scholars in the USA and Europe have questioned the reliance on narrow definitions of the core family (Honohan 2009). Hawthorne (2007) argues that US family immigration law relies on an outdated model of the family, which does not resemble the variety of families in the USA and abroad. Others have critiqued the disproportionate impact of ‘Western’ monogamous marriage norms on the wives of men in polygamous marriages, as most countries only admit one wife and, in countries such as the Netherlands, only her children (Eichenberger 2007; Strasser et al. 2009). A recent trend in Europe that has received a great deal of scholarly attention is the subjection of family migrants to integration requirements before and after entry (Goodman 2014). While we have seen earlier in this chapter that other conditions, such as income and housing requirements, are mostly to be fulfilled by the sponsor, these integration requirements are imposed on incoming family migrants. They consist of obligatory courses and/or tests which focus on the command of the national language and on knowledge of the core values, institutions and customs of the receiving society. Proponents of such integration requirements argue that they promote integration and prevent forced marriages (Strasser et al. 2009). Pre-departure integration tests in particular have raised discussion, as scholars argue that they aim at restricting access to family migration rather than promoting integration (Bonjour 2014; Goodman 2011). In addition, Goodman (2011) highlights that these tests follow an implicit racial logic, mainly targeting Muslim sending countries, since family migrants from countries such as the United States and Canada are exempted from taking these tests. In most countries outside Europe, states do not compel family members to comply with pre- or post-departure integration requirements. An exception is New Zealand, where a pre-departure language test is in place. In South Korea, voluntary integration programmes were introduced in 2008 for so-called ‘multicultural families’, which aim at Korean language development and ‘social understanding’ (Seol 2014).
Co-constructions of family and belonging in the politics of family migration 167
WHAT CONSTITUTES A ‘GOOD FAMILY’? Family migration policies are shaped by – often implicit – notions of what a ‘good’ or ‘proper’ family is; ‘what the function and role of a family and its members ought to be: how a family is to perform’ (Strasser et al. 2009: 167). Family migration rights are unequally distributed, depending on how well families fit within such dominant norms. Notions of what makes a ‘good’ family are heavily classed and gendered. First, a ‘good’ family is financially independent from the state, as reflected in the income and housing requirements discussed above. Kofman (2018) describes how, as part of a broader political development where ‘integration’ and civic virtue are increasingly defined in terms of labour participation and economic independence, income requirements in Europe have increased significantly in the past two decades. In the USA, family migrants tend to be perceived as undermining national economic competitiveness (Duleep and Regets 2014). Similarly, in Europe, fears of transnational families weighing on welfare state budgets have played a significant role in family migration policymaking (Cochran Bech et al. 2017; Kofman 2018). However, while migrant families are required to be independent from the state, they are expected to be dependent on each other (Eggebø 2010; Pellander 2016). Reflecting patriarchal breadwinner models in which one (female) partner is assumed to be dependent on the other (male) partner, income requirements must often be met by the sponsor alone, as the resources of the foreign partner are disregarded (Kofman 2018; Strasser et al. 2009). Exacerbating such dependencies, some countries issue a separate work visa dependent on the sponsor’s legal status (EMN 2016), or prohibit family members from working for several years after admission (Lee 2008). In Germany in the 1970s and 1980s, for instance, family migrants were not allowed to enter the labour market for the first four years – reflecting not only labour market protectionism but also the assumption that family migrants were wives and that wives would not (want to) work (Boyd 1997). Luibhéid (2008) argues that such enforced financial dependency is part of a ‘neoliberal governmentality’ in which the responsibility for care and support is transferred from the welfare state to heteronormative families. Notions of the ‘good’ family are also heavily ethno-racialized. This is explicitly visible in most Asian countries, where the admission of migrants is underpinned by a strong desire to maintain a homogeneous ethnic Asian community (Lee 2010; Yang 2011). In Singapore and Israel, countries that Koopmans and Michalowski (2017: 56) have characterized as ‘full exclusionist’, acquiring permanent residence and citizenship for non-co-ethnic family members is not possible, as these countries ‘do not even strive to assimilate’ these family migrants into their societies. In the 1990s, the South Korean government juxtaposed an open door policy for Chinese Josunjok ‘cross-border brides’ and a closed-door policy for unskilled Chinese migrant workers and their families (Lee 2008). In Chinese/Taiwanese marriage migration, the moral stigma of being dalumei (from mainland China) combined with identity markers regarding educational background and perceived class backgrounds, results in the perception of certain marriages as fraudulent (Cheng 2018). In the USA, explicit racial provisions were applied to Chinese and Japanese migrants in the first half of the twentieth century (Lee 2013). This resulted in the National Origins Act, which introduced annual quotas for admission of family members. These quotas were drawn along racial lines (exclusion of Asian families) and geopolitical considerations (exclusion of Eastern European migrants during the Cold War), whereas the admission of Western European family members was almost unlimited. Today in the USA, national caps on particular categories of family migration make reunification much more dif-
168 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration ficult for some ethnic groups than for others: for instance, Mexican long-term residents may have to wait up to 12 years before they can reunite with their spouse (Hawthorne 2007). In contemporary Europe, while explicit racial selection is prohibited, implicit ethno-racial imaginations of ‘Self’ and ‘Other’ play a key role in defining which family migration claims are deemed legitimate. Families which ‘belong’ in Europe are expected to meet ‘Western’ family norms shaped by gender equality, freedom of choice and individual autonomy. Families which are thought to deviate from these norms, notably Muslim families which are represented as patriarchal and authoritarian, are construed as not belonging in Europe. This has resulted in a series of restrictions of family migration policies, ranging from raising income and age requirements to pre-entry integration requirements (Carver 2016; Eggebø 2010; Wray 2011). European scholars have emphasized that such family migration policies recall colonial regulations of intimacy, which aimed to secure racial hierarchies by representing Western (‘civilized’) marriage and family forms as superior (Turner 2015; van Walsum 2008). A key feature in contemporary ethno-racialized discourses on family migration is the notion of ‘love’. The ‘love marriage’ – chosen freely by two individuals without interference of parents or family and without ulterior (material) motives – is presented as a key feature of ‘Western’ norms and values and as the only ‘proper’ marriage. Thus, ‘love’ becomes the criterion by which to distinguish fraudulent from genuine marriage migration claims, as well as a justification to impose restrictions on transnational marriages which are represented as arranged or forced (Bonjour and de Hart 2013; D’Aoust 2013; Luibhéid 2008). These discourses are heavily gendered, in that they centre on ‘saving women’. White women are represented as the victims of fraudulent men who marry them for a residence permit rather than for love, while non-white women are represented as the victims of their allegedly patriarchal and oppressive culture and family. In both cases, restrictive policy reforms are justified as a means to ‘save’ women (Carver 2016; Bonjour and de Hart 2013).
CONCLUSION This chapter has explored how different nation states across the globe construe which families belong – and can therefore legitimately claim family migration rights. In doing so it has provided a bird’s-eye view of a field of scholarship that is only some 15 years old. As this young field of scholarship on the politics of family migration continues to develop, its contribution to our understanding of the politics of migration and citizenship is likely to increase in significance. A first promising avenue for further studies is to move beyond the current Eurocentrism of the field to gain more knowledge of family migration politics elsewhere in the world (on the Eurocentrism permeating scholarship on migration governance more broadly, see Mayblin in this volume, Chapter 2). Comparative case studies, which have so far been few and far between, are likely to yield important new insights into how the co-construction of family and belonging is shaped by social, political and institutional contexts. Second, scholars have only just begun to explore regulations on same-sex partner migration and the political processes which resulted in their introduction. Third, the (dis)continuities between contemporary family migration politics and colonial regulations of family and intimacy present a promising new research agenda. In its short existence, scholarship on family migration politics has already pushed the study of the politics of migration and citizenship further, both empirically and theoretically.
Co-constructions of family and belonging in the politics of family migration 169 Empirically, this scholarship has finally begun to explore the political processes which shape the most important existing channel for the admission of migrants – family migration policies. Theoretically, this scholarship has called attention to a question which has been all but ignored in existing migration and citizenship literature, namely the fundamental role of gender, sexuality and family in shaping conceptions of nationhood, citizenship and belonging.
NOTE 1.
The remaining 30% is free movement.
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14. Deconstructing skills in the stratification of migration governance Huw Vasey
INTRODUCTION Skill is a term that has become part of the common parlance of international migration. It exists as an area of academic interest, in the immigration policies of most high and middle nations of the world, and in public debates about the future of migration. In all these instances, a stark division is held between high-skill and low-skill variants of international migration. However, skill is a difficult concept to pin down, and consistent definitions are hard to come by, yet it retains a substantial influence on the governance and politics of migration. This chapter is dedicated to tracing the roots of the skills agenda in international migration and to asking exactly how the concept of skill shapes the experiences of migrants. In doing this, questions are raised about how we might begin to forward a critical conceptualisation of skill in international migration research. The study of ‘skill’ as a unit of study in migration research has its roots in analyses of internationally mobile ‘highly skilled migrants’ (HSMs). Where migrants are not considered highly skilled, studies of how they utilise their abilities and knowledge in the labour market have been relatively rare. Therefore, to appreciate how skill is understood in contemporary migration research we must begin by briefly examining the development of HSM research and the role skills play in the governance and politics of international migration, and this makes up the next section of the chapter. In order to grasp how concepts of skill have acted to distinguish, categorise and stratify different groups of migrants, however, it is necessary to incorporate research outside the HSM agenda. This is done in the subsequent part of the chapter, as I illustrate how scholars have understood the concept of skill as socially mediated and intersected by other social categories, such as class, race, ethnicity and gender. To conclude, I present a view of skill as a social construct that is structured by both national regulations and the migration industry, mediated by everyday interactions, and open to both contestation and change driven by local contexts, and outline some critical approaches to researching the governance and politics of international migration.
THE DEVELOPMENT AND INFLUENCE OF THE CONCEPT OF SKILLED MIGRATION Contemporary discussions of skilled migration appear to stem from concerns during the 1960s of a ‘brain drain’ of UK scientists to other parts of the world (especially the USA) in order to seek better wages, more developed scientific facilities, and greater career opportunities (Johnson 1965). This concern quickly spread to researchers working in India, then elsewhere in the global South, as they became aware of substantial proportions of their professional 173
174 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration classes emigrating to richer nations in the global North (Moses 2006). Such movement was often exacerbated by the increasing global mobility of university students, with many of those moving abroad to study seeking to remain in their destination, or move on to another wealthy country, after completing their degrees (Baas 2019). Such movements led to vigorous international policy and academic debates as to whether these processes were of benefit or detriment to both sending and receiving countries (see, e.g. Berry and Soligo 1969; Grubel and Scott 1967). Though such arguments continue today (see, e.g., Gaillard et al. 2015; Yeoh and Lam 2016), comparative analyses of the international migration governance regimes of high- and middle-income countries reveal that ‘skill’ is a central organising principle of nearly all such regimes (de Haas et al. 2018; Ruhs 2013). Quite why skill should become so universal an element of international migration governance is beyond the scope of this chapter, but we can detect it’s lineage in the emergence of the notion of a knowledge-based economy (see, e.g., the Lisbon Strategy of the European Council 2000) and the resultant ‘war for talent’ in an increasingly globalised economy, leading states to strategically adjust to other governments’ policies in order to gain a competitive advantage in this worldwide battle (de Haas et al. 2018). In practice, this has meant the diffusion of points-based schemes from English-speaking immigration countries, such as Canada and Australia, to the rest of the world (Czaika and Parsons 2017). The ‘skills turn’ helped to enshrine two important changes in approaches towards international migration; firstly, it marked out highly skilled migrants as different from other movers in their motivation for migration, the length of their moves, and their relationship with a changing international economic order. Such differentiation came at a time when scholars of this new field felt that contemporary research on migration was overwhelmingly concerned with ‘immigration for permanent settlement and its consequences for integration and race relations’ (Koser and Salt 1997: 285). Furthermore, those advocating increased focus on HSMs wished to connect the movement of the highly skilled to emerging processes of global restructuring, and felt that ‘conventional’ migration theory lacked the sophistication to understand the nuances of the corporate practices driving such changes (Findlay et al. 1996; see also Azmeh in this volume, Chapter 18). Secondly, by concentrating on skills as a driver of economic performance, HSM research drew the attention of national governments to a perceived need to actively attract the highly skilled, to protect against the loss of their own skilled professionals, and to attract them back if lost. In the policies of both the global North and South, the highly skilled (whether already migrants or potentially so) were suddenly elevated to the category of the desirable, reducing the lower skilled ‘guest workers’ of the post-war era to a lower class of entrant. This created interest from both academics and policy professionals in the idea of an ‘immigration market’ in which countries compete to attract the best and brightest in order to out-compete their rivals in innovation and wealth creation (see also debate on managed migration in Pécoud in this volume, Chapter 17). In this way, the concept of HSMs had a direct effect on the development of migration governance regimes throughout the world. Indeed, as the countries of the ‘west’ began to heavily restrict irregular and family immigration from the 1960s onwards (compare Bonjour and Cleton, Chapter 13 and Squire, Chapter 11, both in this volume), they increasingly utilised schemes to ensure that HSMs, these most desirable of migrants, could continue to circumvent such barriers (Czaika and Parsons 2017; de Haas et al. 2018). These practices allowed nation states to engage in competition for ‘global talent’, whilst simultaneously highlighting their ability to control national borders to a sceptical electorate (Findlay and Cranston 2015; cf. El
Deconstructing skills in the stratification of migration governance 175 Qadim in this volume, Chapter 19). Meanwhile, countries in the global South, such as China, India and South Korea, which had been losing skilled workers to these nations, also reacted; setting up policies to create a ‘reverse brain drain’, seeking to attract these ‘lost’ workers back (Chacko 2007; Song 1997; Zweig 2006). Others, most notably the Philippines, attempted to tap into and encourage the migration of certain types of skilled workers in order to access much needed foreign currency, and (it was hoped) utilise the earnings of these ex-pats to drive economic development at ‘home’ (Yeates 2009). These new engagements with HSM research helped to insert migration into studies of an emergent global economic system. Indeed, we can see its influence in the drive towards a knowledge economy enshrined in the EU’s Lisbon Agenda of 2000. Equally, the entwined growth of national, regional and local policies towards HSMs allowed researchers to effectively link macro and meso-scales of international migration. However, where migrants were not viewed as highly skilled, their abilities and knowledge have long been under-explored. Too often their economic importance was presented as little more than ‘warm bodies’ to fill the jobs that local workers were no longer willing to do. Even sympathetic authors tended to write in terms of racial discrimination, ethnic segregation and employment rights, rather than of the ways in which individuals in low-skill roles might utilise their existing abilities and knowledge to secure better jobs, an improved working environment, or to mobilise collectively (compare Azmeh, Chapter 18, de Lange, Berntsen and de Sena, Chapter 24 and Piper, Chapter 32, all in this volume). While early exceptions may be found in work on immigrant entrepreneurs (Kloosterman and Rath 2001) and ethnic labour market niches (Wessendorf 2018), approaches did slowly change, driven by both the structural presentation of dual immigrant labour market within the global city (Sassen 1998), and the increasing interest in the social organisation of migrant labour markets along lines of race, ethnicity and gender (Roediger 2005; Waldinger and Lichter 2003).
CONTESTATIONS: CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON MIGRATION AND SKILLS One recurring issue with work on skills and migration has been the lack of definition of who counts as highly skilled. In terms of migration governance, countries regularly shift definitions of what constitutes a high-skill role in their visa regimes, whilst the relative importance of different personal characteristics varies widely both between immigration systems and within the same country over time. The UK, for example, substantially increased the qualification requirements for its top tier skilled-based visa in 2011 (Paul 2015), whilst the varied ways in which countries have combined and conflated different admission criteria, such as nationality, age and family status, have made nominally similar ‘points-based’ schemes very different in practice (ibid., de Haas et al. 2018; Ruhs 2013). Academic researchers, too, have struggled to define the S in HSM. Whilst the most commonly forwarded proxy has been a tertiary educational qualification (a university degree or equivalent), graduates are not necessarily employed in roles considered to require high levels of skill, nor are all those holding such roles graduates (see, e.g. Koser and Salt 1997). Furthermore, employers often forward far more subjective (and mutable) definitions of the highly skilled than simply using educational qualifications as a proxy. Findlay et al. (1996), for example, note that the ‘technical expertise’ of employees
176 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration was culturally constructed by firms in Hong Kong, in this case placing a heavy emphasis on the ‘internationality’ of staff. In the next section, therefore, the ways in which skills are socially (re‑)produced along interacting lines of differentiation (such as gender, race, ethnicity or class) are presented, as are the ways in which the reconstitution of existing skills in a new context acts to ‘deskill’ certain groups of migrants.
THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION AND REPRODUCTION OF ‘SKILLED’ AND ‘UNSKILLED’ MIGRANTS In recent years, scholars studying HSMs have paid increased attention to the way social categories, such as race, ethnicity, gender or class, help to shape the experiences of individuals who may be considered highly skilled. For example, in their work on how South Asian doctors in the UK came to be concentrated in the previously marginalised field of gerontology, Raghuram et al. (2011) shine a light on how racial and ethnic stereotyping helped to shape the workplace experiences of these doctors. The authors illustrate that, whilst their skills and qualifications provided access to highly skilled work, many career pathways remained closed to them, forcing them to the fringes of their profession. Other researchers, meanwhile, have noted how the migration of the highly skilled and the national policies which enable this are inherently gendered. Kofman (2013), for example, has noted that even apparently neutral points-based systems are subtly gendered through the evaluation of what is considered a skilled role, whilst reflecting existing patriarchy by placing a high value on the economic returns of particular (masculine) roles. Kofman notes that it is not that women lack skills or qualifications, but those that are most highly valued – particularly science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects – have tended to have lower levels of female participation. Meanwhile, areas traditionally seen as ‘feminine’, such as care work, have their economic and social worth downplayed (see also Lutz and Palenga-Möllenbeck 2012; Yeates 2009). Research has also explored the behaviours of Western ‘expatriates’, illustrating how complex intersectional practices of gender, race and class make and remake (post)-colonial practices and spaces (Cranston 2017; Kunz 2016; Mayblin in this volume, Chapter 2). Class, performed through the demonstration of social capital and habitus (Bourdieu and Passeron 1990), is not solely a reflection of our occupational standing, but becomes conflated with raced and gendered expectations. Thondhlanda (2018), for example, has shown that the relative success of skilled Zimbabwean migrants is linked not only to their relevant skills and qualifications, but also to their ability to perform the soft skills, the habitus, expected by potential employers (see also Siebers 2018), whilst Rajaram (2018) details how refugees become ‘classed’ (and ‘raced’) in capitalist value regimes through the devaluing of their productive labour, marking them as a surplus population, useful only as a cheap and disposable source of short-term labour. Relatedly, social networks have been seen as fundamental to the development and maintenance of highly skilled migration pathways (Plöger and Becker 2015; Ryan and Mulholland 2015). ‘Skill’ in such approaches is as much a matter of social performance and perception, as of technical expertise, educational qualifications or knowledge. Furthermore, by placing such performances in an interactional, heavily socialised, domain, ‘skill’ becomes a personal
Deconstructing skills in the stratification of migration governance 177 attribute that is constantly under negotiation. How it is negotiated is contextual, with different power structures in different spaces of interaction having a profound impact on how skilled a person is considered. For example, Lozanovska (2014) illustrates how skilled Italian construction workers moving to Australia were ‘de-skilled’ and presented as, ‘lowly, passive, peasants’ (2014: 135) in the mainstream construction trade. Whilst they were largely unable to resist this narrative, many were able to visibly illustrate their capabilities within their local communities and social networks through the building, or adaptation, of their own homes. Other work has explored the ways in which embodied social constructs, such as gender, race, class or age, interact with each other and the social networks of relationships which undergird these constructs, to produce performative landscapes. These, in turn, affect which jobs we are likely to get, and how we are viewed once in post. Waldinger and Lichter (2003), for example, illustrated how both social networks and local understandings of race, ethnicity and gender worked together to produce a system where migrant workers were drawn into certain kinds of work. Bauder (2006), meanwhile, helped show how a division of labour based on imagined embodied capital was normalised and presented as natural, whilst Wills et al. (2010) extended such research to incorporate an analysis of the ways in which global cities produce a division of labour that is heavily segmented along lines of race, ethnicity, class and gender. McDowell et al. (2007), meanwhile, produced an analysis of how the working lives of migrants in London hotels are mediated by social performances. In their analysis of the stubborn persistence of labour market segmentation and inequality, and the continuing importance of imagined gendered and racialised characteristics to our positions within such a system, McDowell et al. utilise the notion of interpellation, as introduced by Louis Althusser (2001 [1971]) and developed in labour market theory by Michael Burawoy (1982). Whilst McDowell et al. retain the idea that the identity of workers is socially constructed in an elaborate call and response between worker and employer, they extend this beyond class relations, to invoke an understanding of identities as multiple, fluid and nuanced social (re)constructions that are subject to both contestation and consenting stereotyping. Additionally, the complex relationships between social constructions, social networks and the governance structures of international migration and labour markets are often further mediated by third parties in the global migration industry, such as recruitment managers and agencies (de Lange, Berntsen and de Sena in this volume, Chapter 24). Authors, such as Findlay et al. (2013) and Scott (2013), have identified these mediators as key players in both the social construction of the ‘good’ migrant and in shaping the career trajectories of HSMs and other migrants by how and where they place individuals and groups in work (Stenning and Dawley 2009; van den Broek et al. 2015). In this way recruiters act as gatekeepers to the labour market, verifying and vouching for migrants and tacitly labelling them as suitable for certain kinds of roles (Vasey 2017). This may manifest itself as a preference for placing young Polish migrants to the UK in hard-to-fill, low-skill roles, regardless of their existing abilities or qualifications (Stenning and Dawley 2009; Vasey 2016); the differentiation of migrants based on imagined ethnic, gender and class characteristics (McDowell et al. 2008); or the more marginal and less secure employment experiences of Latvian agency nurses in Norway, as compared with their Swedish equivalents (Knutsen et al. 2019; Thibos and Howard in this volume, Chapter 12).
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DESKILLING AND THE CONTEXTUAL NATURE OF SKILL RECOGNITION As illustrated above, the skills of an individual are constantly open to contestation and change dependent on both the social recognition of those abilities by others, and local and national policy. Where an individual is considered skilled in one context and not in the other, academics often refer to them as having been ‘deskilled’. This does not mean that the individual has actually lost their skills; rather, it implies that they are unable to utilise them fully in their new surroundings. Why this happens varies greatly and depends on the context of migration. Often, this is due to their qualifications not being recognised in their new locale, barring them from entering their former profession (see, e.g., Cameron et al. 2019). Indeed, the recognition of overseas qualifications, formally determined by bilateral or multilateral international agreements (see, e.g., Schuster et al. 2013), can have a profound effect on the labour market trajectories of migrants (Andriescu 2018). However, not all migrants are aware of such schemes, nor do employers always value unfamiliar qualifications, whether or not they are formally recognised (Tibajev and Hellgren 2019). Additionally, language stands as a barrier to labour market progression for many migrants. In many countries in the global North, those with little or no ability in the dominant language are largely confined to the lower echelons of the labour market, either in unattractive poorly paid jobs in the general workforce, or within ‘ethnic’ niches where their existing skills (including fluency in a subordinate language) have more value (Dustmann and Fabbri 2003). However, even amongst those with a relative proficiency in the dominant language, circumstances may render their language ability less valuable than they thought. In the UK, for example, both employers and migrants themselves often view a lack of ‘clear’ English as a barrier to labour market progression; despite proficiency in the ‘standard’ or ‘global’ form of the language, regional variations and accents, as well as job-specific vocabularies, are still deemed barriers to career progression (Nowicka 2014). Equally, the importance of the face-to-face interview as the final barrier to gaining a role acts to formalise a linguistic penalty for those for whom the dominant language is not their main tongue (Roberts 2013). Indeed, as Blommaert et al. (2005) have argued, language ability is recast in a new social environment and undergirded with hidden meaning and value not immediately obvious to the newly arrived. Getting to grips with this new regime of language, with all its subtly disguised and normalised power structures, is a time-consuming business which can act to not only deskill an individual, but to present their lack of labour market success as a failure of personal qualities (Allen 2013). Indeed, there is evidence that those entering the lower end of the labour market never overcome this initial ‘linguistic’ penalty, becoming incorporated at the bottom, rather than rising up, as they both learn the language and become acculturated to their new setting, to gain jobs individuals with their qualifications may be expected to hold (Clark et al. 2018; Vasey 2017). Whilst those working in well-paid, high-skilled jobs also often face problems acquiring local know-how and becoming accultured to their new settings (Stephens 2016), crucially this does not appear a fundamental barrier to their career progression. Instead, where, when and how an individual’s personal characteristics impacts on their career and the social validation of their skills is defined by the intersection of an array of factors, including gender, race, ethnicity and class. An abstract concept of skill alone is not enough to explain the different labour market trajectories of international migrants. Rather, these exist within a global economy which produces hierarchically stratified spaces of privilege (Findlay and Cranston 2015).
Deconstructing skills in the stratification of migration governance 179
RECONCEPTUALISING MIGRATION AND SKILLS AS SOCIAL PERFORMANCE In this chapter I have set out the ways in which ‘skill’ emerged as a distinct category in the governance of migration. Furthermore, the politics and practices of migration (of states, organisations and individuals) is shaped by skill as a conceptual category. Such distinction has helped normalise the stratification of migration into elite and non-elite categories, marginalising those, such as ‘guest-workers’, who were considered desirable in previous periods of migration governance (Piore 1979). However, ‘skill’ is a highly contested domain; it is not a natural category, but a socially constructed one. We cannot accurately define skill, yet it is relied on by both academics and policymakers to distinguish between groups of migrants. Indeed, migration governance structures across the vast majority of high- and middle-income countries are almost universally concerned with distinguishing and attracting highly skilled migrants (de Haas et al. 2018; Ruhs 2013). Furthermore, skill intersects with other constructs of the social imagination, to fundamentally impact on our everyday lived experience of migration. In this concluding section, I draw together the insights highlighted earlier in this chapter to suggest ways in which those researching the politics, practices and governance of migration and migrants can begin to critically engage with the conceptualisation of skill as social performance. Firstly, the growth of ‘skill’ as an important factor in points-based immigration regimes has led to a situation whereby migrants are given differential access to not only the labour market, but also the welfare state and routes to citizenship, based on beliefs about the economic benefits of certain types of migrants (Ruhs 2013), creating both internal and external borders for migrants to work around (Amelina et al. 2019). However, as I have argued here, not only is skill is as much socially constituted as it is a measurable entity, it is often conflated with other variables, such as country of origin, or age, in both border regimes and in everyday social interactions. Additionally, as those seen as highly skilled are viewed more favourably than other immigrants by ‘host’ populations (Bonizzoni 2018; Naumann et al. 2018), being perceived as such is not only an economic imperative – in order to get a (better) job – but also a social one – in order to be accepted as a ‘good’ migrant. Bearing these points in mind, there are solid grounds for approaching immigration regimes critically, whether our work is explicitly concerned with them or not. That is, as Paul (2015) has convincingly argued, bordering in contemporary nation states does not end at their external boundaries, but manifests itself in numerous ways throughout our everyday interactions with the state (Crowley 2005; Yuval-Davis et al. 2019). Skill, as a central tenet of the points-based immigration systems commonly deployed across the world, is certainly part of this process. However, more research needs to be done to explore how and where ‘skill’ is deployed within everyday bordering practices, not just formalised systems of immigration governance, such as points-based schemes. Secondly, less formalised structures are also at play in the relationships between skills and migration. Recruitment and employment agencies, along with other intermediary actors (van den Broek et al. 2015), play a significant role in determining how the skills of migrants are reconstructed in new locales, shifting certain groups into certain roles, subtly diminishing the skills of some, whilst highlighting those of others (see, e.g., Knutsen et al. 2019; McDowell et al. 2008; Nowicka 2014; Vasey 2017). Relatedly, social networks act to structure and shape the ‘performance’ of skill during the migration process. These transnational links act
180 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration to draw individuals together, providing support networks and helping to maintain or increase the cultural capital of their members (Erel 2010; Ryan 2011; compare Fischer in this volume, Chapter 4). In this way, they can act both as bastions of privilege, reproducing an elite transnationalism in new locales (Beaverstock 2005), and as a way to negotiate an alien and indifferent environment (Faist et al. 2015; Levitt et al. 2017). Such networks act to both reflect and negotiate social structures, sometimes amplifying and highlighting our skills and abilities, other times ignoring or minimising our qualifications and capabilities. In this way, we can begin to illustrate how social presentations of skill and competence are enabled and activated (or not) through social connections and intermediaries. Thirdly, the socially embedded nature of skill, combined with structural barriers, means that ‘skill’ is subject to transience and change, particularly when moving from one context to another. This may lead to deskilling, whereby one’s capabilities and qualifications are rendered less useful in a new locale, either through the non-recognition of existing qualifications, different social and cultural working habits and norms, or the lack of social recognition of the ability of certain individuals. Such deskilling can have profound and long-term impacts on the labour market progress of migrants, and we need to continue to explore how this process works, in turn helping to demonstrate and highlight the politics and governance of international migration. Finally, skill should be understood as fundamentally socially mediated; that is, it is not only an expression of technical capability, but also a social marker, which is both intersected by other social constructs, such as gender, race, ethnicity and class, and enacted within a web of social interactions. This means that our ability to utilise our skills, and the value that is ascribed to them, is contextual and driven by elaborate dual interpellations which mark some as skilled, others as not, regardless of their qualifications and abilities (McDowell et al. 2007). Therefore, one of the key tasks for researchers in this field is to denaturalise the concept of skill, to explicitly demonstrate how skill is socially constructed and contextual. Even critical academics have sometimes co-opted the notion of HSMs in their work, without adequately unpacking what this means in practice. The push now must be both to challenge the notion of skill as a natural category, and to demonstrate how all migrants are skilled. How well migrants are able to deploy their abilities may be more to do with power and politics than capability or aptitude. In conclusion, skill is still too often presented as a natural category in international migration research, policy and governance. It is important for scholars to take a critical approach to skill, and to remember its expression is socially mediated and contextual, not simply a rendering of innate or learnt abilities or qualifications gained. Nor is this contextuality simply a matter of learning the ‘rules’ and language of a new locale; rather, it is underlain by a complex of interacting social constructs, including gender, race, ethnicity and class. In order to fully comprehend the role of ‘skill’ in the politics and governance, we must abandon the fallacy of skill as a natural category and be rigorous in our study of how it is socially constructed and mediated.
Deconstructing skills in the stratification of migration governance 181
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PART III INSTITUTIONS AND REGIMES OF MIGRATION GOVERNANCE
15. Towards a relational perspective on border regimes Prem Kumar Rajaram
INTRODUCTION Border regimes are difficult to pin down. Broadly speaking, they are to do with conceiving and managing the rules, procedures and patterns that make borders meaningful and governable. At one level, border regimes are quite simply the rules and procedures that determine entry and that govern migrants. At another level, border regimes are the shifting sets of actors, interests, and institutional norms or behaviours that become visible if borders are framed in certain ways. Border regimes are ways of seeing and knowing, of governing, and they are materialities – walls, bridges, camps and fences that impede or enable mobility. Border regimes are often gendered, behaving differently towards men and women, and they are also racialized. It is difficult to parse this all out. The literature on border regimes can be narrowly focused but can also be expansive to the point where significant work needs to be done to relate it back to ‘borders’. An example of narrow focus is the literature that centres itself on studying the policing, surveillance and securitization of borders (Loftus 2015; Pallister-Wilkins 2015), but at the same time such literature does orient itself outwards, asking questions about the meaning of community, the state and authority when studying the dispositifs (those institutional mechanisms and knowledge practices through which power is exercised in society) of border regimes (Bigo 2007). An example of a wider focus is work that looks at the multiple actors present at border sites (Green 2012). This literature argues that border regimes are complex relational fields where the lived experiences of migrants and the work of activists and solidarity networks dialectically engage with the work of security professionals. One intent of such work is to use the study of borders and border regimes as methodological tools to open up questions about patterns of inequality, uneven development and exclusion or marginalization that extend beyond the border but are put into sharp relief through mechanisms of immobilization at the border (Mezzadra and Neilsen 2013). In this chapter, I argue that fundamental assumptions about time and space shape how scholars imagine borders and border regimes, and by extension authority, power and community. Certain assumptions about space and time can lead, for example, to a perspective that borders are mappable in space and amenable to control. Scholars who see borders in this way put the actions of states at the centre of their work, whether implicitly or explicitly. They view the state as a stabilizing force that reconciles power, community and authority. Power is understood as the exercise of coercive capacity and its institutionalization within the state. Community is the site where the ideological basis of the state is reproduced, thereby creating consent to state power. And authority comes from the way in which coercion and consent as modes of governing are manipulated by the state. Other assumptions about time and space re-frame borders into diverse sets of relations that change over time. Relational and relativist accounts argue that border regimes are produced 185
186 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration by a multiplicity of actors and they focus on the diversity of experience found at the border. Emphasizing flux rather than stability, they highlight the complexity and contestation that question rather than reconcile community, authority and power. The rubric of state–power– community thus allows us to not only make sense of the literature, but to understand the wider social embeddedness of border regimes. The chapter ends by arguing that we should counter-intuitively ‘forget’ the border. We should reject accounts of it as special or particular. Instead, we should focus on how bordering practices are relationally connected to and emerge from the historical processes of control, dispossession and marginalization that are expressed by other regimes, for example global capitalism. Scholarship on borders and border regimes would do well to consider how the marginalization occurring at borders is connected to deep-seated political and economic structures and processes that reproduce marginalization and make it durable.
BORDERS AND BORDER REGIMES IN SPACE AND TIME Like other social metaphors – community, state, neighbourhood – ‘borders’ are second-order concepts. They rest on arguments about the characteristics of space and time. Building on David Harvey’s (2014/2005) three dimensions of space and time – the absolute, the relative and the relational, I now examine the spatio-temporal assumptions of three strands of literature on border regimes in order to make the implications of such assumptions apparent. I argue that it is important in all three strands to give a properly historical and spatial account of authority, community and power, and suggest the merits of a Gramscian historical approach to this. This is important because border scholarship tends to begin with ‘the border’, however conceived, and not with the conditions that led to the emergence and durability of certain bordering practices (see also Follis in this volume, Chapter 5). Border scholarship would have more to say about authority, community and power if it systematically studied borders as outcomes of historical processes and events. I also argue that borders may be seen as lenses into wider social processes. As such, scholars of border regimes should strive to account for how wider relations of inequality and marginalization are reproduced by the way borders are produced. While studies of gendered and racialized border regimes do exist (compare overviews in Mayblin, Chapter 2, and Bonjour and Cleton, Chapter 13, both in this volume), these are mainly studies of how policies of inclusion and exclusion are expressed. Yet race, gender and class are not pre-formed categories or identities. The production of marked bodies occurs through the same structured patterns of exclusion and inclusion that determine how border regimes operate. If gender and race are tools of ideological critique (Young 2003), then analysing how borders reflect racialized and gendered forms of exclusion and stratification will help us uncover deep-seated and historically emergent ideologies that foster and naturalize processes of dispossession and marginalization. Absolutist Accounts of Borders and Border Regimes Absolutist accounts take space as fixed and divisible, e.g. into private property, and assume individuals and things within a given space have precise positions (Harvey 2014/2005: 12). Measurability and calculability are thus key features of absolutist accounts of space. Because these qualities are prized, borders become technical sites of expert intervention and capitalist
Towards a relational perspective on border regimes 187 exploitation. A managerial state observes and calculates from afar, drawing and policing lines to manage society. Because calculation and measurement are prized here, borders can become technical sites of expert intervention or capitalist exploitation. Border management in all its complexity is increasingly provided by private firms (Andrijasevic and Walters 2010). Borders, in particular those in the industrialized North, have become objects of increasing policing and surveillance – they tend to privilege absolutist accounts of space. This is evident in ‘sharply rising law enforcement budgets for border controls, new legislation targeted at unauthorized entries and mobilities, the deployment of sophisticated surveillance and information technology, stricter visa controls and the augmented role of military personnel, methods and hardware’. All this points to states ‘retooling and reconfiguring their border regulatory apparatus to prioritize policing’ (Andreas 2003: 78). The imperative is the attempt to deny territorial access to ‘clandestine transnational actors’ – non-state actors who, in Andreas’ terms, operate in violation of state law, and include asylum seekers, migrants moving for work and drug traffickers among others. Post 9/11, North American borders have changed in both character and shape but they are changing in a flexible and targeted way, seeking to exclude mobilities identified as illegal while remaining porous to mobilities deemed desirable. Matthew Sparke, for example, describes how borders in the United States strived to stay open for a certain class of traveller (Sparke 2005). The border thins out for some while becoming progressively thicker and cumbersome for others. Walters (2006a) argues that it is important to understand the genealogy of borders. How have particular approaches to the border become naturalized? What has happened so that these practices of control exercised on the border produce a space where such practices appear as rational, natural or necessary? Bigo (2002) writes of the cultivation of a ‘governmentality of unease’, a mode of creating and establishing fear so that certain imaginations of the border appear natural and necessary. One consequence of this is that a number of stresses on liberty have become accepted ‘inside’, away from the border, in the name of fighting the insecurity at the border – while at the same time creating a fiction about the coherence of the ‘inside’ (Bigo 2002, 2007). A second consequence is the growth of data processing and biopolitical innovations to accelerate some forms of movement while slowing down others (Amoore 2006; Sparke 2005; Vaughan-Williams 2015; see also Jeandesboz in this volume, Chapter 27), and a third is the increasing tendency to push the border away, outsourcing processing of migrant and asylum claimants, for example to Libya, Nauru or Papua New Guinea. The ‘delocalization’ (Walters 2006b) of the border points to how externalized bordering practices are connected to internal or domestic practices of social control. Such practices are often subtle and allow for remote governmental practices fostering acceptable behaviour on the part of those who encounter the border. The politics of control has a strong racial, gendered and classed aspect due to colonialism followed by sustained and ideologically legitimized under-development (compare Mayblin in this volume, Chapter 2; Barbero 2012; Rexhepi 2018). The people being accelerated through are the capitalist and cosmopolitan elite class, and those being slowed down are disproportionately people who have been dispossessed by a global process of accumulation (Glick Schiller 2015). Borders do not necessarily exclude; rather, they slow down the transit of some people across borders and marginalize them by placing them along specific pathways – and dead-ends (Apostolova 2017). A broader understanding of how border practices work shows how people called irregular migrants are valued as cheap and easily disposable labour (Mezzadra and Neilsen 2013; Rajaram 2015). In Italy, for example, the agricultural industry relies on access to cheap migrant labour often
188 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration with unclear status (Peano 2017). In the meantime, the frontstage of capitalism prizes cosmopolitanism: those able to market themselves to the demands of the new market thrive while others are left out or rendered immobile, notwithstanding the contest posed by abject cosmopolitans (Nyers 2003). Border regimes in Europe post-2015 have taken strong culturalist turns (Rajaram 2018). At stake in border securitization is a way of life threatened by others who, it is said, have a different idea of how to be. Relativist Accounts of Borders and Border Regimes Relativist accounts of space and time emphasize the subjectivity of spatial relations. Borders can appear remote or proximate through real or imagined connections (Sparke 2000). The location of the border – at the edge of the nation – is also relative: what is important is the density of networks connecting it to central or peripheral areas. The relativity of borders means that they can be seen as far or near, as sites of solidarity or threat. The concept of ‘borderlands’ in anthropological approaches to borders highlights this uncertainty. It demonstrates that cultures, identities, and the relations that animate them, are not territorially bound. They are instead developed along a stretched-out borderland where the realities of trans-territorial cultural ties clash with sovereign authority (Alvarez 1995). When culture comes back in, it brings history with it (Hage 2016). An examination of who has right of entry or of acceleration through borders points to cultural forms that are prized (Rajaram 2018). The narrative and politics of exclusionary otherness resituates the border ‘inside’. There is a ready slippage in the way external others and internal others, like Roma in much of Europe, are characterized (Yıldız and De Genova 2018). Scholarship in the relativist vein emphasizes the different relations, hierarchies and power set-ups of borders and border regimes. It connects broader global processes to specific phenomena and processes at the border. For example, formal and informal capitalist networks in Malaysia collaborate with police and border officials to permit, legally or otherwise, Indonesian labourers into the country in order to supply the agricultural, service and construction sectors with cheap and easily disposable labour. Similar neoliberal logics allow North American business travellers, even in the post-9/11 age of heightened immobilization, to continue to speed across borders without giving them a second thought (Sparke 2005). The emphasis on diversity and specificity makes relativist accounts of community, authority and power more complex. Inclusion and exclusion are more matters of capitalism and culture than geography. Power is diffused in borderlands, while authority is contingent and contested rather than the stable outcome of powerful states interacting with coherent communities. Relativist accounts of space enable us to think of borders as the products of historically contingent processes rather than as sites located in space and time (on the temporal dimension see Griffiths in this volume, Chapter 26). They are materialized in specific technologies, ways of seeing and modes of knowing, and can be repackaged and contained in different sites of intervention and different relations of power. The border in absolute space is categorized and becomes more like this than like that: a border can be ‘open’ or ‘closed’, a space of ‘danger’ or of ‘commerce’. Relativist accounts move us beyond such categorical modes of thinking. Rather than focusing on whether things remain the same or are transformed, they shift our attention toward the microprocesses of power that enable the continuation or disruption of border rationalities and imaginaries at different scales or sites. As such, they help us under-
Towards a relational perspective on border regimes 189 stand the “topology” of borders (Allen 2003; Paasi 2011), that is, the connections and disruptions that occur between locations. This form of thinking helps us see why borders can also be mobile. Why, for example, people with refugee status continue to be bordered and policed after ‘transforming’ out of their previous status (for example, ‘asylum seeker’, irregular migrant) and moving ‘inside’ the ostensible border (Collier 2009; Khosravi 2007; Mezzadra and Neilsen 2012; see also Squire, Chapter 11 and Mofette, Chapter 28, both in this volume). Borders here are relative, relational and perspectival (Mezzadra and Neilsen 2012; Rajaram 2015; Rajaram and Grundy-Warr 2007). Borders are also mobile; they are carried by subjects: border processes name and mark bodies, making subjects that – to different degrees – carry the border with them as a means of adjudicating difference, even when they make it to the ‘inside’. In his auto-ethnography of travelling ‘illegally’ from Iran to Europe, Shahram Khosravi looks at the multiple formal and informal institutions and actors that deploy to mark his body as illegal or undesirable. Khosravi says this notion sticks. Many years later, Khosravi, now an academic in a Swedish university, stopped at Bristol airport when flying there for an academic conference. The border guard justifies her interrogation of him with ‘you want to kill us, we have to protect ourselves’ (Khosravi 2007: 332). Huub van Baar (2017) argues that some groups are made legally ‘evictable’, but not necessarily excluded. Those under conditions of ‘evictability’ face daily insecurity because of their status. Irregular migrants in the United States, South East Asia, Europe and the Middle East are valued by capitalist markets for their cheap, disposable and legally precarious labour (Castles et al. 2012; Garcés-Mascareñas 2015; Sigona 2012). The border looks like an ongoing set of blockades against which people strive to articulate belonging. At the same time, new forms of solidarity have emerged between migrants and citizens that call to mind differently bordered politics and communities (Cantat 2016). Among these are sanctuary cities in the United States and elsewhere, active squatter and occupation movements, and neighbourhood community spaces in southern Europe (Bauder 2017; Mudu and Chattopadhyay 2017; on political mobilization of migrants, see Ataç and Schwenken in this volume, Chapter 30). The main insight of relativist accounts of space is that borders are more differentiated and expansive than they might seem, and the actors involved are multiple. This scholarship argues that border regimes do more than manage inclusion and exclusion. Borders are both dynamic and non-dynamic (Green 2012). Sometimes they are active agents that foster inclusion or exclusion; at other times they are spaces of inaction and waiting (see Griffiths in this volume, Chapter 26), holding zones where not very much seems to happen. As Green (2012: 580) puts it, borders are more a verb, a practice and a relation than they are a noun. They intend to cause a certain desire or imagination to come into being. The actors involved can be multiple and shift over time and space, as do the desires and imaginations behind these. Relational Understandings of Borders and Border Regimes A relational account of space – the third way of conceiving space – moves away from the relativist focus on identifying difference, and instead focuses on the power structures that lead to certain forms of bordering becoming durable over time. The relational account of space and time focuses on interactions – those networks that connect locations. Relational accounts of space and time can attend to the global flows that influence how topologies of borders operate. They move beyond the methodological nationalism of many accounts of the
190 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration border. The analytical focus is on the social processes and practices that produce degrees of inclusion and exclusion. For example, Roma migrants who are citizens of an EU country may find themselves subject to inclusion and exclusion simultaneously: included as EU citizens but excluded as racialized others (van Baar 2017). For Mezzadra and Neilsen (2012), the important focus then is on how relations of domination and power become produced in the topologies of borders. Relational accounts of space and time focus on interactions instead of stable accounts of ‘events’. Community, power and authority are thus constituted by a series of interactions between agents. Every now and again, these appear to coalesce into stable arrangements, but relational accounts avoid naturalizing these and ask what types of interactions have become dominant and why. The onus is always on uncovering processes and relations that point to the underlying flux of ostensibly stable social, economic and political arrangements. Relational accounts of borders and border regimes point to new forms of scalar and spatial organization – in Clarke’s (2008) words, new ways of ‘making up places’. Such accounts point to the multiple ways of constructing, making sense of and governing the border. Plural sovereignties are articulated that frame the border and its regimes in different ways. These are often overlapping and contested sovereignties where different articulations are made between different subjects, organizations and places. What becomes apparent here is that sovereignty, meaning territorial control and state authority, is created by contingent practices and relations. These, in turn, depend on how the connections between local and global processes are imagined and made to materialize. As Green (2012) says, we lose something if we see the sovereign and its border as nouns; they are ongoing practices. If sovereignty is framed around a distinct border, then the multiple scalar operations of sovereignty are concealed. When we see the border as a made-up place – or a place in the process of being made up – we see how different actors, interests and institutions are related or placed into different relations. Relational accounts show how border regimes form and are reproduced through dialectical engagement between actors and institutions. The focus is on relations and networks between institutions and actors, including migrants themselves (rather than a ghostly and unitary state acting in the background). Rather than abject and individualized appellants to a state, migrants feature in their agentic struggles for recognition or plain rebellion (Papadopoulos et al. 2008). Relational accounts bring out many other actors as well, most of whom are invisible in state and state-centric accounts of borders. NGOs, activists, Churches and humanitarian agencies are involved in facilitating waypoints for crossers; people variously called traffickers, smugglers or activists may be involved in helping people across the border; employers may be present at borders to recruit cheap labour; human rights lawyers and groups may offer advice to crossers and may seek to challenge the decisions of border bureaucrats; border guards can go rogue (sometimes violently so); citizen militias, private security firms, Churches, and various other volunteers are involved in policing the border or dealing with the consequences of policing (for the role of humanitarian NGOs, see Hart, Chapter 8, and Crawley and Setrana Chapter 16; for practices of trafficking, Thibos and Howard, Chapter 12; for labour recruitment, Azmeh, Chapter 18, all in this volume). Kallius et al. (2016) argue that the organizations formed to assist migrants moving through Hungary in 2015 occupied contradictory and ambiguous positions, framing migrant assistance as humanitarian while also making political claims on behalf of migrants. Rozakou (2012) studies volunteers and organizations who call on ‘traditional’ notions of hospitality to reject the state’s biopolitics. Cantat (2016) shows how the European political landscape is complicated by activists deploying new imaginations of
Towards a relational perspective on border regimes 191 solidarity and belonging – a Mediterranean community stretching from Europe through to the Middle East and North Africa. These interventions point to the multiple actors of and at the border, and the multiple communities and solidarities visible when not over-determined by the state or state-centric accounts of borders. For scholars that focus on the border as a regime of control, power is held by the state through the institutionalization of coercive power. Community is the space where the state’s ideology is reproduced enabling consent, and authority is held by the state exercising coercive and consensual power. De-centring the state acknowledges attempts by state institutions to organize border regimes while taking into account multiple actors that seek to challenge, shift or work with the state. The ‘regime’ of rules and procedures emerges out of multiple relations, narratives and intents, of which the state’s are neither always clear nor dominant. These contests and changes in and around border regimes are generative: they influence how border regimes imagine inclusion and exclusion and they colour the territories that border regimes perform (Green 2012). While absolutist accounts of borders tend towards an analytically stable account, relational accounts highlight these contests and complexly intertwined relations. Forget the Border By suggesting that we forget the border, I am proposing a move away from an analysis of the border as a specific or special place. Once they are subject to a relational analysis, borders and border regimes in themselves are not the subject of study. Rather they are analysed as outcomes, expressions and effects of broader historical processes by which domination and inequality are worked out. If the border is relationally constituted in this way, then it is not simply connected to actors at border sites, but to the wider global social processes that make these actors and their positionalities politically and socially meaningful. Cantat (2016) argues that we need to understand how mobilities are deemed rogue or legitimate as part of state-making processes which have centred on naturalizing the idea of private property and ensuring the reproduction of class privilege. Mezzadra and Neilsen (2012) have suggested that the growth of the hyper-exploitative capitalist accumulation processes has been enabled by the erosion of the political-economic ideology of the citizen-worker and the way it was deployed as a means for expressing recalcitrant political agency that acted as a counterfoil to capitalist accumulation and restricted accumulation by dispossession. This is the case at least in the West; in the South it also legitimized such dispossession, because people were not able to perform citizenship properly, but that is a longer story (Rajaram 2018). So, how might durable historical processes, including the constitution of the nation state (El Qadim in this volume, Chapter 19), the emergence of capitalism and the global division of labour (Azmeh in this volume, Chapter 18), and the interests that these serve be understood as part of the ongoing processes of marginalization of migrants in different border regimes? We can begin by looking at how borders and border regimes reflect, sustain and naturalize wider processes that cultivate inequality and marginalization. The border is not particular, and neither are border regimes. Border scholars would do well to forget the border and resituate questions of inclusion and exclusion in a wider socio-historical backdrop.
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CONCLUSION What you understand by border regimes depends on how you see space and time. Absolutist accounts of space underpin the idea that the border regime is fundamentally about control. Relativist accounts of space point to the multiple actors present: border regimes are large and loose, including a wide range of actors and roaming far from the territorial line. Relational accounts of space suggest that border regimes are not the thing to be focused on: we should trouble ourselves rather with the relations that connect and disconnect, make meaningful or non-meaningful different ‘events’ at the border. Relational accounts of the border are promising because they do not take borders and border regimes as the thing to be analysed. Rather, they ask how, through what relations, did this particular idea of the border and border regime emerge and become naturalized? Focusing on the process and the relations affected by borders, they allow for a properly historical account of how borders emerge and of our obsessions with them. Despite their many merits, relational accounts can also be limited though: they can explain the need to focus on processes in and around the border and that make the border emerge, but they do not always manage to give an account of how these processes coalesce into specific patterns. Why do patterns of marginalization and exclusion repeat around the border? What makes them so durable and why are the same kinds of people impacted negatively over time? I have suggested that we should, counter-intuitively, forget the border if we are to understand the border and border regimes. Rather than specializing in the study of the border – making a fetish of it – it would be analytically interesting to study border and border regimes in relation to underpinning historically emergent practices that sustain the marginalization of some and drive the privilege of others. There may be many ways of doing this; one way is to see borders and border regimes as reflections of deeper-set processes of capitalist accumulation.
REFERENCES Allen, J. (2003), Lost Geographies of Power, Oxford: Blackwell. Alvarez, R. R. (1995), ‘The Mexican–US Border: The Making of an Anthropology of Borderlands’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 24, 447–70. Amoore, L. (2006), ‘Biometric Borders: Governing Mobilities in the War on Terror’, Political Geography, 25 (3), 336–51. Andreas, P. (2003), ‘Redrawing the Line: Borders and Security in the Twenty-First Century’, International Security, 28 (2): 78–111. Andrijasevic, R. and W. Walters (2010), ‘The International Organization for Migration and the International Government of Borders’, Environment and Planning D, 28 (6), 977–99. Apostolova, R. (2017), ‘Moving Labor Power and Historical Forms of Migration: The International Socialist Worker, the Social Benefit Tourist and the Economic Migrant’, doctoral thesis, Budapest: Central European University. Barbero, I. (2012), ‘Orientalising Citizenship: The Legitimation of Immigration Regimes in the European Union’, Citizenship Studies, 16 (5–6), 751–68. Bauder, H. (2017), ‘Sanctuary Cities: Policies and Practices in International Perspective’, International Migration, 55 (2), 174–87. Bigo, D. (2002), ‘Security and Immigration: Towards a Critique of the Governmentality of Unease’, Alternatives, 27, 63–92.
Towards a relational perspective on border regimes 193 Bigo, D. (2007), ‘Detention of Foreigners, States of Exception, and the Social Practices of Control of the Banopticon’, in P. K. Rajaram and C. Grundy-Warr (eds), Borderscapes: Hidden Geographies and Politics at Territory’s Edge, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 57–101. Cantat, C. (2016), ‘Rethinking Mobilities: Solidarity and Migrant Struggles Beyond Narratives of Crisis’, Intersections: East European Journal of Society and Politics, 2 (4), 11–32. Castles S., M. A. Cubas, C. Kim and D. Ozkul (2012), ‘Irregular Migration: Causes, Patterns, and Strategies’, in I. Omelaniuk (ed.), Global Perspectives on Migration and Development, Global Migration Issues, vol. 1, Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 117–51. Clarke, J. (2008), ‘Living With/In and Without Neo-Liberalism’, Focaal, 51, 135–47. Collier, S. (2009), ‘Topologies of Power: Foucault’s Analysis of Political Government beyond “Governmentality”’, Theory, Culture & Society, 26 (6), 78–108. Garcés-Mascareñas, B. (2015), ‘Revisiting Bordering Practices: Irregular Migration, Borders, and Citizenship in Malaysia’, International Political Sociology, 9 (2), 128–42. Glick Schiller, N. (2015), ‘Explanatory Frameworks in Transnational Migration Studies: The Missing Multi-Scalar Global Perspective’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 38 (13), 2275–82. Green, S. (2012), ‘A Sense of Border’, in Thomas M. Wilson and Hastings Donnan (eds), A Companion to Border Studies, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 573–91. Hage, G. (2016), ‘Etat de siege: A Dying Domesticating Colonialism?’, American Ethnologist, 43 (1), 38–49. Harvey, D. (2014/2005), ‘Spacetime and the World’, in Jen Jack Gieseking, William Mangold, Cindi Katz, Setha Low and Susan Saegert (eds), The People, Place and Space Reader, London: Routledge, pp. 12–16. Kallius, A., D. Monterescu and P. K. Rajaram (2016), ‘Immobilizing Mobility: Border Ethnography, Illiberal Democracy, and the Politics of the “Refugee Crisis” in Hungary’, American Ethnologist, 43 (1), 25–37. Khosravi, S. (2007), ‘The “Illegal” Traveller: An Auto-Ethnography of Borders’, Social Anthropology, 15 (3), 321–34. Loftus, B. (2015), ‘Border Regimes and the Sociology of Policing’, Policing and Society, 25 (1), 115–25. Mezzadra, S. and B. Neilsen (2012), ‘Between Inclusion and Exclusion: On the Topology of Global Space and Borders’, Theory, Culture & Society, 29 (4/5), 58–75. Mezzadra, S. and B. Neilsen (2013), Border as Method, or the Multiplication of Labour, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Mudu, P. and S. Chattopadhyay (2017), Migration, Squatting and Radical Autonomy, New York: Routledge. Nyers, P. (2003), ‘Abject Cosmpolitanism: The Politics of Protection in the Anti-Deportation Movement’, Third World Quarterly, 24 (6), 1069–93. Paasi, A. (2011), ‘Geography, Space and the Re-Emergence of Topological Thinking’, Dialogues in Human Geography, 1 (3), 299–303. Pallister-Wilkins, P. (2015), ‘The Humanitarian Politics of European Border Policing: Frontex and Border Police in Evros’, International Political Sociology, 9 (1), 53–69. Papadopoulos, D., N. Stephenson and V. Tsianos (2008), Escape Routes: Control and Subversion in the 21st Century, London and Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press. Peano, I. (2017), ‘Migrants’ Struggles? Rethinking Citizenship, Anti-Racism and Labour Precarity through Migration Politics in Italy’, in S. Lazar (ed.), Where Are the Unions? Workers and Social Movements in Latin America, the Middle East and Europe, London: Zed Books, pp. 87–106. Rajaram, P. K. (2015), ‘Common Marginalizations: Neoliberalism, Undocumented Migrants and Other Surplus Populations’, Migration, Mobility, & Displacement, 1 (1), 67–80. Rajaram, P. K. (2018), ‘Refugees as Surplus Population: Race, Migration and Capitalist Value Regimes’, New Political Economy, 23 (5), 627–39. Rajaram, P. K. and C. Grundy-Warr (2007), ‘Introduction’, in P. K. Rajaram and C. Grundy-Warr (eds), Borderscapes: Hidden Geographies and Politics at Territory’s Edge, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. ix–xl. Rexhepi, P. (2018), ‘Arab Others at European Borders: Racializing Religion and Refugees along the Balkan Route’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 41 (12), 2215–34.
194 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration Rozakou, K. (2012), ‘The Biopolitics of Hospitality in Greece: Humanitarianism and the Management of Refugees’, American Ethnologist, 39 (3), 562–77. Sigona, N. (2012), ‘“I Have Too Much Baggage”: The Impacts of Legal Status on the Social Worlds of Irregular Migrants’, Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale, 20 (1), 50–65. Sparke, M. (2000), ‘Excavating the Future in Cascadia: Geoeconomics and the Imagined Geographies of a Cross-Border Region’, BC Studies: The British Columbian Quarterly, 127 (autumn), 5–44. Sparke, M. (2005), ‘A Neoliberal Nexus: Economy, Security and the Biopolitics of Citizenship on the Border’, Political Geography, 25 (2), 151–80. van Baar, H. (2017), ‘Evictability and the Biopolitical Bordering of Europe’, Antipode, 49 (1), 212–30. Vaughan-Williams, N. (2015), Europe’s Border Crises: Biopolitical Security and Beyond, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Walters, W. (2006a), ‘Border/Control’, European Journal of Social Theory, 9 (2), 187–203. Walters, W. (2006b), ‘Rethinking Borders Beyond the State’, Comparative European Politics, 4, 141–59. Yıldız, C. and N. De Genova (2018), ‘Un/Free Mobility: Roma Mgrants in the European Union’, Social Identities, 24 (4), 425–41. Young, I. M. (2003), ‘The Logic of Masculinist Protection: Reflections on the Current Security State’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 29 (1), 1–24.
16. The limits of the ‘global refugee regime’ Heaven Crawley and Mary Setrana
INTRODUCTION Current estimates suggest that around 70 million people worldwide have been forced to leave their homes, and often their countries, as a result of persecution, human rights abuse and conflict (UNHCR 2018a). The ‘global refugee regime’, established by European countries in response to the continent’s collective failure to protect those displaced and/or targeted during the Second World War, has been the subject of growing criticism for its failure to provide protection and long-term solutions for refugees, Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and others for whom migration is not a ‘choice’. Images of refugees fleeing conflict and violence in Somalia, South Sudan, Afghanistan, Syria and, most recently, Myanmar have brought into sharp relief the inadequacies of the ‘global refugee regime’ in providing international protection to those most in need (cf. Hart in this volume, Chapter 8). At the same time the concept of ‘asylum’ – and the figure of the ‘refugee’ as someone deserving of sympathy and support – has increasingly come under attack. This trend has been fuelled by the rise of anti-immigrant parties in Europe – where the arrival of more than 1 million people, primarily refugees, across the Mediterranean in 2015 was met largely with hostility and distrust (Crawley et al. 2018; cf. Guia in this volume, Chapter 33). Government policies elsewhere, most notably Australia – where refugees are routinely detained and remain incarcerated for many years in offshore detention centres1 – and the United States – where the Trump administration actively sought to undermine legal protections and refugee resettlement programmes2 – have also brought into question the effectiveness of the ‘global refugee regime’ in providing protection to refugees. This chapter provides an overview of how the ‘global refugee regime’ came to be established, including its inherent Eurocentrism in terms of both conceptualization and geographical reach, its complex and highly contested relationship to broader systems of control intended to govern international migration, and the shift from the protection of human rights towards the centrality of ‘burden sharing’ as a key organizing principle. In so doing, it challenges the notion that there is a ‘global refugee regime’ at all, arguing that the history of protection is rooted in deeply embedded normative assumptions about the legitimacy or otherwise of claims to international protection in the context of forced migration. The regime is underpinned by an assumption that it is both possible and desirable to separate refugees from other migrants, and subject them to differential treatment, establishing entirely separate legal, institutional and policy mechanisms for determining who is, and is not, deserving of international protection and assistance by states. These assumptions, reflected in the prevalence of categories intended to include and exclude (Bakewell in this volume, Chapter 10; see also Crawley and Skleparis 2017), inevitably mean that protection is a deeply political – and politicized – policy tool employed by states not simply to control migration flows but to legitimate and de-legitimate certain types of movements and certain kinds of migrants. This chapter suggests not only that the existence of a ‘global refugee regime’ is questionable, but that in the period since the institutional structures of the regime were established, there has been a gradual but steadily increas195
196 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration ing shift away from ensuring that the human rights of refugees are respected towards a focus on sharing the ‘burden’ of refugees, not only between states but between states and other actors, including host communities, the private sector and refugees themselves. This is reflected in the most recent effort to ‘fix’ the widely acknowledged problems associated with the ‘global refugee regime’ – namely the Global Compact on Refugees (‘Refugee Compact’) and associated Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF). The Refugee Compact’s claim to be ‘entirely non-political in nature, including in its implementation’ (UNHCR 2018b, para. 5) belies the fundamentally political nature of protection and the geo-political contexts within which the ‘global refugee regime’ was established and continues to evolve. We begin by providing a historical overview of the evolution of the ‘global refugee regime’ before unpacking the politics of refugee protection and the shift away from rights towards burden sharing. The chapter concludes by questioning the existence of a ‘global refugee regime’ and the extent and availability of protection to those forced to leave their homes.
THE HISTORY OF THE ‘GLOBAL REFUGEE REGIME’ Whilst the ‘global refugee regime’ has a long history (Barnett 2002), its contemporary manifestation is underpinned by international instruments and institutional structures established in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, most notably the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (‘the Refugee Convention’) and UN High Commission(er) for Refugees (UNHCR).3 When the war ended in 1945, an estimated 30 million people were left uprooted in Europe. This included soldiers and displaced people who did not want to, or could not, return home because of border changes, and more than 12 million ethnic Germans expelled from the USSR (ibid.). Three years after the war ended, at least a million remained without a long-term solution to their displacement (Gallagher 1989). The Refugee Convention defines a refugee as: A person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence, is unable, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it. (Article 1A)
Critically, those claiming international protection as refugees cannot be prevented from entering a country, nor can they be deported, expelled or transferred to territories in which their life or freedom would be threatened (Scalettaris 2007). This principle of non-refoulement clearly distinguishes the ‘global refugee regime’ from other forms of migration control: Whereas immigration policy is designed primarily to serve the interests of the receiving country by admitting selected categories of foreign nationals and preventing unauthorized entry by others, refugee policy arises from the legal and moral obligations incumbent upon open societies by virtue of their membership in an international community. (Suhrke and Zolberg 1999: 141)
It requires that states which are signatories to the Refugee Convention provide a process by which individuals can assert their right to ‘seek asylum’.
The limits of the ‘global refugee regime’ 197 As noted by both Mayblin (2014) and Alienikoff and Zamore (2018), this emphasis on rights rather than relief, came on the back of the conflict in Europe and the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (1948).4 Protection for refugees was considered to be important because it was an urgent issue at the time and because it was seen as a way to uphold stability and basic rights in the event of any future humanitarian crises (cf. Hart in this volume, Chapter 8). In this regard, the ‘global refugee regime’ differs significantly from other forms of migration governance because it is rooted in a concern for the human rights of individuals rather than the economic interests of states. The emphasis on the right of refugees to seek protection and avail themselves of the human rights protection potentially available in a country other than their own has dominated the evolution of case law determining who is, and is not, recognized as a ‘Convention refugee’ by individual states. At the same time, however, this emphasis on rights and associated obligations (particularly in relation to non-refoulement) has been widely represented in recent years as posing a potential threat to state sovereignty and the exercise of discretion by countries with regard to who can, and cannot, enter and remain in their territories, a point to which we will return. In particular, the Eurocentric application of rights and the ‘myth of difference’ – which represented the nature and character of refugees seeking protection from the global South as being radically different from those who had been seeking protection within Europe – means that some humans have continued to be viewed as more deserving of rights than others (Chimni 1998; Mayblin 2014). Although its geographical limitations were subsequently removed,5 the Refugee Convention was therefore intended to address the needs of those displaced within Europe. These origins of the Refugee Convention are central to understanding why the regime cannot truly be described as ‘global’ in its reach. Firstly, even at the time of its drafting, the Refugee Convention reflected, and in turn codified, longer histories of colonialism, exclusion and ‘othering’ (Mayblin 2014; see also Mayblin in this volume, Chapter 2). Whilst there were many people outside of Europe in need of international protection – including in previously colonized countries undergoing often violent struggles for independence – their interests and needs were systematically discarded, even at that time. Secondly, not all states signed up to the Refugee Convention, a point to which we return below.
THE POLITICS OF REFUGEE PROTECTION The geographical and experiential limitations of the Refugee Convention, combined with a significant ‘implementation gap’ driven by national and international geo-political concerns, calls into question the existence of a ‘global refugee regime’. Firstly, as noted above, the regime was never ‘global’ in terms of signatories. Whilst the Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol have been signed or ratified by the majority of the world’s countries, there are still 43 members of the UN that have not signed or ratified either.6 This includes most countries in South and South East Asia, some of which host significant refugee populations (Kneebone 2019) as well as many countries in the Middle East including Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq. Whilst Turkey has signed the Refugee Convention, it has not signed the Protocol removing the Convention’s geographical limitations, which means that more than three million Syrians currently residing in Turkey are treated as ‘guests’ rather than refugees within the meaning of international refugee law. Cognizant of context-specific displacement drivers, a number of regional instruments have been developed which comprise part of the
198 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration ‘global refugee regime’. These include the 1969 OAU Convention (governing the specific aspects of refugee problems in Africa) and the 1984 Cartenga Declaration (for the protection of refugees in South American countries) (Suhrke and Zolberg 1999). Whilst regional instruments can provide practical responses to the protection and humanitarian challenges associated with forced migration, they are arguably not central to it in that they are often not underpinned by the same legal and human rights principles and may be subject to national or regional interests or priorities. Moreover, whilst UNHCR is tasked with the job of ensuring that the regime is implemented, it has little political and financial power of its own (Loescher 2009). Since its inception, UNHCR has faced the constraints of being wholly dependent upon the voluntary contributions of key donor states and reliant upon host governments for permission to initiate operations on their territory (cf. Hart in this volume, Chapter 8). About 98% of UNHCR’s funding comes from voluntary contributions, particularly the USA, Japan and the EU, who exercise a disproportionate amount of influence on the organization’s activities and priorities (Loescher 2009). Secondly, the concept of a ‘refugee’ and who is and isn’t able to access international protection is defined and understood in ways that primarily reflect the interests of the global North rather than those of the global South, where the vast majority of refugees are located. The ‘global refugee regime’ was established primarily to address the problems posed to the countries of Europe by the existence and presence of refugees rather than to address the problems faced by refugees themselves (Saunders 2014). Moreover, European states actively sought to exclude non-European refugees in the colonies from being included in the Convention, so that there is a colonial dimension to the very definition of refugee and the setup of the supposedly ‘global refugee regime’ (see, for example, Mayblin 2014). As a result, many crucial aspects of forced migration – such as the experiences of IDPs located in the global South – are neglected. Moreover, states increasingly draw on policy and legal processes to differentiate and categorize the experiences of people who move in an effort to limit their obligations towards refugees. This presupposes that there is a clear distinction between the experiences of refugees and other migrants when often there is not (Crawley and Skleparis 2017). In this way the needs and interests of the global North and other advanced economies continue to dominate, reflected in recent political and media attention – and in turn resources – directed towards the arrival of refugees in Europe (Crawley et al. 2018). Thirdly, there is evidence of a significant ‘implementation gap’. It has always been down to individual countries that are signatories to the Refugee Convention to decide how they will implement it beyond core principles such as non-refoulement. Whilst the regime obligates states to establish processes to determine who is, and is not, in need of asylum, there is no corresponding obligation for protection to be granted (Alienikoff and Zamore 2018). This has resulted in significant differences in processing mechanisms and recognition of protection needs over time and between different countries, including countries in the same geographical regions aiming to establish harmonized procedures.7 Fourthly, and reflecting the points made above, responses to the protection needs of those who are displaced are primarily driven, as they always have been, by the politics of protection (Adamson and Tsourapas 2019; Goodwin-Gill 2008; Greenhill 2002; Keely 2001; Waibsnaider 2006). The legitimacy or otherwise of claims to international protection were driven initially by foreign policy considerations in the context of the Cold War: in the first few decades after the Second World War, many refugees came out of the communist bloc. The acceptance of these refugees from these countries was a way to position the West as morally and ideologi-
The limits of the ‘global refugee regime’ 199 cally superior (Goodwin-Gill 2008; Keeley 2001). After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Western nations became less interested in championing the rights of refugees. Refugees have, nonetheless, remained a critical tool in global ‘migration diplomacy’ (Adamson and Tsourapas 2019). This was apparent during the 1994 Cuban balseros crisis (Greenhill 2002), and has been seen more recently through the use of refugees to leverage political and financial power in Libya8 and Turkey9 (Crawley et al. 2018). The politics of protection has increasingly driven national, regional and global policy responses to the arrival of refugees. Refugees constitute only a small proportion of migrants globally – around 9% of the total according to IOM (2018) – with less than 15% able to reach and seek protection in the countries of the global North. Nonetheless, these refugees, and the systems designed to protect them, have become highly symbolic, representing a ‘touchstone issue’ for a wide range of other anxieties and concerns. Refugees – together with their advocates and protectors – have come to be positioned within the global politics of migration in specific ways: as a threat to security (Hammerstadt 2014; Jones 2016); as people who abuse the hospitality of states who are otherwise generous in their willingness to protect refugees (Safouane 2019); and as a political symbol of a country’s allegiance or opposition to a particular regime or conflict (Goodwin-Gill 2008). As a result, the emphasis has been on limiting access to the asylum system, on narrowing the legal interpretation of the Refugee Convention, devising new forms of ‘temporary’ or ‘subsidiary’ protection (Fitzpatrick 2000; on the temporal dimension of migration governance cf. Griffiths in this volume, Chapter 26), and on introducing mechanisms for determining the protection needs or otherwise of refugees and asylum-seekers before they arrive (Léonard and Kaunert 2016). For many governments – including those in most EU member states, the USA and Australia – the standard for judging performance on responses to forced migration is not the protection of the rights guaranteed under the Refugee Convention, but the achievement of immigration officials in driving down the number of applications for asylum. Billions of dollars have been spent on a variety of border-control techniques, including the deployment of additional border guards, the construction of border fences and barriers, the interdiction and detention of those travelling irregularly and the implementation of visa requirements which limit the possibility of legal entry (Jones 2016; see also Rajaram in this volume, Chapter 15). In other words, the ‘global refugee regime’, like all other aspects of contemporary migration governance, is not a given: it has evolved over time to reflect the geo-political and other interests of states and regional priorities with regards to protection, integration and return. Formal systems exist, most notably through UNHCR, but implementation is at the national level and varies hugely. UNHCR itself lacks any mechanism by which to enforce the provisions of the Refugee Convention, or indeed any mechanism by which to address the causes of refugee flows (Saunders 2014; see also Hart in this volume, Chapter 8).
FROM RIGHTS TO ‘BURDEN SHARING’: THE REFUGEE COMPACT Against this background of increasing restrictions and divergent outcomes for refugees under the ‘global refugee regime’, the notion of ‘burden sharing’ has been revived and is rapidly gaining currency. In the context of refugees, ‘burden sharing’ is ‘the principle through which the diverse costs of granting asylum assumed by the host state are more equitably divided
200 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration among a greater number of states’ (Milner 2005: 56). As noted by Boswell (2003), this idea started life in the 1950s as a principle for promoting international solidarity among states receiving refugees but has increasingly been used – or abused – by different protagonists to justify quite divergent policy approaches. Whilst the importance of ‘burden sharing’ has been articulated in a range of documents since the creation of the ‘global refugee regime’, it finds its clearest and most explicit articulation in the Refugee Compact which came out of the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, signed in September 2016.10 As with the Refugee Convention, the Refugee Compact was essentially a response to events in Europe, where the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ had come to dominate political and policy debate.11 The Refugee Compact – and associated Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF) rolled out across a range of refugee-receiving contexts during 2017 and 2018 (Hansen 2018: 1) – signals a significant shift away from ‘top-down’ governance of refugee issues through a rights-based approach, instead devolving responsibility to the private sector, community-led organizations and refugees themselves to deliver refugee self-reliance through a ‘whole-of-society’ approach. These efforts to ‘reboot’ the ‘global refugee regime’ were not the first of their kind. In 2001, UNHCR marked the 50th anniversary of the Refugee Convention by launching a series of Global Consultations on International Protection12 which culminated, two years later, in the Agenda for Protection (Feller 2001; UNHCR 2003) aimed at developing ‘new approaches, tools and standards to underpin the present protection regime and enhance both the legal and physical protection of refugees’. The Refugee Compact’s aims reflect those of the earlier Agenda for Protection, albeit with a greater emphasis on the concerns of states than the rights and protection need of refugees: Refugee situations have increased in scope, scale and complexity and refugees require protection, assistance and solutions … There is an urgent need for more equitable sharing of the burden and responsibility for hosting and supporting the world’s refugees, while taking account of existing contributions and the differing capacities and resources among States.13
Some of the Compact’s fiercest critics highlight the weakness of its language when it comes to fundamental, but politically controversial, issues such as the right to work, resettlement, financial burden-sharing and other socio-economic aspects of inclusion (see, for example, Chimni 2018; Hathaway 2018). More specifically, they point out that the greatest weakness of its language is precisely the non-binding characteristic lauded by others, arguing that it fails to provide a forceful language of interpretation on the very controversial issues of international refugee law – such as detention and penalties for illegal entry – that lie at the heart of refugee protection. They also question the continuing dominance of the global North in defining the nature of ‘the refugee problem’ and in driving the allocation of resources given UNHCR’s continuing financial reliance on the generous contribution of rich industrialized countries and organizations with their own political interests and agendas. UNHCR, it is suggested, is part of the problem, not the solution (Hathaway 2018). Moreover, whilst the principles of burden-sharing are made explicit in the Refugee Compact and the CRRF, there remains, in concrete terms, an imbalance in the sharing of duties, leaving some states with greater responsibilities than others. Although the Refugee Compact was adopted by 193 member states in 2016, its implementation is not ‘global’: the CRRF has only been rolled out by 15 countries – namely Afghanistan, Belize, Costa Rica, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Honduras, Kenya, Mexico, Panama, Rwanda, Somalia, Uganda, United
The limits of the ‘global refugee regime’ 201 Republic of Tanzania and Zambia (UNHCR 2018a) and two regional approaches (the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) Special Summit on Durable Solutions for Somali Refugees and its resultant Nairobi Declaration and San Pedro Sula Declaration). The Refugee Compact reflects and reinforces unequal power relations regarding states’ relationships towards refugees: while rich global North countries are positioned as financiers, countries in the global South – where the vast majority of refugees are located – are positioned as the stewards of refugees. Once again, this challenges the idea of a ‘global refugee regime’. Perhaps the most significant concern about the Refugee Compact, however, is that it re-orientates the ‘global refugee regime’ away from its original focus on ensuring state responsibility for the provision of rights and assistance for refugees towards an emphasis on the responsibilities of others – the private sector, communities and refugees themselves – to address ‘the refugee problem’. This is reflected in the language used: no section specifically focuses on access to international protection, and whilst there are 36 mentions of ‘need’, 32 mentions of ‘humanitarianism’ and 131 mentions of ‘support’, refugee ‘rights’ are mentioned just six times. The concept of ‘self-reliance’ and the call for a whole-of-society’ approach are central to this shift. Instead of addressing root causes of forced migration, the language of refugee self-reliance is posited as a grand solution, one that puts the onus on refugees themselves to resolve their displacement-related vulnerability. Whilst this has the potential to create more livelihood opportunities, this approach fails to offer adequate well-being and protection to refugees while potentially exposing them to the vagaries of tight and/or hostile labour markets.14 The expectation is that refugees will become self-sufficient. They are often encouraged to be entrepreneurs in areas which differ significantly from their professions or skills prior to migration, limiting the diversity of potential income sources. Refugees, irrespective of their psychological and physical circumstances, are increasingly only provided with temporary assistance upon arrival in the name of ‘self-reliance’. Instead of providing enhanced protection policies for refugees, states and international donors have rather relinquished their more permanent obligation as humanitarian assistants, and instead sought to ‘create cost-effective exit strategies from long term refugee populations’ (Easton-Calabria and Omata 2018: 1459). Running alongside the emphasis on refugee self-reliance is a focus on the implementation of a ‘whole-of-society’ response involving the participation of both state and non-state actors such as civil society organizations, business actors, researchers and refugees themselves, among others. Whilst this is a potentially bold idea, there is a danger that the ‘whole-of-society’ response will change little for refugees on the ground without the political will of governments to improve refugee protection and access to opportunities for integration, including through the provision of rights. As noted by Montemurro and Wendt (2017: 11), ‘just as in the past, there is a risk with the refugee participation as part of the whole-of-society approach that it will be preached, but only practiced as long as it matches with broader political and vested interests of States and international organizations’. Whilst it is clear that there need to be changes in the ways in which refugee issues are addressed, a major limitation of the Refugee Compact, therefore, is the absence of any measurement of accountability. In the absence of a rights-based approach to refugee protection and assistance requiring states to take the lead, refugees may be rendered even more vulnerable than they currently are. It is clear therefore that despite the potential value of the Refugee Compact and CRRF in drawing attention to the problems associated with the ‘global refugee regime’, its formulation and content has been driven primarily by the desire to prevent a repetition of the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ in Europe. An interest in ‘sharing the burden’ with the largest ‘producers’ of
202 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration refugees in the world is also a concern even though these countries are also some of the poorest and least politically stable (Hansen 2018: 146). In other words, the language and framing of ‘the refugee problem’ continues to reflect and reinforce the needs and interests of countries in the global North who are currently providing international protection to only a tiny proportion of the world’s refugees.
SO DO WE NEED A ‘GLOBAL REFUGEE REGIME’ – OR JUST BETTER PROTECTION? The politics of protection which shaped the evolution of the regime after the Second World War continues to do so in ways that ultimately undermine access to protection for those forcibly displaced within and outside their own countries. As noted in our introduction, the ‘global refugee regime’ is neither global in scope nor consistent in application, raising questions about whether it can even be described in these terms. And there is no shortage of countries prepared to question its very existence, pushing aside their international obligations in order to satiate the demands of politicians and the public. The EU, USA and Australia are among the biggest offenders in that respect, but they are not the only ones. There is growing evidence that the refugee policies of rich, industrialized countries receiving a tiny proportion of the world’s refugees are starting to have ‘ripple effects’ for refugees living in other parts of the world and the international refugee regime more generally (Hargrave and Pantuliano 2016). In 2015, as Rohingya refugees fled Myanmar on overcrowded boats, the governments of Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand pushed the boats out to sea to prevent them from reaching safe shores. Kenya has been seeking to close down some of its largest refugee camps and repatriate those who have lived there all their lives. Peru and Ecuador are restricting Venezuelan refugees, while Tanzania is working to push out Burundians. Lebanon and Turkey are pushing for the return of Syrians. In other words, the response of an increasing number and range of countries to issues of refugee protection has moved from one of ambivalence to active resistance. In this context, the particularity of governance arrangements for the protection of refugees has been subject to growing criticism. The failure of the ‘global refugee regime’ is proffered as evidence that a separate governance structure addressing the needs of refugees is outdated and unworkable, designed as it was at a moment in history when the political landscape was very different and international mobility far more limited. It has been suggested that the Refugee Convention should be scrapped and the needs of those who are forcibly displaced integrated into wider migration governance structures (Ferracioli 2014). The problem is that the Refugee Compact does nothing to allay these concerns and any failure to deliver, as was seen with the Agenda for Protection, may simply re-confirm them. More recently, there have been calls to entirely ‘rethink’ the global refugee regime, to ‘mend the broken system’ (Betts and Collier 2017) and even to create entirely new countries in which refugees and their advocates would live (Cohen and Van Hear 2019). But solving ‘the refugee problem’ very much depends on how this problem is defined and understood. In many ways the Refugee Compact and associated CRRF simply reproduces – and indeed deepens – the shift from rights to ‘burden sharing’ that has increasingly characterized the ‘global refugee regime’. The problem is not that too many people are coming to the rich, industrialized countries of the global North but rather that the politics of protection has increasingly undermined the availability of protection and assistance available to those
The limits of the ‘global refugee regime’ 203 forced to move. This is reflected in the lack of political support for global initiatives such as resettlement which could prevent situations of protracted displacement and dependency. Moreover, there has been a failure to address the root causes of forced migration, most notably, the relationships between conflict, (under)development, trade, arms and support for politically oppressive regimes. Debates about the drivers of forced migration and issues of refugee protection have been almost entirely disconnected from these wider policy agendas. This chapter has suggested that the concept of human rights which lies at the heart of the ‘global refugee regime’ and which requires states to provide opportunities for entry and protection not available to other categories of migrants, has increasingly come to be challenged. This is particularly apparent in the framing of the Refugee Compact. Yet in a world that continues to be characterized by political conflict, intra-group tensions and the mass movement of people within and across borders, the Refugee Convention and the principles it embodies are arguably more important and more relevant than ever. The Refugee Convention, for all its flaws of implementation and interpretation, provides a vital framework and a set of principles for ensuring that those who cannot be protected by their own governments – or are targeted by them or other forces out of their control – are able to secure protection elsewhere. The rights that underpin the Refugee Convention need to be re-centred and extended, adapted to the specific and particular contexts in which forced migration takes place, and aligned to broader debates about the rights of citizens and non-citizens in an increasingly globalized world. Success in managing forced migration and in meeting the needs of those forced to move will require governments to explicitly acknowledge and reinforce the principle that the ability to seek protection from persecution and human rights abuse is a fundamental human right. This right should be facilitated rather than prevented – whether through the Refugee Convention or via other means. At the same time as reclaiming the concept of protection, the international community needs to turn its attention in a comprehensive and meaningful way towards addressing the root causes of forced and other migration. Current policy and practice in most global North countries continues to be dominated by, and premised upon, the assumption that most refugees are in fact economic migrants. Even where refugees originate from countries clearly affected by conflict, this is not considered the primary motivation for the decision to leave (cf. the discussion on voluntary vs. forced migration in Bakewell in this volume, Chapter 10). The most effective way to reduce the number of refugees globally– and in turn the pressures on states to provide protection and assistance – is through policies that tackle the root causes of forced migration by preventing and reducing conflict and promoting respect for human rights and good governance. It also requires the forging of new forms of transnational solidarity that go beyond states or specific groups to address issues of poverty, inequality and injustice more generally. Whilst the Refugee Compact and CRRF offer some new ideas about how best to address the long-term needs of refugees in different contexts, they do not address any of these more fundamental issues and problems. Instead, the Refugee Compact and CRRF are almost exclusively oriented towards making things more palatable for states. The problem is that many of these states are increasingly choosing to renege on their international obligations altogether.
NOTES 1. 2.
See https://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/publication/immigration-detention-australia. See https://www.refugeesinternational.org/reports/2019-administration-report-card.
204 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration 3. The history of how the Refugee Convention and the institutional structures supporting it came to exist is outlined in detail elsewhere (see, for example, Gallagher 1989). 4. Article 14 of the UDHR states that ‘Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.’ 5. An additional Protocol removing the geographical limitations of the Refugee Convention was signed by most, although not all, signatory countries in 1967. 6. See https://www.unhcr.org/protection/basic/3b73b0d63/states-parties-1951-convention-its-1967 -protocol.html. 7. See, for example, https://www.thenewfederalist.eu/eu-asylum-policy-the-past-the-present-and-the -future. 8. In 2010. Colonel Muammar Gaddafi warned that Europe ran the risk of ‘turning black’ unless the EU paid Libya at least €5 billion (£4.1 billion) a year to block the arrival of illegal immigrants from Africa. See https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/7973649/ Gaddafi-Europe-will-turn-black-unless-EU-pays-Libya-4bn-a-year.html. 9. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly threatened to ‘open the gates’ to Europe for refugees unless he receives financial compensation and visa-free access for Turkish nationals. See https://www.dw.com/en/turkey-threatens-to-open-the-gates-to-europe-for-refugees/a-50317804. 10. See https://refugeesmigrants.un.org/declaration. 11. Despite the fact that the vast majority of the world’s refugees – an estimated 85% – are hosted by poorer countries in the global South (UNHCR 2018a). 12. See http://briguglio.asgi.it/immigrazione-e-asilo/2002/maggio/inform.-cons.-globale.html. 13. Available at https://www.unhcr.org/gcr/GCR_English.pdf. 14. See http://blogs.bath.ac.uk/cds/2019/06/20/a-world-of-self-reliant-refugees-reflections-on-world -refugee-day/.
REFERENCES Adamson, F. B. and G. Tsourapas (2019), ‘Migration diplomacy in world politics’, International Studies Perspectives, 20 (2), 113–28. Alienikoff, A. and L. Zamore (2018), The Arc of Protection: Towards a New Refugee Regime, Public Seminar Books, https://cic.nyu.edu/news/arc-of-protection-refugees-zamore. Barnett, L. (2002), ‘New issues in refugee research: global governance and the evolution of the international refugee regime’, Working paper No. 54, Geneva: UNHCR. Betts, A. and P. Collier (2017), Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System, London: Allen Lane. Boswell, C. (2003), ‘Burden-sharing in the new age of immigration’, Washington: MPI https://www .migrationpolicy.org/article/burden-sharing-new-age-immigration. Chimni, B. S. (2018), ‘Global compact on refugees: one step forward, two steps back’, International Journal of Refugee Law, 30 (4), 630–34. Chimni, B. S. (1998), ‘The geopolitics of refugee studies: a view from the South’, Journal of Refugee Studies, 11 (4), 350–74. Cohen, R. and N. Van Hear (2019), Refugia: Radical Solutions to Mass Displacement, London: Routledge. Crawley, H., F. Düvell, K. Jones, S. McMahon and N. Sigona (2018), Unravelling Europe’s Migration Crisis: Journeys Over Land and Sea, Bristol: Policy Press. Crawley, H. and D. Skleparis (2017), ‘Refugee, migrant, neither, both: categorical fetishism and the politics of bounding in Europe’s “migration crisis”’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 44 (1), 48–64. Easton-Calabria, E. and N. Omata (2018), ‘Panacea for the refugee crisis? Rethinking the promotion of “self-reliance” for refugees’, Third World Quarterly, 39 (8), 1458–74. Feller, E. (2001), ‘The evolution of the international refugee protection regime’, Washington University Journal of Law and Policy, 5, http://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_journal_law_policy/vol5/iss1/11. Ferracioli, L. (2014), ‘The appeal and the danger of a new Refugee Convention’, Social Theory and Practice, 40 (1), 123–44.
The limits of the ‘global refugee regime’ 205 Fitzpatrick, J. (2000), ‘Temporary protection of refugees: elements of a formalized regime’, The American Journal of International Law, 94 (2), 279–306. Gallagher, D. (1989), ‘The evolution of the international refugee system’, International Migration Review, 23 (3), 579–98. Goodwin-Gill, G. S. (2008), ‘The politics of refugee protection’, Refugee Survey Quarterly, 27 (1), 8–23. Greenhill, K. M. (2002), ‘Engineered migration and the use of refugees as political weapons: a case study of the 1994 Cuban balseros crisis’, International Migration, 40 (4), 39–74. Hammerstadt, A. (2014), ‘The securitization of forced migration’, in E. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, G. Loescher, K. Long and N. Sigona (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 265–77. Hansen, R. (2018), ‘The Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework: a commentary’, Journal of Refugee Studies, 31 (2), 131–51. Hargrave, K. and S. Pantuliano, with H. Idris (2016), Closing Borders: The Ripple Effects of Australian and European Refugee Policy: Case Studies from Indonesia, Kenya and Jordan, London: Humanitarian Policy Group, Overseas Development Institute, www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/ resource-documents/10862.pdf. Hathaway, J. C. (2018), ‘The global cop-out on refugees’, International Journal of Refugee Law, 30 (4), 591–604. Jones, R. (2016), Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to Move, London: Verso. Keely, Charles B. (2001), ‘The international refugee regime(s): the end of the Cold War matters’, The International Migration Review, 35 (1), 303–14. Kneebone, S. (2019), ‘Why is Asia known as the region that rejects the Refugee Convention?’, RLI Blog on Refugee Law and Forced Migration, https://rli.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2019/04/15/why-is-asia-known-as -the-region-that-rejects-the-refugee-convention/. Léonard, S. and C. Kaunert (2016), ‘The extra-territorial processing of asylum claims’, Forced Migration Review, 51, 48–50. Loescher, G. (2009), ‘A universal mandate to protect: the challenges of refugee protection’, Harvard International Review, 31 (3), 44–8. Mayblin, L. (2014), ‘Colonialism, decolonization and the right to be human: Britain and the 2951 Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees’, Journal of Historical Sociology, 27 (3), 423–41. Milner, J. (2005), ‘Burden sharing’, in M. Gibney and R. Hansen (eds), Immigration and Asylum: From 1900 to the Present, Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, pp. 56–7. Montemurro, M. and K. Wendt (2017), Whose Responsibility? Accountability for Refugee Protection and Solutions in a Whole-of Society Approach’, Danish Refugee Council/HERE-Geneva, https://drc .ngo/media/4267546/whose_reponsibility-accountability-in-wosa_drc_feb2018.pdf. Safouane, H. (2017), ‘Between hospitality and inhospitality: the politics of migrants protection in Germany’, SPECTRA, 6 (1), https://spectrajournal.org/articles/abstract/10.21061/spectra.v6i1.403/. Saunders, N. (2014), ‘Paradigm shift or business as usual? An historical appraisal of the “shift” to the securitization of refugee protection’, Refugee Survey Quarterly, 33 (3), 69–92. Scalettaris, G. (2007), ‘Refugee studies and the international refugee regime: a reflection on a desirable separation’, Refugee Studies Quarterly, 26 (3), 36–50. Suhrke, A. and A. R. Zolberg (1999), ‘Issues in contemporary refugee policies’, in A. Bernstein and M. Weiner (eds), Migration and Refugee Policies: An Overview, London: Continuum, pp. 143–80. UNHCR (2003), Agenda for Protection, Geneva: UNHCR, https://www.unhcr.org/protection/ globalconsult/3e637b194/agenda-protection-first-edition.html. UNHCR (2018a), Global Trends 2017, Geneva: UNHCR, https://www.unhcr.org/statistics/unhcrstats/ 5b27be547/unhcr-global-trends-2017.html#_ga=2.178223525.1438534029.1561635706–452829518 .1554454146. UNHCR (2018b), Report of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Part II: Global Compact on Refugees, 73rd Session (September 2018), A/73/12, https://www.unhcr.org/gcr/GCR_English.pdf. Waibsnaider, M. (2006), ‘How national self-interest and foreign policy continue to influence the US Refugee Admissions Program’, Fordham Law Review, 391, https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr/vol75/ iss1/10.
17. Pitfalls, ambivalences and contestations of ‘migration management’ Antoine Pécoud
INTRODUCTION In September 2015, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).1 Composed of 17 goals, the SDGs constitute a global agenda designed to reduce poverty and inequalities, improve health and education, foster economic growth and address environmental change. They replace the 2000 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which expired in 2015. While different in many respects, both the MDGs and the SDGs serve the same purpose of building a comprehensive and internationally agreed-upon roadmap for development. Yet, one of the innovative features of the SDGs is that, unlike the MDGs, they refer explicitly to migration. Goal 10, which is about inequality-reduction within and among countries, contains target 10.7 that reads as follows: ‘Facilitate orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration and mobility of people, including through the implementation of planned and well-managed migration policies.’ However vague and elusive, this recommendation makes clear that the international community believes that ‘well-managed’ migration should be ‘facilitated’. UN-sponsored intergovernmental debates are indeed characterized by this tone and by the belief that ‘orderly’ migration is a desirable political objective (Pécoud 2015). This is intriguing. Particularly (but not only) in the global North, governments have placed a strong emphasis on border control and on the fight against irregular migration (Hollifield et al. 2014; see also Follis, Chapter 5 and Squire, Chapter 11, both in this volume). Political debates are frequently organized around hostile attitudes, and inward migration is associated with negative outcomes, such as security threats, welfare costs, unemployment and/or ethnoreligious tensions. Such debates take place in a particular context: whereas states have adopted international norms pertaining to asylum and refugees (mainly contained in the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, or Geneva Convention), no such binding rules exist for the admission and treatment of migrants (including, above all, labour migrants, but also other types of migration such as family reunification). Immigration policy thus largely remains within the realm of state sovereignty. This makes multilateral discussions difficult, while also hindering international organizations’ (IOs) effort to issue their own policy recommendations (Geiger and Pécoud 2014). Moreover, the (over‑)politicization of issues in national debates further makes IOs’ work difficult as it polarizes positions and creates antagonisms between and within countries, whereas IOs prefer to avoid exposure and criticisms, and thus value consensus (Petiteville 2018). As this chapter argues, these obstacles have spurred the elaboration of seemingly technical and depoliticized worldviews regarding how migration should be governed – and hence the reliance on a technocratic notion such as ‘migration management’. The technocratic flavour of migration management can therefore be interpreted as a strategy to mitigate the absence of a regime and the strong politicisation of migration in many countries. 206
Pitfalls, ambivalences and contestations of ‘migration management’ 207 This chapter is structured as follows. It first describes the context in which migration management emerged, in the aftermath of the Cold War in the 1990s, before showing how the perceived migration ‘crisis’ inspired calls for alternative political strategies such as ‘migration management’. I then examine the core elements that structure the rhetoric of migration management, before moving to the practices associated with migration management. The fifth section of the chapter looks at the institutional actors that promote these narratives and the final section explores the different criticisms that have been targeting migration management.
FROM THE ‘GLOBAL MIGRATION CRISIS’ TO ‘MIGRATION MANAGEMENT’ Migration management can be defined as a corpus of worldviews and policy recommendations regarding the ways in which migration should be governed by states and the international community (Geiger and Pécoud 2010). Before turning to the actual content of these worldviews, it is worth recalling the context in which they were born. Indeed, policy ideas and frameworks do not emerge out of nowhere but are grounded in specific historical and geopolitical contexts and must therefore be historically situated. The first occurrences of the ‘migration management’ approach took places in the 1990s, a decade that was in many respects a turning point in immigration policy, particularly in Western Europe. In terms of the geopolitical context, the collapse of the Soviet Union paved the way for a globalizing world, characterized by the worldwide penetration of capitalism, the growing interdependencies between countries and increasing transnational flows (of goods, capital or information). With the decline of the East–West confrontation, a number of global challenges progressively became identified, such as security concerns over terrorism or climate change. The transnational nature of these concerns, in a context in which the world became perceived as a ‘global village’, raised the issue of sovereignty and of states’ capacity to regulate issues that develop far beyond their borders. Migration was one such issue. In Western Europe, governments feared massive migration from the former communist countries in the East, while also struggling to cope with refugee flows fleeing the war in the Balkans. Climate experts warned about the consequences of environmental change in forcing people to leave their country (see Boas and Wiegel in this volume, Chapter 7). New problems were identified, such as the rise of human smuggling and trafficking (see Thibos and Howard in this volume, Chapter 12). Cheap transport, and information and communication technologies were also thought to facilitate migration (Geiger 2013). As a ‘new’ challenge and a ‘human consequence’ of globalization, migration became perceived as a threat, not only in terms of security and border control, but also as far as unemployment, the welfare state, social cohesion, religion or identity were concerned (Graham 2000). In 1995, Myron Weiner (1995) coined the notion of a ‘global migration crisis’: by challenging state sovereignty and destabilizing societies, he argued, migration moved from ‘low politics’ to ‘high politics’ and became a central issue for governments worldwide. Saskia Sassen (1996) further suggested that, in an era of globalization, states were ‘losing control’ and there were intense debates about their actual capacity to control their borders (Guiraudon and Joppke 2001). Governments’ main answer to this sense of ‘crisis’ was the tightening of migration control. In the United States, the Clinton administration started constructing segments of
208 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration a wall at the Mexican border in 1994, while in Europe the ‘Europeanization’ of migration policy took off in the late 1980s, with a strong security dimension (Huysman 2000).2 At the multilateral level, the dominant answer to concerns about state sovereignty was ‘global governance’, understood as a strategy based on cooperation between governments and on the increased involvement of IOs in assisting states. This was the main conclusion of the UN-sponsored Commission on Global Governance, whose 1995 report was entitled Our Global Neighborhood. As far as migration is concerned, such patterns of cooperation were discussed at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo. In 1997, the UN launched a project entitled the New International Regime for Orderly Movements of People (NIROMP), led by Bimal Ghosh, a former academic and international civil servant who had already provided his expertise to the Commission on Global Governance (Ghosh 2000, 2012). After completion of the NIROMP project, between 2001 and 2004, the Swiss government financed the Berne Initiative, a process of intergovernmental consultations that led to the International Agenda for Migration Management. Since then, intergovernmental and international discussions over migration have never stopped, fuelled by an ongoing context of crisis. Thus, while fears over East–West migration motivated the NIROMP in the 1990s, the migration crisis in the euro-Mediterranean region has more recently inspired the adoption, in December 2018, of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (see Ferris and Donato 2019).3 As the NIROMP initiative makes clear, the objective of these ongoing debates is to envisage a new ‘regime’ to govern international migration. In IR theory, a regime is a set of ‘principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actor expectations converge in a given area of international relations’ (Krasner 1983). A key feature of a regime is that it enables states and non-state actors to cooperate over certain issues, thereby lessening the costs stemming from anarchy and non-cooperation. Typically, a regime combines a set of norms and principles with an institutional actor tasked to implement them. When it comes to the international mobility of people, only the governance of refugee flows is the object of a regime: the Geneva Convention details the key legal and political principles (right to seek asylum, non-refoulement, etc.) while the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is mandated to translate these principles into practice and to assist states in addressing the problems raised by refugee flows (see Crawley and Setrana in this volume, Chapter 16). In contrast, no comparable regime exists for migration flows. For example, states have proven very reluctant to ratify and implement the conventions adopted by the International Labour Organization and the UN to protect migrants’ rights, which could provide an international law basis for a labour migration regime (Pécoud 2009). The consequent lack of cooperation prevents states from successfully governing migration and paves the way for a crisis. Faced with a transnational issue, states would then have no choice but engage in cooperation to retain their capacity to steer and monitor human mobility (on transnationalism, see Fischer in this volume, Chapter 4). In the words of the Global Compact, ‘no State can address migration on its own due to the inherently transnational nature of the phenomenon’ and migration policy thus ‘requires international, regional and bilateral cooperation and dialogue’. It follows that the destabilizing effects of migration flows are not necessarily due to human mobility itself, but to the lack of cooperation to ensure that such mobility is ‘well-managed’. To conclude, migration has, since the 1990s, been apprehended as a destabilizing and crisis-generating process. This has inspired fears and anxieties that have driven states to adopt increasingly control-oriented immigration policies. Yet, at the international level, this context
Pitfalls, ambivalences and contestations of ‘migration management’ 209 has motivated calls for increased cooperation between states. The keyword here is ‘managed’ migration: as the SDGs or the Global Compact make clear, IOs and the international community are not ‘against’ migration, but believe that migration should take place in an ‘orderly’ manner.
CONSTRUCTING AN IDEAL MIGRATION WORLD Now that the historical and geopolitical context has been explained, we can turn to the content of the worldviews and representations that characterize migration management. Indeed, migration management is primarily about elaborating a fairly coherent political narrative about migration. Like all political discourses, this narrative has a dual nature: it describes what migration is while also normatively outlining what it should be. The consultations, meetings and reports discussed above analyse migration and shed light on its causes, dynamics and consequences. Yet, they also go beyond such descriptive/analytical tasks and describe an ‘ideal migration world’ by outlining what migration should look like. Based on an analysis of the discursive production of IOs and intergovernmental forums (Pécoud 2015), this section identifies the key elements of this narrative: ●● Migration is a normal and inevitable process: If migration needs to be managed, it is because it cannot simply be stopped. The assumption is that migration is an inevitable phenomenon that will happen, no matter states’ political strategies. Migration management narratives thus distinguish themselves from the dominant views in many countries, where both governments and public opinions tend to see migration as a problem, or at least as the symptom of global disorders (poverty, conflicts) that should ideally be prevented. ●● Migration is a beneficial process: Migration is not only normal, it is also potentially positive. If properly managed, migration is beneficial for all parties – receiving states, sending states, and migrants themselves – according to the so-called ‘triple-win’ objective. It follows that governments should adopt a pragmatic (or cost–benefit) attitude when confronted with inevitable migration flows, and turn migration into a positive process. Alternatively, migration will happen anyway, but in a chaotic and unproductive manner. The benefits yielded by well-managed migration include addressing labour shortages in receiving economies, countering demographic imbalances in Western ageing societies, and fostering development in receiving regions. ●● Migration is a global issue: In order to benefit from migration, states must recognize its global nature and the subsequent need for multilateral cooperation. If they stick to narrow, unilateral policies designed at the national level, they will not only fail to take advantage of migration, but also prove unable to govern it at all. Failure to recognize the interdependencies between countries leads to suboptimal results. Just as governments cooperate over trade or climate change, they should also cooperate over migration policy – including through the increased reliance on IOs (hence the pro domo nature of this argument). ●● A reliance on liberal principles: In line with their commitment to universal values, IOs and intergovernmental bodies believe that migration should be addressed in compliance with a number of internationally agreed-upon principles and norms. These include the human rights of migrants and the humanitarian protection of migrants in vulnerable situations. Such liberal principles also include the free-market and the overall acceptance of a globalized capitalist economy in which the circulation of labour is indispensable to growth.
210 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration A few observations can be made about the core elements of migration management narratives. First, they envisage a kind of ‘third way’ between ‘closed’ and ‘open’ borders. They display a post-control spirit, according to which migration is a normal and positive process that cannot – and should not – be stopped. Yet, they also posit that migration should be governed and reject any kind of ‘free movement’ scenario (Ghosh 2007). A key premise of ‘managed’ migration is that migration remains under control. Second, migration management narratives draw upon the ‘New Public Management’ philosophy, according to which states and other public actors should develop market-oriented policy strategies and practices that are commonly associated with the private sector. This favours a generally economistic approach to migration while downplaying certain non-economic issues that are sensitive in many societies, like the sociocultural integration of migrants or their impact on social cohesion. Third, and not withstanding this general utilitarian inspiration, migration management narratives are comprehensive and speak to at least three different political agendas. By emphasizing that migration should be ‘managed’, they fit into security concerns over border surveillance and the fight against unauthorized migration that have come to play a key role among governments and public opinion (also Guia, Chapter 33 and Squire, Chapter 11, both in this volume). But they also introduce a cost–benefit argument and stress that migration should be facilitated, which is in line with the preoccupations over the recruitment of foreign workers that often stem from employers and the private sector (see also Vasey in this volume, Chapter 14). The reference to the positive impact of migration on development connects these narratives to sending countries and to development professionals (see also Azmeh, Chapter 18 and Kabbanji, Chapter 6, both in this volume). Finally, by incorporating human rights and protection, migration management narratives connect to civil society’s claims about the vulnerability of migrants (Geiger and Pécoud 2014). Fourth, migration management is about ‘fine-tuning’ migration. It aspires to favour ‘good’ migration (that is to say, useful and safe) while reducing ‘bad’ migration (associated with chaos, victimhood and abuses). ‘Managing’ migration would amount to navigating between the above-mentioned agendas, ensuring the ‘just right’ equilibrium in which migration would all together be under control, profitable for all and respectful of migrants themselves (Geiger and Pécoud 2010).
FROM NARRATIVES TO PRACTICES As a political narrative, ‘migration management’ is about explaining what migration is all about and how it should take place. It is more difficult to assess what migration management looks like in practice and to identify the actual policies that would translate these worldviews into reality. This section attempts to outline some of the practices that are commonly associated with migration management. This is a difficult task, not only because it is under-researched, but also because it implies examining a very diverse range of practices. A tentative list of ‘migration management’ activities could read as follows: ●● Counter-trafficking: Trafficking is widely understood as an obvious case of ‘mismanaged’ migration, as it is characterized by both a lack of protection for migrants and unauthorized border-crossings. Efforts to combat human trafficking have long displayed the cooperative
Pitfalls, ambivalences and contestations of ‘migration management’ 211 nature that characterizes migration management narratives, by bringing together states, civil society groups and IOs (Segrave 2016; see also Thibos and Howard in this volume, Chapter 12). ●● Readmission and ‘voluntary’ returns: This is also a longstanding field of activity for IOs. The objective is to facilitate the return of migrants marked as undesirable to their country of origin, usually by offering incentives (such as small grants), in order to avoid the costs and violence of expulsions (Koch 2014; Korneev 2014; see also Lindberg and Khosravi in this volume, Chapter 29). ●● Labour migration programmes: In line with the objective of facilitating the necessary circulation of labour, the implementation of migration management by IOs includes the organization of temporary labour migration, in a way that is supposedly orderly, protective of migrants and supportive of development (Barber and Bryan 2018; Gabriel and Macdonald 2018; see also Vasey in this volume, Chapter 14). ●● Border management: This usually includes the introduction of new technologies (such as biometrics) and the training of state officials in order to improve the operational nature of states’ surveillance of their borders. The objective is to strengthen their capacity to monitor migration flows, while at the same time establishing ‘smart borders’ practices that do not block the necessary mobility of people (Dini 2018; Frowd 2018; see also Jeandesbosz in this volume, Chapter 27). Cross-cutting tasks in all these activities include the production and circulation of data, in line with ‘evidence-based policymaking’ and the belief in the need for sound data to design appropriate policies (Korneev 2018). So-called capacity-building activities also pervade all these initiatives and include the training of officials and their socialization (Fine 2018). A common point to these practices is that they are situated somewhere in between the different policy agendas outlined above. For example, ‘counter-trafficking’, ‘readmission’ and ‘voluntary return’ initiatives lie between security and humanitarian concerns, while labour migration schemes try to conciliate the need for foreign labour with development efforts. ‘Border management’ initiatives lie in between the security agenda and the need to facilitate needed migration. Another common point is that these practices take place predominantly in ‘weak’ states and among ‘weak’ actors (namely sending states and migrants themselves). ‘Capacity-building’ activities target predominantly less-developed countries: given their political weakness and perceived lack of experience, these countries are exposed to external interventions by IOs. In contrast, receiving states hardly seem to be affected by migration management activities. This is in line with traditional patterns of interventions among IOs, and is reinforced by the funding of IOs (that comes mainly from Western receiving states, for example; see Hart in this volume, Chapter 8). It follows that these practices do not affect the core political strategies in the global North.
THE ACTORS BEHIND MIGRATION MANAGEMENT Policy narratives do not emerge out of nowhere. They must be crafted – and then supported – by policy entrepreneurs, institutions and epistemic communities that display a shared belief and interest in the value of the narratives. As described above, the emergence of migration
212 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration management was made possible through the joint efforts of a small number of experts, together with a handful of governments and certain IOs. As far as IOs are concerned, the most crucial one is certainly the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which was from the start closely associated with the NIROMP and subsequently actively promoted the idea of migration management – to the extent that its motto used to be ‘Managing migration for the benefit of all’ (Georgi 2010). The IOM is an intergovernmental organization that was created in 1951 and that, throughout its history, has provided governments with operational and logistical services. In the post-Second World War context, it was, for example, tasked with the organization of the emigration of refugees and displaced people from Europe to the Americas. These services were to a large extent designed to complement (or challenge) the rights-based protection mandate of the UNHCR, which is why the IOM remained outside the UN system until 2016. It became a permanent organization in 1989 and has since then witnessed a massive growth, to the extent that it is now the most influential IO in the field of migration policy (as exemplified by its key role in elaborating the Global Compact on Migration). Today, it undertakes a broad range of activities, from securing borders to providing humanitarian assistance, and producing and disseminating expert knowledge. It is involved in all the fields described above – security, humanitarian protection, development, labour migration, etc. – and has used the notion of migration management to bring these very different activities under a single umbrella and to provide legitimacy to its activities (Geiger and Pécoud 2020; Pécoud 2018). While the IOM is the dominant organization, there are other IOs involved in migration-related activities. They do not, however, place the same emphasis on the idea of ‘managing’ migration. The International Labour Office, for example, has a mandate centred on the protection of migrant workers’ rights (see Ataç and Schwenken, Chapter 30, and de Lange, Bernsten and de Sena, Chapter 24, both in this volume), while the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) works on the basis of its international human rights law instruments (see also Crawley and Setrana, Chapter 16 and Hart, Chapter 8, both in this volume). The World Bank focuses on development and remittances, and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime on the fight against human trafficking (see also Thibos and Howard in this volume, Chapter 12). The notion of migration management is occasionally used by these IOs, but does not have the same strategic importance than it has for the IOM. Regional actors also rely on this notion: this is the case with the European Union (which published in 2005 a Green Paper on an EU approach to Managing Economic Migration), but also with the International Centre for Migration and Policy Development (ICMPD), a small regional organization that works with non-EU states to increase their compliance with EU norms and practices (Fine and Pécoud 2018). A common point to all these actors is their inter- or supra-national character – and therefore their lack of legitimacy in addressing a political issue that is central to state sovereignty (see El Qadim in this volume, Chapter 19). In this respect, migration management is a consensual and all-encompassing narrative that speaks to all political priorities, thereby serving the purpose of justifying and legitimatizing the interventions of these actors. It follows that, from the perspective of these institutional actors, migration management is above all a resource: even if it does not mean anything, and even if it never translates into practice, it serves their institutional and organizational interests.
Pitfalls, ambivalences and contestations of ‘migration management’ 213
MIGRATION MANAGEMENT AND ITS DISCONTENTS As a narrative, migration management claims to reconcile largely irreconcilable political objectives and to transcend the diverging interests that characterize migration policymaking. In so doing, it depoliticizes migration by ignoring the political dilemmas that stem from the different views and objectives of all the actors interested in migration policy (Pécoud 2015). This is not specific to migration management: according to Shore and Wright (1997: 8), ‘a key feature of modern power’ is the masking of the political ‘under the cloak of neutrality’. ‘Management’ conveys the idea that migration can be governed in an optimal way, which has nothing to do with ideology or power, but only with a neutral and objective quest for optimal results. It follows that a critical stance towards migration management is difficult. By merging potentially diverging interests and concerns, these activities tend to be depoliticized and to escape clear-cut critical scrutiny. Yet, migration management, both in terms of narratives and practices, has been criticized along different lines. On the one hand, migration management – and UN positions at large – are criticized for being too open to migration. By arguing that migration is a normal and desirable process, they challenge states’ aspirations to fully control (or even close) their borders. Moreover, by calling for the inclusion of non-state actors (such as employers or civil society) in governing migration, migration management is perceived as qualifying states’ monopoly over the admission and treatment of foreigners (Ghosh 2012). The adoption of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration in 2018 was thus characterized by heightened debates and by the widespread idea that IOs’ interventions would lead states to lose their control over the transnational mobility of people. However ungrounded, this argument motivated the withdrawal or hesitations of key receiving states such as the United States, Australia and Italy (Ferris and Donato 2019). On the other hand, migration management is criticized for being too close to migration control, to the detriment of migrants’ rights. According to Amnesty International, for example, ‘if a regime of “migration management” is to be effective, not only must it be credible to states, but it must also be credible to migrants. To achieve this, it must respect the fundamental human rights of migrants, and indeed must actively seek to respect, protect and promote the rights of all migrants’ (2006: 25). Even IOM acknowledges that ‘the word “management” has occasionally been criticized as a euphemism for “restriction” or “control” and for giving insufficient attention to human rights’ (2008: 1). According to this criticism, migration management is merely a ‘soft’ way of referring to border control. The third criticism points to the discrepancy between migration management narratives and practices (Basok and Piper 2012; Geiger and Pécoud 2010). The former envisages an ideal migration world in which people would move for the benefit of all. But, as noted above, the latter take the form of much more down-to-earth projects that concentrate on non-Western states and do not seem to have the potential to transform the world in such a way. Moreover, while narratives claim that migration management is in the interests of all, practices rather seem to be aligned on the interests of dominant states – and to be therefore pervaded by hidden agendas. For example, border management and the training of migration officials in the global South are widely regarded as facilitating the externalization of border control (Dini 2018; Düvell 2003; Geiger 2010). In this respect, far from challenging the emphasis on border control that characterizes migration politics, migration management rather reinforces existing trends and imbalances.
214 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration In particular, the emphasis on ‘triple-win’ objectives in migration management narratives would enable Western states to impose their agenda in an apparently consensual manner. For instance, Collyer (2012) observes that IOM’s so-called ‘voluntary’ returns hide the structural violence that is inherent to such practices and the imbalances of power they are based upon (between governments and migrants as well as between governments of unequal power); these political aspects are neutralized and isolated in a ‘technocratic bubble’ (perhaps even more so if the practices are technologically conceived; see Jeandesbosz in this volume, Chapter 27). Barnett and Finnemore (1999: 700) recall that ‘even when they lack material resources, IOs exercise power as they constitute and construct the social world’: in this view, narratives are not only about ‘talking’, but actually shape the perception of reality – thereby making certain political strategies more or less acceptable. Migration management would then constitute a powerful cognitive framework that masks the perpetuation of an imbalanced and unequal world order. Fourth, from a political economy approach, migration management is criticized for being aligned on a neoliberal ideology that aims at controlling borders while at the same time facilitating the circulation of labour that is necessary to global capitalism (see also Azmeh, Chapter 18 and Vasey, Chapter 14, both in this volume). In a post-Fordist context, advanced economies would be characterized by a dual labour market: at the lower end, labour markets rely on the exploitation of the cheap labour provided by migrant workers (often in undeclared and semi-legal conditions), while at the upper end, companies compete to attract highly skilled workers. In such contexts – evident in middle-income countries as well – migration management is about selectivity, as it seeks to facilitate both types of labour migration, but in different ways and according to different standards of protection (Ruhs 2013). ‘Migration management’ thus embeds unequal conditions for migrants depending upon their productivity, while also favouring ‘useful’ migrants to the detriment of ‘unproductive’ foreigners such as refugees or family members (Mau et al. 2012; Menz 2008; Paul 2015).
CONCLUSION Migration management is profoundly ambivalent. If one looks at the rather modest practices identified in this chapter, coupled with the often naïve rhetoric of migration ‘for the benefit of all’, it is tempting to consider migration management as yet another example of the powerlessness of IOs, which candidly envisage alternative migration policies, but lack the influence to translate them into reality. However, another interpretation would be that the function of migration management is precisely to provide a new discursive framework for practices that are not in themselves new or challenging. As such, migration management constitutes a way of legitimizing certain practices and increasing their acceptance by all parties. Thus, ‘voluntary’ return would amount to a return, but it is rather disguised as a cooperative, migrant- and development-friendly process – and hence the return per se is more difficult to contest. As such, migration management acts as a catchall, a ‘buzzword’ that is flexible enough to endorse different meanings and be interpreted differently by different actors (Cornwall 2007). When IOs call for migration management for development, for example, this can mean more migration for development (i.e. liberalizing movement in order to increase remittances and circular mobility) or, on the contrary, more development for less migration (i.e. development as a strategy to reduce emigration pressure). Different actors – governments, civil society organ-
Pitfalls, ambivalences and contestations of ‘migration management’ 215 izations, employers in sending or receiving countries – are then likely to interpret migration management differently. They may agree on certain core principles, but in a superficial way that leaves space for diverging and sometimes contradictory views. Far from being a weakness or a problem, this superficiality is crucial to the very existence of migration management. Migration management is not a neutral and technocratic set of ideas and practices; it is a malleable corpus open to interpretations, embedded in power relations and subject to the asymmetries and imbalances that characterize migration politics. In today’s world, migration may well be more unmanaged than ever. But it is precisely in this troubled context that the idea of ‘well-managed’ migration has emerged and gained visibility. This paradox reflects the widespread perception that migration should somehow be differently – or better – governed. Yet, there are deep disagreements regarding what should be done. This creates a need for a depoliticized and seemingly consensual approach, flexible enough to speak to all – but also to accommodate the structural constraints of migration governance in an unequal world and a globalized capitalist economy.
NOTES 1. See https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdgs. 2. It is worth recalling that the perception of migration as a ‘crisis’ does not necessarily presuppose an actual increase in the volume of migration flows. Similarly, the idea according to which states would fail to control their borders is not necessarily correlated to increasing unauthorized flows (Brubaker 1994). While a thorough analysis is beyond the scope of this chapter, history shows that important migration flows have long been taking place and do not therefore constitute a distinct feature of today’s world (McKeown 2004). 3. Among the important steps of this ongoing debate, one may also mention the 2005 report of the Global Commission on International Migration, the UN High-Level Dialogues in 2006 and 2013, the annual Global Forum on Migration and Development since 2007, and the 2016 New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants (see Betts and Kainz 2017 for a detailed history).
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216 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration Dini, Sabine (2018), ‘Migration management, capacity building and the sovereignty of an African state: IOM in Djibouti’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 44 (10), 1691–1705. Düvell, F. (2003), ‘The globalisation of migration control’, openDemocracy, https://www.opendemocracy .net/en/globalisation-of-migration-control/. Ferris, Elizabeth G. and Katharine Donato (2019), Refugees, Migration and Global Governance: Negotiating the Global Compacts, London: Routledge. Fine, Shoshana (2018), ‘Liaisons, labeling and laws: IOM bordercratic interventions in Turkey’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 44 (10), 1743–55. Fine, Shoshana and Antoine Pécoud (2018), ‘International organizations and the multilevel governance of migration’, in Anna Triandafyllidou (ed.), Handbook of Migration and Globalization, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 38–53. Frowd, Philippe M. (2018), ‘Developmental borderwork and the International Organization for Migration’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 44 (10), 1656–72. Gabriel, Christina and Laura Macdonald (2018), ‘After the IOM: recruitment of Guatemalan temporary agricultural workers to Canada’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 44 (10), 1706–24. Geiger, M. (2010), ‘Mobility, development, protection, EU-integration! The IOM’s national migration strategy for Albania’, in M. Geiger and A. Pécoud (eds), The Politics of International Migration Management, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 141–59. Geiger, M. (2013), ‘The transformations of migration politics’, in M. Geiger and A. Pécoud, (eds), Disciplining the Transnational Mobility of People, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 15–40. Geiger, Martin and Antoine Pécoud (eds) (2010), The Politics of International Migration Management, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Geiger, Martin and Antoine Pécoud (2014), ‘International organizations and the politics of migration’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 40 (6), 865–87. Geiger, Martin and Antoine Pécoud (2020), The International Organization for Migration: The New ‘UN Migration Agency’ in Critical Perspective, Basingstoke: Palgrave. Georgi, F. (2010), ‘For the benefit of some: the International Organization for Migration and its global migration management’, in M. Geiger and A. Pécoud (eds), The Politics of International Migration Management, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 45–72. Ghosh, Bimal (ed.) (2000), Managing Migration: Time for a New International Regime?, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ghosh, Bimal (2007), ‘Managing migration: towards the missing regime’, in A. Pécoud and P. de Guchteneire (eds), Migration without Borders, Oxford: Berghahn, pp. 97–118. Ghosh, Bimal (2012), ‘A snapshot of reflections on migration management: is migration management a dirty word?’, in M. Geiger and A. Pécoud (eds), The New Politics of International Mobility: Migration Management and its Discontents, Osnabrück: IMIS-Beiträge 40, pp. 25–30. Graham, David T. (2000), ‘The people paradox: human movements and human security in a globalising world’, in David T. Graham and Nana K. Poku (eds), Migration, Globalisation and Human Security, London: Routledge, pp. 186–216. Guiraudon, Virginie and C. Joppke (eds) (2001), Controlling a New Migration World, London: Routledge. Hollifield, James F., Philip M. Martin and Pia M. Orrenius (2014), Controlling Immigration: A Global Perspective (3rd edition), Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Huysman, Jef (2000), ‘The European Union and the securitization of migration’, Journal of Common Market Studies 38 (5), 751–77. IOM [International Organization for Migration] (2008), World Migration Report: Managing Labour Mobility in the Evolving Global Economy, Geneva: IOM. Koch, A. (2014), ‘The politics and discourse of migrant return: the role of UNHCR and IOM in the governance of return’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 40 (6), 905–23. Korneev, Oleg (2014), ‘Exchanging knowledge, enhancing capacities, developing mechanisms: IOM’s role in the implementation of the EU-Russia Readmission Agreement’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 40 (6), 888–904. Korneev, Oleg (2018), ‘Self-legitimation through knowledge production partnerships: IOM in Central Asia’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 44 (10), 1673–90. Krasner, Stephen D. (ed.) (1983), International Regimes, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Pitfalls, ambivalences and contestations of ‘migration management’ 217 Mau, Steffen, Heike Brabandt, Lena Laube and Christof Roos (2012), Liberal States and the Freedom of Movement: Selective Borders, Unequal Mobility, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. McKeown, Adam (2004), ‘Global migration, 1846–1940’, Journal of World History, 15 (2), 155–89. Menz, Georg (2008), The Political Economy of Managed Migration: Nonstate Actors, Europeanization, and the Politics of Designing Migration Policies, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Paul, Regine (2015), The Political Economy of Border Drawing: Arranging Legality in European Labor Migration Policies, Oxford: Berghahn. Pécoud, Antoine (2009), ‘The UN Convention on Migrant Workers’ Rights and international migration management’, Global Society: Journal of Interdisciplinary International Relations, 23 (3), 333–50. Pécoud, Antoine (2015), Depoliticising Migration: Global Governance and International Migration Narratives, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Pécoud, Antoine (2018), ‘What do we know about the International Organization for Migration?’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 44 (10), 1621–38. Petiteville, Frank (2018), ‘International organizations beyond depoliticized governance’, Globalizations, 15 (3), 301–13. Ruhs, Martin (2013), The Price of Rights: Regulating International Labor Migration, Princeton,, NJ: Princeton University Press. Sassen, S. (1996), Losing Control? Sovereignty in an Age of Globalisation, New York: Columbia University Press. Segrave, Marie (2016), Human Trafficking, London: Routledge. Shore, Cris and Susan Wright (1997), ‘Policy: a new field of anthropology’, in Cris Shore and Susan Wright (eds), Anthropology of Policy: Critical Perspectives on Governance and Power, London: Routledge, pp. 3–39. Weiner, Myron (1995), The Global Migration Crisis: The Challenge to States and to Human Rights, New York: HarperCollins.
18. Global value chains, production regimes and the governance of migrant workers Shamel Azmeh
INTRODUCTION The geography and organization of production and labour in the global economy has shifted dramatically over the last few decades. The last few decades of the twentieth century ushered in a new era as firms in the global North found that new communications and shipping technologies along with favourable trade policies allowed them to save money by shifting labour-intensive activities to low-wage economies in the global South. This quickly became the dominant model of production, and over the past few decades a large body of academic literature has emerged to document and analyse what have become known as global value chains (GVCs) or global production networks (GPNs) (Coe et al. 2008; Gereffi et al. 2005; Henderson et al. 2002). One strand of this work has attempted to understand how workers have shaped and been shaped by these broader economic and geographical shifts (Herod 1997; Storper and Walker 1983). Migrant workers in particular have been the focus of recent attention (Buckley et al. 2017). Researchers have highlighted the central role played by internal and external migrants in key GVC spaces (Phillips 2011) everywhere from China (Han 2010; Ngai 2005, 2007; Seeborg et al. 2000), Mexico (Fussell 2000), and Cambodia (Natsuda et al. 2010) to Bangladesh (Paul-Majumder and Begum 2000), Vietnam (Nadvi et al. 2004), Thailand (Arnold and Hewison 2005), Mauritius (Ancharaz 2009; Lincoln 2009), and Jordan (Azmeh 2014). Although production and migration have ‘analytically been constructed into unrelated categories’ in early research on the geography of global production (Sassen 1988: 12), awareness of the connection between the two is not new. Already in the 1970s, Hymer’s pioneering work on internationalization processes in business showed how firms were building ‘integrated capital-labour networks’ through which they ‘unify world capital and world labour into an interlocking system of cross penetration that completely changes the system of national economies that has characterized world capitalism for the past three hundred years’ (1972: 92). More recently, scholars such as Preibisch (2007), Ngai (2004), Chan (2010), Kelly (2002) and Azmeh (2014) all illustrated the structural link between the rise of GVCs and shifts in the geography and organization of migration in today’s world. As the roles of GVCs, their lead firms, and key suppliers in organizing global production have expanded, their influence over the lives and movement of workers in these places has increased. This growth has forced the governance of both migrant and non-migrant labour in GVCs out of the realm of national institutions and into a complex transnational terrain involving myriad state actors, producers, buyers and recruitment agencies interacting across multiple political arenas (Lillie and Greer 2007; Menz 2009; Mieres 2018). These changes have led some scholars to argue that there is now a ‘governance vacuum’ in the regulation of labour 218
Global value chains, production regimes and the governance of migrant workers 219 (Mayer and Gereffi 2010). Two governance agendas have emerged to address this problem. One has focused on using the power of lead firms and their codes of conduct to govern labour and working conditions in GVCs. The other has sought to use international trade agreements to govern working conditions in exporting countries, particularly regional and bilateral trade agreements signed by the European Union or the United States. While migrant workers and migration are rarely central to either of these agendas, the complexity of governing migration in GVCs means that both have consequences for migrant workers. This chapter will discuss the relationship between GVCs and migrant workers. In the next section, I explore how the demands of lead firms for certain types of production and labour regimes influence migration and use examples from China and Egypt to illustrate how this works in practice. The third section takes a detailed look at both agendas for reform. I begin by explaining their genesis and then focus the discussion on how the incorporation of labour standards into international agreements brings them into contact with migration governance. The free trade agreement (FTA) between Jordan and the United States serves as the primary example in this section.
MIGRANT WORKERS AND GLOBAL VALUE CHAINS A number of different factors facilitated the rise of GVCs as a key mechanism for organizing global production and trade. New communications, shipping, and logistics technologies, changing methods of business organization, and a macro-level shift in international political economy towards liberalized trade and capital flows all combined to bring GVCs to dominance (Anderson and Yotov 2016; Curran et al. 2018; Gereffi et al. 2005; Medvedev 2012; Rodrigue and Hesse 2006). Production through GVCs carries benefits and risks for the global brands organizing these chains. On the positive side, production through GVCs enables lead firms to exploit advantages found in different parts of the world, including specific skills and knowledge, policy advantages, trade preferences, and lower production costs, amongst others. Those benefits, however, come with major risks. Firms must contend with a multitude of political and socio-economic environments, not only those found within each production location but also in the links between these locations. Political crisis, changes in government policy, social conflict, labour unrest, and currency fluctuation at any one of these points could disrupt the cost and flow of production across the entire chain. Managing these risks is key to the consistent and on-time delivery of raw materials, parts and final goods. Delays could lead to lost sales, price discounts, serious damage to brand names, and excessive investments in working capital. This focus on on-time delivery throughout the chain has, furthermore, intensified as organizations have sought to shorten lead times, optimize just-in-time production and speed up their response to consumers. These processes have made ‘time-based competitive advantage’ (Stalk 1988) a crucial characteristic of a well-functioning GVC. Lead firms govern their GVCs in ways that reflect the importance of punctuality and speed. They have strict rules regarding on-time delivery and punish their suppliers for failing to meet deadlines through fines, the extra cost of expedited air freight, and cancelled contracts. The pressure on suppliers increases toward the top of the chain, as suppliers interacting directly with lead firms are usually held responsible for the logistical risks found in previous stages. In
220 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration the textile and garments industry, for instance, garment producers who deal with retailers are often responsible for managing earlier stages in the value chain. One way for lead firms to mitigate these risks is by refusing to guarantee future sourcing from a particular supplier. This lack of commitment provides a higher degree of locational flexibility for lead firms but increases the uncertainty felt by suppliers. It makes them wary of undertaking longer-term investments such as paying to renovate buildings, purchase new machinery or train workers. For example, my own research has shown that Tunisia faced several strikes in key logistical infrastructure following the onset of the Arab Spring. One consequence was the disruption of apparel shipments from Tunisia’s ports. European lead firms responded by reducing their reliance on Tunisian suppliers and shifting orders to other countries. As a result of these dynamics, building a consistent yet adaptable production regime across many production locations is a key challenge facing suppliers. To cope they must remain as flexible and lean as possible. One way they meet that challenge is through the type of production and labour regime they construct. Workers need to have low levels of absenteeism with the overwhelming majority of workers reporting to work every day. There also needs to be a relatively low level of labour turnover. While this requirement varies depending on the precise skill, activity and replaceability of the workers in question, in general a consistent production regime requires that most workers do not leave or change jobs against the wishes of the firm (compare de Lange, Bernsten and de Sena in this volume, Chapter 24). Finally, workers need to be available to work overtime whenever there is a sudden shift in demand. The ability to build such a production regime is dependent on a range of demographic and socio-economic factors relevant to different sites of production. A useful concept to unpack this issue is what Jonas (1996) called a local labour control regime (LLCR). He defines this as a ‘historically contingent and territorially embedded set of mechanisms which co-ordinate the time–space reciprocities between production, work, consumption and labour reproduction within a local labour market’ (325). As Jonas argues, ‘The available labour pool may not be socialized to particular work practices; in which case the entering corporation must assume part of the burden for retraining and skills formation. On the other hand, workers may be “oversocialized” and actively hostile towards externally introduced labour control practices’ (331). From this perspective, the ability to build a local labour control regime that could meet the basic requirements of the value chain is a constant challenge facing firms. Migrant workers often provide a source of flexibility to suppliers seeking to meet these challenges. This role is partially due to factors related to migration itself. Workers are frequently looking to maximize their income for the supposedly limited period in which they are abroad, and they often face social isolation due to language barriers, for example. Perhaps more important, however, is the high degree of control that states (home and host), GVC actors and recruitment agencies can exert over a migrant labour force. An example of this process is the so-called dormitory labour regime in China (Ngai and Chan 2013; Smith and Ngai 2006). As China moved to deepen its integration in the global economy, it enticed lead firms to relocate their labour-intensive activities there by offering them unmatched low-cost and high-scale production possibilities. Within a short amount of time China’s coastal industrial areas became important sites for manufacturing within GVCs. Underpinning this rapid expansion of manufacturing was a constant influx of migrant workers from the rural areas in China toward the industrializing coastal areas. This migration was, however, tightly managed by the state through a number of policies. Hukou, a household reg-
Global value chains, production regimes and the governance of migrant workers 221 istration system, was particularly important. The Hukou system was initially set up to separate urban from rural populations and to control the movement of rural populations to urban areas. The dynamics of this system changed in the 1980s when some industrializing areas began to offer temporary urban Hukou status linked to employment. This status deprived rural workers in those areas from social benefits, tied their urban residency to employment, and banned family members from joining them unless they also had jobs. It transformed rural migrant workers into a flexible, controllable and expendable labour force (Chan 2010; compare Medland in this volume, Chapter 22; Ngai 2004). Most workers who moved to urban areas under this new status were young and single. To house them, companies began to provide accommodation on or near factory premises. These dormitories emerged as key spaces linking the state, employers, and GVCs. As Ngai and Smith (2007: 31) argue, ‘dormitories facilitate the temporary attachment or capture of labour by the firm, but also the massive circulation of labour, and hence the holding down of wages and the extensive lengthening of the working day, as working space and living space are integrated by the employer and state’. Xue (2008) shows how this control of workers’ time and space beyond the shop floor is important for electronic firms in China, as it provides them with the ability to optimize workers’ rest in accordance with changes in demand. This temporary attachment created by the ‘controlled mobility’ of workers enabled the construction of a local labour control regime that minimizes production costs and disruptions for the GVC. In some cases, this local labour control regime was strengthened by the firm assuming the costs of the workers’ temporary work permits – effectively leading to bonded relationship with workers (Chan 2000). The apparel industry in Egypt, which I studied between 2009 and 2014, offers another example of how this works in practice. Local wages are relatively low in Egypt, according to firms in the industry, so the cost of migrant workers is actually higher than for Egyptian workers, once the additional costs associated with migrant workers are factored in. Nonetheless, the managers interviewed insisted that migrants remain important for the industry. For them, the high turnover and absentee rates amongst Egyptian workers are unacceptably high given the pressures of on-time delivery and fluctuations in demand. Coping with those pressures makes migrant workers necessary. Due to government restrictions, however, Egyptian firms are restricted to a certain percentage of foreign workers. They must strategically deploy them as needs arise. As one sourcing manager of a global supply chain management firm in Cairo put it, migrant workers are the ‘firemen’ in Egyptian factories as they deal with emergency production situations. Often, migrant workers from Asia to Egypt are hired by factories through recruitment agencies as a ‘complete production line’ so that they can continue to produce with no disruptions once Egyptian workers go home. According to some experts in the sector, some of those workers are not hired permanently by a single company but act as a ‘floating emergency labour force’ that can move between companies based on their production needs.
LABOUR STANDARDS AND THE GOVERNANCE OF MIGRANT WORKERS IN GLOBAL VALUE CHAINS These shifts in production and trade over the last few decades have had important implications for the governance of labour in the global economy (Mayer and Gereffi 2010). The relocation of production to industrial areas in the developing world has raised concerns about working
222 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration conditions in those economic spaces. One such concern is the limited institutional capacity in many developing countries to regulate, monitor and enforce working conditions in these zones (Elliot and Freeman 2003; Locke et al. 2007). Another relates to local political economies, particularly the role of ruling elites and trade unions, as well as the (non‑)existence of enabling rights such as freedom of association (Ahmed et al. 2014). More fundamentally, some authors have argued that the light regulation of labour in such spaces is a crucial source of these zones’ comparative advantage. In other words, it is the absence of enforced labour law in these zones that allows for production at such low costs (Neveling 2017). Researchers have documented the negative effects of these dynamics at several production sites. Piore (1997) argues, for example, that fluctuations in order volumes is a key driver of congested factories and poor and dangerous working conditions – fluctuations that are often intensified in global value chains. In Bangladesh, Anner (2019) shows how lead firms squeeze their suppliers for lower costs and faster deliveries, resulting in poor working conditions and in pressure on labour rights in factories. Two agendas have emerged for reforming labour governance in GVCs in response to these critiques. The first focuses on the role of lead firms in governing working conditions in their supply chains through tools such as codes of conduct and private audits. The second approach concentrates on building labour standards into international trade agreements. Although migrant workers are not always central elements within these two agendas, both approaches have important implications for migrant workers. I will focus my discussion on the second agenda: including labour standards in international trade agreements. This choice reflects political concerns with the private governance agenda (Anner 2012; Bartley 2005; Palpacuer 2017; Seidman 2007) in addition to growing evidence of its practical limitations in terms of achieving tangible and sustainable improvements in working conditions (Egels-Zandén and Lindholm 2015; Graham and Woods 2006; Locke 2013; Vogel 2010). There is a long history of debates around the link between labour standards and trade, and to what extent international trade agreements should incorporate labour regulations (Charnovitz 1992; Hepple 2005). While international labour standards have been agreed in the International Labour Organization (ILO), incorporating them into international trade agreements remains a controversial practice. Some fear that linking labour standards to trade could impact market access, as states could potentially retaliate for labour violations by restricting exports of goods and services (Haworth et al. 2005). At a multilateral level, debates around addressing labour standards reached their peak in the 1990s when a number of countries pushed for the inclusion of labour standards in the World Trade Organization (WTO). This proposal was opposed by a number of developing countries who feared that artificially high labour standards would be used as a protectionist tool by advanced economies (Chan 2003). With the failure to reach an agreement at the multilateral level, efforts to link labour standards with international trade moved to other forums. Foremost among them are the regional and bilateral trade agreements negotiated by the United States and the European Union. The link between preferential trade agreements and migrant workers is complex. On the one hand, there is evidence that these agreements are themselves important drivers of migration (Orefice 2015). This is because they create ‘artificial’ opportunities for sourcing and exports in locations that are not necessarily competitive in these sectors on their own. On the other hand, these agreements are increasingly incorporating labour standards and becoming important frameworks for the governance of labour.
Global value chains, production regimes and the governance of migrant workers 223 The way labour issues are addressed in preferential trade agreements varies substantially. Some trade agreements include general commitments that call on parties to ‘strive to’ achieve certain labour standards or call for dialogue over labour issues. Other agreements include more concrete commitments to certain labour standards. In some cases, these standards are the national labour laws of the signatories. In others, they are the standards of the International Labour Organization (ILO). Agreements also differ in terms of enforcement and dispute settlement. Some agreements provide access to dispute settlement, enabling, in principle, trade sanctions or fines in response to violations. In addition to reciprocal trade agreements, labour clauses are included in unilateral trade preferences programmes. The Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), which enables developing countries to access the markets of the advanced economies, also includes clauses related to labour rights. There have been instances in which these preferences were withdrawn due to labour violations. For example, in 2007 the EU suspended GSP preferences to Belarus due to violations related to freedom of association. Similarly, in 2014, the USA suspended trade preferences to Swaziland due to failure to achieve progress on labour issues. Despite these examples, it is not clear how effective labour regulations through trade agreements are. Giumelli and van Roozendaal (2017) found no correlation between stricter labour clauses and improvements in labour standards after examining the FTAs of 19 countries with the United States. Contrary to those findings, Dewan and Ronconi (2018) found that the number of labour inspectors increased by 20% and the number of inspections increased by 60% after countries in Latin America signed an FTA with the USA. Schrank (2013) documents some of the positive impacts of labour standards on the work of the Ministry of Labour in the Dominican Republic, while I have argued elsewhere that enforcing labour standards through trade agreements’ dispute settlement mechanisms is a complex issue (Azmeh 2019). On balance, the inclusion of labour standards agreements seems positive, but more research is needed to confirm this assessment and to understand this in the context of the role of those agreements in driving some of the working conditions we see in global value chains. Although the labour chapters of most agreements do not include specific clauses related to migrant workers, the way they create export opportunities means that migrant workers are often associated with these preferential agreements. To examine this issue further, case-by-case analyses of specific trade agreements are needed. Furthermore, agreements vary in the way labour is included and signatories can sometimes have markedly different political and economic regimes, especially in relation to migrant workers. As a result, the specific positions of different countries in GVCs and the types of GVC actors operating in different regions create distinct local labour control regimes vis-à-vis migrant workers. We can see this clearly in action in the United States’ free trade agreement with Jordan. Reflecting broader geopolitical issues linked to the peace process in the Middle East in the 1990s, the United States offered Jordan preferential access to the US market through an agreement called the Qualifying Industrial Zone (QIZ). A free trade agreement was subsequently signed by the two countries. At the time, at least for proponents of the agreement, the Jordan FTA was considered an important step forward in terms of labour provisions. Labour standards were incorporated in the core text of the agreement, rather than as a side agreement, and as a result were subject to dispute settlement (Bolle 2003). With a limited manufacturing base, a small labour force, high outward migration to its oil-rich neighbours, and a complicated geo-economic position, Jordan was not an obviously competitive location for labour-intensive manufacturing. Nonetheless, keen to promote exports
224 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration through the QIZ and the FTA, the Jordanian government pursued foreign investments by creating a series of special economic zones. Large US retailers saw the FTA with Jordan, which offered substantial tariff savings, as an opportunity to add a new sourcing location to their rosters. A number of Asian firms from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, amongst others, also saw the benefits of setting up factories in the industrial zones. As a result, production for export in Jordan expanded rapidly, particularly between 2000 and 2008. The Jordanian export apparel industry was thus effectively created by the FTA with the United States. US buyers remain the dominant lead firms in Jordan. Complaints around the ‘discipline’ of the labour supply by some foreign investors led the government to permit companies to import migrant workers into these industrial zones. This permission allowed for the circular movement of workers between several Asian countries (primarily Bangladesh, Nepal, India, the Philippines and Sri Lanka) and Jordan. Limited domestic and international attention has allowed for various forms of labour abuse to flourish within Jordan’s industrial zones. Forced labour is common, as are practices such as debt bondage, passport confiscation, forced overtime, movement restriction, and sexual and physical harassment (Tamkeen 2010). Similar to the dormitory labour regime in China, the circulation of those workers to and from Jordan is controlled by the state (Jordan and the workers’ home states), firms and recruitment agencies. Permission to work in Jordan is linked to a specific employer, and it was common practice – at least for the first decade – for firms to keep the travel documents of workers. Workers are housed in company-controlled dormitories near the factories, often with restrictions on movement through curfews and accommodation supervisors. Many workers have to borrow money to cover the initial cost of the contract, placing them in a weak position vis-à-vis their employers, and embassies often work directly with employers to deal with any issues related to the labour force (Frantz 2013). This controlled mobility of workers enables the construction of a cheap, flexible, and controllable labour force and externalizes the costs of its reproduction. Attention to the working conditions in Jordan began to grow toward the end of the 2000s. Significantly, the FTA and its theoretically strong labour provisions became a focal point of mobilization around this issue. A report from the US-based National Labour Committee (later known as the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights) was released in 2006 and highlighted some of the practices in the industry (compare Thibos and Howard in this volume, Chapter 12). In the years that followed, a large number of Jordanian and American organizations campaigned to improve working conditions in Jordanian factories, forcing the US government to exert pressure on Jordan to address the system’s shortcomings. One outcome was the 2008 launch of a programme with the International Labour Organization (ILO), Better Work Jordan, which aimed to improve working conditions. And, in 2013, the USA and Jordan signed an implementation plan to address issues such as anti-union discrimination for migrant workers, conditions of accommodation and sexual harassment. A memorandum of understanding between the US Department of Labour and the Jordanian Ministry of Labour around these issues was signed in 2013. These efforts coincided with growing resistance by migrant workers in Jordan to their working conditions as well as Jordanian trade unions’ increasing involvement in the textile and garment sector (see also Piper in this volume, Chapter 32). While the union was initially banned from accepting non-Jordanians as members, pressure on the Jordanian government to change this law finally forced a change. Migrant workers are now able to join the trade union
Global value chains, production regimes and the governance of migrant workers 225 and the trade union is now able to enter into collective bargaining on behalf of all workers. This development has resulted in a number of collective agreements that have addressed some of the key issues facing migrant workers in Jordan.
CONCLUSIONS The objective of this chapter is to highlight the complex relationship between migration and global value chains along with some of the implications of this relationship for the politics and governance of migration. To understand this structural link, we need to analyse the connections between the mobility of workers, on the one hand, and the globalization of production and firms, on the other. We also need to understand how global value chains combine mobility of goods, capital and workers under different regimes of governance, similar to what Hymer has called ‘integrated capital-labour networks’. As global value chains rose to dominate production in the global economy, GVC firms, buyers and suppliers became important actors in shaping migration and the lives of migrant workers in production locations. The requirements of GVC-led firms in terms of cost, time and flexibility is often at odds with the political and socio-economic realities in different production locations, making the realization of these requirements highly challenging. In response, GVC actors, state institutions, and recruitment agents use their political power to shape migration processes in ways that enable them to meet the demands of GVCs. This chapter has also examined how preferential trade agreements shape these processes by altering the locational calculus of lead firms. Demand for and movement of migrant workers often shifts as a result. This demand reflects not only the supply and demand of labour in those countries, but also the ability of supplier firms to build the production and labour control regimes they need to meet the requirements of lead firms. Migration processes in these locations are governed through a complex regime of state and non-state actors, including multiple GVC actors, states of workers (home and host), producers and buyers in GVCs, recruitment agencies, and the state of the destination market of the goods. At the same time, those same trade agreements are increasingly incorporating labour provisions into their texts. Their inclusion is presented as a way to address some of the labour violations that are experienced in sites of production. More research is needed to examine how effective those tools are for improving working conditions for labourers within GVCs, but some evidence already exists that shows how including labour standards within agreements opens up spaces for campaigning and mobilization (compare Piper in this volume, Chapter 32). The analysis in this chapter shows that there are still many unanswered questions regarding the links between global value chains and migrant workers. These need to be addressed in future research. While the issue of labour has received more attention in the literature on global value chains in recent years, the dominance of migrant labour in many GVC production locations needs to be further analysed. Often, the presence of migrant workers in GVCs is treated as an empirical observation unique to specific production locations rather than as a theoretical issue related to the connection between globalized production and labour migration. To reach such a broader understanding, future research should examine production and labour control regimes in different GVC locations. Scholars should also take a closer look at the role of migrant workers in those regimes in order to understand how it varies by sector, country, GVC governance and type of led firms, amongst other factors. This empirical research
226 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration should, however, link to a broader research agenda that aims to produce a more structural and universal theoretical analysis of the link between GVCs and migrant labour. In addition to its contribution to knowledge in this area, this research agenda could produce important insights for trade unions, labour activists, and policymakers on how to more effectively address labour abuse within supply chains.
REFERENCES Ahmed, F. Z., A. Greenleaf and A. Sacks (2014), ‘The paradox of export growth in areas of weak governance: the case of the ready-made garment sector in Bangladesh’, World Development, 56, 258–71. Ancharaz, V. (2009), ‘David v. Goliath: Mauritius facing up to China’, The European Journal of Development Research, 21 (4), 622–43. Anderson, J. E. and Y. V. Yotov (2016), ‘Terms of trade and global efficiency effects of free trade agreements, 1990–2002’, Journal of International Economics, 99, 279–98. Anner, M. (2012), ‘Corporate social responsibility and freedom of association rights: the precarious quest for legitimacy and control in global supply chains’, Politics & Society, 40 (4), 609–44. Anner, M. (2019), ‘Squeezing workers’ rights in global supply chains: purchasing practices in the Bangladesh garment export sector in comparative perspective’, Review of International Political Economy, DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1625426. Arnold, D. and K. Hewison (2005), ‘Exploitation in global supply chains: Burmese workers in Mae Sot’, Journal of Contemporary Asia, 35 (3), 319–40. Azmeh, S. (2014), ‘Labour in global production networks: workers in the qualifying industrial zones (QIZs) of Egypt and Jordan’, Global Networks, 14 (4), 495–513. Azmeh, S. (2019), ‘Can international trade agreements drive progress on labour standards?’, Global Development Institute (GDI) blog, Manchester. Bartley, T. (2005), ‘Corporate accountability and the privatization of labor standards: struggles over codes of conduct in the apparel industry’, Research in Political Sociology, 14, 211–44. Bolle, M. J. and Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division (2003), ‘Jordan–US free trade agreement: labor issues’, Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress. Buckley, M., S. McPhee and B. Rogaly (2017), ‘Labour geographies on the move: migration, migrant status and work in the 21st century’, Geoforum, 78, 153–8. Chan, A. (2000), ‘Globalization, China’s free (read bonded) labour market, and the Chinese trade unions’, Asia Pacific Business Review, 6 (3–4), 260–81. Chan, A. (2003), ‘Racing to the bottom: international trade without a social clause’, Third World Quarterly, 24 (6), 1011–28. Chan, K. W. (2010), ‘The household registration system and migrant labor in China: notes on a debate’, Population and Development Review, 36 (2), 357–64. Charnovitz, S. (1992), ‘Environmental and labour standards in trade’, World Economy, 15 (3), 335–56. Curran, L., K. Nadvi and L. Campling (2018), ‘The influence of tariff regimes on global production networks (GPNs)’, Journal of Economic Geography, 19 (4), 873–95. Coe, N. M., P. Dicken and M. Hess (2008), ‘Global production networks: realizing the potential’, Journal of Economic Geography, 8 (3), 271–95. Dewan, S. and L. Ronconi (2018), ‘US free trade agreements and enforcement of labor law in Latin America’, Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, 57 (1), 35–56. Egels-Zandén, N. and H. Lindholm (2015), ‘Do codes of conduct improve worker rights in supply chains? A study of Fair Wear Foundation’, Journal of Cleaner Production, 107, 31–40. Elliott, K. A. and R. B. Freeman (2003), Can Labor Standards Improve Under Globalization? Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics. Frantz, E. (2013), ‘Jordan’s unfree workforce: state-sponsored bonded labour in the Arab region’, The Journal of Development Studies, 49 (8), 1072–87. Fussell, E. (2000), ‘Making labor flexible: the recomposition of Tijuana’s maquiladora female labor force’, Feminist Economics, 6 (3), 59–79.
Global value chains, production regimes and the governance of migrant workers 227 Gereffi, G., J. Humphrey and T. Sturgeon (2005), ‘The governance of global value chains’, Review of International Political Economy, 12 (1), 78–104. Giumelli, F. and G. van Roozendaal (2017), ‘Trade agreements and labour standards clauses: explaining labour standards developments through a qualitative comparative analysis of US free trade agreements’, Global Social Policy, 17 (1), 38–61. Graham, D. and N. Woods (2006), ‘Making corporate self-regulation effective in developing countries’, World Development, 34 (5), 868–83. Han, D. (2010), ‘Policing and racialization of rural migrant workers in Chinese cities’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 33 (4), 593–610. Haworth, N., S. Hughes and R. Wilkinson (2005), ‘The international labour standards regime: a case study in global regulation’, Environment and Planning A, 37 (11), 1939–53. Henderson, J. et al. (2002), ‘Global production networks and the analysis of economic development’, Review of International Political Economy, 9 (3), 436–64. Hepple, B. (2005), Labour Laws and Global Trade, London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Herod, A. (1997), ‘From a geography of labor to a labor geography: labor’s spatial fix and the geography of capitalism’, Antipode, 29 (1), 1–31. Hymer, S. (1972), ‘The internationalization of capital’, Journal of Economic Issues, 6 (1), 91–111. Jonas, A. E. (1996), ‘Local labour control regimes: uneven development and the social regulation of production’, Regional Studies, 30 (4), 323–38. Kelly, P. F. (2002), ‘Spaces of labour control: comparative perspectives from Southeast Asia’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 27 (4), 395–411. Lillie, N. and I. Greer (2007), ‘Industrial relations, migration, and neoliberal politics: the case of the European construction sector’, Politics & Society, 35 (4), 551–81. Lincoln, D. (2009), ‘Labour migration in the global division of labour: migrant workers in Mauritius’, International Migration, 47 (4), 129–56. Locke, R. M. (2013), The Promise and Limits of Private Power: Promoting Labor Standards in a Global Economy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Locke, R. M., F. Qin and A. Brause (2007), ‘Does monitoring improve labor standards? Lessons from Nike’, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 61 (1), 3–31. Mayer, F. and G. Gereffi (2010), ‘Regulation and economic globalization: prospects and limits of private governance’, Business and Politics, 12 (3), 1–25. Medvedev, D. (2012), ‘Beyond trade: the impact of preferential trade agreements on FDI inflows’, World Development, 4 (1), 49–61. Menz, G. (2009), The Political Economy of Managed Migration: Nonstate Actors, Europeanization, and the Politics of Designing Migration Policies, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mieres, F. (2018), ‘Migration, recruitment and forced labour in a globalising world’, in Anna Triandafyllidou (ed.), Handbook of Migration and Globalisation, Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Nadvi, K., J. T Thoburn, B. T.Thang, N. T. T. Ha, N. T. Hoa, D. H. Le and E. B. D. Armas (2004), ‘Vietnam in the global garment and textile value chain: impacts on firms and workers’, Journal of International Development, 16 (1), 111–23. Natsuda, K., K. Goto and J. Thoburn (2010), ‘Challenges to the Cambodian garment industry in the global garment value chain’, European Journal of Development Research, 22 (4), 469–93. Neveling, P. (2017), ‘Capital over labor: health and safety in export processing zone garment production since 1947’, in R. Prentice and G. De Neve (eds), Unmaking the Global Sweatshop: Health and Safety of the World’s Garment Workers, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 123–46. Ngai, P. (2004), ‘Women workers and precarious employment in Shenzhen special economic zone, China’, Gender & Development, 12 (2), 29–36. Ngai, P. (2005), Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Ngai, P. (2007), ‘Gendering the dormitory labor system: production, reproduction, and migrant labor in south China’, Feminist Economics, 13 (3–4), 239–58. Ngai, P. and J. Chan (2013), ‘The spatial politics of labor in China: life, labor, and a new generation of migrant workers’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 112 (1), 179–90.
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19. National states in the governance of mobilities Nora El Qadim
INTRODUCTION A common narrative of migration governance argues that states started to govern migration in the twentieth century: the regulation of migration has become so central to state activity that Hollifield (2004: 885) argues that we ‘have seen the emergence of the migration state, where regulation of international migration is as important as providing for the security of the state and the economic well-being of the citizenry’. While the degree of intervention varies, today’s states generally attempt to control or at least organize migrants on their territory by regulating their entrance, exit, settlement and right to work, as well as through integration and anti-discrimination programmes. Some also seek to control the movement and departure of their own citizens. This chapter examines the state as a central actor in three main aspects of national migration regimes: the control of circulation, the organization of immigration, and the governance of emigration. In contrast to most studies, it does not put ‘immigration countries’ and ‘emigration countries’ in opposition to each other. Doing so too often results in Western countries and global South countries being studied differently, which is problematic for many reasons. Countries are, for example, rarely purely destination or origin countries. Like Italy or Morocco, they are or have often been both. Migration regimes and policies are furthermore not exclusive to the West – formerly colonized countries in the global South have long had them as well. And the role of imperial and postcolonial connections in the construction of national state regimes should never be discounted (Vigneswaran 2019; Mayblin in this volume, Chapter 2). For these and other reasons we must be wary of what Blanca Garcés-Mascareñas (2018) calls ‘methodological Western-Centrism’: the presentation of liberal and illiberal states as incomparable and fundamentally different when it comes to dealing with immigration (see also Natter in this volume, Chapter 9). This chapter charts a different path. It acknowledges historical and geographical entanglements and demonstrates the connections and commonalities between national state regimes of migration governance in different regions. Studying the state to understand migration is not as obvious as it might seem. Treating the state as a unit or level of analysis remains largely tied to disciplinary traditions: the state as a unit of analysis is more prominent in disciplines such as political science or international relations than in sociology or anthropology (Brettell and Hollifield 2014: 14–19). However, as interdisciplinary migration studies emerged, national state regimes may have become a more transversal topic for research, as ties between policies and other aspects of migration are examined. However, the risk of ‘methodological nationalism’, that is, ‘the assumption that the nation/state/society is the natural social and political form of the modern world’ (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002: 302), inherent to the study of the national state regimes, is strong and has led some authors to focus on other units of analysis. While acknowledging the legitimacy of this critique, this chapter argues for the continuing relevance of national state regimes within the analysis of migration regimes as a whole. 229
230 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration
DEFINING THE BOUNDARIES OF THE NATION STATE BY CONTROLLING CIRCULATION The literature on migration and the state began with analyses of European countries and North America. These argued that the principles of modern nation states, most notably that of territorial rule, both generate international immigration and push states to control or restrict it. However, some scholars, especially those studying imperial regimes of circulation, question this Eurocentric origin story of territorial and migration controls, arguing that non-European actors within empires were instrumental, through their claims for intra-imperial mobility (Vigneswaran 2019). In any case, the connection between migration governance and citizenship and nationhood rules is central: definitions of the bounds of belonging and distinctions between foreigners and nationals are intimately tied up in the construction of statehood (Brubaker 1992; see Rodrigues de Castro and Moulin in this volume, Chapter 3). As nation states sought to establish themselves, democratize, and compete militarily, they required ever stricter definitions of who was a citizen and who was not. Nationality law is thus a central tool of national state regimes of migration. A great variety of nationality laws exist around the world, and their specifics depend on how a country has mixed the legal traditions of jus soli and jus sanguinis together (Castles 1995). Migration governance has also left its mark on these laws. For example, the nationality laws of France and several other countries (Weil 2001) grant citizenship on the grounds of double jus soli, that is, somebody born in a country to someone who was also born in that country. Nationality laws clarify the boundaries of the state by defining who belongs to it. Cards and passports materialize this distinction; they distinguish nationals from foreigners while specifying a person’s status and associated rights to entry, circulation and work. John Torpey (1998: 239) argues that modern states have ‘expropriated the legitimate means of movement’ and ‘monopolized the authority to determine who may circulate within and cross their borders’. Identification papers, such as identity cards, international passports and in rare cases internal passports, embody these ‘legitimate means of movement’. These tools do more than merely identify – they are a means of control. In some cases, they have been imposed on specific groups within a territory to make their status visible at first glance. For example, a 1912 French law imposed an ‘anthropometric booklet’ on ‘nomads’ only. In later years, France issued foreigners with differently coloured cards depending on which permit and work rights they had (Noiriel 1996). The wide variety of papers and cards used over the years shows that states try to control mobility for different purposes. This is because, as sociological analyses of national state regimes have repeatedly pointed out, the state is neither static nor unitary. It is a historical construct, influenced by external dynamics and composed of multiple institutions and individuals. Critical security scholars inspired by Foucauldian and post-structuralist approaches have underlined that the control of mobilities serves a plurality of purposes: national state regimes assemble a variety of actors, from international organizations to private actors, as they pursue their goals (Salter 2013; Walters 2015). Three rationales can be identified in the government of migration (Spire 2005), at least as far as the state is concerned: a police rationale, a labour force rationale, and a demographic rationale. The police rationale considers ‘nomads’, imperial subjects and foreigners as potential threats to security. Interior ministries or home affairs departments are its main actors, although it is increasingly prevalent in all policy sectors. Today this rationale is referred to in the
National states in the governance of mobilities 231 international relations literature and elsewhere as the ‘securitization of migration’. It is built on a state-led narrative that not only ties migration to drug trafficking, human trafficking and terrorism (see Thibos and Howard in this volume, Chapter 12), but also frames migrants and asylum-seekers as burdens on social welfare systems and as challenges to national identities (Ceyhan and Tsoukala 2002; Huysmans 2000). It has coincided with the expansion of a field of migration control professionals who now work to develop and refine targeted techniques of surveillance and profiling (Bigo 2002: 82; see also Jeandesboz in this volume, Chapter 27). In contrast to the police rationale, the labour force rationale induces governments to organize the ‘importation’ of workers so that companies can meet their labour needs and thereby sustain the economy. Finally, a demographic rationale is present in these policies. It often combines arguments about ‘quantity’ – the desire for a growing population – and ‘quality’, an idea that often rests on implicit or explicit hierarchies of desirability based on national origin, religion or ethnicity. In the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and Immigration Act of 1924 in the United States, for example, race-based nativism ‘favored the “Nordics” of northern and western Europe over the “undesirable races’ of eastern and southern Europe’ (Ngai 1999: 69). Colonial and postcolonial mobilities have often been treated similarly. For example, the ‘Indigenous Code’ of 1881 in French Algeria bestowed a type of second-class citizenship on inhabitants, while Great Britain increasingly restricted the settlement rights of Commonwealth citizens to the United Kingdom over the course of the twentieth century. Although this literature has mostly focused on Western countries, interest in non-Western contexts has been growing. Indeed, the history of South–South migration pre-dates states and citizenship as we know them today: some examples include Chinese migrants settled all over East Asia from the Middle Ages; the slave trade, as early as the fifth century within Africa, involved the displacement of people, and had a much larger impact with the arrival of Europeans in the fifteenth century; Gujarati traders came to Tanzania in the nineteenth century. Today, it takes place at a similar scale to migration to Europe or North America. In 2017, there were 77.9 million international migrants in Europe, 57.7 million in North America, 79.6 million in Asia, and 24.7 million in Africa. India, the most common country of origin for international migrants, is also the twelfth most common country of destination (United Nations 2017). As such, places thought of as ‘countries of emigration’ in the West usually also receive migrants and have their own migration policies in place to organize these flows. In many cases these have changed over time. For example, Uganda welcomed Asian migrants when it was a British protectorate. A few years after independence, in 1972, President Idi Amin reversed course and gave the country’s South Asian minority population 90 days to leave. Other countries have long been hubs for regional immigration. For example, Ivory Coast’s first postcolonial ruler, President Félix Houphouët-Boigny, continued this tradition early in his rule by promoting a cosmopolitan and unified society. For many years this seemed to function in spite of official discrimination against foreigners around access to work and conflict between indigenous and non-indigenous people (who were progressively equated with foreigners). In the 1990s, however, a slowing economy exacerbated increasingly overt xenophobic discourses and policies articulated around the notion of ‘Ivoirité’, which was central in the civil war and political-military crisis of the 2000s (Beauchemin 2005). Use of the term ‘transit migration’ has made South–South migration more visible. The focus has been on migrants who are described as wanting to reach Western countries yet are prevented by visa restrictions and carrier sanctions from flying there directly. As a result, they must make their way over land and sea. The category of ‘transit’ became popular in
232 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration policy-making circles in the early 2000s because it offered a way to enrol the countries through which migrants were travelling in the fight against irregular migration. This process has allowed policymakers to externalize European migration policy beyond European borders (Hess 2012). In Morocco, for example, many migrants who came intending to cross over to Spain have subsequently become stuck or decided to stay. Unlike the presence of many Europeans migrants, who experience ‘privileged mobility’ (Croucher 2012), the presence of African migrants has prompted heated debates about migration policy in a country that was accustomed to seeing itself as predominantly a country of emigration. In this regard, Morocco now finds itself in a position similar to that of Italy – another historically important sending state that still has a relatively high level of emigration yet also, since the 1980s, has increasingly become a country of immigration. Oscillating between repression and regularization, the policies adopted in so-called ‘transit countries’ often resemble immigration policies in European countries, especially when it comes to engineering ‘hostile environments’ (Bowling and Westenra 2020). Studies of reception policies in the Middle East and North Africa generally show either ‘indifference as policy’, where states rely on international organizations and civil society to provide basic services to migrants, asylum-seekers and refugees (Norman 2019), or forms of ‘violent inaction’ (Davies et al. 2017; Nassar and Stel 2019). These resemble the forms of indifference also seen in Europe and the West, for example on the Greek islands (Rozakou 2017). The ‘politics of exhaustion’ deployed in places such as Calais, France (Ansems de Vries and Welander 2016) or near the Sebta and Mililīyah fences in north Morocco (Moffette 2018; Tyszler 2019) combine inaction and indifference through the non-provision of services with police action to control the border, destroy camps and displace people further from the border. In these cases, not caring for migrants is a form of policy, one which seeks to render invisible and ultimately drive out those deemed unwanted. This calls into question the (often implicit) separation between Western/non-Western, ‘liberal’/‘illiberal’, and democratic/autocratic states found in the study of migration policies (see also Natter in this volume, Chapter 9). As some have started to argue, rather than dividing the analysis in this way we need to compare different types of national state regimes of migration and mobility based on actual practice (Garcés-Mascareñas 2018).
ORGANIZING, SELECTING, RESTRICTING IMMIGRATION The coexisting rationales of migration management require states to not only hinder migration but also to organize it, especially for labour purposes. The underlying logic varies depending on time and place, but one objective has been to provide abundant, cheap, low-skilled labour to the economy while preventing that labour from becoming permanent. In parallel, many states have developed a variety of strategies to attract high-skilled migrants (see Vasey in this volume, Chapter 14). Stephen Castles (1986) noted that temporary labour recruitment existed before the twentieth century in the capitalist world: Chinese labour in Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, or Indian ‘coolies’ in the West Indies and South Africa, for instance. However, the heyday of guest worker programmes in the West came after the Second World War, when European countries needed a strong workforce for reconstruction. Great Britain set up a scheme in 1945 to recruit 90,000 workers; Belgium set up the contingentensysteem; France established a special institu-
National states in the governance of mobilities 233 tion in charge of recruitment abroad; and the German Federal Republic, after initially relying on workers fleeing the East, established the Federal Labour Office (Bundesanstalt für Arbeit). Most European countries also signed bilateral agreements with countries of Southern Europe and North Africa (Castles 1986). Further west, the Bracero programme brought 450,000 Mexican males to the United States to work as farm labour between 1942 and 1964 (Gonzalez 2006). Guest-work policies have changed but still exist. Countries such as Israel, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar use them to recruit both male and female workers from Africa, Arab states and Asia (Jureidni 2009; Kemp 2004; Thiollet 2016). And while it has been argued that the guest-worker era has given way to a focus on high-skilled migration in Western ‘immigration countries’ (Castles 2006; Menz 2009; compare Vasey in this volume, Chapter 14), the import of cheap labour continues to exist in different ways. In the USA, the H-2 Visa Program brings in temporary labour for agricultural and non-agricultural occupations. In the European Union, posted work schemes adopted in the 1990s allow for the temporary international posting of workers to other EU member states. And some countries also resort to ‘circular migration’, a phrase developed primarily within international organizations in the 2000s to defend the idea of people moving back and forth freely between their countries of origin and the countries in which they find work. Circular migration, they claimed, would bring a ‘triple win’ for the countries of origin and destination as well as for migrants. However, a number of countries have used this phrase to develop programmes that seek to organize temporary, often seasonal, labour mobility (Castles and Ozkul 2014). Spain, for example, has a system of contratación en origen – decentralized hiring programmes for the agricultural sector that rest on a quota system articulated to a flexible legal framework and bilateral agreements with countries of origin. They involve both private and public actors, and focus on the recruitment of women, especially mothers, as it is believed that their ‘rate of return’ is higher. Programmes described as temporary are always geared towards the return of those recruited. This is in part because it is often assumed, more or less implicitly, that guest workers cannot be assimilated in the population. Recruitment processes use criteria such as gender, and marital and family status to select those deemed most likely to return. However, as European countries discovered in the 1970s when they sought to stop immigration, ‘there is no such thing as a temporary worker programme’ (Massey and Liang 1989: 223). In most cases, migrants settled where they were and then brought over or, established, families. Although family reunification was initially rejected by several European countries, as it appeared to contradict the purpose of the guest worker system, employers’ interest in a stable labour force and the development of several multilateral agreements within the framework of international organizations led to a relaxation of regulations (Castles 1986: 771). Countries ‘importing’ labour thus have had to face the impossibility of temporariness – of separating ‘labour immigration’ from ‘family immigration’ and temporary migration from permanent settlement (Sayad 2004 [1999]: 69–73). Nevertheless, the idea of temporariness still affects how migrants are perceived and governed today (see Griffiths in this volume, Chapter 26). Policies of ‘wilful negligence’, where social protection is absent or minimal for foreign, low-skilled workers, create dynamics of differential inclusion and precariousness in environments marked by structural racism and discrimination (Craig and Wilkinson 2011). Access to the labour markets of high-income countries thus appears to come at the cost of migrants’ rights (Ruhs 2013). These dynamics are exacerbated in the case of undocumented migrants. Since the 1970s, most European countries have sought to increasingly restrict immigration, especially for
234 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration unqualified workers. Visa requirements for nationals of many non-European countries were strengthened from the 1980s onwards, a tendency propelled along in part by the harmonization of visa policies within the Schengen space. The restriction of access to legal documentation has meant that more people find themselves undocumented: ‘illegal migrants’ are made highly visible, politically and in the media, while the legal operations ‘illegalizing’ or ‘irregularizing’ them remain largely invisible (De Genova 2002: 429; Jansen et al. 2015; see also Squire in this volume, Chapter 11). Two purposes of these policies are to deter further immigration and to adopt a strong stance against immigration for electoral purposes. Another less visible purpose is to maintain a reserve pool of cheap and pliable labour by keeping migrant workers in a state of precarity. ‘Legalize’ programmes, ‘regularization’ or ‘amnesties’ do not contradict ‘illegalize’ processes but help sustain them by providing a method of rectification. Similar to this, the ever-present possibility of deportation – the ‘deportability’ of migrants – is what ‘has historically rendered undocumented labor a distinctly disposable commodity’ (De Genova 2002: 439). This is why governments insist on their right to deport even though they cannot practicably do so for many migrant groups – either because the risks are so high that law prevents their deportation, or because the countries on the other end do not cooperate in the process (see Lindberg and Khosravi in this volume, Chapter 29). Finally, the logic of regularization/irregularization is bound not only to domestic politics, but also to international diplomatic relations. Regularization campaigns in Morocco, for example, help improve relations with other African countries while crackdowns on irregularized migrants help maintain relations with European countries (El Qadim 2018). This situation is extremely different from national state regimes for high-skilled migrants, whom many states seek to attract (Menz 2009; see Vasey in this volume, Chapter 14). In France, the idea of ‘chosen immigration’ which emerged during the presidential campaign of 2006 exemplifies this. The US Green Card and the EU Blue Card, which allow highly skilled, non-EU nationals to live and work in almost any country of the EU, are other examples. All this shows the persistent objective of governments to organize immigration on the basis of labour needs. Conflicting policy rationales have led to the adoption of contorted schemes to provide a flexible labour force, often intermeshing economic arguments and socio-cultural ideas of (postcolonial) belonging (Paul 2015). National state regimes have thus produced strong inequalities in the international mobility of different categories of people based on different combinations of class, race and gender.
EMIGRATION POLICIES Immigration is not the only type of movement states seek to control. Many states play an active role in encouraging, discouraging, organizing and regulating emigration as well. Importantly, this practice is not limited to ‘countries of origin’ in the global South. Western countries such as the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy and Ireland, now considered ‘countries of immigration’, have all experienced massive departures of their population at different points in their history. Paying closer attention to the state shows how, in most cases, emigration policy has been involved in shaping outward movement in both Northern and Southern contexts. National state regimes of emigration can vary greatly. Some are more explicit, visible, and constraining than others. They also shift over time as states adapt their policies to new objectives and to changing domestic and international contexts.
National states in the governance of mobilities 235 Zolberg (2007) demonstrated the need to focus on exit policies through his historical study of European emigration, and of how European states gradually became more laissez-faire over time. Imperial Britain, for example, encouraged colonial emigration up until the seventeenth century, when it reversed course and prohibited it. After the independence of the United States, the newly formed republic tried to convince European states to remove barriers to emigration. States were initially reluctant – wars had exacerbated the need for population in Europe – but with the rise of Malthusian ideas and of a working class increasingly seen as dangerous, policies were once again changed: first to the active encouragement of departures and then to laissez-faire. This quickly became the most prominent trait of British migration policy in the North Atlantic space. By the middle of the nineteenth century, Zolberg argues, the responsibility of control had shifted to hosting states. This ‘exit revolution’ highlights the imperial logics at play in migration policies, not only when it comes to immigration but also in the control of departures. It also shows the diversity of reasons, rationales and practices of emigration policies. Although studies of sending states’ policies exist, they mostly concentrate on transnational engagement through ‘diaspora policies’ (discussed below; see Fischer in this volume, Chapter 4) and the externalization of migration control. Studies of exit policies remain rare, and those that exist are, like Zolberg’s, historical. This lack of interest reflects the relative invisibility of emigration policies despite their importance for defining the possibilities of migration. Exit policies can be defined as laws, measures and practices adopted with the purpose of influencing the volume of emigration as well as its composition and destination. They can be both economically and politically motivated. States see the emigration of surplus labour as a way of tackling poverty and unemployment, and by extension as a way of stemming political unrest. At the same time, they seek to avoid brain drain, which has the dual potential of undermining economic development and encouraging the formation of dissident or revolutionary forces in exile (de Haas and Vezzoli 2011). De Haas and Vezzoli propose a threefold typology for classifying exit policies: ‘minimal regulation and laissez-faire’; encouragement; and restriction. Zolberg highlighted laissez-faire as a phase of European states’ emigration policies. Elsewhere, the Mexican state, for example, attempted to organize and control labour emigration for most of the twentieth century. It switched to a ‘policy of no policy’ in 1974, and during this period there were few restrictions and no penalties on leaving without a contract. In the 2000s it began to actively promote emigration (Fitzgerald 2006: 278–80). Active encouragement policies can make use of a variety of tools. They usually include negotiations with receiving states, for example to organize guest-worker programmes or to improve the rights of citizens abroad. The Italian Republic, for example, set up a whole administration dedicated to assisting emigrants and monitoring recruiting agents after it adopted a law on emigration in 1901 (Douki 2007). Other examples include the guest-worker schemes discussed above, as well as the way that the current Chinese and Vietnamese states are directly involved with recruitment agencies (de Haas and Vezzoli 2011: 22). The Philippines have developed, since the 1950s, a ‘highly institutionalized system for labor exportation’ that pushes nurses, above all, to find employment overseas (Brush and Sochalski 2007: 39). A special, state-sponsored Overseas Employment Development Board has been set up to support this goal and a large number of nursing schools have emerged to help ensure supply. Projects such as exporting healthcare workers from so-called developing countries to so-called developed countries are not, however, without their critics. These voices demand that
236 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration emigration be restricted so that valuable human resources are kept in the countries that produce them. Restrictive policies, such as encouragement policies, can adopt different forms. These include cumbersome procedures or high fees to obtain passports, emigration checks for certain citizens (as India does for people of lower socio-economic status), exit permits and visas (for example Iran), and reducing emigrants’ rights (as Hungary attempted to do in 1992) (de Haas and Vezzoli 2011). At times, policies seek to restrict emigration going to a specific destination, for example when the Philippines temporarily suspended labour emigration to Singapore in the 1990s after the plight of Filipinos working there was revealed (Hugo and Stahl 2004). Finally, we can add the case of ‘transit countries’, as they not only control the departure of citizens but also the exit of others. In many cases this is a result of pressure from the outside. As Western countries have closed their borders, they have partially externalized migration control by enrolling (or trying to enrol) other countries in border control. This has influenced the rules of emigration in some countries and led to the criminalization of undocumented departures (see Moffette in this volume, Chapter 28). In Morocco, for example, a 2003 law criminalizing undocumented emigration from the country has been described as a direct result of European pressure on the kingdom. A similar law was adopted in Tunisia in 2004. International organizations such as the EU or the International Organization for Migration have played an important role in the evolution of national migration regimes. Although countries labelled as ‘transit countries’ have had the opportunity to use ‘weapons of mass migration’ (Greenhill 2010), that is, leveraging collaboration in migration control against aid, development policies, commercial agreements or better circulation conditions for their nationals, their own policies have been influenced by these negotiations and processes of externalization. They have often had to re-organize border controls to curtail the exit of their own citizens as well as of foreigners (El Qadim 2014; İşleyen 2018; Paoletti 2010). A further part of this international character appears through the active engagement of states with citizens abroad. Transnational ‘diaspora policies’, which are explored more fully elsewhere in this book (see Fischer, Chapter 4), are also emigration policies. They frequently include the establishment of specialized institutions to coordinate the previously uncoordinated efforts of various state agencies that, in one way or another, interact with emigrants. Only a few of these institutions existed worldwide in the 1980s; in 2014, over half of the states in the United Nations had one (Gamlen 2014: 181–2). Another broad category of diaspora policies is the ‘political and economic management’ of populations abroad (Ragazzi 2014: 75). In many cases, such as Mexico or Morocco, interest in diaspora engagement was sparked by the increasing visibility of remittance flows (Brand 2006; Iskander 2010). This focus on the potential financial gain from having citizens abroad is also found in other countries that have been successful in attracting remittances, such as India or the Philippines. In addition, some states have been trying to organize or encourage skills transfer initiatives. Finally, some states have developed transnational conceptions of belonging through citizenship and voting rights for their citizens abroad. This was not an obvious development, given the connection between the construction of the nation state and the idea of control over a specific territory that we saw in the first section of this chapter. How can we understand the proliferation of diaspora policies that attempt to reach citizens beyond the borders of the state and, in the process, to de-territorialize sovereignty? It is important to examine these policies in light of an oft-overlooked factor: the rise of liberal governmentality, in which the state’s role shifts from bureaucratic control to enabling pre-existing economic processes. In this model, the state accompanies and encourages self-initiative
National states in the governance of mobilities 237 as well as transnational flows (Ragazzi 2014). Different types of measures have aimed at maintaining emigrants’ ties to their countries of origin and at encouraging the economic productivity of those ties. Some of these revolve around citizenship, such as the authorization of dual citizenship (for example, France in 1973, Tunisia in 1975, Portugal in 1981, Italy in 1992, Mexico in 1998) (Faist 2007; Perrin 2014), or the creation of a special status of ‘non-resident citizen’ for expatriates (for example, Mexico, Morocco, Colombia, Greece) or for former citizens or non-citizen descendants of citizens (for example, Turkey, India). Others concern the political participation of emigrants, such as legal provisions for external voting (Lafleur 2015: 19) or special councils for citizens abroad (for example, Morocco, Mexico, Uruguay, Brazil) (Délano 2014). Still others focus on social rights (and in some cases their portability), such as the reinforcement of social services and welfare protection programmes (for example, the Philippines) (Ragazzi 2014: 76) or bilateral social security agreements to ensure the possibility of return (Holzmann 2018). Some states provide services to facilitate investment in the country of origin, and others even organize language courses and cultural events abroad. These different practices can be interpreted not only as bureaucratic and political efforts to include emigrants within the nation state, but also as efforts to ensure the continuation and development of economic processes.
CONCLUSION This chapter has presented different functions of national state regimes from across a large interdisciplinary literature, including the control of circulation, the organization of immigration, and the governance of emigration. Examples were chosen from both Western and non-Western contexts to highlight the commonalities of migration policy even between states that have substantial power and resources asymmetries. National state regimes are always complex arrangements of control over entry, exit and circulation that vary by context and over time. They should therefore be examined by looking at the different domestic and international factors at play, and without preconceptions regarding what type of state leads to what type of national state regime. The central characteristic of national state regimes of migration is their interest in organizing selective mobilities. Processes of bureaucratic and police control have now merged with policies to encourage, channel and direct migrations, resulting in a situation where some people are allowed to move, and some are not, based on variable definitions of desirability. As the different functions of immigration and the political priorities of migration policies change over time, national regimes are in a constant state of flux. They frequently contradict themselves, especially when they interact with other national and international regimes and the strategies of migrants themselves. Indeed, some have suggested that, rather than questioning the ‘effectiveness’ of these national state regimes, it is important to examine the ways in which migrants themselves counter restrictive policies. The hypothesis of an ‘autonomy of migration’ (Mezzadra 2004; Moulier-Boutang 1993) has suggested that repressive tools can be used to counter individual instances of migration, but migration flows cannot simply be opened or closed. Border regimes, in this conception, should be envisaged as sites of conflict and contestation where migrants exercise a degree of autonomy. This reminds us that, in addition to examining
238 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration national state regimes by unpacking the diversity of actors involved in their making, it is essential to examine their interactions with the people they are trying to control.
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PART IV SPACES OF MIGRATION GOVERNANCE
20. The migration route as governance William Walters
INTRODUCTION The figure of the migration route looms large in the way publics, humanitarians, security experts and migration policymakers in the global North try to make sense of human migration – particularly those forms of migration and mobility that have come to be associated with issues of insecurity, criminality and illegality. When news media report migration crises they typically identify particular routes. For example, the notion of a Western Balkans route became a staple of coverage regarding Europe’s fractious relationship to mass refugee movements in 2015 and 2016. Maps commonly accompany these stories (Conant 2015), translating (and reducing) the complexity of human movement into a series of coloured lines or arrows (Walters 2009). Sometimes these graphics echo the military maps of the Second World War, where curved, arrowed lines depicted the movements of advancing troops. But looking beyond the media, it is clear that routes have a central place in official and expert discourse as well. The International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project declares its aim to be ‘tracking deaths along migratory routes’ which it breaks down into five world regions (https:// missingmigrants.iom.int). Meanwhile, the route features prominently within the periodic risk analyses which the EU’s Frontex produces concerning its external borders (for example, Frontex 2018a). Other actors have also made the migration route pivotal to their activities, but in a different register. Humanitarian NGOs operating in the US/Mexico borderlands plot the routes of migrants crossing the desert with the aim of provisioning them with water and other forms of support that might lessen the deadly toll which the desert levies on migrant lives (Walsh 2010). Elsewhere, migration routes have been mapped in the cause of justice and political answerability for border-related fatalities. For example, Heller and Pezzani (2014) reconstructed the route of what came to be known as the ‘left-to-die boat’, an inflatable that set sail from Tripoli on 27 March 2011, only to drift in the Mediterranean for 14 days resulting in the death of 63 of its occupants. Their maps and investigation sought to show how close the boat came to nearby NATO and other military assets, and to demand accountability for the failure of these actors to provide assistance. Why do migration routes have this prominence? What is their meaning for migration governance and politics? Certainly, the route has a common-sense connection to mobility. After all, don’t we use route planning devices when we travel? Yet it would be a mistake to regard the migration route as a natural feature of the governance and politics of migration, or the effect only of technological culture. The core argument of this chapter is that the route is not self-evident but instead a feature of the regimes of power/knowledge which organize and contest today’s migratory world. Rather than take the route at face value – as so much policy knowledge does – we should aim to denaturalize it, and consider the power effects, social and geopolitical relations, and hierarchies and struggles that it puts in play. We should ask what this discourse of routes means for the ways in which borders, territories, migrations and much 242
The migration route as governance 243 else are being transformed amidst the ongoing struggles about the right to move and the right to stay. The route has not always been a prominent feature of the governance of migration. Rather than presume a constancy to the route we can, as a point of departure for this chapter, consider a few of the contexts in which it has appeared and disappeared in a politics of mobility, and the different functions and meanings that a knowledge of routes has taken. For example, within specialized areas like demography and ethnology we often see the mapping of historical population movements in terms of routes (for example, Gilbert 1969). Routes also featured as administrative and legal concepts within the colonial governance of migration. For instance, in 1908 the Canadian government passed the ‘continuous passage act’ which had the aim of prohibiting landing in Canada to any migrant who did not travel directly from the country of their citizenship (Mawani 2018). In practice, the regulation sought to accomplish the racialized exclusion of Asians from India and Japan for whom direct passage to Canada was logistically and politically difficult (for colonial legacies in contemporary migration governance, see Mayblin in this volume, Chapter 2). If a focus on migration routes is something that has come and gone within migration history, and served multiple purposes, and if the meaning of migration routes has been historically contingent, then what is a migration route today? That is the question this chapter will answer. The rest of this chapter is organized into four main sections. First, it examines critical scholarship about migration routes today, paying close attention to the rise of a discourse of routes and how this relates to transformations in practices and imaginings of borders. Second, we explore scholarship that seeks to complicate the idea of a migration route, whether by locating the route within dynamic and agonistic struggles over space, or by foregrounding other conceptualizations of the passage. Third, the chapter attends to one particular alternative to routes talk, namely scholarship on migration journeys. It finds that a concern with journeys frequently examines questions of migrant experience that are often missing from the literature on routes. In a final section the chapter proposes some new avenues for research on routes.
THE ROUTES OF MIGRATION GOVERNANCE What might explain the rise of this discourse of routes? Why now? What kind of power relations are at stake? What relationship might exist between the discourse of routes and new forms of bordering? We cannot understand the pivotal place of migration routes in the landscape of migration governance without considering the externalization or outsourcing of border controls (Bialasiewicz 2012; Casas-Cortes et al. 2010, 2015; Menjivar 2014; see also Follis, Chapter 5; Squire, Chapter 11; Pécoud, Chapter 17, all in this volume). This term encompasses the policies, tactics, laws and devices that are being used by EU states, as well as the USA, Australia, and other powerful states, to control migratory flows at a distance. Externalization includes the use of visa policy to check migration flows before they leave various ‘sending’ countries, the creation of checkpoints in ‘transit’ countries, and safe third country policies which make it harder for refugees to access certain territories where they can make claims (Hyndman and Mountz 2008). The strategy of externalization is producing a new geopolitics of migration and borders, one in which the territorialization of new kinds of space becomes pivotal to the transnational projection of power over population. One of these spaces is the ‘transit country’, that is, a political geography of the states, regions and territories that
244 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration are identified by migration authorities as laying along the routes of migration, and which are to bear some responsibility for their control. Discourses of transit gathered momentum amongst states and international agencies in the 1990s (Collyer et al. 2012; Fine 2017; Hess 2012). Critics have highlighted that transit migration eludes precise definition, yet still operates as an important way in which political responsibility for migration is being redistributed on regional and transnational scales (Collyer et al. 2012). Like the idea of migration routes, the labelling of whole states as ‘country of transit’ or ‘country of origin’ has a self-evident character. But like ‘immigrant’, ‘smuggler’, ‘illegal alien’, or any other label that populates the lexicon of migration governance (see Bakewell, Chapter 10; Squire, Chapter 11; Thibos and Howard, Chapter 12; Vasey, Chapter 14, all in this volume), the notion of a transit country should be treated itself as an effect of power relations and geopolitical strategies. Many migrants pass through, say, Canada on their way to the USA, yet Canada is rarely described as a country of transit. The power to designate, identify and label is as much a part of the governance of migration and the production of new kinds of bordering as is the implementation of the new technologies and laws that have been rightly associated with outsourcing and externalization. To find oneself designated a transit country, and even more, to internalize that designation within policy, is already to translate and, to some extent at least, operationalize these modes of governance. Casas-Cortes et al. (2010) argue that the discourse of migration routes changes how authorities think about the space and time of migration control, and poses fundamental questions about understandings of sovereignty and territory. As they put it, the ‘strategy of “migration route” control re-orients border management away from a focus on a moving front-line to a series of points along an itinerary’ (2010: 81). They see this shift of emphasis expressed within the EU’s adoption of new frameworks like the Neighbourhood Policy, but especially the Global Approach to Migration which began to take shape in 2005. Let us also note that much of the policy language which frames the governance of migration routes sounds very consensual. The need to govern routes is articulated within a vocabulary of partnership, neighbourhood, solidarity, management, forum and agreement. And speaking of agreements, note how these are named after places (for example, Söderköping, Budapest, Rabat) or invoke new imagined communities and conversations (for example, a Euro-African Dialogue). All of this consensual language obscures the fact that the governance of migration routes is underpinned by hierarchical relations between the sending, transit and receiving countries (on such consensual language in the politics of migration and development, see Kabbanji in this volume, Chapter 6). It would be a mistake to regard the migration route as nothing more than the expression of the journeys undertaken by migrants, even if the latter are one of its conditions and protagonists. Better to see the migration route as a discourse, which draws on and overlaps with other discourses about migration management (Geiger and Pécoud 2010; see also Pécoud in this volume, Chapter 17). It corresponds with an entire apparatus of governance (Feldman 2011), one that is defining and linking states and other actors in new ways. Ethnographic research explores key aspects of this apparatus including its authorities and agencies (Bigo 2015; Fine 2017), the culture of police cooperation in third countries, transit zones (Andersson 2014; Frowd 2014) and hotspots (Pallister-Wilkins 2020; Tazzioli 2018), the technologies being used to police routes, and the way in which other discourses like transit overlap with this field (Hess 2012).
The migration route as governance 245 Despite the importance of this critical scholarship on migration routes, a note of caution is merited concerning the narrative of externalization with which critical research is usually concerned. We should be careful about the kind of historical past we presume when we speak of externalization. The notion risks an evolutionary view of history in which at some moment in the past border controls were not dispersed; when, perhaps, they coincided more neatly than today with the territorial borders of the state. This might be valid if we are making comparisons with the organization of border controls in many countries in the 1960s and 1970s. But if we pan out, a different picture emerges. Historians of migration governance and colonial power offer an important reminder that for much of the nineteenth century and before, what we might today call migration control focused not on borders or even individual migrants but on transportation systems, and was configured around imperial geographies (Blue 2013; Feys 2010; Mawani 2018; McKeown 2012). To presume that ‘before’ externalization all controls were centred in the nation state and its territorial borders risks glossing over those histories and their respective, hierarchical geographies of control and resistance.
RETHINKING MIGRATION ROUTES In technical and policy-oriented literature the migration route has a rather self-evident character. Routes are usually understood as the composite of a whole series of factors. A route might open up because civil unrest in a particular region has affected the migrants’ mobility tactics, because particular cities operate as transit points and smuggling hubs, or because border guards and police are more porous in one place than another. In these texts the route is interpreted as a faithful expression of the actual paths of migrants’ movement. But a series of concepts and frameworks have recently emerged in which the epistemologies of the migration route are called into question. Critical scholars, activists, and migrants themselves are using other terms and tools which reveal either the limitations of a focus on routes or help to rethink the route not so much as a self-evident pathway but as a form of power/knowledge. In this section I survey some of the more interesting and challenging ways of rethinking routes. For Casas-Cortes, Cobarrubias and Pickles it is important to distinguish routes from what they call ‘itineraries’ (Casas-Cortes et al. 2015). ‘Routes refer to the ways in which migration management seeks to channel movements into migration routes (for example, Schengen visa requirements for migrants coming from North African countries), whereas itineraries refers to migrants’ paths and passages whose spatial configurations always exceed the ability of formal routes management to synthesize and regulate them’ (Casas-Cortes et al. 2015: 900). Another useful concept which critical scholarship has brought to the analysis of migration routes is the corridor. Kasparek (2016) talks of corridors as systems which arise under very specific and perhaps crisis circumstances. His context is the peak of the refugee crisis which saw thousands of people traversing the Balkans towards northern Europe and especially Germany in the summer of 2015. With countries like Macedonia and Croatia eager to see migrants moved northwards the migration route turned into a corridor, a mechanism which included transit camps, and which embodied the will to channel and accelerate the movement of unwanted population through the territory. Corridors transform migrants’ mobility. ‘Migrants didn’t travel the route anymore: they were hurriedly channeled along, no longer
246 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration having the power to either determine their own movement or their own speed’ (Kasparek 2016: 6). A binaristic conception of mobility is not uncommon in migration studies: forced and voluntary movements are often juxtaposed (compare Bakewell in this volume, Chapter 10). A focus on corridors examines an in-between situation where mobility is neither simply forced nor voluntary but channelled, insulated, protected and coerced at the same time; and where the role of states in applying force to migration is acknowledged. It helps to illustrate ways in which states themselves do not only block movement – as images such as Fortress Europe sometimes imply – but use mobility to control mobility (Tazzioli 2018; Weber at al. 2019). Hence, it should not surprise us that the notion of a corridor has also been used in studies of deportation (for an overview of scholarship in this field, see Lindberg and Khosravi in this volume, Chapter 29). For example, research on the governance of stowaways (Walters 2008) found that maritime experts and insurance officials used terms such as ‘repatriation corridor’ to pose the problem of how ship captains could isolate, contain and remove stowaways, get them onto land, and return them to their ‘home’ countries. In a similar vein, Drotbohm and Hasselberg (2014) speak of the ‘deportation corridor’ to move beyond an understanding of deportation as a discrete event and to offer instead a ‘processual’ account that attends to the chain of ‘in-between’ places, affective states, feelings and experiences that arise when people are channelled, escorted, detained, and herded over time and place. Further research could fruitfully deepen our understanding of corridors within such experiences as humanitarian emergency, evacuation, resettlement, relocation, and other ways in which mobility is controlled through the channelling of mobility. The concept of migration routes is also becoming nuanced by research that draws connections between migration research and recent geographies of volume and verticality (Elden 2013; Weizmann 2007), and topographies and morphologies of borders (Nyers 2012). After all, the migrations that form of the object of so much routes talk frequently involve the crossing of seas, and the navigation of mountain ranges and deserts. They entail encounters not just between migrants and authorities but also terrains and climates which generate threats to life, yet there are opportunities for those who navigate them successfully. For this reason scholars argue we need to take terrain seriously as a geophysical factor that can at different times be weaponized by states (who use the heat of the desert to police movement) and exploited by migrants (who might use the shelter which terrain sometimes affords) to advance their projects (Boyce 2018; Squire 2014). As with research on corridors, this writing moves beyond an image of migration as something that happens on a flat, planar surface. It also considers how the features of depth, height, expanse and exposure shape the governance and politics of mobility. Questions of morphology and volume pertain not just to the ways in which terrain is modulated but how people on the move interact with subjects, materials and practices that surround, protect or endanger them. Looking at labour migration in East Asia, some scholars speak of ‘encapsulation’ to highlight the ways in which brokers, escorts, hostels, and other human, as well as nonhuman, elements (such as mini-buses which transport migrants to and from villages to airports) serve to protect female migrants on the move, while simultaneously isolating them from broader social relations and resources in ways that enhance their commodification (Lindquist 2018; Xiang 2013). In a similar vein, but drawing on the spherological philosophy of Sloterdijk (for whom the sphere is any life-supporting enclosure), Dijstelbloem and Walters (2019) use a concept of envelope to make sense of the dynamic relationship between mobility
The migration route as governance 247 and enclosure. Like a postal envelope, which mediates the movement of messages and other materials through communication systems, escorting provides an envelope that allows migration as well as deportation agencies to make use of transportation networks. But the envelope has a second level of reference. From aviation a flight envelope is the volumetric space, determined by mutable factors such as a pilot’s skill and the plane’s technical capabilities, within which flight is safe and predictable (hence, ‘pushing the envelope’). In this extended sense we could say that the journeys of migrants also involve envelopes. So when mountain guides provide assistance to people crossing the Alps, when local communities provide rides or shelter, when state or non-state actors undertake maritime rescue operations, or when migrants themselves share information, tips and data, these ‘mobile commons’ (Trimikliniotis et al. 2014) can also be regarded as enveloped forms of mobility.
FROM ROUTES TO JOURNEYS These themes of itinerary, corridor and volume all mark important new directions that nuance and add depth to scholarship on migration routes. But if there is one area where this reappraisal of routes talk is most evident it is with the focus on migration journeys. Journey and route are sometimes used interchangeably. Yet there are subtle but significant differences of emphasis which appear when scholars privilege a focus on the journey. Quite recently, BenEzer and Zetter (2014) observed that the journey was largely absent from refugee studies as a concept or an object of empirical inquiry, a situation not much different in other areas of migration research. Whereas scholars had traditionally examined the conditions shaping the departure of migrants, as well as experiences of reception, assimilation and exclusion in destination countries, the period in between has been overlooked. They found this surprising given that a refugee’s ‘exilic’ journey is often a hugely significant event in their life. It is also odd given that the journey is historically such a powerful motif in religious life, art and legend. They offer three reasons why scholars should take refugee journeys seriously: (1) the fact that the journey is meaningful for the refugee and their social world, and quite likely a transformative and perhaps traumatic experience; (2) the role scholarship can play in giving voice to marginalized refugee experiences and injustices; and (3) the possibility that scholarship can better inform policy. However, research on migration journeys is now growing. For example, Squire and her colleagues (Squire et al. 2017) engaged migrants making precarious journeys across the Mediterranean to discover how they viewed EU policy, and how such policy shaped their journeys. Such research is crucial since it not only documents the riskiness of the journey, the failure of EU policies, and the violation of human rights; it also opens channels by which migrants can speak back to policymakers. Such scholarship also reveals journeys to be fragmented, complex and protracted. Collyer (2010) argues that the fragmented journey is now being recognized not as an epiphenomenon but an irreducible and structural feature of contemporary migration systems. He suggests that fragmented journeys have this salience for several reasons. One reason has to do with protection. When people become stuck en route, in countries where they lack citizenship or resources, they face great risks. This point has been deepened by Ilcan et al. (2018) who document the complex forms of precarity which migrants travelling from Syria to Europe have confronted. Another factor is that these fragmented journeys are not merely a reflection of the lengths which migrants will go to negotiate or
248 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration evade control. They are also an effect of broader social and technological transformations. The long, circuitous journey may once have been the privilege of those with money. Based on his fieldwork in Morocco, Collyer (2010) suggests that the ubiquity of mobile communication has led to what we might call a democratization of the journey. A glance at the impressive scholarship emerging on the journey allows for a series of observations. First, while there is a great deal of overlap and dialogue between scholars who focus on routes and those who focus on journeys, the latter tend to devote more attention to migratory experiences. They often ask how migrants move, the risks and dangers they face, the tactics they employ, and the ways in which these odysseys acquire meaning. In this way these scholars seek to complicate the popular image of migrants as either helpless victims or sneaky invaders by revealing how migrants exercise agency, however cramped their situation. Questions about the paradoxes of clandestinity arise in such a context. As Coutin (2005) has argued, the routes which undocumented people take are both hidden and known. Criminals, including smugglers, know about them and use this as way to extort, as do corrupt officials. Street vendors often know about routes and gather to sell food and drink to travellers. Meanwhile, advocates also know and use this knowledge of routes to provide a network of support – from water towers to shelters – that shadows the route. ‘Thus, “hidden” migration is simultaneously a visible facet and feature of social landscapes’ (Coutin 2005: 198). Second, a focus on journeys widens understanding of the social world of migration, shedding light on the multiple actors which populate the scene of migration. For example, Zhang and his colleagues (Zhang et al. 2018) focus on the social world of smugglers who operate as brokers in many journeys. Moving beyond the simplistic image of victim/predator, and without in any way belittling the violence and exploitation that happens, they nevertheless insist there are complex negotiations at play. ‘[M]igrants are not passive actors in the process of transnational migration but active in vetting and procuring smuggling services, evaluating the reliability of smuggling facilitators, and learning through failed journeys which smugglers are worthy of trust and why’ (Zhang et al. 2018: 9). Other research highlights interactions with a heterogeneous cast of actors including humanitarians, drivers, police and border officials, smugglers, activists, lawyers, and, indeed, migration researchers (Xiang and Lindquist 2014). Crucial insights about the informal practices of governing routes emerge. For example, we learn that Greek police managed the recent surge of migration affecting their country by tactics of non-implementation: often they neglected to fingerprint and register people arriving at their borders and instead encouraged them to move on to other countries (Weber et al. 2019). Third, a focus on journeys is particularly important because it complicates the image of mobility and border crossing that populates so much routes talk. In the latter, routes appear purposeful, invasive, organized and determined. The very language of routes resonates with our everyday ideas of planning and efficiency. In contrast, a focus on journeys unfolds the multiple times, directions, and stops and starts. It reveals ‘trajectories that are non-linear, circular, seasonal, multi-directional, repetitive and ambiguous’ (Mainwaring and Brigden 2016: 250) while also reminding us that not all journeys are successful, or end in places that were intended or planned. ‘The study of journeys in which migration trajectories remain underdetermined and uncertain allows us to think critically about the political, economic, social and personal consequences of non-arrival, arrival, and the spaces in between “successful” and “failed” migration’ (Mainwaring and Brigden 2016: 250). Finally, let us note that, for all its benefits, a focus on journeys raises new problems for research. Certainly, we can agree with BenEzer and Zetter (2014) that it poses difficult issues
The migration route as governance 249 of definition as well as method. When and where does a journey begin? When does it end? Yet there are also a range of thorny ethical and political questions which a research orientation towards journeys raises. What if people on the move claim a ‘right to opacity’ (Demos 2009), refusing their allotted place in the media and academic spotlight? What if research becomes implicated in the scene of the border spectacle (De Genova 2013) replicating a great deal of journalism which generates web traffic by showing suffering and fuelling voyeuristic tendencies on the part of a curious public? What if these accounts, in striving to give a human face to mass migration crises, mainly serve to foster what Squire has called a kind of ‘naïve humanism’ which reinforces the power of humanitarian actors to speak for, and control the mobilities of these subjects (Squire 2014)? Scholarship and art that experiments with new modes of representation and visualization, suggesting ways to navigate some of the pitfalls of reproducing the border spectacle (Heller et al. 2012; Parizot et al. 2014), is an important response to the risks of naïve humanism. This includes counter-cartographies (Walters 2009) such as those collaborative projects in which migrants work with humanities scholars, cartographers, and social scientists to visualize their own journeys (Mekdjian 2015).
NEW ROUTES OF RESEARCH In this section I highlight a few areas where critical research on the governance and politics of migration routes is sparse, and where some potentially fruitful contributions could be made. It is not an exhaustive account so much as a provocation. First, a point about discourse analysis. This chapter has argued that migration routes should be approached not as something natural but as a discourse, and a mode of spatializing and imagining migration. As we saw, there has been important research on the migration apparatus, the network of actors, agencies, laws and programmes that produce migration routes. Yet there has been surprisingly little work that conducts a systematic discourse analysis on the vast body of official reports, briefs, maps, charts and communiqués within which officials have debated the migration route. It would be really useful to treat such texts as an archive, tracing the ways in which the route has been objectified, how it has mutated, and so on. Such a move would enhance understanding of the routes by which concepts and knowledges of the route have travelled. Second, we need more work that examines the different ways in which knowledge about routes relates to the administration of migratory experiences and especially how it mediates microlevel interactions between migrants and state actors. For example, recent UK guidance to immigration authorities identifies the ‘personal interview’ as a key technology of refugee claims governance. One function of such an interview is to seek information from its subject about ‘the travel routes taken en route to the UK (including any claims to have entered the “Dublin area” and then left it again)’ (Home Office 2017: 24). Might we say the route operates in this context not only as a geography but as a truth about the individual that the interview and other forms of inquiry (e.g. the checking of fingerprints and other traces within databases like EURODAC) produce in their agonistic interactions with people seeking protection? Third, a point about land, sea and air. It is notable that the aerial is rather marginal in our thinking about routes. When we imagine migration routes it is overwhelmingly in terms that locate mobility in geographies of land and sea. Air travel and air routes certainly do appear in official discourses of migration routes. Hence, Frontex does mention the role which par-
250 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration ticular airports play within migration routes. For example, we are told that Sarajevo airport is a popular destination for Turkish nationals who can reach it without the need for visas, but who then try ‘to reach the EU illegally’ (Frontex 2018b: 31). And careful accounts of journeys, as well as autoethnographies (Khosravi 2010), reveal not just that journeys are fragmented and polytemporal – as we saw in the previous section – but also multi-modal, combining a flight here, a hike there, a long bus journey, and so on. Nevertheless, migration routes are powerfully associated in the public imagination with land and sea rather than air. Is this because it is on oceans, motorways and deserts that the border spectacle of violence and exposure plays out? Is it because air travel in the global North is effectively enclosed by large airline companies? People rarely cross air borders illegally in small planes the way they do sea or land borders outside official channels. Is it because, building on Collyer and King (2016: 7), compared with long borderlines or vast oceans, the nodal space of airports and air routes is easier to police? Whatever the reasons for the marginality of the aerial, a fuller account of routes and journeys, as well as a more vertically and aerially attuned geography of migration, would do well to grapple with aspects of air travel. Here, a useful lead is offered by Julie Chu’s (2010) ethnography of transnational migration between Fuzhou province in China and the USA. Chu speaks of ‘paper routes’ in reference to people who manage or aspire to travel by air, in contrast with those who have little option but to be smuggled across the Pacific, perhaps in a container ship. The notion of a paper route insists that air travel should be approached in no less material terms than other modalities. Consider, for example, the negotiations, risks and events that a person might experience in order to acquire the visas, marriage certificates, work permits or passports to undertake a given flight; or the debts and obligations they might incur that will last long after their journey. These are all activities and transactions that may well occur far in time and place from the border and the journey. Yet they are no less a crucial part of the production of these journeys and routes. Finally, I want to note an asymmetry that exists in terms of the kinds of journeys and routes that scholars examine. More specifically, scholarship seems to concentrate overwhelmingly on journeys towards the countries of the global North. When it comes to the deportation of people from these same territories, or all the other ways migrants circulate and return, these are less often examined through the framework of journeys and routes. Since the bulk of deportations from the EU and North America rely on aviation, this asymmetry overlaps with the neglect of air travel I mentioned above. It is an imbalance I have elsewhere called the ingression bias (Walters 2018): the discursive practices which render migration as a process of coming ‘over here’, and in its most extreme and polemical form, ‘invasion’. The growth of ethnographies of detention and deportation journeys is beginning to challenge this bias (Drotbohm and Hasselberg 2014; Peutz 2006; see also Lindberg and Khosravi in this volume, Chapter 29), as is research that moves beyond a view of deportation as a ‘unidirectional’ and ‘discrete practice’ in favour of ‘mobility control continuums’ (Weber et al. 2019). Future work on deportation could fruitfully connect Chu’s (2010) idea of paper routes to the realm of deportation to give a more material account of control and resistance in the documental production of the deportee. Media reports (for example, Guardian 2014) point out that the UK and German governments have sometimes made secret payments to embassy officials to generate travel documents for people they want to remove, people whose actual nationality is in question. Such reports prompt the question: are ‘illegal’ travellers the only actors who engage in clandestine and irregular activities? Do state and other authorities not also engage
The migration route as governance 251 in clandestine and illegal practices in governing migration (compare Squire in this volume, Chapter 11)? There may be more symmetry to entry and exit than we suppose.
CONCLUSION So what is a migration route? And why should the critical analysis of migration routes matter for scholarship on the politics and governance of migration? This chapter has argued against a naturalistic conception of migration routes, seeing them instead as a privileged concept and spatial category that operates within contemporary discourses of border and migration management. For some time now scholars have argued that borders are becoming stretched, mobilized, dispersed and transformed, and are in no way confined to the edges of the national territory (compare Follis in this volume, Chapter 5). A focus on migration routes is important since it moves us beyond this important point, allowing us to see some of the ways in which these processes of dispersal are being conceptualized and put into practice by political authorities and security experts. In other words, by following routes we can better understand some of the ways bordering is actually being done. Yet a focus on routes matters for other reasons. It also connects migration research more fully to the wider mobilities turn that is transforming the social sciences. By studying routes, along with proximate concepts like journey, and related geographies of im/mobility, we can foster a more multi-sited, processual and variegated account of the governance and contestation of migration, one that insists that the road as much as the city, and the vehicle as much as the agora should be recognized as sites of politics.
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21. Migration, governance, and the co-production of urban spaces An Van Raemdonck and Fran Meissner
INTRODUCTION Cities as we know them would not exist without migration. Urban spaces are spaces of both the agglomeration of people on the move and of economic activity. Many urban scholars argue that what is specific about urban space is precisely the closeness of people and things. As such, cities always produce proximities between those born and bred in them and those who migrated there, be that as part of urban to urban, rural to urban or international migration. Much of the recent migration and diversity literature has thus focused on cities as spaces of encounters of difference and of negotiations of those differences. Indeed, some argue that it is ultimately urban contexts in which processes of migrant governance are shaped (de Graauw and Vermeulen 2016). Dynamic and ever-changing social configurations develop in cities precisely as a result of how migration to, and migrants in, cities are governed. With this in mind, this chapter discusses how cities are spaces in which the daily lives of migrants are governed and how this governance is negotiated. We argue that disparate literatures shed light on this question, in what is necessarily a highly interdisciplinary and geographically varied field of research. To start and situate our discussion we begin with looking at cities as spaces of migration. We examine how migration alters the urban form by contributing to dynamic changes within the spatial organisation of cities. We show that writing on migration governance often casts ‘the urban’ or ‘cities’ as spatially equivalent, and neglects the dynamics and complexities with which urban spaces and migration are bound together. In the next section, we explore the local level implications of international migration governance. We examine how differentiation by immigration status sets migrants apart in urban spaces and defines their opportunities for mobility. Ongoing policy changes in this area thus shape urban diversity dynamics. The third section summarises key arguments about the role of city administration in governing migration as part of multilevel-governance constellations. We explore how those constellations can both constrain and support foreign nationals’ lives and livelihoods in local social, political and institutional spaces. Lastly, we explore how migrants creatively engage with those governance structures and the urban spaces of migration in which they find themselves. Our focus here is on migrants as city makers, highlighting migrant agency and the complex microdynamics that shape urban spaces. Ultimately, we argue that the necessarily intertwined and multi-level processes of governance and the active engagement of migrants in cities have to be seen in conjunction even more than they are in the current literature. To do this we have to also pay closer attention to the global variation of the dynamics of ‘the urban’.
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MIGRATION AND URBAN SPACES In this section, we examine how migration alters the urban form by contributing to dynamic changes within the spatial organisation of cities. We explain the significance of diverse and specific local contexts to how migration, urban spaces and their governance intersect. It has become a mantra to say that cities matter because a growing share of people is going to be living in cities – indeed, over 68 per cent of the world’s population by 2050 (United Nations 2018). A recent report by the World Economic Forum (2017: 10) notes that: ‘Managing human mobility is one of the greatest challenges […] worldwide [and] further exacerbated in cities where migrants typically seek a better quality of life.’ However, the relationship between migration and urbanisation is not so straightforward in practice. Measures to limit, order or discourage migration fall short of recognising important social, political and population dynamics. Paying attention to such dynamics is especially important if we apply a global lens to the link between urban spaces and migration governance. Certainly, international migration is not the prime driver of urbanisation. As Medland (Chapter 22 in this volume) shows, internal migration is much more pronounced and not all international migration is to cities. While rural to urban migration flows are important (Vertovec 2015b: 2; World Bank 2013), ‘the most substantial migration flows [are] from urban to urban areas and from rural to rural areas’ (DESA 2008: 3–4). Most urban population growth is in small cities of around half a million people, rather than in large and mega-cities (DESA 2008; Penninx et al. 2004). Finally, there are significant regional differences. Urban population growth in developing countries is mostly due to natural increases (DESA 2008). Cities in the global South and in China are often more rapidly expanding while in the global North we more frequently observe stagnant urban growth. It is therefore important to ask how urban spaces and the urban form – the physical makeup of cities and how it changes – are intertwined with migration, and its governance. Urban contexts are historically situated and continuously changing. Many spatial configurations of inequality, those that we often perceive as being specifically urban, are closely intertwined with the governance of migration. For example, the spatiality of migration to cities is often thought about in terms of where migrants settle and live. An extensive literature on patterns of segregation in US cities shows how high levels of segregation are bound up with historical patterns of forced migration (Nightingale 2012). These patterns are produced and perpetuated by discriminatory infrastructures and laws. Historically, patterns of segregation are thought of in terms of inner-city deprivation, but increasingly in North American and Oceanian cities, international migrants live in suburban areas. This trend alongside the relocation of longer standing migrant communities to the urban fringes has spurred debates about so-called ‘ethnoburbs’ (Wen et al. 2009): suburban areas marked with specific ethnic, cultural and racial identities in the wider urban space. Such shifts contribute to the reshaping of (sub)urban socialities and ways of living in the city, as well as changing the political economy of urban development more generally (Keil 2018). Singapore offers another example where the modes of governing migrants are intimately intertwined with urban geographies. Here the city state houses migrant workers in specific, often spatially distant compounds. This practice has come under more pronounced criticism in light of the recent coronavirus crisis as it creates differentiated spatial experiences that exclude labour migrants, and puts those migrants at disproportionate risk (Kathiravelu and Heller 2020). Similarly, a number of scholars have conceptualised refugee camps as urban spaces,
256 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration highlighting extreme spatial densities as a key characteristic in those settlements (Diken 2004; Jansen 2011; Kreichauf 2018). These diverse spatial configurations are not equivalent but they are all nonetheless shaped by the intersection of migration and urban governance, and labour markets. They alter the physical layout and structure of cities and shape the urban form in ways that contribute to classed and racialized experiences of cities and migration. There is no specific and uniform quality to the urban form, and it is important to stress that there is wide variation in how city spaces are affected by migration. How we classify and talk about urban contexts, then, shapes how debates about the relationship between migration governance and the city are understood. Caponio et al. (2018) offer a helpful heuristic: superdiverse, divided and border cities. Focusing on superdiverse cities steers attention to complex configurations of migration-related diversity in cities (Vertovec 2007) and writing about divided cities points to ‘deep divisions [that] can lead to the presence of two governments and two sets of institutions’ (Caponio et al. 2018: 287). In border cities it is not primarily deep-seated ethnic and religious divisions that matter, but rather divisions due to the physical location of cities within border territories. Yet van Kempen (2007) reminds us that divided cities are subject to contingencies that emerge in response to contextual specificities and macro-level developments. Superdiverse cities can also be divided cities, bound-up in their specific histories of urban development and policy responses to migration. As Massey (1999) has noted, it is complex interconnections of the local and the global that help us make sense of the city as spatial. These interconnections highlight it as a space for migration, as well as a destination of migration. Urban spaces are imbued with infrastructures of migration. Train and bus stations or airports signal the city as a place of arrival and departure. As Meeus et al. (2018) note, these spatial and social infrastructures of arrival (and departure) show that a dynamic view on migration in and through urban space is needed. Questioning the idea that migration necessarily leads to settlement, in turn opens up debates about more varied migration trajectories as part and parcel of the urban fabric. Urban spaces are marked by the layering of diversities and they change in response to migration (Blommaert 2013). Drawing on the example of South African municipalities, Loren Landau has noted that the urban is increasingly marked by ‘neighbourhoods or sites characterised by multiple flows of movements; unique eco-systems shaped by oscillating, almost tidal migration combined with people transiting through’ (Landau 2018: 217), that he calls ‘urban estuaries’. Landau links this spatial shift to how migration is governed – particularly migration within the African continent. In pointing to the development of urban estuaries he highlights the physical fluidities of migration. Such ‘urban estuaries’ have parallels in what Engbersen (2012) discussed in terms of ‘liquid migration’ and its increasing importance for social complexities in European cities. European free movement facilitates this liquidity, marked by the possibility of temporariness and the variability of outcomes and (cross-border) lifestyles. We can see that the urban spatial implications of migration are neither negligible nor uniform. The governance of migration and urban governance both matter to how the daily lives of migrants are governed in cities.
Migration, governance, and the co-production of urban spaces 257
GOVERNING MIGRATION AND URBAN DIVERSITIES When trying to understand the governance and politics of migration in cities, we need to assess both the legal regulation of who gets to move under what conditions and also how these are applied in and by cities. For this purpose, Meissner (2017) distinguishes between the local implications of general conditions of entry, and the parameters of presence. The former play an important role in who gets to move how, for how long and where to; the latter matter for migrant incorporation in urban social and political fabrics. While the two are linked, the migration-driven diversity we find in urban spaces is not determined by (attempts to) regulate migration but it is certainly also not completely random. Conditionalities of entry – and what Meissner (2017) calls ‘legal status diversity’ – steers our attention to migrant category differentiations that play into urban diversity dynamics. This notion highlights the importance of ongoing changes to the details of particular immigration status tracks and to intricate policy changes. These include the amount of money migrants are required to have in their bank account to be eligible for certain visa categories or for how long different types of migrants are granted a residence permit. Such intricacies influence who gets to move when, where and under what conditions (Carmel, Lenner and Paul in this volume, Chapter 1). More intricate policy changes can seem haphazard and often respond to longstanding policy legacies (Lenner 2020), but spur a stratification of immigration and legal statuses (Ellermann 2019; Morris 2001). These stratifications play out in local contexts and influence how migrants can access resources and rights within urban spaces (Berg et al. 2019; Lebuhn 2013). Carmel and Paul (2013) point to the ‘complex stratifications’ of migrants rights in the EU that become apparent once we attend to both the stratification of migrant categories and also to local contexts determining the specific status of a migrant differently. More difficult pathways to claiming rights will prevail in contexts that are socio-economically disadvantaged or where the political climate is expressly anti-immigrant. Shifts and changes in policies matter for the categorisation of urban migrants and their parameters of presence. It is illustrative in this regard to have a detailed look at measures surrounding refugee migrants moving into cities. Refugees living in camps have traditionally received most academic interest and attention from policy makers (see Turner in this volume, Chapter 23). Only since the mid-2000s has academic scholarship started to take seriously self-settled refugees, i.e. those refugees living in urban areas and not within the purview of UNHCR policies. In 1997 the UNHCR defined ‘urban refugees’ in order to specify their rights of assistance compared with assistance programmes in camps and so-called ‘irregular movers’ (UNHCR 1997). Urban refugees, in this early definition, come from urban areas but it also included rural–urban migration and those leaving camps to move into towns. This policy was one of containment that privileged the principle of encampment. A 2009 revision tends towards a community-based approach focused on the integration of refugees into host societies (UNHCR 2009; Ward 2014). This revision was largely prompted by the Iraqi refugee crisis in the Middle East, after 2002. Iraqi refugees, spread across Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt, showed many socio-economic characteristics that were different from the majority of urban refugees on the African continent that UNHCR had usually dealt with. Iraqis were allowed access to public services in Syria and Jordan. They were often middle-class, highly educated and visible migrants who often started businesses and cross-border trade (Chatelard 2011), although also many poor Iraqis crossed
258 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration borders to Jordan and Syria (e.g. Hoffmann 2016). The Iraqi crisis proved the difficulty of providing universal models for urban assistance and governance of refugees. It illustrates the long way that UNHCR policy and scholarship alike had travelled from giving attention to urban refugees to recognising the diversity of urban refugees in different contexts. It was understood that ‘the paradigms used to understand the predicament of encamped refugees are not applicable to urban contexts’ (Chatelard and Morris 2011: 4). Consequently, a subfield of urban refugee studies has developed over the last 15 years. Refugees who leave camps and settlements and move into cities in the global South are often arrested or mistreated by host state authorities and populations that prefer to contain refugees in designated spaces. Moreover, these new urban refugees often live in the poorest areas that already suffer from marginalisation and state neglect (Chatelard 2011). In many contexts, unlike the Iraqi crisis, a high proportion of refugees prefer to remain anonymous and invisible, especially when there is a dominant framing of them as security threats. This makes it harder for humanitarian aid and NGO services to convince urban refugees to register and so to provide proper assistance (Chatelard and Morris 2011). The renewed UNHCR policy expanded its own roles and mandate, as it sought ‘to legitimize the role of cities as “places of protection”’ (Crisp 2009: 75), and offered a better understanding of the need to adapt to context-specific capacities and needs of refugees. In the meantime, important pleas have been made for the importance of studying urban refugees distinct from policy-related questions (Bakewell 2008; Chatelard and Morris 2011). Some have argued to study urban refugees against the backdrop of growing urbanisation and rural–urban migration in the global South. Whereas particularly African states generally prefer to keep refugees spatially segregated, major cities offer possibilities and services that can often not be found in the provinces. Therefore, cities continue to draw refugees in, even when this leads to living in marginalised areas or slums. In their efforts to keep refugees out of cities, states often rely on an international securitisation discourse that represents urban refugees as a national or social threat (Fabos and Kibreab 2007; more generally on the security-border nexus, see Follis in this volume, Chapter 5). Many refugees make a conscious bargain to live on the fringes of the host society but still succeed in advancing their livelihoods. As they do so, they actively contribute to the transformation of urban spaces (Grabska 2006). This discussion shows that migration governance through differentiation in immigration status matters for how migrants experience cities and how they are able to participate in, as well as shape, urban spaces but also how those possibilities change with shifts in how migration to urban areas is addressed and conceptualised.
MIGRATION REGIMES AND URBAN SPATIAL DYNAMICS: CITIES AS SITES OF GOVERNING URBAN MIGRANTS The governance of migrants in cities is always subject to multi-level governance arrangements that operate regardless of and in addition to status specificities. As many have noted, there has been a local turn in migration governance (Zapata-Barrero et al. 2017), reflecting how immigration status is increasingly administered and negotiated within cities. At Habitat III, the 2016 UN conference on housing and urban sustainability, the ‘New Urban agenda’ included a commitment to foster cities supporting migrants regardless of their immigration status and to ‘strengthen synergies between international migration and development’ across different
Migration, governance, and the co-production of urban spaces 259 levels of governance (United Nations 2017: 11). This commitment clearly points to the role of cities as sites of migration governance, for example by rhetorically linking the urban space to international migration governance instruments such as the global compact for migration (IOM 2017). This section turns to the position of cities within configurations of multi-level policy making. City governments and policies are now recognised as playing an equal, if not more pronounced role in how migrants experience urban spaces. The focus on local level articulations of policy was new in the 2000s, but over the last two decades, scholars have started to theorise local migration policy making in the framework of multi-level governance (MLG) and with more attention to global comparison and differences (Zapata-Barrero et al. 2017). This development roughly coincided with the appearance of immigration and local integration on the European policy agenda. A first explicit statement about the importance of the local level for successful integration was made by the European Union’s ministerial decision-making body, the European Council, in 2000 in the context of its newly adopted economic and social policy agenda, the ‘Lisbon Strategy’. After 2007, a series of European ‘Integrating Cities’ conferences aimed to articulate local policy responses to migration. From then on, EU institutions have shown interest in moving integration matters downwards to the city level (and outwards to civil society associations), but have not yet implemented policies (Caponio and Borkert 2010: 10). In light of those changes and their limitations, scholars have pointed at the dynamic interaction between the multiple levels of policy making and the possibility of both policy divergence and policy convergence (Scholten 2013: 218). City policy may converge or conflict with national policies or may spearhead certain policies that will later be initiated nationally. The city of Rotterdam has played a very visible role in this regard as a so-called ‘policy entrepreneur’ (Scholten 2013: 233). The city drafted integration policies in the late 1980s, preceding the development of national civic integration policies in the early 1990s in the Netherlands. Moreover, the city introduced the ‘Special Measure for Urban Areas’, also known as ‘the Rotterdam law’, that allowed the municipality to ‘prevent the settlement of people from low-income categories or with social security benefits in designated urban areas’ (Scholten 2013: 229). This regulation was applied by a populist government and the measure has consequently been analysed as an example of a ‘gradual’ approach of ‘urban revanchism’, i.e. when local authorities seek to overhaul social-democratic projects of anti-segregation and the promotion of social cohesion (Uitermark and Duyvendak 2008; on anti-immigrantism and nativist governance, see Guia in this volume, Chapter 33). In other cases, local-level policies diverge from national policy making to such an extent that a form of so-called ‘governance decoupling’ occurs (Jørgensen 2012; Poppelaars and Scholten 2008). The example of Rotterdam shows how urban policies may leave migrants in situations of intensified exclusion through spatial policies that disproportionately disadvantage migrants (Simon and Beaujeu 2018). However, cities have also supported and made possible the protection of migrants from government control and threats of expulsion, notably through the increasing prevalence and importance of so-called sanctuary cities. Sanctuary cities have been defined as ‘cities that expressly forbid city officials or police departments from inquiring into an individual’s immigration status’ (O’Brien et al. 2017: 3). While sanctuary cities have gained attention in light of recent North American politics (Carney et al. 2017) their spread goes beyond those contexts (Bauder and Gonzalez 2018). In tracing the emergence and relevance of sanctuary cities in the USA, Canada and the UK, Bauder
260 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration (2017: 182) notes that despite differences in national contexts, they help shift the relevance of migration policies in ways that encourage local belonging of foreign-born residents. Often this rescaling of migration policies is justified by noting that persecuting migrants for their immigration status is detrimental to the social fabric of cities (Unzueta 2017). For example, one argument is that in order to effectively fight urban crime it is important that urban residents trust the police, especially if they are in vulnerable situations and thus more likely to be subject to criminal exploitation. As Bauder (2017) also notes, sanctuary policies often arise out of pro-migrant activism and develop politically significant narratives that positively frame the possibility of claiming a right to the city and urban citizenship (Caponio et al. 2018; see also Mourino and Rodrigues in this volume, Chapter 3). Similarly, in the wake of the 2015 refugee crisis, a number of cities across Europe developed narratives and strategies to encourage the local reception of refugees and combat anti-refugee right-wing sentiments. Oomen (2019) argued that Transnational Municipal Networks (TMNs), people who ‘team up’ to share expertise on welcoming and integrating refugees, have proliferated after 2015. In many cases, such cities ‘decouple’ from more restrictive national policies. The mayors of Barcelona and Palermo, for instance, disagreed with national policies and defended such ‘decoupling’ on the basis of defending human rights and the right to mobility (Oomen 2019: 3). The exercise of ‘city diplomacy’ has become particularly pronounced in recent years when mayors actively pressure their own governments or commit themselves to the 2018 Global Compact on Migration (Heimann et al. 2019). Urban policies that are aimed at migrants, or disproportionally affect them, will benefit or disadvantage different migrants in different ways. Cities’ involvement in migration governance can be a rather top-down process – especially if those policies are linked to fostering immigrant integration in a way that changes the conditions for integration faced by migrants (Schinkel 2018). We need to recognise that the urban space is embedded in not only multi-level but multi-scalar processes of change. Formal levels of governance do not operate separately but are part of more complex configurations (Scholten 2020) that require ‘situate[ing] urban actors within various networks of power’ (Çağlar and Glick Schiller 2018: 11). What this means and how these play out within urban policy making is addressed next.
NEGOTIATIONS OF LOCAL GOVERNANCE AND MIGRANTS AS CITY MAKERS Urban policy making is almost inevitably closer to the ground and responsive to local circumstances and sentiments. These frequently get neglected in literature that foregrounds the urban as just one additional level of governance. It is thus important to attend to how migrants engage with both the constraints and opportunities that the urban fabric offers them. Encounters in city spaces and the regulation of migrants in those spaces show how convivialities are always bound up with ruptures and shifts between conflictual and consensual situations (Heil 2015). This produces cities where legal, racial and socio-economic stratifications play out together in complex patterns. In thinking about the structuring and dynamics of urban spaces it is useful to recall the importance of what Simone (2010) defines as ‘cityness’. Drawing on his fieldwork in Jakarta and Dakar, Simone (2010: 6) sees cityness as the product of movements and encounters that shape urban spaces and that are relevant for paying ‘attention to how best to calibrate relations among people, places, institutions responsibilities, economic activities and
Migration, governance, and the co-production of urban spaces 261 social functions’. Thinking in terms of cityness means abandoning an overly rigid focus on how different levels of governance are intertwined. This approach sheds light on how migrants engage with and negotiate cities and how their mobility is being governed. It is thus not surprising that while in earlier decades discussion focused on processes of gradual replacement of specific neighbourhood populations, more recently, sociological and anthropological literature has increasingly focused on the diversity of ethnic–cultural coexistence in urban spaces across the globe. Referring to the American context, Logan and Zhang proposed the term ‘global neighbourhoods’ (Logan and Zhang 2010) to discuss the increasingly diverse population in ‘global cities’ (Sassen 2013). These are neighbourhoods ‘where the simple place categories of predominantly white, predominantly black, or racially mixed are no longer adequate’ (Logan and Zhang 2010). The concept of global neighbourhoods relates to accounts of ‘superdiversity’ (Arnaut and Spotti 2015) in Western and Central European contexts but also globally (Vertovec 2015a). Superdiversity goes beyond the ethnic focus by highlighting dynamically changing differentiation patterns in cities including but not limited to the legal status diversities referred to earlier. Against this backdrop of broadly understood encounters of difference in predominantly urban contexts, a new subfield of research investigates the ‘local micropolitics of everyday interaction’ (Amin 2002), forms of social interaction across different migrant groups (Schönwälder et al. 2016) and practices of conviviality. Current scholarship tends to converge on a common understanding of the concept of conviviality/convivencia, notably as active practices of living together in communities under conditions of cultural difference, ethnic and religious and socio-economic diversity. One focus has been on attributes of conviviality, or cosmopolitan dispositions, and the processes of acquiring these attributes (Wise and Noble 2016). Others have looked at the tools, capacities and conditions that enable convivial practices in certain spaces. These include the spatial and temporal dimensions of conviviality, pointing out the role of public space, and routinized, ‘ritualized sociality’ (Erickson 2011) or regulated habits in contrast to improvised and spontaneous ones (Freitag 2014). It can refer to acts and practices that people engage in to ‘create modes of togetherness’, consciously or unwittingly (Nowicka and Vertovec 2014). Conviviality can therefore be cultivated, learned, promoted or simply occur under the right conditions – at the same time it is important to recognise that conviviality is never without conflictual elements (Heil 2015). These findings could be relevant for policy makers looking to enhance convivial living in urban spaces. This literature has brought great insight into the micropolitics and microdynamics of superdiverse societies and intercultural urban cohabitation. However, it does not engage thoroughly with the impact of governance on the everyday lives of urban migrants. It would be valuable to examine how national and urban migration policies affect migrants’ everyday lives and conviviality, including everyday contestations of migration governance, on the city scale. A good starting point might be Kesten et al.’s (2011) argument that we should examine the paradoxical relation between the (inherent) fluidity of changing group identity, and the desire for fixity and boundedness by governing bodies. Rather than seeing urban migrants primarily, or only, as the object of urban governance, we should also address and highlight the creative engagement of migrants with urban spaces and how they are governed. A growing literature is focused on migrants as city makers rather than, as some of the analysis above might suggest, just as city takers (Çağlar and Glick Schiller 2018; Fawaz et al. 2018; Hall et al. 2017). Migrants are understood as navigating their translocal emplacement in their city of abode in ways that contribute to reconfigurations of the city space. Migrants are
262 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration physically present in one place but often emplaced socially, culturally, politically and economically in multiple cities at the same time. Translocal emplacement emphasises that for many migrants their embedding in not only multiple national but often even more numerous local contexts matter for how their city of abode is navigated. More formal migrant regulations are circumnavigated in productive ways that make cities as we know them possible. For example, Hall and colleagues in their work on global migrant streets point to how shopping streets in London and other British cities are linked to a global network of people and goods. They also identify the spatial configurations of the migrant street itself as highly important for migrants shaping and creating new economic activity in the city. A telling example that she and her colleagues identified is how retail spaces are carved up to enable low start-up costs for entrepreneurs entering the market as well as to be able to respond to the changing demographics of the city (Hall et al. 2017). Through those practices, the migrants are making the city liveable, providing otherwise inaccessible or unaffordable services, and at the same time shaping the face of the migrant street, as well as the city and how it functions economically. Researching the experiences and practices of Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Fawaz et al. (2018) have also argued that we need to consciously reflect on modes of representation of migrants in urban contexts. Refugees and asylum seekers in particular, across the global South and North, have previously been analysed as rather passive inhabitants of infrastructure and recipients of aid. Challenging such representations, Fawaz and colleagues show the diverse ways in which refugees ‘have produced new representations of the spaces where they have settled, started up new businesses, and introduced new forms of inhabiting or navigating urban quarters’ (Fawaz et al. 2018: 6–7). Apart from recognising migrants’ active role in shaping their own lives and securing livelihoods under strained conditions, they also show that the very fabric of urban social life and exchange is equally impacted by the presence of migrants or refugees. Indeed, in a longer historical perspective, we can see that cities across the globe show genealogies of migrants’ material, political and socio-cultural imprints, such as Amman, Jordan, after receiving large numbers of Palestinian and Iraqi nationals, and more recently, Syrian migrants (e.g. Daher 2008). Çağlar and Glick Schiller also call for researchers to study what they call processes of multiscalar city making. They urge research to observe the micropolitics in urban spaces but to also pay particular attention to ‘multiscalar-networks of differential power’; to move beyond descriptive work that ‘is haunted by binaries of difference’ (Çağlar and Glick Schiller 2018: 11). In exploring how migrants come to be embedded in the processes of city regeneration, they condemn much of the earlier work, for example on superdiversity, for being under-theorised and overly descriptive. Their critique has to be read in a nuanced way but it is a reminder that there is still much work to do in tracing processes of city making and the role played by migrants and long-term city dwellers. We must differentiate between official levels of governance and policy making and more intangible power inequalities that play a role in migrants’ lives and how they are able to claim their ‘right to the city’ (see Rodrigues de Castro and Moulin, Chapter 3 and Attac and Schwenken, Chapter 30, both in this volume). Focusing exclusively on the formal governance of migrants in city spaces misses important microdynamics through which the daily lives of migrants are governed in such spaces. A more actor-focused approach highlights the importance of drawing together insights from different strands and disciplines concerned with better making sense of the governance and politics of migration/migrants and urban spaces. In focusing on migrants and how their everyday lives are regulated, we are also reminded to de-migrantise migration research (Dahinden 2016); to expand our focus when trying to under-
Migration, governance, and the co-production of urban spaces 263 stand the implications and experiences of migrants and migration (see also Carmel, Lenner and Paul in this volume, Chapter 1). In this vein, in advancing work about the governance of migration, starting with urban spaces pushes us to more fully appreciate the complex configurations and relations that play out in those spaces – affecting all who live there.
CONCLUSION With a ‘local turn’ in both policy and literature, cities have been claiming a larger role in migration policy design, and scholars advocate for a greater understanding of the city-level contribution and added value to policy and governance. This includes a greater focus on the daily lives of urban migrants and refugees across the global North and South. Urban space is central to the governance and politics of migration, and vice versa. In this chapter, we have shown that cities as spaces of, and for, migration governance and politics, are not a universal given or context. Rather, cities’ diversity and dynamics are produced in complex ways, subject to specific histories, and they are constantly changing. We further explored the governance of international migration and its implications for the local level as well as how urban migrants are governed at the city level. Finally, we discussed the urban context as a space within which migrants are active city makers who link city spaces to various different elsewheres. A key finding from our discussion is that formal institutions of migration governance at different levels are highly relevant for making sense of urban spaces. At the same time, we also need additional approaches and perspectives to understand the dynamics of diversity in urban spaces. More specifically, in bringing together insights from an array of different literatures on cities, migration and urban governance, we can identify three common insights that tie those literatures together. First, when thinking about the urban as a space of migrant control we need to consider that spatial configurations are highly context specific. Second, and at the same time, such configurations are almost always made possible through interconnection both of migrants with multiple elsewheres and of the interaction of local, national and global governance (even if these are contradictory). Finally, these spatial circumstances are, nonetheless, part of what Massey famously called spaces of ‘throwntogetherness’ that show up inequities but also offer scope for possibility and change (Massey 2005). Those possibilities mean that even in dire situations there will be an engagement of urban dwellers – migrants and non-migrants alike. Facilitating the recognition and harnessing of urban spaces of possibility calls for working with broader notions of the political. Focusing exclusively on structural constraints and formal governance may make us miss emergent social patterns and their global urban variations. Shifting our analysis in this way required paying more attention to interconnections in the literature and to be vigilant about what can be learned from paying closer attention to the dynamics of ‘the urban’.
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22. Reconsidering migration dynamics within diverse rural spaces Lydia Medland
INTRODUCTION Far from the global metropoles where policy and business are established by urban elites, rural spaces are crucial to many migration processes and trajectories. For some migrants, the rural context is the space and place of origin, as well as potential return. For others, multiple rural spaces are the context of the entire migration experience. Rural spaces are places of work, transit and temporary residence, yet migration policy frequently remains focused on what occurs in urban settings. The assumption that the rural world is something ‘of the past’, has deep roots and is part of the dominant development narrative, in which early colonial and industrial elites constructed ‘nature’ in opposition to ‘society’. This narrative constructs activity in the rural world as ‘behind’, and its disruption, occupation or change is inherently assumed to be ‘progress’ because it moves away from nature and towards ‘civilization’ (Patel and Moore 2018). Such assumptions obscure the way political and economic governance affect rural contexts and the people resident in them. The financial and trade-related imperatives for low-priced raw materials, cheap food products and low-waged labour forces, for example, deeply affect dynamics of rural mobility. Furthermore, many migrants do not leave rural worlds ‘behind’. As we will consider in this chapter, rural contexts often maintain a key place in migrants’ life strategies, trajectories and family lives. This chapter problematizes the city-centric construction of migration policy and literature by focusing on rural spaces. The chapter begins with three themes: rural migration, rural space and gender. By considering what rural migration means, we establish the problem that this chapter deals with. Then, I explore ‘rural spaces’ and emphasize that they are not always as distant as we may imagine and are deeply connected to global processes. Some are in a process of transformation related to migration and economic governance. The gendered dynamics of rural migration are then introduced and this highlights tensions in states’ promotion of mobility and immobility, in particular towards women on the move. This indicates how intersectional factors, in connection with migrants’ rural origins or social positioning, can denigrate their experiences of migration. The chapter continues with the illustration of three important dynamics of migration within rural spaces, these are: rural–international migration, rural–rural migration and labour migration to rural areas. In each scenario, I examine how governance disrupts or distorts the mobility of people through rural space. In the discussion of rural–international migration, we see how attitudes of condescension can emerge in relation to rural populations through the practices and histories of the governance of mobility. The role of rural to rural migration demonstrates the need to focus on the rural world as a context in which human mobility is deeply connected to ecological change and its consequences. The governance practices that affect such migration are often indirect practices such as economic policies that affect access to rural land or changes 267
268 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration in commodity and land prices. This highlights the need to consider economic governance as well as political governance in policies relating to migration. In the third of these scenarios, the rural work contexts are discussed as spaces where migrant workers are involved in agriculture, mining and forestry, among other roles. In the final discussion, we see how the categorizations of migration which typically class people as migrants or refugees, break down in the working context in which mobile people, who have left their home contexts for a variety and mix of reasons, and with mixed statuses, work in rural workplaces alongside one another (Corrado et al. 2017; see also Chapters 10–14 in Part II of this volume). These key dynamics are also underscored by the complex connection between ecological change and human mobility which reinforces the need to consider mobility in rural spaces (Carr 2009). In this way, and through the use of many examples in these discussions, the chapter brings into view how rural spaces and communities play active and under-researched roles in the broader dynamics of global migration.
RURAL MIGRATION In its recent report focusing on migration, agriculture and rural development, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization discusses rural migration as ‘migration from, to and between rural areas, whether the move occurs within a country or involves crossing a border’ (FAO 2018: vi). Such a categorization therefore overlaps at different points with other categorizations, such as internal, international, environmental, seasonal, and circular migration, to name just a few terms. This chapter will consider how rural spaces meaningfully affect one or many aspects of the migration experience. Where rural spaces might otherwise be characterized as ‘left behind’, by focusing on mobile people we can see how rural spaces are places of work, social reproduction and social and ecological contestation. Furthermore, we can see how mobile people, even in small numbers, can deeply transform rural spaces. This starting point also alerts us to the forms of governance that directly and indirectly affect people in rural spaces, and their blind spots. Whilst a slow shift from majority rural- towards majority urban-living has occurred since early industrialization in the eighteenth century, 45% of the world population continues to live in rural spaces (World Bank 2018). There are many forms of rural migration and some are clearly more common. Many more migrants move from rural to urban contexts than from urban to rural contexts, suggesting that rural to urban migration is the norm (FAO 2018: xv; migration in urban spaces is discussed in Van Raemdonck and Meissner in this volume, Chapter 21). However, as global migration literature demonstrates, many people also live in split households in which migration is an ongoing feature of life. This is seen, for example, in the case studies of Chinese and Paraguayan rural – urban migration (Chuang 2016; Finnis 2017). Furthermore, macro-trends can overlook the levels of rural–rural migration occurring both within countries and, to a lesser extent, between countries. Despite poor data on rural–rural migration, it is generally thought that ‘a larger share of people migrate between rural areas than from rural to urban areas’ (FAO 2018: xv). Of these migrants, some go on to migrate to cities and fewer to migrate across borders. The scale, as well as the nature, of rural to rural migration therefore makes it an important phenomenon to consider in greater depth.
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MOVING BEYOND RURAL AND URBAN SPACE As people move through spaces, these spaces are in turn shaped by their migration. We therefore need to problematize the meaning of rural space in the context of migration. Rural spaces change in relation to migration and mobility for many reasons: demographic changes and increased urban space; land use change; and climate change, to name a few factors. Furthermore, increased mobility may affect the way that spaces are understood in relation to one another due to increased connections between spaces and social groups (Finnis 2017). The notion of rural spaces must therefore be understood beyond a simple contrast with ‘urban’. Indeed, rural spaces cannot be understood within a ‘single cultural frame’ and what is referred to as ‘rural’ will differ from context to context (MacKrell and Pemberton 2018). Southern Morocco, in particular in the province of Chtouka Aït Baha, provides a case study illustration of how rural spaces can be fundamentally changed by new patterns of working and living in them. This is a region of destination for internal migrants, who could be considered ‘rural migrants’ for several reasons: they originate in great majority from rural areas of Morocco in the Atlas and Anti-Atlas mountainous regions; they come to the region predominantly in search of jobs in the agricultural export-orientated production sectors in the region; finally, the province of Chtouka Aït Baha has no major city and, until recently, has been considered a rural space dominated by traditional culture and production (Medland 2019). The ‘rural’ plays an important role in this case (migrants’ rural origins, agricultural work, absence of major metropole). Yet the very scale of the social and ecological transformation involved in the process of people moving and settling, as well as direct impact of the agro-export industry that offers jobs in the area, has transformed the space itself. Ben Attou (2018) asserts that under the urban influence of international and national investment, as well as inward migration, this ‘rural’ area is at the point of becoming ‘urban’ even if the towns and ‘pseudo towns’ built by migrant workers have not yet been recognized as such (Ben Attou 2018: 76–8). Processes of transformation often involve social resistance as traditional ways of life are challenged in contexts of broad social and ecological change. Despite the context of rural migration and agricultural activity, the presence of international actors and investment in Chtouka Aït Baha has created dynamics of capital intensification in which traditional actors of authority struggle to keep pace with the self-organized activity of migrant workers (such as autonomous building without state planning or authorization) (Bouchelkha 2016). Ben Attou argues, ‘… we qualify this phenomenon of suburban-urban as having become a space of territorial negotiation between actors, administrations, [and] multinationals’ (Ben Attou and Abdelilah 2018: 79). This is a rare recognition of diverse actors contesting how the space itself will change, as it is actually occurring. While many workers in Chtouka Aït Baha continue to return to families in remote areas during the ‘down’ season of production, and retain roots in rural areas, most establish lives in the region, and some even find onward routes into international migration. Rural migration is not only or always about urbanization: it is also often related to changes in the socio-economic organization of people, space and their (formal and informal) governance. Intermeshed dynamics of economic and political governance in this Moroccan region have facilitated export-orientated agricultural trade (of tomatoes and green beans particularly) with knock-on effects for rural–rural and rural–urban migration (Medland 2019). This illustrates how economic governance, in which a particular mode of production or work is promoted
270 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration and economically supported by regional, national and international governments, often has knock-on effects for patterns of migration in the short and long term.
GENDERED PATTERNS OF WORK AND RURAL MIGRATION Migration, especially for work, is a multifaceted livelihood strategy for many rural-born women and represents a main way in which they express agency in response to a harsh political-economic climate (Pickbourn 2018). The workplace is affected by social ideas about gendered divisions of labour, and this is the case for both the work of social reproduction (care work, domestic work and work to reproduce society as a whole) and work organized through wage-labour and self-employment relationships (see de Lange, Berntsen and de Sena, Chapter 24, and Marchetti and di Bartolomeo, Chapter 25, both in this volume). Particularly in the case where migrants travel to seek work, social divisions of labour in both the region of origin and destination have informed labour migration decisions about who migrates to do which jobs. Often, macro-economic policies have a disproportionate effect on rural communities and add to their motives to leave or move rural contexts (FAO 2018). Yet, as part of this mobility, women can be faced with several problems. These include enduring low social status and gendered expectations once back in the context of origin; immobility in parts of their trajectories; and policy responses which exacerabate discrimination, marginalization and personal security. In recent years within out-migration flows from rural areas, women have made up an increasing share of those migrating to cities (ILO 2016; Pickbourn 2018). This trend can be associated with both the feminization of many industrial processes, as well as changing social roles and community needs. This can be seen, in particular, in labour migration towards particular production networks such as for the production of ready-made garments in Bangladesh (Anwary 2017; Elson and Pearson 1981). In relation to this trend, a debate has emerged regarding whether migration is an empowering process for women, individually and in relation to their communities of origin in rural areas (de Haas and van Rooij 2010; Finnis 2017; Lenoël 2015; Torres and Carte 2016). This research suggests that while women from all backgrounds are playing an increasing role in global mobility, it should not be assumed that gender inequalities are decreasing. In China, rural–urban migration has had an impact that has been transformative not just for China but for the global division of labour and production. Since the 1990s, women in China have increasingly been hired to work in factories in Export Processing Zones of the country (Chuang 2016). Meanwhile, male rural–urban Chinese workers have often found work in sectors such as construction. Despite assumptions about widespread social change in rural areas due to outward labour migration, Chuang finds that ‘a dominant paradigm of proper femininity that relegates young women to household labour’ (ibid.: 467) often persists even once women have returned from urban factory jobs. Such cases also expose the limitations of the potential of migration for livelihood support and development, as young women’s wages are insufficient to meet these needs in the medium to long term. Similar results were found from Lenoël’s (2015) study of Moroccan women ‘left behind’ when their husbands travelled to France to find work in the late 1980s. Therefore, despite assumptions that changing gender models from urban migration experiences will alter rural women’s bargaining power in places of origin, even those women with their own migratory projects are often then left vying for control over wages, assets and remittances with families and in-laws in places of origin.
Reconsidering migration dynamics within diverse rural spaces 271 Even in the case of rural–urban migration, many cases demonstrate that despite overarching trends towards urban living, this does not necessarily imply that the rural is being ‘left behind’ by all. In fact, for some migrant workers, particularly where family, state or other factors incentivize their return, urban migration can result in funds for a re-investment in rural spaces. Finnis (2017) provides an informative case of women who are migrant workers in Paraguay. This illustrates how rural–urban mobility is not only characterized by strategies that span space, but also time. Finnis (2017) shows how the strategies of mobile workers may represent renewed commitments towards rural livelihoods as urban income can be used to buy rural land and improve or build homes that will be relied on in later life and by migrants’ children. These strategies demonstrate how, when women leave rural contexts, they do not necessarily leave for good. The permanence or temporality of any ‘migration’ should therefore be considered in the policy assumptions that concern the gendered practices of migration and work in different regions of the world (on the temporal dimension, see Griffith in this volume, Chapter 26). Migration is often undertaken by women as a response to the increasing non-viability of rural livelihoods due to changes in economic, ecological or social conditions. The share of women migrating within the African continent varies by country from around 12% in Burkina Faso to around 53% in Malawi (Pickbourn 2018: 4). An example of migration as a response to economic policy failure rather than a decisive departure from rural contexts, is of women who predominantly work as market porters migrating from Northern to Southern Ghana. Pickbourn (2018) demonstrates that in the Ghanaian context, it is declining agricultural income that has meant making a livelihood from rural activities is increasingly difficult in rural Northern Ghana. This has led to large-scale internal, and often circular and seasonal migration of Ghanaian women to urban centres such as Accra. Pickbourne identifies a predominantly negative attitude towards rural–urban internal migration in Ghana in which women are socially marginalized in urban contexts and blamed for unplanned slum housing. Such an attitude has led to policy approaches which attempt to keep migrants, and particularly women, in their regions of origin; NGO initiatives aimed at women in regions of origin involve the teaching of skills such as soap-making, while aggressive government actions such as forced slum-clearances and evictions take place. Soap-making may be an option for a few; however, rural–urban migration is a much more realistic broad response from women to the socio-economic contexts that they face. The blaming of women for poor quality housing in inner cities is therefore a short-sighted (and cruel) response to an expression of a rural crisis in which economic and political governance has allowed agricultural livelihoods to become financially untenable. Clearly, the economic governance leading to such a scenario is also a question of global governance and an orientation away from small-scale diversified farming and towards the mass production of agricultural and other products. Political strategies which stimulate insecurity (such as slum clearances) do not deal with the root problems and instead make the migration experience more difficult. Putting women’s personal security at risk has the added implication of questioning their legitimacy in the working context which can contribute to gendered social stigma about the role of women in the public and working domain. This makes for both a social and political response to situations of rural crisis which are reproduced by distorted economic and ecological governance, or lack of it.
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INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION: FROM VILLAGE TO AIRPORT AND BEYOND This section examines contexts in which migration occurs from rural areas and is orientated towards international destinations. While some policies facilitate and shape migration from rural areas, others explicitly deter it. Barriers to rural populations’ mobility and migration are sometimes overt. In the case of China, rural populations have long been restricted in their mobility, making internal migration towards major metropoles more limited than it may otherwise be. State governance of rural populations is able to control both their spatial location as well as their access to potentially increased wages. Private actors, too, can extend into rural spaces, where potential migrants are also potential clients. In both Indonesia and China, Xiang and Lindquist (2014) demonstrate how potential migrants are courted by local labour brokers who gear them towards international migration. Crucially, it is in this rural space, in villages, homes and on routes towards cities, where dynamics of control are first established. Rural-to-urban migration is primarily understood to be motivated by perceived increasing wage opportunities; these in turn are reinforced by poor access to public services in rural areas (FAO 2018: xvii). Rural out-migration is also affected by several other key factors related to economic governance which include: the increase of neo-liberal policy formulations favouring export-orientated and large-scale production, the removal and reduction of fixed or indexed prices for some crops, the removal and reduction of agricultural subsidies and volatile and decreasing crop prices. These factors have made making a living from agriculture in rural areas increasingly difficult. This is evident in many African and Latin American countries (for Morocco, see Davis 2006; for Ghana, see Pickbourn 2018: 7). Difficulty making a living in the countryside in this context is compounded by ecological factors. These include decreasing soil fertility; access to insufficient clean water; and the onset of climate change. Such economic and ecological factors can leave people with good reasons to migrate (see also Boas and Wiegel in this volume, Chapter 7). A significant number of international migrants are born in rural areas, and many migrate to urban contexts prior to international migration (FAO 2018: xiv). Potential migrants in these contexts do not always embark on migration projects of their own initiative but may be actively courted by brokers. The relative poverty and aspirations of such individuals then become a way to extract funds which are already in short supply, for an international migration project that offers no guarantee of being financially beneficial to the migrant (Xiang and Lindquist 2014). It is not only commercial actors involved in this mediation process, but also regulatory, technological, humanitarian and social groups (ibid.). Derogatory attitudes and practices towards those from rural origins are echoed in international migration. This was shown in the struggles of rural migrants in the Ghanaian case discussed above, but can equally be seen in South East Asia. For example, villages are the main sources of migrant workers from Indonesia moving towards international destinations (Lindquist 2018: 80). Distrust and controlling dynamics of the state towards rural populations have led to historical patterns in which rural populations are infantilized by policy makers who seek to manage their activities through a complex matrix of intermediaries, particularly, ‘field agents’ (ibid.). Lindquist shows that concern for rural women’s welfare has led to the development of an integrated system of escort of international migrants who intend to travel to countries in the Gulf as domestic workers. There is a coercive infrastructure through which at different times they are deprived of their personal liberty (to choose the address to which they
Reconsidering migration dynamics within diverse rural spaces 273 wish to go to on return), funds (having to pay agents) and, ironically, of their mobility (being locked in rooms prior to international flights) (ibid.). Lindquist shows that these dynamics have a long history in Indonesia. The rural origins of migrants intersect here with gendered practices of escort, as well as historical rural–urban patterns of governance and control. Rural spaces can therefore be seen as significantly shaping those migration dynamics which might not initially be considered as ‘rural’ in character. ‘Despite the ubiquity of cell phones and that most migrants now travel directly by airplane […] in the space between rural and urban areas different brokers temporarily collaborate. In this process, [brokers] are able to control capital, documents, and the migrants themselves’ (Xiang and Lindquist 2014: 141). What is relevant to the discussion of rural migration here is the way in which each of these processes of escort are mediated through finance, private and political infrastructure and regimes of governance in and beyond rural spaces.
RURAL–RURAL MIGRATION: FROM VILLAGE TO FOREST Migration and mobility, although occurring in the rural sphere, are often triggered by activity in urban spaces, including changes in demands for food (for example the increase in demand of soya now met by supply from the Amazon basin) and for precious minerals such as gold (IOM 2018). Rural migration in these cases is therefore, if indirectly, also associated with processes of globalization, industrialization and capitalism despite its occurrence in remote spaces. It is also connected with processes of human interaction with ecosystems in which land use change often leads to more unsustainable practices (for example, intensive farming, mining, logging). Although many forms of rural mobility are ultimately orientated towards increasing urban spaces, some people decide to travel deeper into rural territories. This is the case of people in Latin America who travel to forest frontiers in order to settle agricultural land to make a living. When rural communities can no longer support subsistence agriculture with income from trading supplementary crops, or with jobs in local sectors, mobility is often a response to the need to find surplus income, often from another sector such as services (Carr 2009; FAO 2018). In migration trajectories towards other, sometimes even more remote rural contexts, this incurs a change in, rather than a departure from, rural livelihood strategies. Carr argues that this is precisely why rural migration matters: rural migration transforms not just livelihoods but also the nature of the human ecological footprint on earth (2009: 355; see also Boas and Wiegel in this volume, Chapter 7). When people, households and communities take decisions to move towards urban or rural spaces, this is related to changes in residence as well as changes in land-use and livelihoods. Carr (2009) illustrates the multifaceted implications of segregated patterns of labour migration; rural migrants who travel to the frontier of the Amazon rainforest in Latin America to settle on newly deforested land are those unlikely to be highly educated or have language skills. Their prospects in the cities are therefore weak, yet unsettled lands on forest frontiers offer the potential to settle and gain agricultural property. At this human–ecological interface where rural migrant small farmers engage in forest clearing to secure livelihoods at the edges of the world’s most significant forest basin, Carr argues that the significance of rural migration is clear: poverty and ecological destruction are related and entwined in the interplay of rural development. Understanding land use change (such as urbanization, deforestation, settlement)
274 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration and migration and population movements together should, in this view, therefore be a priority in order to both mitigate rural poverty and ecological destruction at forest frontiers (2009: 370). It is not just (potential) agricultural land that attracts rural migrants to spaces at ecological frontiers, but also the hope of making a livelihood from mining, and other precious stones and substances that can be found in remote spaces (IOM 2018). Furthermore, these activities take various forms; while in the case described by Carr, migrants were pursuing livelihoods independently, in other cases employment through large-scale companies or intermediaries facilitates the entry of migrants into rural areas where mining, agriculture or other activities associated with land use change take place. The growing role of these sectors in rural areas is deeply connected to broader processes of global transformation, including rural–rural migration.
WORK IN RURAL CONTEXTS: FROM VILLAGE TO PLANTATION Rural areas are sometimes places of intense social and economic activity, including work in agriculture, mining and forestry. Rural areas may also connect borders of countries, urban metropoles or industrial centres, which themselves offer employment. For a long time now in areas of the global North, agricultural work in rural areas has been associated with migrant labour (Corrado et al. 2017; Rye and Scott 2018; Scott 2013). Such work provides informal opportunities sought by migrants without formal work permission, and usually has lower barriers to entry for those from backgrounds (often rural) with little education or experience in other sectors. However, it is also often associated with very poor living conditions (Holden 2002; Ziebarth 2006), racism and other forms of discrimination, segregation, and wages below minimum legal levels (Corrado 2011; Hinnershitz 2013; Martin Diaz 2002). As mentioned above, remote regions, and people within them, often elude the attention and awareness of policy makers and urban populations. However, when rural spaces emerge in the public eye as sites of migration, they can also spur new dynamics of contestation and governance. This was the case in the rural town of El Ejido, Spain, when violent riots in 2000 between the town’s farmers and workers drew both the existence of the migrant work force, and their poor living and working conditions, to national public attention (Martinez Viega 2014). González-Enríquez (2009) termed the practice of the government turning a blind eye to undocumented migration in the 1990s, ‘the Cheap Model’ due to the convenience of the labour that migrant workers offered the agricultural economy: low wage levels, and little involvement from regulators to either gain explicit public consent or to administrate the process. The events in the fields of El Ejido triggered a national change in immigration policy over the successive decades in Spain (González-Enríquez, 2009). Some mass regularizations of sub-Saharan and North African migrant workers took place in the early 2000s; however, this approach came to a halt with both increasing border controls through European Union efforts (backed by Spain) and decreasing public consent for regularizations in the context of the economic crisis of 2008. Temporary migration programmes which aim to discourage settlement are now preferred options for policy makers to meet rural labour demands (Fudge and Olsson 2014; Medland 2017; see also Piper in this volume, Chapter 32). This case highlights how migration in rural spaces can both occur beyond the awareness (or attention) of policy makers and the public, and can then be the subject of, and intersect with, changing regimes of migration.
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BLURRED CATEGORIES: THE REFUGEEIZATION OF RURAL WORK The increasingly racially and ethnically segregated work forces in rural areas reflect global inequalities more broadly. The ‘refugeeization’ of agricultural labour (Dines and Rigo 2015) is also a significant characteristic in some regions of the world, such as in south eastern Europe and some areas of sub-Saharan Africa. For example, according to researchers in the region, rural agricultural work in Cameroon is increasingly being carried out by refugees from bordering states in conflict such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (Toussé Djou 2019). This phenomenon demonstrates how the categories of ‘refugee’ and ‘labour migrant’ break down in practice (see Bakewell, Chapter 10 and Crawley and Setrana, Chapter 16, both in this volume). In the field or agricultural workplace, the refugeeization of agricultural labour refers to the same process in which the vulnerability (or decreased social bargaining power) in the economic relationship of migrant worker and employer permits farmers to pay lower wages to refugees fleeing conflict in their places of origin (or prior destinations). In the case of Turkey, which is now hosting more than half of the 4.4 million Syrian refugees who fled Syria in the wake of the Arab Spring and Syrian civil war, refugees are now playing a large role in the informal agricultural labour force (Akay Erturk 2017). Nevertheless, the entrance of Syrian refugees into informal agricultural labour markets in Turkey has been triggered by more than just the war in Syria. Prior to this mobility, international pressure on agricultural prices, European Union quotas, World Trade Organization decisions and rising input prices, had (similar to in other rural contexts) meant rural agricultural work was becoming unprofitable and had triggered internal rural–urban migration of many Turkish people of young working age (Akay Erturk 2017; more broadly, Azmeh in this volume, Chapter 18). Therefore, refugee populations from Syria, willing to accept lower than normal wages, have filled a gap in the labour force opened by previous flows in rural migration. The interrelationships between rural mobility and rural work demonstrate how stress on rural populations is often felt by newcomers who are offered poorer wages due to their weak (often informal) position in the labour market. In this case the arrival of Syrian refugees, often employed by ageing Turkish farmers, has been a factor which has meant that olive oil production in some areas has continued to be viable despite the exit of Turkish working age people and poor prices for the product (Akay Erturk 2017). As illustrated by some of the case studies mentioned above, the injustices of racially and ethnically segregated work forces in rural areas reflect global inequalities more broadly and are readily contested by migrant and refugee rural workers (Corrado et al. 2017).
CONCLUSION This chapter has explored how rural spaces play significant roles in the experiences of migrants and migration governance. We have seen how governance disrupts and distorts the experiences of migrants in rural spaces in complex ways. I have also considered how rural spaces themselves are transformed and co-produced by mobile people. While some aspects of rural migration are considerably well understood (rural–urban migration), others require further attention. The most significant of these, highlighted in the chapter, are the intersection of gender and migration control, especially in international migration; rural–rural migration;
276 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration and labour migration to rural contexts, in which work is often taken up by refugees. Although globally the overall trend is for human populations to move towards urban living (see Van Raemdonck and Meissner in this volume, Chapter 21), this by no means suggests that the countryside is deserted. We should pay better attention to dynamics of migration and its governance in the rural context. There are various ways in which migration through rural space is affected by state and private regimes of migration control. Many of these are related to international connections at the heart of our globalizing world: demand from the global North for fresh food year round, requirements from corporations for raw materials found at ecological frontiers, and labour markets which are stratified in ways that are racialized and respond to migrants’ lack of security with low wages and poor conditions. The governance of rural spaces and rural mobility cannot be separated from this context. As I have illustrated, falling agricultural prices imply falling incomes for those rural peoples who rely on them. By assuming that people wish to move away from the rural world, social, economic and political policies alike serve to demean and make more difficult the choices and livelihoods of those travelling from, to and within rural space. Migrants of rural origins can be undermined in their choices, agency and mobility due to social attitudes which construct the rural world as ‘behind’. From the infantilizing practices of the Indonesian state towards rural peoples, to the overt aggression of the Ghanaian state towards rural–urban internal migration, examples have been considered here that illustrate how both efforts to facilitate and impede rural migration use practices of aggressive control over migrants’ bodies, persons and possessions, alongside rhetoric of protection. The condescension towards people of rural origins can translate into disrespect, and into a weakening of their social position. Women can be differentially affected by rural migration policies and may have different strategies as part of their migration projects. High pressures on rural livelihoods deeply influence patterns and dynamics of rural mobility from, within and between rural spaces. In this way, migrants and refugees work in agricultural jobs that are vacant due to changes in economic governance and emigration patterns of people formerly working in agriculture. Ecological change is another factor which affects rural livelihoods and mobility, often triggering outward mobility from rural (or coastal) contexts (see Boas and Wiegel in this volume, Chapter 7). In contexts of economic difficulty in rural areas, it is often those who are least protected (legally and socially) in the labour market that fill gaps in agricultural labour markets: these are often migrant and refugee workers. A major problem with governance in relation to rural mobility is that it is often constructed in relation to urban contexts, priorities and viewpoints. This is accompanied by the deeply problematic assumption that the rural world should gradually be integrated and incorporated into capital-centric urban life. How migration occurs and is governed within rural spaces has important consequences; the global political economy relies on extracted resources as well as under-protected and under-estimated migrant workers. Respect and recognition of their labour and livelihoods should be incorporated into political and economic governance, not only of migration, but also of trade and labour. We need to recognize that rural spaces, and the well-being of populations living in them, are crucial to human and ecological survival.
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REFERENCES Akay Erturk, S. (2017), ‘Refugees in the agricultural sector: some notes on Syrians in Hatay province, Turkey, in A. Corrado, C. de Castro and D. Perrotta (eds), Migration and Agriculture: Mobility and Change in the Mediterranean Area, New York: Routledge, pp. 168–80. Anwary, A. (2017), ‘Feminised workforce in transnational production: Bangladesh ready-made garment industry’, History and Sociology of South Asia, 11: 174–91. Ben Attou, M. and A. Jelloul (2018), ‘Les mutations récentes d’un espace rural de métropolité émergente: le cas de l’agriculture périurbaine’, in M. Bouchelkha (ed.), Developpement Territorial dans le Souss et ses Bourdures: Ressources, Emigration, Evolution des Systemes Sociaux et de production, Marrakech: Faculte des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines, pp. 67–111. Bouchelkha, M. (2016), ‘Agricultural modernisation, internal migration and the formation of a wage labour market in the Souss region, Morocco’, in A. Corrado, C. de Castro and D. Perrotta (eds), Migration and Agriculture: Mobility and Change in the Mediterranean Area, New York: Routledge, pp. 246–57. Carr, D. (2009), ‘Population and deforestation: why rural migration matters’, Progress in Human Geography, 33: 355–78. Chuang, J. L. (2016), ‘Factory girls after the factory: female return migrations in rural China’, Gender & Society, 30: 467–89. Corrado, A. (2011), ‘Clandestini in the orange towns: migrations and racisms in Calabria’s agriculture’, Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts, 4: 191–201. Corrado, A., C. de Castro and D. Perrotta (eds) (2017), Migration and Agriculture: Mobility and Change in the Mediterranean Area, New York: Routledge. Davis, D. K. (2006), ‘Neoliberalism, environmentalism, and agricultural restructuring in Morocco’, The Geographical Journal, 172: 88–105. de Haas, H. and A. van Rooij (2010), ‘Migration as emancipation? The impact of internal and international migration on the position of women left behind in rural Morocco’, Oxford Development Studies, 38: 43–62. Dines, N. and E. Rigo (2015), ‘Postcolonial citizenship between representation, borders and the “refugeeization” of workforce: critical reflections on migrant agricultural labour in the Italian Mezzogiorno’, in S. Ponzanesi and G. Colpani (eds), Postcolonial Transition in Europe: Contexts, Practices and Politics, London: Rowman & Littlefield International. Elson, D. and R. Pearson (1981), ‘“Nimble fingers make cheap workers”: an analysis of women’s employment in third world export manufacturing’, Feminist Review, 7: 87–107. FAO (2018), The State of Food and Agriculture 2018: Migration, Agriculture and Rural Development, Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Finnis, E. (2017), ‘They go to the city, and sometimes they come back: conceptualising rural and urban spaces through experiences of circular migration in Paraguay’, Critique of Anthropology, 37: 383–400. Fudge, J. and P. H. Olsson (2014), ‘The EU Seasonal Workers Directive: when immigration controls meet labour rights’, European Journal of Migration and Law, 16: 439–66. González-Enríquez, C. (2009), Spain, the cheap model: irregularity and regularisation as immigration management policies, European Journal of Migration and Law, 11: 139–57. DOI: https://doi.org/10 .1163/157181609X440004. Hinnershitz, S. (2013), ‘“We ask not for mercy, but for justice”: the Cannery Workers and Farm Laborers’ Union and Filipino civil rights in the United States, 1927–1937, Journal of Social History, 47: 132–52. Holden, C. (2002), ‘Bitter harvest: housing conditions of migrant and seasonal farmworkers’, in C. D. Thompson and M. Wiggins (eds), The Human Cost of Food: Farmworkers’ Lives, Labor, and Advocacy, 1st edn, Austin: University of Texas Press, pp. 169–93. ILO (2016), ‘Women at work: trends 2016’, available at https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/-- -dgreports/---dcomm/---publ/documents/publication/wcms_457317.pdf. IOM (2018), ‘Chad calls for urgent funding to assist thousands of migrant gold miners’, available at https://www.iom.int/news/iom-chad-calls-urgent-funding-assist-thousands-migrant-gold-miners. Lenoël, A. (2015), Burden or Empowerment? The Impact of Migration and Remittances on Women Left Behind in Morocco, Bristol: University of Bristol Press.
278 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration Lindquist, J. (2018), ‘Infrastructures of escort: transnational migration and economies of connection in Indonesia’, Indonesia, 105: 77–95. MacKrell, P. and S. Pemberton (2018), ‘New representations of rural space: Eastern European migrants and the denial of poverty and deprivation in the English countryside’, Journal of Rural Studies, 59: 49–57. Martin Diaz, E. (2002), ‘Cultivating racism: labour segmentation and social exclusion in rural Andalusia’, AREAS, Revista Internacional de Ciencias Sociales: 113–27. Martinez Viega, U. (2014), ‘The political economy of El Ejido: genealogy of the 2000 conflict’, in J. Gertel and S. R. Sippel (eds), Seasonal Workers in Mediterranean Agriculture: The Social Costs of Eating Fresh, Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 103–11. Medland, L. (2017), ‘Misconceiving “seasons” in global food systems: the case of the EU Seasonal Workers Directive’, European Law Journal, 23: 157–71. Medland, L. (2019), ‘A harvest of bare living conditions: a Moroccan enclave within the global food system’, PhD thesis, University of Bristol. Patel, R. A. and J. W. A. Moore (2018), A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet, London: Verso. Pickbourn, L. (2018), ‘Rethinking rural–urban migration and women’s empowerment in the era of the SDGs: lessons from Ghana’, Sustainability, 10: 1075. Rye, J. F, and S. Scott (2018), ‘International labour migration and food production in rural Europe: a review of the evidence’, Sociologia Ruralis, 58: 928–52. Scott, S. (2013), ‘Labour, migration and the spatial fix: evidence from the UK food industry’, Antipode, 45: 1090–109. Torres, R. M. and L. Carte (2016), ‘Migration and development? The gendered costs of migration on Mexico’s rural “left behind”’, Geographical Review, 106: 399–420. Toussé Djou, J. (2019), ‘Migration et politique d’insertion agricole des réfugiés en Afrique Centrale: Étude de cas du Cameroun’, 6th International Seminar: Migrations, Agriculture, Food and Sustainable Development, Agadir, Morocco: Université de Yaoundé II Soa (Cameroun). World Bank (2018), ‘Rural population (% of total population)’, available at https://data.worldbank.org/ indicator/SP.RUR.TOTL.ZS. Xiang, B. and J. Lindquist (2014), ‘Migration infrastructure’, International Migration Review, 48: S122–S148. Ziebarth, A. (2006), ‘Housing seasonal workers for the Minnesota processed vegetable industry’, Rural Sociology, 71: 335–57.
23. Governing, experiencing and contesting camps and encampment Lewis Turner
INTRODUCTION Camps have long represented a ‘cornerstone’ of humanitarian and state responses to displacement (Peteet 2005: 29), especially in the global South. While only a minority of those experiencing displacement currently live in camps, in numerous contexts camps are central to how migration is experienced, imagined and understood. Whether in the form of Palestinian camps that have gradually and unevenly become integrated into the urban fabric of Middle Eastern cities, the temporary ‘jungle’ of Calais founded by migrants and refugees in France, the isolated encampments at Dadaab near the Kenya–Somalia border, the camp-cum-prison at Azraq in the Eastern Desert of Jordan or the accommodation being created on remote islands by countries such as Bangladesh and Denmark, they represent a crucial aspect of migration governance. Yet, as this list indicates, the designation of ‘the camp’ encompasses a wide range of spaces, which represent different strategies of governance and very different experiences for those who live in them. As Kirsten McConnachie has succinctly put it, ‘camps vary in almost every dimension’ (McConnachie 2016: 397). This chapter explores the key scholarly debates surrounding camps as spaces of migration governance. Like the literature as a whole, its primary focus is on camps that are understood to be ‘refugee camps’; that is, camps for those who have been recognized to have been ‘forcibly’ displaced across international borders. Simultaneously, however, recognizing the limitations inherent in such categorizations (see Bakewell in this volume, Chapter 10), it also examines the important research about forms of encampment that are used to govern other ‘categories’ of migrants, and argues that future research should explore more the connections and entanglements between these different forms of encampment. Following this short introduction, the chapter proceeds by analysing why different actors (states, humanitarian actors, and refugees and migrants themselves) decide to build and live in (different forms of) camps. It argues that, despite extensive rhetoric to the contrary, refugee camps are typically not created primarily for humanitarian purposes, nor are they necessarily designed to respond to the needs of the people who will live there. Subsequently, the chapter turns to the key scholarly debates on the nature and politics of camp spaces. It explores how the work of Giorgio Agamben has both enabled and restricted research in this field, and argues that scholars should actively seek to overcome the limitations inherent in many Agambenian perspectives on encampment. It then turns to the scholarship on camps for labour migrants. It highlights the importance of research that has questioned the boundaries of what is understood to constitute a ‘camp’, and that has thereby productively placed trends in encampment policies and practices within wider political contexts and transformations. Reflecting where encampment typically occurs, it primarily draws on empirical studies from the ‘global South’, while also recognizing the recent increase in the use of encampment within contexts of the ‘global North’. 279
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WHY STATES, HUMANITARIANS AND REFUGEES (SOMETIMES) OPT FOR ENCAMPMENT While it is often noted that the ‘standardization’ of the camp began in the period during and after the Second World War (Lippert 1999: 308), the history of encampment is a longer one. Camps were, indeed, used extensively for people fleeing the Nazi regime, and subsequently for people fleeing the Soviet Army or who had been freed from concentration camps (Oesch 2017). Camps were quickly adopted across a range of contexts, including during and following the partitions of India and Palestine (McConnachie 2016). It was also around this time that the foundations of the new refugee regime, which still heavily shapes today’s landscape, were being put into place. Nevertheless, prior to these times, camps were used extensively by colonial regimes, which established the camp as a dominant model for ‘isolating groups seen as problems, risks, or threat’ (Oesch 2017: 114). European colonial powers created ‘the first concentration camps’, which were sometimes referred to as refugee camps, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to, for example, suppress potential revolts. As Petti (2013) argues, these camps claimed to be ‘taking care’ of the people living in them, but their uses within colonial governance demonstrates, from the outset, the complex and multifarious functions and purposes that camps can serve. McConnachie (2016) argues that the genealogy of the refugee camp should extend back ever further, to prisoner of war camps, which are first known to have been used in the 1790s. These competing histories and genealogies demonstrate the varied origins of, motivations for and experiences of encampment, and offer important insights into how we understand more contemporary forms of encampment, both as a mode of governance and as social and political spaces. This can clearly be demonstrated through an analysis of why and how different actors have decided to use encampment in the refugee regime of the post-Second World War era (see Crawley and Setrana in this volume, Chapter 16). These actors include both states and humanitarian agencies, most prominently in the latter group the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). From the perspective of states, camps can serve numerous purposes. While they can be a response to an ‘emergency’ context, in which large numbers of people cross borders during a short period of time, it would be inaccurate to imply that a preference for encampment was necessarily a question of logistics. Rather, in spatially segregating refugees (or others), states can both physically and symbolically differentiate refugees from the population at large, thereby upholding the trinity of state/nation/territory that ideologically underpins the modern state system, and that refugees (as well as other mobile populations and indigenous nations) can be understood to disrupt (Jaji 2012; Kibreab 2007). Even if camps exist for years or decades, their status as ostensibly ‘temporary’ spaces similarly provides both physical and symbolic representation that refugees will be returning ‘home’, or at least not integrating into the host society (Jaji 2012). Housing refugees in camps enables their freedom of movement to readily be restricted, and thus can reduce (the perception of) competition for scarce resources, such as land, housing and job opportunities (Loescher and Milner 2005; Turner 2015). States that are unwilling to contemplate refugee integration, and/ or who do not have the ability or capacity to provide for refugees, can also shift the costs and responsibilities entailed in hosting refugees onto international actors such as UNHCR through the creation of camps (Seeley 2013). Some analysts argued that Kenya’s 2015 announcement that it would close the refugee camps at Dadaab was an attempt ‘to make a point’ about
Governing, experiencing and contesting camps and encampment 281 funding shortfalls, and to ensure that donors took responsibility for funding the camp’s operations (Anyadike 2016). Governments may also wish to ‘make a point’ by establishing camps, for example to ‘showcase’ the suffering of those who fled the regimes of host governments’ political opponents (International Crisis Group 2013). A further category of motivations for refugee encampment can be grouped under the heading of ‘security’. Given that many people seek protection across borders because of ongoing armed conflicts, host states are often concerned that refugees will attempt to intervene in the conflict, and that if they were to do so using the territory of the host state, that this could trigger an intervention from their state of origin (Loescher and Milner 2005). While the existence and extent of these fears will be based on a number of factors, including the host state’s relationship to the conflict in refugees’ state of origin, states wishing to ensure that refugees can be monitored and controlled may well opt for encampment (Jacobsen 1996). While states have often insisted on encampment for refugees, for many decades encampment was also UNHCR’s ‘default’ response for people experiencing displacement. In the 1970s and 1980s, non-camp refugees were ‘conceived as a problem, even by the most sympathetic commentators’ and even in the mid-1990s, UNHCR’s policies regarding non-camp refugees were described by an internal discussion paper as both ‘weak’ and ‘unclear’ (Crisp 2017: 88). This approach meant both poor levels of support for refugees not living in camps, and a greater number of people being forced or pressured to live in camps, where their rights are often severely restricted (Verdirame and Harrell-Bond 2005). UNHCR’s preference for encampment was demonstrated, and became the subject of great controversy, during the debates surrounding its policies on ‘urban’ (read: non-camp) refugees, the first of which was published in March 1997. This policy stated that if refugees of a particular nationality were assisted within camps or rural settlements within a host country, UNHCR would provide these refugees with assistance in urban areas ‘only with the agreement of the government and if there are compelling reasons to do so’ (UNHCR 1997: 1). The lack of focus on refugee protection, and the tone of the document, in which refugees outside of camps were depicted as a problem and a security threat, quickly made it controversial among human rights groups and refugee advocates (Crisp 2017). Although ‘UNHCR hurriedly issued a revised version of the policy’ in December of the same year, this did little to mollify its critics (Crisp 2017: 90). According to critical scholars, UNHCR’s preference for encampment was based on the advantages, from the perspective of humanitarian actors, of spatially containing refugees in order to render them governable and to facilitate the distribution of aid (Hyndman 2000; Verdirame and Harrell-Bond 2005). As Barbara Harrell-Bond noted, refugee camps also helped to render refugees ‘visible’ and countable, which helped to raise donor funds for refugee assistance (Harrell-Bond 1998). These policies have developed extensively in the intervening two decades. In 2009, the aforementioned December 1997 policy was replaced by a new Policy on Refugee Protection and Solutions in Urban Areas, which pledged that UNHCR would protect and assist refugees in non-camp settings, regardless of whether the host government approved of refugees’ residence there (UNHCR 2009). In July 2014, UNHCR reversed its ‘default’ position, by stating that, henceforth, it would ‘avoid the establishment of refugee camps, wherever possible’, and that where camps could not be avoided, the agency would attempt to phase them out ‘at the earliest possible stage’ (UNHCR 2014: 6). Not establishing camps, UNHCR argued, would avoid unnecessary investments in camp infrastructure and the establishment of parallel services, in contrast to that money being used to strengthen pre-existing services, from which
282 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration refugees and host communities could both benefit (UNHCR 2014: 5). Nevertheless, in some contexts, long-term encampment continues with the active participation of UNHCR. Notably, in the same year as the release of the Alternative to Camps policy, UNHCR unveiled what was planned to be one of the largest refugee camps in the world near Azraq in Jordan’s Eastern Desert. While, as Sophia Hoffman has argued, there should no longer be ‘any pretence that the camp is anything other than a prison facility’, upon the camp’s opening, UNHCR’s then country representative in Jordan, Andrew Harper, described Azraq as ‘probably one of the best planned refugee camps in the world’ (Oddone 2014). The example of Azraq aptly demonstrates that UNHCR’s supposedly ‘global’ shifts in encampment policies will be interpreted and implemented differently in different contexts, in part because of the varied and often restrictive political contexts within which UNHCR operates. More abstractly, encampment can be understood as a mechanism through which a particular subject position associated with refugeehood is created and enforced. Humanitarian and state actors who govern refugee camps often enact policies that attempt to create passive and depoliticized subjects (Petti 2013), who are ‘managed through a quasi-military mode of operations’ (Hyndman 2000: 24). Importantly, this subject position is both gendered and racialized. As numerous scholars have argued, visions of refugees in the global South, particularly those living in protracted displacement in camps, have been subject to intertwined processes of feminization, racialization and depoliticization (see Chimni 1998; Hyndman and Giles 2011; Johnson 2011). Indeed, as Linda Tabar has argued, humanitarian responses to suffering are predicated on the ‘non-Westerner’s conformity to a subordinate position that denies their voice and agency’ (Tabar 2016: 23; see also Hart in this volume, Chapter 8). Camps, which segregate and securitize refugees, provide a setting in which such subordination is enacted along intersecting axes of power and differentiation. The racialized politics of encampment can also be seen in the geographical distribution of refugee camps. In 2002, for example, in Africa ‘camps sheltered 83.2 per cent of refugees assisted by the UNHCR, and in Asia 95.9 per cent, as against 14.3 percent in Europe’ (Agier 2011: 36). While UNHCR’s main funding tends to come almost exclusively from states in North America and Europe, as well as Japan (see e.g. Loescher 2001), these states have typically not been, and still are not, the main refugee hosting countries. Yet, as Verdirame and Harrell-Bond have argued, in the interests of protecting (for example) ‘fortress Europe’, states in the global North have both funded UNHCR and promoted the ‘unworkable logic of control and containment’ to keep refugees in the global South. Camps have often been an important part of the strategy to achieve this (Verdirame and Harrell-Bond 2005: 278). Nevertheless, despite the ways in which encampment is often imposed on populations experiencing displacement, refugees and migrants themselves can also set up a wide variety of encampments, often against the wishes of host governments (Katz et al. 2018). Michel Agier claims that these ‘self-installed and self-organized’ camps ‘represent the very basis of refuge, the shelter that we create in a hostile environment without a politics of welcome’ (Agier 2010: 36). As Agier explores, the increasing restrictions on movement across borders has meant that many of these camps are set up internally within a country, and are then described as internally displaced people (IDP) camps (Agier 2010). Calais, in northern France, offers an example of a form of encampment created by refugees and migrants themselves. Following the closure of a refugee reception centre run by the Red Cross in 2002, refugees and migrants pitched tents a few miles away from the city centre, to create small, informal camps, often in groups divided by nationality. Under threat of eviction,
Governing, experiencing and contesting camps and encampment 283 they were ‘offered the “option” to relocate to a dumping ground out of town, which later became known as the Jungle’ and hosted between 3,000 and 5,000 people (Sandri 2018: 68). This camp was demolished in October 2016, although several hundred people continued to live in the area, and many hundreds moved to Paris, where they would often find sites to pitch tents, only for the police to either force them to move on, or arrest or deport them (Nossiter 2016). As Amelia Gentleman explained, ‘the crisis has not been solved, merely shifted to other locations’ (Gentleman 2016). Two years later, newer makeshift camps, which had become settling places for refugees and migrants since the demolition of the ‘jungle’, were being destroyed by French authorities (European Council on Refugees and Exiles 2018). These encampments are just a few of the many ‘provisional spaces [that] have become common in European cities … as part of the movements of displaced populations who are both their residents and their constructors’ (Katz 2016: 17). Life in this kind of camp is often especially precarious. While people may choose to create and live in these camps, and the creation of such spaces can be a means of, and site for, recovering agency (Katz 2016), such choices are typically taken within enormous constraints. The camps typically have fewer services and assistance than formal camps, yet are still often under the surveillance of police and other entities, ‘which either monitor, destroy, or transfer these populations to other types of camps’ (Agier 2010: 36). Even when refugees were not the ones who decided to set up camps, in some contexts camps have been utilized by refugees and their national liberation movements. Camps have provided refugees spaces to organize politically and militarily, for example in the case of Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon (Hanafi and Long 2010; Peteet 2007), and in such contexts camps can themselves become military targets (Khalili 2005). That camps can provide spaces for self-organization has in turn caused some host states to be wary of encampment (Salehyan 2007), and the militarization of some camp contexts is one of the factors that led to the use of the label ‘refugee warriors’, which is meant to denote refugee communities with political leadership structures and armed groups pursuing their political objectives (Zolberg et al. 1989). This terminology, and the debates surrounding it, has in turn been critiqued by Leenders (2009) as part of the problematic tendency to securitize refugees. Even aside from their possible military uses, however, camps can be symbolically important in political contestations over refugeehood, and in national struggles. As Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh has argued, for example, the Polisario Front has ‘projected a specific image of the camps’ hosting Sahrawi refugees in Algeria – as secular spaces of democracy and gender equality – in an attempt to ‘secure the humanitarian and political support of Western state and nonstate actors’ (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2014: 3, 2; see also Finden 2018). Camps, in summary, are typically not established primarily for humanitarian motives – multiple rationales are always at play. Camps can represent the potential of de facto permanent exile, but also centres of resistance to occupation and colonization; the reinforcement, but also rejection, of gendered and racialized visions of refugeehood; the response to and cause of (perceived) security threats; sites for the exercise and undermining of state sovereignty; and spaces where national identities are both undermined and (re‑)affirmed.
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ANALYSING CAMP SPACES AND LIVES While offering important contributions to our understanding of the role of camps in migration policy, the debates examined so far in this chapter still leave unanswered many questions about how camp spaces themselves are governed, and what life is like within them. These questions have, however, attracted a wealth of scholarship, and a growing interest (Katz et al. 2018), from a range of disciplines including refugee studies, anthropology, urban studies, geography, law, architecture, politics and international studies, among others. This literature has attempted to investigate the politics, lived experiences, governmentalities and spatial dynamics of camp life. One influential figure within these debates is Giorgio Agamben (see Agamben 1998, 2005), who has come to occupy a central place within critical refugee studies over the past few decades (Owens 2009: 567; see also Ek 2006). As Patricia Owens argues, one of Agamben’s most original contributions is the suggestion that refugees are ‘the ultimate “biopolitical” subjects’, who can be governed in a ‘permanent “state of exception”’ (Owens 2009: 571). The camp is a key site where this happens, outside of the normal juridical system, and is thus a space ‘in which biological and political life, private and public, cannot be distinguished from one another’ (Owens 2009: 572). As Nando Sigona has noted, demonstrating the influence of this work, Agamben and the notion of the camp as a ‘state of exception’ are deployed ‘from the Nazi concentration camps to Guantanamo Bay via asylum reception centres’ (Sigona 2015: 4). Indeed, it is the breadth with which Agambenian analysis is deployed that is a point of criticism for many scholars; one singular framework cannot adequately speak to the realities of such a diverse range of contexts, they argue (Sigona 2015). A second point of critique has been that the idea of the camp constituting a state of exception has had the effect of not only generalizing, but also dehistoricizing and depoliticizing camps. Indeed, such an approach leaves little analytical space for the contingencies and specificities of local contexts or for the agency of refugees (Bulley 2014; Ramadan 2013; Rygiel 2012; Sigona 2015). As Sigona convincingly argues, in contrast to Agambenian approaches, scholars should offer analysis ‘more rooted in the materiality of the camp’ (Sigona 2015: 5). Centring the materiality and specificities of different camps has led to a wealth of productive insights. Of particular relevance to discussions about the governance of migration is the scholarship that has argued that the camp should be understood not as a homogeneous state of exception, but rather as a space of ‘hybrid’ or ‘contested’ sovereignties, where sovereign power is exercised and contested by states, humanitarian actors, non-governmental organizations and refugees themselves (Janmyr and Knudsen 2016; Turner 2005). Many authors acknowledge that the extra-territoriality of camps can bestow upon their administrators tremendous power and control over camp inhabitants, while also recognizing the multiplicity of actors who hold that power, and the varied forms taken by what Agier terms ‘humanitarian government’ (Agier 2010). An important part of these varied governance structures, which has often received too little attention, is the roles that refugees themselves play in the control of camp spaces and resource allocation within them. This often occurs through informal structures, which may build upon social networks that were established in refugees’ home countries or may represent an upending of pre-established hierarchies (see, for example, Sullivan and Tobin 2014; Turner 2016). Others have taken different approaches still. Lucas Oesch, for example, drawing on Aihwa Ong’s scholarship on graduated sovereignty and citizenship (see Ong 2000), has offered a Foucauldian analysis of al-Hussein camp for Palestinian refugees in
Governing, experiencing and contesting camps and encampment 285 Jordan to argue that Agambenian analysis misses the varieties and complexities of power in refugee camps (Oesch 2017). Related scholarship has focused on the agency, activities and political lives of refugees, and the roles these have in shaping camp life. While, as many scholars have noted, humanitarianism attempts to depoliticize its refugee ‘beneficiaries’ (Harrell-Bond 1986; Tabar 2016), refugee camps often have a vibrant political life, not only through the creation of formal or informal structures for political representation (Omata 2017a), but also through everyday acts that represent a profoundly political response to refugees’ circumstances and humanitarian governance (Lecadet 2016; Newhouse 2015). Extensive work has also demonstrated how refugees re-shape the space and life of camps, and how many camps come to resemble ‘cities’ or other ‘urban’ environments. In his research on Kakuma refugee camp, for example, Bram Jansen terms the camp an ‘accidental city’. Kakuma has become, he argues, a ‘normal’ feature of the Kenyan landscape in ways authorities never intended, and refugees living there have created dynamic camp markets, which inevitably interact with and influence the wider Kenyan economy (Jansen 2016). Za‘tari camp in Jordan has attracted a lot of attention for similar reasons, and has again increased the volume of research that approaches studies of camps through, or informed by, the perspectives of urban studies (see, for example, Dalal et al. 2018). The demonstration of refugees’ influence over how camps develop calls into question many of the narratives that are promoted about refugees by humanitarian actors, in policy literatures and in the media (see also Hart in this volume, Chapter 8). Of particular prominence has been the idea that refugees in camps suffer from a ‘dependency mentality’. In a 1993 paper, the insights of which remain important for contemporary discussions, Gaim Kibreab argued that it is a ‘myth’ to suggest that long-term aid in camps creates a system, or mentality, of dependency among refugees (Kibreab 1993). Even in difficult conditions and under considerable structural constraints, refugees, he demonstrated, were able to maintain large amounts of independence. While refugees in camps strive to create their own independent structures and economic opportunities, this does not mean that the increasing emphasis on refugee ‘self-reliance’ in camps is necessarily to be welcomed. UNHCR has promoted ‘self-reliance’ even in contexts in which refugees’ objective circumstances would appear to preclude such a possibility (Kaiser 2006), and research has demonstrated that in a camp that is presented by UNHCR to be a model of ‘self-reliance’, ‘the significance of access to overseas remittances [was] a main determinant of economic well-being’ (Omata 2017b: 8). Increasingly, as Ilcan and Rygiel (2015) have argued, refugees in camps are expected to be ‘resilient’ – less dependent on long-term ‘care and maintenance programs’ and more involved in camp governance. As they argue, however, behind these progressive buzzwords are new forms of refugee de-politicization, in which refugees are encouraged to adapt to their conditions in a camp, rather than protest or challenge them. There are, therefore, numerous ways in which scholars have challenged acontextual and ahistorical depictions of camps. They have demonstrated the complex and contested nature of power relations in camps, the diverse and deeply political lives that refugees build in them, and the independence for which they strive, even in extremely challenging circumstances.
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CAMPS AND THE GOVERNANCE OF NON-‘FORCED’ MIGRATION One type of encampment that is rarely put into conversation with the scholarship discussed above is the use of camps for migrant workers. Perhaps reflecting divisions in the legal regimes and organizations that govern different ‘kinds’ of migration, as well as the organization of knowledge production, comparisons between ‘refugee camps’ and ‘labour camps’ remain very rare. Given that, rightly, the supposedly clear-cut distinction between ‘voluntary economic’ migrants and ‘forced political’ migrants has increasingly been questioned and broken down (Bakewell, Chapter 10; Medland, Chapter 22, both in this volume; see also Crawley and Skleparis 2018), the same could be done within scholarship on the ‘camp’ and migration governance. ‘Labour camps’ have, of course, received extensive attention in their own right among scholars, international organizations and human rights activists. The focus of this attention in recent years has often been on the Gulf Arab states, although, as Vora (2013) argues, the exceptionalism often present within these discussions should be problematized. Particular attention has been paid to Qatar, in the context of it hosting the men’s football World Cup in 2022 (see, for example, Human Rights Watch 2012). As in the cases of many refugee camps, scholars and human rights organizations have highlighted the poor conditions in labour camps, and how they can be used to enforce segregation along lines of race, nationality, class and status. Syed Ali describes Sonapur, the largest of Dubai’s labour camps, and the name of ‘which means, ironically, “city of gold”’, as located ‘on the outskirts of the desert surrounded by barbed wire’. The camp ‘is basically a dormitory setting for labouring men … [with] poor drainage and poor sanitation’ (Ali 2010: 91). Discussing the overall context of the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Zahra Babar notes that ‘labour camps’ can be used to segregate ‘large swathes of low-wage migrants’, backed up by ‘a culture of spatial separation which can be overtly or subtly enforced’ (Babar 2017: 161; see also Turner 2015; Azmeh in this volume, Chapter 18). Labour camps, then, like refugee camps, can serve multiple purposes and agendas at once. In a particularly thought-provoking contribution to the literature, Neha Vora takes the discussion of labour camps in the Gulf a step further by examining what she terms ‘expat/ expert camps’ in Qatar. These ‘camps’ are ‘occupied primarily by white professionals from North America and Europe’ – ‘expats’ who live in ‘sites of white/Western privilege and expat consumption and production’ (Vora 2013: 170, 182). Although they are rarely designated or conceptualized as such, Vora argues that these spaces ‘are also camps that cordon off and contain this population’ (Vora 2013: 182), and thus constitute a key part of migration governance in contexts such as Qatar. Could the study of camps and migration governance be enriched by recognizing the range of ways in which spatial segregation occurs, even (or perhaps, especially) when the camps in question do not fit neatly into the definitional and disciplinary categories that often structure research? This is not to argue that there is nothing particular about refugee camps (or labour camps or expat/expert camps). Rather, it is to suggest that there is a need for critical migration scholars to continue to deconstruct boundaries and differentiations that structure how ‘camps’ are studied and understood. Although they are rare, some examples of this kind of approach are found in the literature. Bülent Diken, for example, analyses both refugee camps and gated communities as part of the broader context he terms ‘the end of the city’ (Diken 2004). In
Governing, experiencing and contesting camps and encampment 287 a different but related move, scholars of humanitarianism such as Mark Duffield and Lisa Smirl have interrogated the ways in which aid workers spatially segregate themselves from the populations they are apparently ‘there’ to assist (see Duffield 2010; Smirl 2008). Although it is often unremarked upon, humanitarian workers, who retreat to their ‘fortified aid compounds’ and ‘gated communities’ (Duffield 2010), are often themselves migrants across international borders. Therefore, again demonstrating the heterogeneity of camps, these processes and techniques of spatial (self‑)exclusion exist across a spectrum, variously creating, marking and reinforcing both privilege and oppression.
CONCLUSION This chapter has offered an overview of the key scholarly debates surrounding camps as spaces of migration governance. In analysing why camps are built, how they are governed, how life within them is experienced, and how camp governance is resisted, it has demonstrated the varied ways in which encampment becomes part of the responses to and politics of migration. It has emphasized the need to acknowledge and foreground the diversity of spatial and political formations that constitute ‘the camp’, as well as the range of understandings of what ‘the camp’ is and represents. It has argued for the relevance of multiple political and strategic motivations for encampment, the limitations inherent in Agambenian approaches to studying camps, and the similarities and interconnections between ostensibly different ‘kinds’ of camps. As the chapters of this Handbook make clear, camps are but one spatial formation and context through which the lives of migrants are regulated, and in which they are lived. Nevertheless, and despite the fact that a minority of refugees worldwide live in camps, camps remain central to how migration is imagined, discussed, experienced and governed. Furthermore, as this chapter has emphasized, encampment exists across spectrums – not only of ‘categories’ of migrants, but cities can contain camps, just as camps can come to resemble cities. Scholarship on camps and encampment, therefore, both to date and in the future, will continue to offer crucial insights across boundaries of context and discipline, and across the very categories of migration that it studies.
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288 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration (eds), Migration, Free Movement and Regional Integration, Paris and Brugge: UNESCO Publishing, pp. 149–70. Bulley, Dan (2014), ‘Inside the Tent: Community and Government in Refugee Camps’, Security Dialogue, 45 (1), 63–80. Chimni, B. S. (1998), ‘Geopolitics of Refugee Studies: A View from the South’, Journal of Refugee Studies, 11, 350–74. Crawley, Heaven and Dimitris Skleparis (2018), ‘Refugees, Migrants, Neither, Both: Categorical Fetishism and the Politics of Bounding in Europe’s “Migration Crisis”’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 44 (1), 48–64. Crisp, Jeff (2017), ‘Finding Space for Protection: An Inside Account of the Evolution of UNHCR’s Urban Refugee Policy’, Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees, 33 (1): 87–96. Dalal, Ayham, Amer Darweesh, Philipp Misselwitz and Anna Steigemann (2018), ‘Planning the Ideal Refugee Camp? A Critical Interrogation of Recent Planning Innovations in Jordan and Germany’, Urban Planning, 3 (4), 64–78. Diken, Bülent (2004), ‘From Refugee Camps to Gated Communities: Biopolitics and the End of the City’, Citizenship Studies, 8 (1), 83–106. Duffield, Mark (2010), ‘Risk-Management and the Fortified Aid Compound: Everyday Life in Post-Interventionary Society’, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 4 (4), 453–74. Ek, Richard (2006), ‘Giorgio Agamben and the Spatialities of the Camp: An Introduction’, Geografiska Annaler: Series B, 88 (4), 363–86. European Council on Refugees and Exiles (2018), ‘France: 2 Years After the Demolition of “The Jungle”, Camp Clearances Continue’, ECRE, 26 October, accessed 24 May 2019 at https://www.ecre .org/france-2-years-after-the-demolition-of-the-jungle-camps-clearances-continue/. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Elena (2014), The Ideal Refugees: Gender, Islam, and the Sahrawi Politics of Survival, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Finden, Alice (2018), ‘Active Women and Ideal Refugees: Dissecting Gender, Identity and Discourse in the Sahrawi Refugee Camps’, Feminist Review, 120 (1), 37–53. Gentleman, Amelia (2016), ‘Refugees Take to Hiding in Northern France after Calais Camp Demolished’, The Guardian, 5 November, accessed 24 May 2019 at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/ 05/refugees-northern-france-dunkirk-calais-camp-demolished. Hanafi, Sari and Taylor Long (2010), ‘Governance, Governmentalities, and the State of Exception in the Palestinian Refugee Camps of Lebanon’, Journal of Refugee Studies, 23 (2), 134–59. Harrell-Bond, Barbara (1986), Imposing Aid: Emergency Assistance to Refugees, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harrell-Bond, Barbara (1998), ‘Camps: Literature Review’, Forced Migration Review, 2, 22–3. Human Rights Watch (2012), ‘Building a Better World Cup: Protecting Migrant Workers in Qatar Ahead of FIFA 2022’, accessed 22 January 2019 at https://www.hrw.org/report/2012/06/12/building-better -world-cup/protecting-migrant-workers-qatar-ahead-fifa-2022. Hyndman, Jennifer (2000), Managing Displacement: Refugees and the Politics of Humanitarianism, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Hyndman, Jennifer and Wenona Giles (2011), ‘Waiting for What? The Feminization of Asylum in Protracted Situations’, Gender, Place & Culture, 18 (3), 361–79. Ilcan, Suzan and Kim Rygiel (2015), ‘“Resiliency Humanitarianism”: Responsibilizing Refugees through Humanitarian Emergency Governance in the Camp’, International Political Sociology, 9 (4), 333–51. International Crisis Group (2013), Too Close for Comfort: Syrians in Lebanon, Brussels: International Crisis Group. Jacobsen, Karen (1996), ‘Factors Influencing the Policy Responses of Host Governments to Mass Refugee Influxes’, International Migration Review, 30 (3), 655–78. Jaji, Rose (2012), ‘Social Technology and Refugee Encampment in Kenya’, Journal of Refugee Studies, 25 (2), 221–38. Janmyr, Maja and Are J. Knudsen (2016), ‘Introduction: Hybrid Spaces’, Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development, 7 (3), 391–5. Jansen, Bram (2016), ‘“Digging Aid”: The Camp as an Option in East and the Horn of Africa’, Journal of Refugee Studies, 29 (2), 149–65.
Governing, experiencing and contesting camps and encampment 289 Johnson, Heather (2011), ‘Click to Donate: Visual Images, Constructing Victims and Imagining the Female Refugee’, Third World Quarterly, 32 (6): 1015–37. Kaiser, Tania (2006), ‘Between a Camp and a Hard Place: Rights, Livelihood and Experiences of the Local Settlement System for Long-Term Refugees in Uganda’, The Journal of Modern African Studies, 44 (4): 597–621. Katz, Irit (2016), ‘A Network of Camps on the Way to Europe’, Forced Migration Review, 51, 17–19. Katz, Irit, Diana Martin and Claudio Minca (2018), ‘The Camp Reconsidered’, in Irit Katz, Diana Martin and Claudio Minca (eds), Camps Revisited: Multifaceted Spatialities of a Modern Political Technology, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield International, pp. 1–16. Khalili, Laleh (2005), ‘A Landscape of Uncertainty: Palestinians in Lebanon’, Middle East Report, no. 236, 34–9. Kibreab, Gaim (1993), ‘The Myth of Dependency among Camp Refugees in Somalia 1979–1989’, Journal of Refugee Studies, 6 (4), 321–49. Kibreab, Gaim (2007), ‘Why Governments Prefer Spatially Segregated Settlement Sites for Urban Refugees’, Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees, 24 (1), 27–35. Lecadet, Clara (2016), ‘Refugee Politics: Self-Organized “Government” and Protests in the Agamé Refugee Camp (2005–13)’, Journal of Refugee Studies, 29 (2), 187–207. Leenders, Reinoud (2009), ‘Refugee Warriors or War Refugees? Iraqi Refugees’ Predicament in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon’, Mediterranean Politics, 14 (3), 343–63. Lippert, Randy (1999), ‘Governing Refugees: The Relevance of Governmentality to Understanding the International Refugee Regime’, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 24 (3), 295–328. Loescher, Gil (2001), The UNHCR and World Politics: A Perilous Path, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Loescher, Gil and James Milner (2005), Protracted Refugee Situations: Domestic and International Security Implications, Adelphi Papers, Abingdon: Routledge, for the International Institute for Strategic Studies. McConnachie, Kirsten (2016), ‘Camps of Containment: A Genealogy of the Refugee Camp’, Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development, 7 (3), 397–412. Newhouse, Léonie S. (2015), ‘More than Mere Survival: Violence, Humanitarian Governance, and Practical Material Politics in a Kenyan Refugee Camp’, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 47 (11), 2292–307. Nossiter, Adam (2016), ‘Paris is the New Calais, with Scores of Migrants Arriving Daily’, The New York Times, 3 November, accessed 24 May 2019 at https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/04/world/europe/ paris-migrants-refugees.html. Oddone, Elisa (2014), ‘Azraq Refugee Camp Officially Opened’, Jordan Times, 30 April, accessed 6 March 2017 at http://www.jordantimes.com/news/local/azraq-refugee-camp-officially-opened. Oesch, Lucas (2017), ‘The Refugee Camp as a Space of Multiple Ambiguities and Subjectivities’, Political Geography, 60, 110–20. Omata, Naohiko (2017a), ‘Unwelcome Participation, Undesirable Agency? Paradoxes of De-Politicisation in a Refugee Camp’, Refugee Survey Quarterly, 36 (3), 108–31. Omata, Naohiko (2017b), The Myth of Self-Reliance: Economic Lives Inside a Liberian Refugee Camp, New York: Berghahn Books. Ong, Aihwa (2000), ‘Graduated Sovereignty in South-East Asia’, Theory, Culture & Society, 17 (4), 55–75. Owens, Patricia (2009), ‘Reclaiming “Bare Life”?: Against Agamben on Refugees’, International Relations, 23 (4), 567–82. Peteet, Julie (2005), Landscape of Hope and Despair: Palestinian Refugee Camps. The Ethnography of Political Violence. Philadelphia, PA and Bristol: University of Pennsylvania Press. Peteet, Julie (2007), ‘Problematizing a Palestinian Diaspora’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 39 (4), 627–46. Petti, Alessandro (2013), ‘Beyond the State: The Refugee Camp as a Site of Political Invention’, Jadalliya, 26 March, accessed 29 May 2014 at http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/10813/beyond -the-state_the-refugee-camp-as-a-site-of-pol. Ramadan, Adam (2013), ‘Spatialising the Refugee Camp’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 38 (1), 65–77.
290 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration Rygiel, Kim (2012), ‘Politicizing Camps: Forging Transgressive Citizenships in and through Transit’, Citizenship Studies, 16 (5–6), 807–25. Salehyan, Idean (2007), ‘Transnational Rebels: Neighboring States as Sanctuary for Rebel Groups’, World Politics, 59 (2), 217–42. Sandri, Elisa (2018), ‘“Volunteer Humanitarianism”: Volunteers and Humanitarian Aid in the Jungle Refugee Camp of Calais’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 44 (1), 65–80. Seeley, Nicholas (2013), ‘The Last Refugee Camp’, Foreign Policy, 30 October, accessed 5 August 2014 at http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/10/30/the_last_refugee_camp. Sigona, Nando (2015), ‘Campzenship: Reimagining the Camp as a Social and Political Space’, Citizenship Studies, 19 (1), 1–15. Smirl, Lisa (2008), ‘Building the Other, Constructing Ourselves: Spatial Dimensions of International Humanitarian Response’, International Political Sociology, 2 (3), 236–53. Sullivan, Denis and Sarah Tobin (2014), ‘Security and Resilience Among Syrian Refugees in Jordan’, MERIP, 14 October, accessed 7 November 2014 at http://merip.org/mero/mero101414. Tabar, Linda (2016), ‘Disrupting Development, Reclaiming Solidarity: The Anti-Politics of Humanitarianism’, Journal of Palestine Studies, 45 (4), 16–31. Turner, Lewis (2015), ‘Explaining the (Non‑)Encampment of Syrian Refugees: Security, Class and the Labour Market in Lebanon and Jordan’, Mediterranean Politics, 20 (3), 386–404. Turner, Simon (2005), ‘Suspended Spaces – Contesting Sovereignties in a Refugee Camp’, in Thomas Blom and Finn Stepputat (eds), Sovereign Bodies: Citizens, Migrants, and States in the Postcolonial World, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 312–32. Turner, Simon (2016), ‘What Is a Refugee Camp? Explorations of the Limits and Effects of the Camp’, Journal of Refugee Studies, 29 (2), 139–48. UNHCR (1997), UNHCR Comprehensive Policy on Urban Refugees, Geneva: UNHCR. UNHCR (2009), UNHCR Policy on Refugee Protection and Solutions in Urban Areas, Geneva: UNHCR. UNHCR (2014), UNHCR Policy on Alternatives to Camps, Geneva: UNHCR. Verdirame, Guglielmo and Barbara Harrell-Bond (2005), Rights in Exile: Janus-Faced Humanitarianism, New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. Vora, Neha (2013), ‘Expat/Expert Camps: Redefining “Labour” Within Gulf Migration’, in Omar AlShehabi, Adam Hanieh and Abdulhadi Khalaf (eds), Transit States: Labour, Migration and Citizenship in the Gulf, London: Pluto Press, pp. 170–97. Zolberg, Aristide R., Astri Suhrke and Sergio Aguayo (1989), Escape from Violence: Conflict and the Refugee Crisis in the Developing World, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
24. Political economy, law and the regulation of migrantsʼ workplaces Tesseltje de Lange, Lisa Berntsen and Pedro de Sena
INTRODUCTION The workplace is important in shaping migrant workers’ lives. Like with any other worker, the spatial context where work is performed affects the social interaction of migrants, their level of integration in host societies, as well as the way their labour relationships are regulated. Unlike with native workers, for migrant workers the workplace can be the only place for such interaction, especially when migration regulation does not permit family reunification (see Bonjour and Cleton in this volume, Chapter 13) and housing comes with the job. This chapter departs from the state as a main source of labour migration regulation to focus on how the workplace can act as a de-centred and complex determinant of such regulation, often grounded on specific power dynamics originated within. We will draw out the ways in which migration governance, with its built-in contradictions, inequalities and contestations, plays out at the site of workplaces. Unavoidably, regulation impacting on the workplace intersects with migration regimes, labour laws, collective labour agreements, and other instruments of industrial relations. In this sense, labour migration is ruled by different forces – state power, contractual freedom, and workplace peculiarities – which can coincide as often as they challenge each other (see also Azmeh, Chapter 18 and Piper, Chapter 32, both in this volume). This chapter starts with an overview of the scholarly literature on labour market segmentation theory. Building on Michael Piore’s seminal work (1979), we aim to problematize the ways in which regulation intertwines with segmentation processes at the workplace level, and show how this in turn supports or breaks down positions of subordination and dependence of migrants. In many ways migrant workers are foremost workers and the issues discussed in this chapter could be referred to as issues of the ‘working class’ more generally (Ypi 2016). However, the combined impact of migration regimes and segmentation of labour markets reconfigures workplace relations in complex ways, with differential impacts on migrants’ experiences of work. This is perhaps especially the case when a workplace is dominated by migrant workers, stereotyping the jobs performed as ‘migrant jobs’ (Anderson and Ruhs 2010: 33). We illustrate the impact of the intersection between labour migration governance and the workplace with three typical workplaces often associated with migrant labour: ships, construction sites and households. Finally, we draw out some conclusions and suggest critical lenses for future research on labour migrants and the workplace. Given the authors’ background as legal scholars and a sociologist, this chapter is intrinsically interdisciplinary and draws mostly on (socio)legal and labour studies. In doing so, it offers an analytical frame for critical and interdisciplinary research into migrants’ rights and realities in traditional and future workplaces. A full understanding of migrants’ vulnerabilities and opportunities at work calls for such critical and interdisciplinary scholarship and the use of multiple methods (Poteete et al. 2010). Such an approach allows us to grasp the intertwined 291
292 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration impact of labour and migration governance on specific sectoral and workplace realities of migrant workers.
MIGRANTS, LABOUR MARKET SEGMENTATION THEORY AND BEYOND The position of migrant workers in the flexible economy is commonly explained through segmented labour market theory. Michael Piore (1979) introduced the important role of structural and institutional factors to explain persistent employer demand for migrant labour. He postulated the existence of a dual labour market, consisting of a primary segment with stable and well-paid jobs and a secondary segment associated with migrant labour: temporary and poorly paid jobs, little opportunities for progression, and bad working conditions. There is low inter-segment mobility, because secondary segment jobs are shunned by native workers out of social status and relative deprivation motives. Segmentation theory ‘shows that [the] labour market is split into certain segments that are being formed from economic, political and social forces; it also points out segmentation reasons and differences in characteristics of individual labour market participants’ (Jakštiené 2010: 54). Piore’s insights have been refined, with increasing analytical emphasis on segmentation as opposed to labour market dualization. Migrants may become associated with particular labour market segments due to group characteristics, like an alleged superior ‘work ethic’ compared with native workers (McKenzie and Forde 2009) that reproduces and perpetuates segmentation over time (Waldinger and Lichter 2003). This may induce recruitment practices based on national stereotyping, where the suitability of workers is determined by category instead of based on individual merit (McCollum and Findley 2015). As a result, ethnic hiring queues (Scott 2012) or ethnic labour market antagonism (Bonacich 1972) may occur. This process is mutually reinforcing and may be institutionalized over time (Ciupijus 2011), making certain job segments an almost exclusive domain of migrant labour, such as live-in domestic workers as we discuss later in this chapter. While there may be a structural demand for migrant labour, Anderson and Ruhs (2010) have shown that the ‘need’ for migrant labour is a social construct that is embedded and grown in historical context. The availability of a pool of well-regarded migrant workers also sustains flexible labour market structures at the bottom end of the labour market (McCollum and Findley 2015) and, at the same time, reduces employer incentives to improve pay and working conditions. Lucas and Mansfield (2010: 172) describe how employers expect migrant domestic workers to be available on demand, while only paying for the work actually done. Furthermore, the segmentation of labour markets sometimes results in migrants accepting working conditions in slavery-like conditions (Kara 2017; see also Thibos and Howard in this volume, Chapter 12), the improvement of which might not (just) require new laws but also a turn around on consumer behaviour (Hendriks 2003) demanding low priced products or services that presume availability of precarious migrant labour (see Geddes and Scott 2010). Consumers have little knowledge of how much of the money they pay for a product is for the migrants who make the (cheap) produce available to them. Although labour market segmentation explains migrants being channelled into secondary segment jobs, global restructuring and a shift towards the knowledge and service economy has increased demand for (highly) skilled migrants (Romer 2001; Sassen 1998; see also Azmeh,
Political economy, law and the regulation of migrantsʼ workplaces 293 Chapter 18 and Piper, Chapter 32, both in this volume). Labour migration policies are designed to favour high-skilled migrants (Paul 2015), as countries compete to attract innovative migrant entrepreneurs (de Lange 2018) and firms compete to draw in ‘global talents’ (Czaika 2018; Vasey in this volume, Chapter 14). For example, existing and proposed German migration laws fast-track skilled migrant workers into permanent residence.1 Skilled migrant workers are seen as potential future citizens and not just as (cheap and temporary) labour. Migrants are categorized through ‘a set of politically inaugurated principles’ based on skills, but also on gender, nationality and age (Paul 2018: 64). Where Piore assumed migrants to be economically motivated ‘target earners’, with temporary intentions of stay and coined them ‘birds of passage’, in reality, many turned out to be ‘not birds of passage, but instead crows, ravens, doves, and blackbirds – non-migratory birds all’ (Fine and Milkman 2016: 775). Migrants’ settlement intentions and job (and wage) expectations also may shift over time, challenging segmented workplace structures and states’ migration policy categories (see also Ataç and Schwenken in this volume, Chapter 30). This is, for instance, evidenced in the sans-papiers mobilizations in France where ‘irregular’ migrants challenged their unauthorized legal status and claimed a right to citizenship based on their longstanding position as workers in the French labour market (Chauvin and Garcés-Mascareñas 2012). In respect of ‘membership’ of migrant workers, the scholarship on labour or industrial ‘citizenship’ (Greer et al. 2013) adds another critical perspective to Piore’s lens (see also Piper in this volume, Chapter 32). The concept of industrial citizenship extends political and social rights into the market, to cover individual rights at the workplace level, as well as collective rights to representation by trade unions. Neo-liberalism and globalization have directly challenged the idea and practice of migrant workers’ industrial citizenship. Controlled labour migration (through sponsorship programmes, recruitment only through the staffing industry or via digital platforms) has an isolating tendency and exacerbates limited access to industrial citizenship for migrant workers. Migrants are, however, very much in need of a (national) legal framework to protect such rights, especially when they are working in spatially hidden workplaces. Such is the case of work permit and sponsorship regimes that tie a migrant worker to a specific employer, job or sector. The sponsorship system used in the Netherlands, for example, creates an employer dependency that can easily shift into a situation of abuse (de Lange 2011). In the Asian context, such regimes have been linked with an increasing lack of agency in the workplace, particularly for domestic workers (Ladegaard 2017). Notwithstanding the restrictive effects of migration regulation, industrial citizenship can improve. Multinational workplaces, apt to enforce migrant workers’ rights as part of their corporate social responsibility programmes, present examples of collective enforcement of political and social rights through International Framework Agreements (Bourque and Hennebert 2011), irrespective of migration status. Literature on labour migrants and workplaces repeatedly stresses the importance of intermediaries in arranging migrants’ access to work: employment agencies, recruitment agents, travel agents and traffickers alike (Forde et al. 2015; see also Thibos and Howard in this volume, Chapter 12). The methods of recruitment shape workplace characteristics and migrants’ experiences of work (Findlay et al. 2013). For example, temporary staffing agencies and labour brokers induce ‘casualization’ of work predominantly performed by migrant labour through the use of day labour or zero-hour contracts (Coe et al. 2011). These practices developed by agencies are sometimes criminalized (Fudge 2018). In doing so, states appear to give little
294 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration consideration to the consequences for the migrant worker (Berntsen and de Lange 2018), who is left without a job after a shutdown of an agency or employer. Another relatively recent development that requires attention when considering the workplace and migrant workers is the de-materialization of the workplace through the virtual office or the platform economy (Hill et al. 2008). Digital labour platforms (such as Uber, as well as many educational ‘apps’) provide virtual spaces to match labour supply (workers, such as drivers or language trainers) and demand (consumers of such services) from anywhere at any time (Valenduc 2019). This brings flexibility but also creates the risk of further segmentation and isolation of migrant workers, depriving them of meaningful social interactions occurring at the physical, traditional workplace (Lee 2018). There is a risk that the real person behind the veil of technology disappears, facilitating further segmentation and flexibilization, lack of membership and representation, and little legal protection.
MIGRANTS’ WORKPLACES: HIDDEN SPATIALITIES AND CHALLENGES TO REGULATION We now turn to a discussion of three specific types of workplaces, selected due to the nature of the work performed, which is characterized by labour-intensity and place-boundedness, making these places particularly amenable to migrant labour. The work of migrant seafarers, construction workers and domestic workers is typically unseen and outside the reach of workplace laws. The jobs performed in these workplaces are likely to be stereotyped as ‘migrant jobs’, rarely performed by the nationals of the receiving countries or – in case of cruises – the consumers’ country of origin. The, generally speaking, highly dependent migration status, if any, granted to migrant workers interacts with the specificities of these workplaces, namely the invisibility to state authorities or labour unions. Hence, migrants working in such spaces have even more difficulty gaining access to membership of a host society and worker rights because of their isolation. Ships: the Offshore Workplace of Migrant Seafarers Ships rank among the most dangerous workplaces, a fact recognized in different latitudes across the globe. It is physically demanding, dangerous, violent, and stressful work, with impacts on seafarers’ quality of life and health (IOM 2011; Pocock et al. 2018). Seafarers are ‘people whose way of life is specific and atypical, who are detached from their families, friends, and homeland, and who work under specific conditions – onboard vessels’ (Nenadić et al. 2015: 237). Unsurprisingly, seafaring is a sector with a high predominance of migrant labour (Mensah et al. 2005). It is acknowledged in literature that the nature of seafarers’ workplaces creates a socially isolated environment (Kim and Jang 2018) and that ships, either cruise ships or other vessels, tend to be a deeply segmented workplace. The International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) reports of gender and nationality stratification with, e.g. all Chinese men working at laundry while managers on board cruise ships are from Western countries. Borovnik (2008) described how seafarers are dependent on temporary and often multi-national work-based communities on board ships. The level of community formation should be viewed critically, however; it could also be an employer strategy to have diverse nationalities work specific jobs to prevent community formation and collectivism across
Political economy, law and the regulation of migrantsʼ workplaces 295 migrant groups. Another characteristic deriving from the specific workplace environment and the isolation it entails is the excessive imbalance in the work relationships, to the advantage of those directing work on board. IOM reports the exercise of extreme forms of punitive power by the boat captains of Thai fishing boats if workers do not perform as expected, which might include beatings and other physical punishments. This power is also exercised in respect of the establishment of working conditions, rest time and other features of work performance. It also reports migrant fishermen being required to work 18 to 20 hours per day, being deprived of sleep and living in cramped quarters (IOM 2011). The captains’ authority is exacerbated by the physical confinement of workers to the ship and the significant time without the possibility of returning home or even going ashore. Literature on modern slavery reports cases of migrants being prevented from going ashore during the entire period of repayment of recruitment debts to prevent absconding (Kara 2017). Governance structures and regulation contribute to the precarity of seafarers. Seafarers are excluded from the scope of many legal texts on migration, which underscores their exceptional status. For example, they do not fall within the scope of the UN Convention on Migrant Workers, which defines a seafarer (including a fisherman), as a migrant worker employed on board a vessel registered in a state of which he or she is not a national (Article 2, para 2(c)). In Article 3, however, the seafarers and workers on an offshore installation are excluded from the scope of the Convention. Other conventions on labour migration and employment regulation reflect this exclusion.2 On the other hand, seafarers and their workplace rights are regulated through specific ILO conventions, on maritime labour (2006) and fishing (2007), as well as other international maritime conventions to raise awareness of the hazards of migrant seafarers and which call for the establishment, enforcement and monitoring of (future) agreements between sending and receiving countries. The ITF has called it ironical that seafarers have so many workplace rights but are amongst the most precarious workers across the globe. The problem remains that seafarers are typical ‘off-shore workers’, working on ships sailing under a ‘flag of convenience’, outside clear territorial regulatory regimes, hence, in a ‘space of exception’ (Lillie 2010). Enforcement of international legal standards and national legislation is a challenge closely connected with the features of this specific type of workplace. In the EU context, debates on the discrimination of non-EU migrant seafarers by ships sailing under EU flags have not led to an inclusion of migrant seafarers in migrant worker equal treatment legislation (de Lange 2015). Another aspect of seafarers’ (lack of) workplace rights concerns the temporariness of their job contract (Sampson 2013) and secondment contracts through international crewing agents. Even when holding a work contract with a ship under a ‘western’ flag, this by no means creates a right for seafarers to take up residence in that country other than as passers-by (de Lange 2008). The quest for eligibility for social security rights, if available at all, may place seafarers in a ‘multiple web of constraints acting upon [them] in a manner invariably producing social and economic “paralysis”’ (Sampson 2013: 760). Finally, research into this specific workplace calls for critically considering the industry and its global positioning. From Gegout (2016) we know of a perverse consequence of globalization in the fisheries: EU-funded European fishing corporations push traditional African fish industries out of business, sometimes making former ship owners or seafarers into immigrant traffickers, something also identified in Asia (Kara 2017). ILO and ITF reports suggest that to improve the agency of migrant seafarers in their offshore workplace, the industry and consumers (eating fish or enjoying a cruise) have to be made aware of their deprived situation and
296 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration demand that the produce they buy is produced in a socially responsible way (ITF and War on Want 2002). Construction Sites: the EU Posting of Workers Regulation and Experiences of Work in Construction Migrant workers form an important share of the construction sector labour force worldwide (Buckley et al. 2016). The sector’s flexible subcontracted employment, combined with differential regulatory frameworks, affect the position and experiences of construction workers. The disaggregated and fragmented structure of this sector, which typically involves a multitude of intermediaries, creates ideal conditions for poor accountability in the workplace, namely in identifying who is responsible for workplace rights, including safety regulations (Buckley et al. 2016). The ephemeral and labour-intensive nature of construction work discourages the development of stable employment relations. This fact, together with instances of vulnerability associated with migrant status, can increase workers’ inability to claim workplace rights, including protection by labour unions. While migrants may be recruited to solve local labour shortages, cross-border recruitment in the EU construction sector has growing characteristics of ‘competitive subcontracting’ striving to lower costs (Bosch 2012: 19). Construction work can only be outsourced so much to low-wage countries; like the work on a ship or in a home, construction work is tied to a specific locality: the construction site. In this context, the ‘posting’ of EU-citizen migrant construction workers between member states is a good example of institutionally induced forms of segmentation in the workplace. Although migrants and nationals may be EU citizens alike, through the posting of workers regime, they are not equal labour market participants (Ciupijus 2011). Instead, migrant workers working at the same construction site performing similar jobs are treated differently depending on the regulatory framework that governs their employment contract. In the EU context, posted workers move as dependent employees of intra-EU service providers. The relevant EU Directive (96/71/EC) establishes a hard core of rights in the host country including minimum rates of pay and maximum working periods, while other rights are those of the sending state, such as social benefits. As such, posting in the construction sector is a typical example of ‘offshore’ workplace standards, akin to those working on a ship (Lillie 2010). Following EU accessions in 2004 and 2007, the use of posting increased substantially, as it proved profitable. The persistent socio-economic differences between lower- and higher-income EU member states provide for gross wage differences, even when host country wage levels are paid, of up to 30 per cent by using posting (Houwerzijl and Schrauwen 2018). Through the partial embeddedness of the posting employment relation in different national contexts, employers ‘exit’ national regulatory frames and isolate posted migrants from nationally institutionalized enforcement mechanisms (Lillie 2012). Posting has created a reconfiguration of employment relations at the workplace level, as enforcement and worker protection mechanisms remain nationally institutionalized (Berntsen and Lillie 2016; Lillie and Sippola 2011). Marino et al. (2017) discuss how the national labour market focus of labour unions is challenged by the presence of different types of migrant workers, including posted workers. In relation to posted construction workers, the ability of trade unions to protect them from poor working conditions is limited as they often fail to compel reluctant and evasive employers to abide by national standards (Lillie et al. 2020). However, the EU Court of Justice held (C-396/13, 12 February 2015) that labour unions
Political economy, law and the regulation of migrantsʼ workplaces 297 must be allowed to enforce compliance with the minimum labour conditions applicable in case of posting. Still, enforcement powers of national labour authorities are constrained in cross-border recruitment contexts, to the potential detriment of posted migrants (Wagner and Berntsen 2016). This is an issue the EU tries to address in the Revision of the Posting Directive (Houwerzijl and Schrauwen 2018), but posted (construction) workers remain, in legal terms, ‘offshore’. Finally, while posted work insulates migrants from worker protection mechanisms, the flexible labour market empowers them in certain ways too. Posted migrants do exert agency to advance their interests by ‘working the system’, reclaiming a certain degree of control and increasing their bargaining power, however small-scale these acts at the micro-level may be (Berntsen 2016). They are supported by the general rule of law setting in the EU, an institutional frame often lacking for migrant construction workers in the global South (Jureidini 2016), notoriously in the case of Qatar’s world cup football stadiums. Household: ‘Forced Intimacy’ at the Workplace The household as the workplace has a significant impact on the job characteristics, that is, the type of work performed and the rights it entails, particularly on the relationships between employers and workers. Domestic work is characterized by the blurring of the public–private dichotomy inherent to most work relationships: the workplace being the ‘public’ space where work is performed and the social interaction between workers and employers occurs, and the household as the ‘private’ realm of both employers and workers where social relations between them are excluded, a space of freedom and rest outside of labour relationships to which they can retreat. In domestic work, the household is simultaneously the workplace of the worker and the domestic space of the employer. This means that the workplace becomes a bi-dimensional location combining public and private spheres for employers. Such blurriness is further exacerbated in live-in domestic work relationships. In these cases, the employer’s household is the worker’s workplace and residence, which transforms it into a tri-dimensional space, combining a public sphere and two concurrent private ones, those private domains of the employer’s and the worker’s. Domestic work is also typically gendered work, often performed by women (Morokvasic 1984). In terms of regulation, it is difficult to draw a line between the public and private spheres of both employers and workers, which impairs the use of national or international law to regulate this type of work, namely the ILO Domestic Work Convention, 2011 (No. 189). The general protection of the household as a space mostly free from interference from public authority represents a challenge in terms of legal jurisdiction: ‘[b]ecause of its association with the private sphere (…), the home is usually associated with private law and family law domains, and not labour law. Consequently, the private household as workplace lacks regular protection’ (Schwiter et al. 2018). Additionally, this type of workplace may shift the source of regulation of domestic work away from labour and contract law (although some countries exclude domestic work from the scope of their labour law). This intimacy of sharing domestic space induces the transformation of a contractual work relation into another sort of social relationship between worker and employer, namely of familial nature. The metaphor ‘one of the family’ (Figueiredo et al. 2018) illustrates the changes in social relations that are detrimental to the worker. This fictional familiarity – ‘emotional labour’ based on ‘maternalism’ or close personal relations between worker and employer, as a mechanism of labour control
298 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration (Anderson 2007: 256) – creates relations that ‘are constructed and maintained on the basis of highly affective, personal ties rather than contractual rights and obligations’ (Frantz 2010: 59). In this type of labour relations, the workplace gives the employer control over aspects of the workers’ life – the food that can be consumed, the organization of the worker’s room, the impossibility of having visitors, the way rest time is enjoyed – otherwise left to the workers’ self-determination. This merging in a single space of two important dimensions of the worker’s personality – professional satisfaction and private life – has been called ‘the deprivation of a time-space outside of the workplace’ (Galerand et al. 2015:12). It also physically isolates domestic workers, reducing their ability to establish social relations outside the household and increasing feelings of isolation. This isolation also has consequences in terms of the establishment of support networks based on other domestic workers (class networks), fellow citizens (national or migrant networks) or even unionization. In this sense, the workplace transforms workers into inaccessible individuals, which affects their class identity and jeopardizes their political representation (Cederqvist and Sallaz 2014). Although many characteristics of the employment relation and its amalgamation with the private realm of the worker discussed here are true regardless of whether or not the worker is a migrant, domestic work, as discussed, is a typical ‘migrant job’. The fact that it is migrants, with a dependent and often insecure migration status, who perform domestic work, exacerbates the precarious intersection of migration and work status. A more secure migration status could provide a less precarious work status (on homes as spaces of migration governance, specifically for domestic workers, see also Marchetti and di Bartolomeo in this volume, Chapter 25). The confinement of live-in domestic workers to the household can be seen as a tacit denial of freedom of movement, which acts as a form of social control. This ensures that the worker is physically present in the household, work is indeed performed, and chances of absconding are curtailed (Jureidini and Moukarbel 2004). Such control can also result in restricting migrants’ labour mobility within the national labour market. This type of control comes from migration regimes restricting the place where migrants can live (namely compulsory live-in requirements) or the ability to leave the country without the employer’s permission. These features are linked to immigration law, instead of contractual labour law, rendering domestic workers ‘unfree at the moment of contract by virtue of the restrictive conditions imposed by their precarious migrant status, which is often constructed by the state’ (Fudge and Strauss 2014: 163). Migration regimes that tie workers to specific employers increase the asymmetry in labour relations: they curtail the workers’ bargaining power over working conditions and the ability of claiming rights; they also provide employers with the ultimate power to determine if the migrant can stay in the country and eventually obtain citizenship, if such a path is legally admissible at all (see also Piper in this volume, Chapter 32). Although commonly seen as a risk in terms of legal protection, the live-in requirement for domestic workers was validated in a recent landmark court case in Hong Kong.3 Against the contention that such a requirement presents a risk of servitude, forced labour, violation of the right to rest days or ill-treatment, or that it amounts to discrimination, the court considered that the harsh conditions present in this type of work are a matter of choice (on the discursive dichotomization of choice versus forced labour in migration governance, see also Thibos and Howard in this volume, Chapter 12) . The domestic worker is free to decide to migrate in the first place and keeps the right to terminate the employment contract. The court considered that undesired working conditions (that the worker decides to continue enduring because of some personal, economic, reasons) or even cases of ill-treatment, are not inherent to the live-in requirement itself and are a matter
Political economy, law and the regulation of migrantsʼ workplaces 299 of enforcement of applicable legal standards. This case also illustrates the national specificities that result in (lack of) enforcement of workplace rights.
CONCLUSION This chapter has focused on how migration status can intersect with workplace status. We have especially tried to show how migration regulation with its built-in contradictions, inequalities and contestations, plays out at the site of workplaces. We focused on three workplaces known for offering typical ‘migrant jobs’, where migration status exacerbates inequality and precariousness. These three specific workplaces – ships, construction sites and households – illustrate how the spatial context where migrant work is performed can create or increase dependence and subordination. While other workers have other social fields of interaction, these workplaces offer the migrants the main or only point of contact with the regulatory framework applicable to the work performed. These workplaces exemplify how de facto exclusion from national or international regulations enhances labour market segmentation mechanisms and insulates migrants from effective access to worker rights and representation. By combining forces and presenting our (socio)legal and labour studies insights, this chapter offers a frame for future studies into the different governing forces at work at different localities for various categories of migrant workers. Such studies might at least consider the following levels of analysis or critical lenses. Firstly, consideration must be given to crosscutting legal frameworks, operating at different levels (national or international) and different legal fields (e.g. migration law, labour law, contract law). Instances of dependence and subordination of migrant workers may originate due to the entangled migration regimes, and (lack of) labour mobility rights. The specific constellations may also provide protection against migrant abuse, if effectively enforced. Secondly, critical study of labour migration must consider how it is governed by a political economy that follows global market demands for desired (highly) skilled talents, on the one hand, and cheap, flexible workers on the other (see also Vasey, Chapter 14; Azmeh, Chapter 18; Piper, Chapter 32, all in this volume). Where welcoming policies are designed for the former, effective state and workplace regulation to protect the rights, terms and conditions of employment for the latter tends to be absent. Workplace and job characteristics, often sector-specific, shape differences in work relations. In addition, the political economy of consumer behaviour must be considered as an explanatory factor. Consumers have little knowledge of how much of the money they pay for a product is for the migrants who make the (cheap) produce available to them. Possibly, future research could contribute to raising such awareness. Thirdly, social relations of power governing the daily lives of migrants at the workplace level, illustrated here by the ships’ master, the recruitment agency or the ‘madam’, is central to the migrant workers position. Segmented workplaces involve myriad power relations that function as a form of social control, fostering ethnic antagonism at work, undermining the formation of social networks and community building and blocking the exercise of labour rights at the workplace. Such social control might be challenged by (regulatory) control by state authorities as well as by labour unions. Critical assessment of migration governance and its intersection with the workplace means it should not jeopardize social control at the workplace but rather it should facilitate social control to fight workplace discrimination.
300 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration Fourthly, and finally, any future studies of the intersection of migration governance and workplace governance should consider the further digitalization, ‘platformization’ as well as automation/robotization of work as such developments will add new layers of complexity and challenges for migration into the future workplace.
NOTES 1. Niederlassungserlaubnis für Hochqualifizierte; and proposed Fachkräfteeinwanderungsgesetz 2019. 2. ILO Convention concerning Migration for Employment (Revised 1949) (No. 97) excludes seamen from its scope [Article 11, 2(c)]. The EU Directive (2002/14/EC) permits derogations from the obligation to promote social dialogue in respect of crews of vessels plying the high seas [Article 3(3)]. 3. Lubiano Nancy Almorin v. The Director of Immigration (HCAL 210/2016 [2018] HKCFI 331).
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302 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration Kara, S. (2017), Modern Slavery: A Global Perspective, New York: Columbia University Press. Kim, J. and S. Jang (2018), ‘Seafarers’ quality of life: organizational culture, self-efficacy, and perceived fatigue’, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 15 (10), https://www .mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/10/2150. Ladegaard, H. J. (2017), The Discourse of Powerlessness and Repression: Life Stories of Domestic Migrant Workers in Hong Kong, London: Routledge. Lee, S. (2018), ‘Encounters in the workplace: everyday diversity in a multinational professional firm’, Social & Cultural Geography, https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2018.1499040. Lillie, N. (2010), ‘Bringing the offshore ashore: transnational production, industrial relations and the reconfiguration of sovereignty’, International Studies Quarterly, 54 (3): 683–704. Lillie, N. (2012), ‘Subcontracting, posted migrants and labour market segmentation in Finland’, British Journal of Industrial Relations, 40 (1): 148–67. Lillie, N. and M. Sippola (2011), ‘National unions and transnational workers: the case of Olkiluoto 3, Finland’, Work, Employment & Society, 25 (2): 292–308. Lillie, N., L. Berntsen, I. Wagner and S. Danaj (2020), ‘A comparative analysis of union responses to posted work in four European countries’, in J. Arnholtz and N. Lillie (eds), Posted Work and the Future of Intra EU Labour Mobility, London: Routledge, chapter 5. Lucas, R. and S. Mansfield (2010), ‘The use of migrant labour in the hospitality sector: current and future implications’, in M. Ruhs and B. Anderson (eds), Who Needs Migrant Workers?, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 159–86. MacKenzie, R. and C. Forde (2009), ‘The rhetoric of the “good worker” versus the realities of employers’ use and the experiences of migrant workers’, Work, Employment and Society, 23 (1): 142–59. Marino, S., J. Roosblad and R. Penninx (2017), Trade Unions and Migrant Workers: New Contexts and Challenges in Europe, Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. McCollum, D. and A. Findlay (2015), ‘“Flexible” workers for “flexible” jobs? The labour market function of A8 migrant labour in the UK’, Work, Employment & Society, 29 (3): 427–43. Mensah, T., M. Anderson and D. Fitzpatrick (2005), Seafarers’ Rights, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Morokvasic, M. (1984), ‘Birds of passage are also women …’, The International Migration Review, 18 (4): 886–907. Nenadić, A., D. Jašić and A. Krajnović (2015), ‘Sociological aspects of seafarers’ life and work and management styles in shipping’, International Journal of Economics and Management Sciences, 4 (3), DOI: 10.4172/2162-6359.1000237. Paul, R. (2015), The Political Economy of Border Drawing: Arranging Legality in European Labor Migration Policies, New York: Berghahn Books. Paul, R. (2018), ‘How “low-skilled” migrant workers are made: border-drawing in migration policy’, in C. Rijken and T. de Lange (eds), Towards a Decent Labour Market for Low-Waged Migrant Workers, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, pp. 57–78. Piore, M. J. (1979), Birds of Passage: Migrant Labor in Industrial Societies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pocock N. S., L. H. Nguyen, D. E. Lucero-Prisno III, C. Zimmerman and S. Oram (2018), ‘Occupational, physical, sexual and mental health and violence among migrant and trafficked commercial fishers and seafarers from the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS): systematic review’, Global Health Research and Policy, 3: 28. Poteete, A. R., M. A. Janssen and E. Ostrom (2010), Working Together: Collective Action, the Commons, and Multiple Methods in Practice, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Romer, P. M. (2001), ‘Should the government subsidize supply or demand in the market for scientists and engineers?’, in A. B. Jaffe, J. Lerner and S. Stern (eds), Innovation Policy and the Economy, Vol. 1, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 221–52. Sampson, H. (2013), ‘Globalisation, labour market transformation and migrant marginalisation: the example of transmigrant seafarers in Germany’, Journal of International Migration and Integration, 14 (4): 751–65. Sassen, S. (1998), Globalization and Its Discontents: Essays on the New Mobility of People and Money, New York: The New Press.
Political economy, law and the regulation of migrantsʼ workplaces 303 Schwiter, K., K. Strauss and K. England (2018), ‘At home with the boss: migrant live-in caregivers, social reproduction and constrained agency in the UK, Canada, Austria and Switzerland’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 43 (3): 462–76. Scott, S. (2012), ‘Migrant-local hiring queues in the UK food industry’, Population, Space and Place, 19 (5): 459–71. Valenduc, G. (2019), ‘New forms of work and employment in the digital economy’, in A. Serrano-Pascual and M. Jepsen (eds), The Deconstruction of Employment as a Political Question: ‘Employment’ as a Floating Signifier, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 63–80. Wagner, I. and L. Berntsen (2016), ‘Restricted rights: obstacles in enforcing the labour rights of mobile EU workers in the German and Dutch construction sector’, Transfer, 22 (2): 193–206. Waldinger, R. and M. Lichter (2003), How the Other Half Works: Immigration and the Social Organization of Labour, Berkeley: University of California Press. Ypi, L. (2016), ‘Taking workers as a class: the moral dilemmas of guestworker programmes’, in S. Fine and L. Ypi (eds), Migration in Political Theory: The Ethics of Movement and Membership, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 151–74.
25. Homes as workplaces at the intersection of migration, care and gender regimes Sabrina Marchetti and Anna di Bartolomeo
INTRODUCTION The home can be seen as a microcosm that interfaces with wider political, social and economic (national and transnational) processes. Homes are locations for inter-subjective interactions, loaded with processes of identity making; constructions of social hierarchies; and boundaries of inclusion/exclusion between subjects that reflect the different positions that these subjects have, at the material and symbolic levels (Blunt and Dowling 2006). In relation to migration, the home is a crucial space to observe what has recently been called ‘everyday bordering’ (Yuval-Davis et al. 2019), the enactment of separations between migrants and non-migrants in their everyday encounters, such as the workplace, in hospital or schools (Yuval-Davis et al. 2019). Relationships inside homes typically involve people who are living together as housemates, friends or family. For migrants, however, it is important to consider how the homes in which migrants live in the host-country often do not correspond to the homes where they used to live with their family (see Bonjour and Cleton in this volume, Chapter 13). Migrants, especially women, often live together with the family of their employers for whom they work as nannies, cleaners or caregivers, and thus such homes are both their accommodation and their workplace (de Lange et al. in this volume, Chapter 24). Given the importance of these circumstances, this chapter will focus on the role of homes in the governance and politics of migration through the lens of migrant domestic workers. The International Labour Organization (ILO) has estimated the number of international migrants active in this sector at 11.5 million (ILO 2015). The origin countries of international domestic workers can be grouped by region: workers from the Philippines and Indonesia go mainly to other Asian countries, the Middle East, Europe and North America. For Eastern Europe, important origin countries are Ukraine, Romania and Moldova. Poland is at the same time both a country of origin (for women going to Germany and Western Europe) and a destination, especially for Ukrainians. In South or Central America, as well as in several African countries, one can mainly find internal and South–South migrations. India is an interesting case for internal migration as well as a sending country, especially for women going to the Middle East. In all these cases of international migration, phenomena related to domestic work overlap with different politics and systems of governance of migration, which vary from country to country, and over time (Giles et al. 2014; Gottfried and Chun 2018). Within this perspective, we will look at the different forces that shape relationships inside employers’ homes, and how these forces intersect with the governance and politics of international migrations. In fact, we argue that what happens in employers’ homes can be seen as the conjunction between different political regimes, namely (1) the gender regimes that assign specific functions in society and family to women, along with the class, race and cit304
Homes at the intersection of migration, care and gender regimes 305 izenship differences existing among them; (2) the care regime that regulates the distribution of care for the elderly, children, or sick people, in an interplay between households, markets and states; and (3) migratory regimes that regulate migrants’ mobilities and their conditions in their countries of departure and arrival (Lutz 2011; Lutz and Palenga-Möllenbeck 2011). Accordingly, this chapter proceeds across three levels: homes as sites of gendered regimes and power negotiation in a feminist intersectional perspective; homes as the terrain of different care and welfare regimes; and homes as objects of migration governance. The chapter ends with a discussion of resistance to exploitation in domestic work, mainly with reference to the campaigns on the ILO Convention No. 189 and its motto that ‘domestic work is work’, as well as to recent developments in gender, welfare and migration studies.
HOMES AND GENDER REGIMES: AN INTERSECTIONAL PERSPECTIVE Homes have been the object of analysis by feminist activists and scholars who under slogans such as ‘the personal is political’, have drawn attention to what happens inside the home as a crucial site of power negotiation. Feminists have brought to attention the importance of cleaning, caring and other domestic tasks in the constitution of gender divisions in society. Whether paid or unpaid, these activities have been defined as ‘reproductive labour’, emphasising the necessity of preparing food, mending clothing, cleaning homes, giving birth and raising children, assisting elderly and sick people for the prosperity of the entire society, day after day, and across generations (Kofman 2012; Petersen 2003). In contemporary economies, increasing portions of these activities are commodified, and assigned to a workforce with strong gender, race, citizenship and class-based dimensions (Boris and Parreñas 2010; Folbre 2001; Sassen 2002; Wolkowitz 2006; Zelizer 2009). In this sector, women are usually both the employer and the employee. This often creates a situation in which two women share an everyday, intimate, personal relationship directed to the accomplishment of highly gendered tasks, and yet they are positioned hierarchically with each other in the home. Highlighting the unequal distribution of this work between women, it can be seen through the lenses of what has been called ‘racial division of reproductive labor’ (Nakano-Glenn 2002) or ‘international division of reproductive labour’ (Parreñas 2001). Arlie Russell Hochschild (2002) identified ‘global care chains’ that call attention to the ‘care drain’ taking place from the global South to the global North, with family life of employers being attended to, at the price of domestic workers’ own family life (Pratt 2012; Yeates 2004). The intersectional character of the inequality affecting the employer–employee dyad, challenges notions of ‘sisterhood’ between women. Assumptions about a mutual understanding based on ‘common’ gender roles are counterbalanced by class-based hierarchies that simultaneously intertwine with differences based on age, religion, race or ethnicity (Haskins 2001; Momsen 1999; Yeoh and Huang 1998). If we further consider a migration perspective, we see how the women in this dyad have very different positions in relation to citizenship rights. The asymmetry between the employer (full citizen) and the worker (alien or temporary citizen) leads to a wide spectrum of phenomena. This can range from abuse to benevolent maternalistic support (as in the emphasis on the worker being a ‘member of the family’) in which, albeit
306 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration unwillingly, the employer exercises her power over a migrant subject dependent on her for her work and migratory status (Barua et al. 2017; Marchetti 2016). Finally, it is important to discuss governmental programmes promoting the labour participation of unemployed (low-class ethnicised) women: in the Netherlands or Slovenia, for instance, such groups have been directed towards paid domestic work, understood as a viable job for all women (Triandafyllidou and Marchetti 2014). This is paradigmatic of a specific gendered understanding – all women are apt to do domestic work – but also of class and race. These policies seem indeed to imply that two categories of women exist: the richer and more educated who should be freed from care commitments to engage in a professional career, and those generally belonging to lower classes and with ethnicised backgrounds, who should take responsibility for the care of homes and families for the former.
CARE AND WELFARE REGIMES The inequalities that emerge through domestic work within homes also intertwine with specific ‘cultures of care’ that favour some practices over others. The ‘social organisation of care’ is the result of different interactions between actors such as households, states, markets and the non-profit sector. It may vary between different settings depending on several factors (Farris and Marchetti 2017), affected by each actor’s behaviour in relationship to the employment of migrant domestic workers. At the household level, delegating care tasks to an external person, especially if that person is a migrant, is not always well regarded or supported by employers’ families and their social networks. This relates to specific expectations of women’s roles in the family, concerns about parenting models and/or visions of elderly life and illness. In this light, Triandafyllidou and Marchetti (2014) have identified some regional patterns across European countries. Typically for northern and post-soviet European countries, institutionalisation of care is preferred over home-based care. In this setting, the private employment of care and domestic workers is seen as a challenge to ideals of equality, against class-differences between women (Kristensen 2017; Radziwinowiczówna et al. 2018). In contrast, in Southern European countries, care is provided inside the home by family members, notably women. Here, deciding to delegate care work to another person is often experienced as a necessary practical arrangement yet fraught with moral and emotional distress due to the feeling of disappointing expectations about mothers, wives or daughters (Solís 2014; Triandafyllidou and Marchetti 2014). Similar patterns concerning the impact of the national ‘culture of care’ on employment relationships can be found outside Europe. Along the same lines, research has shown that employers’ attitudes towards the delegation of care and domestic tasks are of paramount importance in shaping employment relationships in homes, from South Africa (Galvaan et al. 2015) to Yemen (De Regt 2009) and Singapore (Lundström 2013). At the state level, we see different trends around the world, with public institutions being more or less involved in organising care provision for children, the elderly, and sick people. Here again, there are places where care needs are understood as a personal issue, a responsibility properly left to families; and others, where states have more welfarist approaches and intervene in care provision. However, they do so in a range of ways, and different interactions between markets and states affect the employment of domestic workers in private households. From the perspective of migrant domestic workers, we see that even in instances where states
Homes at the intersection of migration, care and gender regimes 307 do not directly intervene in care provision, they still are responsible for the legislative framework that allows workers to offer their services inside private homes (Da Roit and Moreno‐ Fuentes 2019; Estevez-Abe and Hobson 2015; Shire 2015). In Europe, the number of households employing a domestic worker is increasing as a response to the rising privatisation of childcare and elder care (Williams 2012). Since public nurseries, homes for the elderly and hospitals can no longer satisfy their demands, European families are shifting to purchasing market-based care and cleaning services (see Triandafyllidou and Marchetti 2014). In countries such as Italy, France and Belgium, there is a strong intervention by the state in supporting employers to individually ‘buy’ care service through allowances for families with disabled and seriously ill members, or young children. In Italy, this has been seen as an incentive for the emergence of what has been called a ‘migrant-in-the-family’ model, whereby families become direct employers of migrant care workers (Ambrosini 2013; Degiuli 2016). In Germany, the state intervenes to support the functioning of the market by emphasising the role of employment agencies and other intermediaries specialised in this sector. In the United Kingdom, there is a two-tier market: since affluent families receive no allowances, they resort to private agencies from which they hire care workers, and working-class families who are recipients of cash allowances use them to cover general family expenses and only to a smaller extent to employ a private caregiver (Van Hooren 2012). Outside Europe, scenarios also vary. In East Asia, countries such as South Korea and Japan have a long-standing tradition of ‘regulated institutional approaches’ to care services and are reluctant to incorporate foreigners in their workforce on nationalistic grounds (Lan 2018; Peng 2017). Hong Kong and Singapore, by contrast, have very personalised conceptions of care provision, with high levels of employment of foreigners within a ‘liberal market approach’ (Peng 2017), similar to what happens with the European ‘migrant-in-the-family’ model. In the middle is Taiwan, which has a tradition of public provision of healthcare and elder care, and yet when it comes to care for the elderly and disabled mainly relies on a liberalised system of intermediary agencies to employ migrant workers (Cheng 2014; Lan 2007). A globally common approach, also seen in the two countries that are considered the largest employers of domestic workers, Brazil and India, is a tradition of service work provided by girls (and some men), internal migrants, and/or ethnicised groups. This can be seen in Ecuador, Bolivia and the Caribbean region (Casanova 2013; Herrera 2016; Martelotte 2016), South and Central African countries (Ally 2009) and China and South Asia (Neetha 2018; Peng 2017). Here domestic workers often live for many years together with employers’ families to satisfy their care needs as they change through various life stages: from taking care of children to caring for the elderly. A contrasting model is found where a foreign worker is employed for a specific, limited number of years, with the explicit function of taking care of children before they grow up, or of elderly relatives in the final years of their life. This model is the same in very different places from Canada and the United States (Michel and Peng 2017; Romero 2018), to Lebanon, Israel and Middle Eastern countries (Fernandez et al. 2014; Liebelt 2011; Ozyegin 2010), to some countries in the European Union. The implications of this model in its interconnection with international migration policies will be explored below, relating to the question of the home as a site of migration governance.
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GOVERNING HOMES THROUGH MIGRATION POLICIES State policies may strongly influence the employment of temporary migrants for care and domestic work (Ruhs and Anderson 2010). Policies that make the regular employment of migrants very difficult contribute to the under-valuation of these jobs, which are already generally assigned to the most vulnerable and stigmatised social groups in any one national or regional context (Lan 2006). Several studies have paid special attention to the question of citizenship rights for migrant domestic workers: Raffaella Sarti (2005) provides a historical overview of their legal status, while scholars such as Rhacel Parreñas (2001), Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez (2010), Aiwa Ong (1999), and Daiva Stasiulis and Abigail Bakan (1997) more generally discuss the implications of their being undocumented or ‘partial citizens’ in Europe and the USA. These studies show how women migrating to work in the domestic and private care sector face a complex landscape of migration and labour regulations that is extremely difficult to navigate. The situation is also problematic for households that cannot find appropriate or affordable care within declining welfare states and among fellow nationals reluctant to take these jobs, but are forbidden or discouraged from legally hiring a non-national domestic worker (or third-country national in the EU). As a consequence, irregular migration and informal work are expanding inside the realm of private homes. In fact, many EU national governments are reluctant to provide residence permits to migrants doing domestic and care work (Triandafyllidou and Marchetti 2014). In places such as Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Germany, it is impossible to legally employ a foreign domestic worker. In Germany, exceptions are made for EU migrants (from Poland and Romania), mainly hired through cross-border employment agencies. In Belgium, France and Spain, although hiring is possible in principle, it is in practice made unfeasible by a strict application of a labour market-test: the need to demonstrate that no national worker is available to take up the same job, a significant obstacle for domestic employers. In countries where hiring is possible, the regulations on the recruitment process can vary widely: in Italy, Belgium and United Kingdom, the employer needs to formally sponsor the worker’s trip and the period of residence, granting work, accommodation and financial support; while in Austria workers are self-employed, which releases the households from any responsibility. In the UK, a residence permit is tied to a single employer and is lost if the worker leaves the job (see similar cases illustrated below). Finally, in countries where hiring migrant domestic workers is not allowed, the au pair scheme has been increasingly abused by families as an opportunity to find affordable childcare rather than as a cultural-exchange experience for a young person as it is intended (Cox and Busch 2018; Isaksen 2010). Outside Europe, the Middle East is increasingly attracting attention for the violence to which foreign workers have been exposed due to their lack of rights as migrants. There is not yet very extensive scholarship on this but interesting studies illustrate the cases of domestic workers in Egypt and Lebanon (Jureidini 2014), Israel (Liebelt 2011), Saudi Arabia and the Emirates (Parreñas and Silvey 2016; Vlieger 2012). Bina Fernandez, Marina de Regt and Gregory Currie (2014) show that the conditions of migrant domestic workers vary depending on whether they are contract workers or freelance workers. Contract workers are usually hired via private agencies through brokers in the origin countries. Usually, these workers obtain a residence permit on the basis of the sponsorship system (called kafala) which ties them to a single employer. If they want to leave their employer/sponsor, they will lose their permit to stay and become undocumented. The use of this system is very common in Saudi Arabia and
Homes at the intersection of migration, care and gender regimes 309 the Gulf States, but not everywhere in the Middle East, where other forms of employment (and residence authorisation) predominate, and many workers freelance in the market on the basis of an independent residence permit. Of course, in countries with the kafala system one may also find undocumented migrants working at risk of being deported back to their country of origin. In the whole Middle East, most workers come from Asia, with many employers preferring women of Muslim religion from Indonesia and the Philippines. A similar setting can be found in Asian countries with rigid migration policies, where employers rely on agency-based recruitment. In Taiwan, for instance, a complex system of agencies and brokers is in place to channel workers from Indonesia, the Philippines or Vietnam. Working conditions in the employing families are often so difficult that contract workers resolve to run away and start working, undocumented, in factories and agriculture (where salaries are better), until the moment when they are caught and repatriated (Cheng 2014). Hong Kong and Singapore are (in)famous as important destination countries for Asian women, where their employment conditions are made extremely vulnerable by restrictive migration policies (Ladegaard 2016; Laliberté 2017). Japan and South Korea, by contrast, overtly resist employing a foreign workforce in this sector and only small numbers are admitted through regular channels every year (Lan 2018; Peng 2017). In North America, the most interesting case is Canada, where the Live-in Caregiver Program, inaugurated in 1992, established that after a period of two years of employment in the sector, and on condition of meeting certain requirements concerning education, language and the employer’s positive opinion, the worker could apply for permanent residency – which was a unique opportunity for workers in this sector (Fudge 2011). Unfortunately, this policy was terminated in 2014 due to a restrictive change in Canadian migration politics (Boyd 2017). However, it is important to notice how in this case, as in the sponsorship-based systems in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, employers retain paramount importance in determining the outcome, making the workers unduly dependent on them to maintain their livelihood and their migration status (Marchetti 2016). As these examples have implied, recruitment agencies are increasingly key actors in the interconnection between migration and care regimes. From Germany to Indonesia, from the Philippines to Brazil, agencies and brokers navigate through different ‘care mindsets’, selecting candidates with skills and (ethnicised) profiles that match the demands of prospective employers in the destination countries, while also managing the regulations about employment and residence permits for overseas workers, which vary from place to place. These regulations are also affected by changes in the bilateral agreements between countries about mobility, which in some cases are an important sphere of political and diplomatic negotiations. The exemplary case in this scenario is that of the Filipino government, which has entertained bilateral agreements about overseas workers since the 1970s, and which does not hesitate to suspend agreements and put ‘bans’ on some countries, at times of diplomatic turmoil, as has already happened due to the systematic violation of human rights of Filipino domestic workers and au pairs in Denmark and Saudi Arabia.
FORMS OF RESISTANCE: HOMES AS A ‘REAL’ WORKPLACE Against this background, starting in the 2000s, the status of paid domestic workers – their poor working conditions and the discrimination they face in different parts of the world – has come
310 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration to be seen as a global problem whose governance is a challenge that exceeds national borders. There has been a gradual development of what can be seen as the ‘global governance of paid domestic work’. This is a multi-layered framework aimed at improving domestic workers’ rights, developed by some of the key actors at the forefront of gender and migration issues in recent years. International organisations such as UN-Women, the ILO, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD), the European Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA), the UN Commission on the Status of Women, as well as several international trade unions and NGOs have undertaken specific actions to promote domestic workers’ rights. At the same time, the founding of the International Domestic Workers Federation (IDWF) in 2012 testifies to a process of institutionalisation of a movement composed directly of domestic workers, including many migrants (cf. Piper in this volume, Chapter 32). Pivotal in this process has been the ILO’s passing, in 2011, of Convention No. 189 (C189) Concerning Decent Work for Domestic Workers, and the related Recommendation No. 201. The convention has finally defined paid domestic work by saying that domestic work ‘means all work performed in or for a household or households’. Thus, it encompasses two broad areas of family care (whether for the elderly or children) and household maintenance more generally. This includes the cleaning and tidying of living spaces, washing and ironing clothes, cooking meals, taking care of pets and plants, as well as tending to children and assisting elderly family members. The passing of C189 was a striking achievement in comparison with the traditional lack of rights for a category of labourers who, in different social contexts, usually belong to the most impoverished and socially stigmatised groups (poor women and children, undocumented migrants, ethnic minorities, and so on). In several countries, domestic work is still not recognised as work, and is therefore excluded from labour protections. Domestic workers are often deprived of monetised salaries and compensated with only food and shelter. Also, in countries where domestic work is regulated through labour laws, provisions differ significantly from those in place for other jobs, having lower remunerations and less social protection. In this scenario, it is important to consider the impact of C189 on campaigns for domestic workers’ rights waged in different national contexts. In fact, when one gets closer to the specificities of each country, there are important differences in the actions and approaches of social movements, states and international organisations in relation to this issue. State and non-state organisations position themselves in contrasting ways, depending on the national context they speak from and the capacity of C189 to mobilise actors in each place. This raises questions such as: how are different local actors reacting to C189 as a global governance measure for domestic workers’ rights? What role does the state play in this process? How do such processes relate to wider political and social transformations taking place at the national and regional levels? Cherubini et al.(2019) consider C189 as an exogenous change leading to the improvement of domestic workers’ rights in various countries – looking at the actors involved, the focus of their action, the alliances they establish, and the frames they activate.
CONCLUSION We have shown here that the home is an important site for the deployment of the ‘bordering of everyday life’ (Yuval-Davis et al. 2018) in which the existence of borders and their regulations
Homes at the intersection of migration, care and gender regimes 311 pertaining to them not only affect people living at geographical borders, but the organisation of society as a whole. This also happens at the level of everyday life, inside places that are seemingly far removed from the actuality of border regimes (see Rajaram in this volume, Chapter 15). In this light, homes are a very intense location for the governance of migration, enacted at different levels. Firstly, such migration governance takes place in and through the inequality characterising the relationship between employers and employees. It is affected by the different entitlements to citizenship rights, as workers are often temporary and undocumented migrants. Moreover, in countries where applications for residence permits can only be done through the support of employers, workers are put in a situation of practical and psychological dependency on employers which, in simple terms, replicates a more general condition of uncertainty, dependency and vulnerability in which migrants live vis-à-vis states and institutions in host countries. Secondly, migration governance establishes who are the subjects whose presence is permitted (or not) inside the homes of a given country: migration policies determine whether migrants in general are entitled to work in this labour sector or not. These policies might also distinguish between nationalities entitled to work and those who are not, and for how many years. They might specify which recruitment channels are allowed and which are not, including the role played by agencies and intermediaries. As a consequence, these policies will define the national identity, duration of stay, and employment conditions of the migrant domestic workers living inside the country’s homes. Finally, migration governance interacts with the governance of welfare and care regimes, producing specific social representations of the care work performed by migrants. This has important repercussions for the general understanding of the sphere of reproductive labour, which traditionally finds its preferred location in the home. The inequalities illustrated above reinforce the perception that caring and cleaning for others is a low-level degrading occupation, only taken up by people from the most deprived and stigmatised sectors, who have no alternatives. What we find here, then, is persistent association of caring and cleaning tasks with subjects in vulnerable positions, lacking citizenship and social rights. This reproduces the traditional conception of the home, as defined by Blunt and Dowling (2006), as a place of hierarchies and boundaries between subjects which reflects larger economic and social divisions in society.
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PART V PROCESSES AND PRACTICES OF MIGRATION GOVERNANCE
26. Interrogating time and temporality in migration governance Melanie Griffiths
INTRODUCTION As this Handbook attests, there are many different ways by which political bodies attempt to shape people’s movements and settlements. This chapter analyses an underexamined dimension of migration governance: that of time. Time is written into the bureaucracies, administrative categories, judiciaries, legislation and decision-making of immigration politics. It is integral to the creation of immigration systems, the design of immigration rules, and the operationalisation – and negotiation – of policies, as well as people’s subjective experiences of migration and moving. The chapter appraises the evolving field of temporally informed migration research and outlines the main emerging areas of work. Using examples from a wide range of countries and types of immigration, it shows how a temporal lens contributes to understanding the ways power and the state are expressed and experienced in migration governance. This is a still-developing conceptual field. Until surprisingly recently, temporal considerations were largely absent from the migration literature. Except for a handful of notable early exceptions, such as Torsten Hägerstrand and his ‘Time Geography’ work, mobility has been primarily viewed as a spatial phenomenon. Time was only part of the framing in a few areas (and often only implicitly), including work on migration and the life-course (for example, marriage, child-raising, retirement, ageing) (King et al. 2006; Lulle and King 2016; White 2006), discussion of second or third ‘generations’ of migrants (Ali 2011), and aeromobilities and transport technology (Adey 2010; Cwerner et al. 2009; Urry 2007). A more explicit consideration of time in migration studies only began to develop at the beginning of the twenty-first century, after the social scientist Saulo Cwerner called for exploration of ‘the complex temporal dimensions of the migration process’ (2001). Drawing on research with Brazilians in London, Cwerner offered important conceptual tools for analysis, including teasing apart the strange, heteronomous, asynchronous, remembered, collage, liminal, diasporic and nomadic times of migration. Over a decade later, Ali Rogers, Bridget Anderson and I published a scoping study,1 in which we reviewed existing work on time and migration and sketched out an emerging research agenda (Griffiths et al. 2013). Since then, there has been diverse and rapidly expanding work examining migration experiences and governance through a temporal lens (for example, see Harper and Zubida 2017 on the concept of ‘migration time’) and how migrants and borders are mutually constituted and shaped through temporal practices (Hurd et al. 2017). This chapter considers the role of time in power, bureaucracy and the state, before identifying five key emerging areas of scholarship: rhythms; speed and waiting; (im)permanence; the past, present and future; and temporal synchronicity and disjuncture. Drawing on work that illustrates the multitude of ways by which time is conceptualised, regulated, employed, negotiated and experienced, by individuals and institutions, in migration policy and practice, the chapter shows how a temporally infused 316
Interrogating time and temporality in migration governance 317 research approach offers new insights into and ways of theorising migration in the twenty-first century.
TIME, GOVERNANCE AND MIGRATION Time is a complex and slippery concept, one that has long captivated (and eluded) scientists and philosophers alike. It is a human universal, but culturally informed and context-dependent, with enough faces to mean everything and nothing. Sociologist Barbara Adam describes a bewilderingly interconnected set of concerns around ‘time, temporality, tempo and timing, between clock time, chronology, social time and time-consciousness, between motion, process, change, continuity and the temporal modalities of past, present and future, between time as resource, as ordering principle and as becoming’ (Adam 1994: 13). Typologies distinguish between time that is public or personal, global or local, natural or cultural, human, astronomical, chronological, biological, political or disciplinary (for example, Nowotny 1994). Time is embedded in social institutions, practices and knowledge (Adam 1995) as well as the legal, political, financial and bureaucratic spheres (Hope 2009; Hutchings 2008). State power is operationalised through temporal devices and controls like schedules (for example, the working week) and age requirements (for example, around schooling and pensions) (Allen 2008; Edensor 2006), through particular conceptualisations of time (including the political past, present and future) and concern with the temporal biopolitics of their populations (for example, life stages, ageing) (Braun 2007). As with all political or bureaucratic systems, migration management operates through the prism of time. The expression of state power through temporal relations is described as ‘time politics’ by Cwerner (2004) and is evident throughout immigration policies. These policies are littered with temporal conditionalities, such as qualifying periods and waits of specific durations and minimum/maximum ages. There are temporal safeguards (such as notice periods before deportation, protections for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children) and windows of opportunity (for example, three days to lodge an appeal, limited amnesties). There are also temporal barriers and hurdles that trip people up, such as complex temporal requirements regarding the timing of application, lengths of time needing to be accrued, deadlines and ages or life stages of migrants and sponsors or dependants (Griffiths et al. 2013). In addition, there are temporal punishments, such as return bans, detention and forced delays, as well as temporal rewards, such as visas (which are ‘gifts’ of circumscribed time-space2 (Griffiths 2017)). Time here may be contested and controversial, from politicisation within political discourse, to individual disputes over the measurement and valuation of their time or age. The classificatory schemes used by immigration governance systems work through time: from different immigration categories, to the very distinction between migrants and citizens. Overstayers have remained past their deadline. Citizens enjoy permanence, unlike the limited and conditional time-space of foreigners. Time is also built into the rights of different immigration categories and mobility between them. Precarious and irregular migrants, for example, are ‘produced’ and governed through the politicisation of time in immigration policies and practices (explored in Norway by Brux et al. 2018), and temporal strategies, such as the acceleration and deceleration of their time through bureaucratic requirements (for Sweden, see Lilja et al. 2019). The rest of the chapter explores some of these heterogeneous ‘times’ of migration governance, focusing on five emerging areas of temporally informed migration research: rhythms;
318 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration speeds; (im)permanence; the past, present and future; and temporal synchronicity and disjuncture.
RHYTHMS AND JOURNEYS We live in a world that is dynamic in both time and space, as illustrated by the mobilities scholarship (for example, Urry 2007). There are rhythms to migrations, and orderings that are planned or anticipated. Attempts to govern migration often focus on anticipating or managing ‘flows’ of people into particular time-space configurations, such as the periodised, time-limited durations of visas, or circular, seasonal visits. Temporary labour migrants, for example, may experience the ‘bracketed and ticking’ timescape of time-delimited visas (Harper and Zubida 2017). Policymakers tend to imagine immigration journeys – through both geographical space and legal processes – to be linear and progressive, whether endlessly and unstoppably flowing ahead, or episodic and halting (for example, the clock ‘stopping’ between immigration applications and decisions). The migration journey is often simplified as a mechanical forward-facing march from A to B, or across legal categories: the idealised path of arrival, to settlement, integration and eventual naturalisation, or the demonised opposite: illegal entry to illegitimate residence and eventual detection, detention and deportation. Ideas of time as linear and forward-facing progress into the future are widespread and longstanding, albeit problematic and criticised (for example, Game 2001). In practice, immigration journeys (geographically and legally speaking) are rarely ones of sequential, progressive trajectory. The reality is one of diversions, delays, queues, repetition, reversals, stasis and liminality. Migrants may become stuck in immigration detention, legal blackholes or intermediary countries. Periods expected to be temporary and places intended to be transitory may drag on for years, whilst supposedly temporally secure immigration statuses can be lost, with even citizenship potentially revocable (Rodrigues de Castro and Moulin in this volume, Chapter 3). The anticipated eventual return ‘home’ may be endlessly delayed or take the form of repeat short visits rather than the expected single, final move (Ali and Holden 2006; Conway et al. 2009). Cyclical migration rhythms are evident from the forced movements of refugees (Novak 2017), to the seasonal migration of privileged retirees chasing the sun (Gustafson 2002). Circularity may be an aim of policymakers (and migrants), tied perhaps to agricultural seasons, financial cycles, political terms, academic semesters, family dynamics or weather conditions at border crossings. The circularity of people’s time can also be framed as obstructive to bureaucratic and legal linearity. An Immigration Minister in the UK described irregular migrants’ time as abusively cyclical, accusing them of creating ‘unnecessary delays, so as to eternally cycle through the legal system and avoid removal, like “a never-ending game of snakes and ladders”’ (Griffiths 2017: 52). Appreciating the (anticipated or actualised) rhythm and temporal orderings of migration journeys offers insight into migration governance, from attempts to theorise mobility and model flows, to policies seeking to dictate people’s movements in time-space.
Interrogating time and temporality in migration governance 319
TEMPOS: SPEED AND STASIS Questions of tempo, such as slowings, pauses and accelerations, relate closely to concepts of rhythm. There has long been the sense that our lives are speeding up; a phenomena variously linked to capitalism, bureaucracy, politics and new technology (Hassan 2009; Scheuerman 2009; Wajcman and Dodd 2016). Some people can move at much greater speeds and over greater distances than ever before, not least because of areomobilities and technological advancements (Cwerner et al. 2009; Klein 2004; Lash and Urry 1994). Privilege, be it financial or favoured citizenship, further eases travel and migration, including through speedy boarding, private jets, premium application services, expedited decision-making, accessible visas or additional, bought citizenships. But whilst some people’s experience of moving is one of increased ease and efficiency, others face a sticky or suspended limbo, or a monstrous uncontrollable frenzy. Faster living is often valued positively; associated with modernity, globalisation, civilisation and progress. But speed can also work to marginalise, exclude and punish. Politicians tend to call for immigration decision-making and deportations to occur at ever-quicker rates. Immigration policies and legislation are often in constant flux, with repeat policy and legislative changes (which are often justified as saving time and improving ‘efficiency’) (Griffiths 2017). Individuals’ experiences of immigration systems may be one of destabilising rushes, in which little can be anticipated or planned. This ‘frenzied’ time is illustrated by aspects of immigration governance that occur suddenly and without warning (for example, arrest, detention, release, transfer), in decision-making that is too quick for support to be mobilised (for example, fast-tracked asylum decision-making), and time frames that require urgency (for example, short periods to find new employment after dismissal as a migrant worker) (Griffiths 2014). Migration may also be characterised by slow or suspended time. Anti-immigration discourses typically frame the pace of social or demographic change as being too fast (Connolly 2009; compare Guia in this volume, Chapter 33) and immigration governance is often focused on slowing migratory movements. From immigration officials and red tape ‘wasting’ people’s time through excessive delays (Fuglerud 2004), to borders and immigration detention and expulsion slowing or stopping journeys (Andersson 2014; Turnball 2015). Migration journeys may be long, taking years, decades or even generations. People wait for opportunities to travel, decisions, court hearings, letters, documents, family reunification, settlement, return, with implications for their lives, well-being and families. Inka Stock (2019), for example, describes the long-term social effects of immobility on the sub-Saharan African migrants stuck during transit in Morocco as a result of European immigration policymaking. It is not only those who migrate who wait, but also the families waiting for their return or to join them, as described by Elliot (2015) for Moroccan women with absent, emigrated husbands, and by myself in relation to British spouses of men being deported from the UK (Griffiths 2019). Irregular and precarious migrants are especially likely to face little change over long periods, with immigration detainees and (refused) asylum seekers often described as experiencing time as having slowed or stopped (Hasselberg 2016; Kobelinsky 2014; see also Lindberg and Khosravi, Chapter 29 and Squire, Chapter 11, both in this volume). Stillness and waiting need not be ‘dead’, boring or empty time, but can be meaningful and valuable, full of suspense and potential (Bissell 2007; Bissell and Fuller 2011; Gasparini 1995). International students in Australia, for example, attempt to transform the immigration-related
320 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration waits they endure into opportunities (Robertson and Runganaikaloo 2014). Even highly precarious groups like asylum seekers report some positive affective elements of waiting, such as heightened anticipation and hope for the future (Rotter 2015). But when waits are long, unpredictable and full of deprivation, the limbos of migration cause considerable harm (psychologically, physically, socially and financially), as shown for people stuck in undetermined limbos in Indonesian refugee resettlement and reception centres (McNevin and Missbach 2018). I have described a torturous ‘dual temporal uncertainty’ faced by people waiting indefinitely in British immigration detention, in which they fear both that their incarceration will go on forever and that it will end imminently in sudden deportation (Griffiths 2014). Migrants prohibited from working also experience temporal tensions, including exclusion from progressive, routinised structure (Clayton and Vickers 2018). Their legal stasis may be experienced as social and chronological stasis; being unable to develop professionally or socially, or advance life stages (Griffiths 2014: 8). Psychologists show that experiencing time as passing slowly is linked with suffering (Flaherty et al. 2005) and the waiting, along with the indefinite and temporary nature of administrative and legal process helps explain the disproportionately high levels of depression and trauma found among asylum seekers (Mansouri and Cauchi 2007). Looking at the ways in which people’s time is slowed, sped-up or usurped in the process of migration illuminates Cwerner’s ‘time politics’. Immigration classifications, hierarchies and power relations are produced by differentiating the tempos of peoples’ lives. Waiting is a particularly evident technique of governmentality, with irregular and forced migrants across the globe susceptible to deceleration and stasis, often for long and indeterminate periods (McNevin and Missbach 2018).
TEMPORARINESS AND PERMANENCE Migratory experiences may be intentionally temporary, linked perhaps to time-limited, life stage, circular, seasonal or repetitive travels. Such impermanence might reflect ambiguity towards new homes, the expectation that a place is one of transit not destination (McGarrigle and Ascensao 2017) or a desire to eventually return ‘home’ (Ali and Holden 2006). Often impermanence is produced by immigration policies. After all, precarious presence is intrinsic to the very distinction between citizens and foreign nationals: the permanence of the former in contrast to the transience and conditionality of the latter, who are dependent upon visas for permission to occupy specific time-spaces. Allen and Axelsson (2019) argue that governments exert a ‘topological’ power on labour migrants, relegating them to an ambiguous existence, ‘simultaneously included and excluded from legal rights and protections’. This makes migrant workers (especially but not only those working illegally), vulnerable to the harms of impermanence, including precarious employment without temporal protections (for example, notice periods), rhythms (such as job regularity or progression), or secure futures (Ahmad 2008; Anderson 2007; Apostolidis 2019; see also de Lange, Berntsen and de Sena in this volume, Chapter 24). In today’s globalised world of modern transportation and communications technologies, new and extreme modes of enduring temporariness are becoming normalised and institutionalised (Rajkumar et al. 2012), including through the chronic liminality – ‘enduring temporariness’ (Nyers 2013) – of some immigration statuses (Chacon 2015; Hurd et al. 2017). Many types of migrant experience are characterised by extended impermanence, including
Interrogating time and temporality in migration governance 321 international students (Collins and Shubin 2017; Robertson and Runganaikaloo 2014; Wang 2019), graduate workers and working-holiday makers (Robertson 2014), ‘trailing spouses’ (Slobodin 2018), backpackers (Allon et al. 2008) and even the ‘neo-nomadism’ of the global hypermobile (D’Andrea 2006). The idealised linear path progressing towards indefinite stay and naturalisation is increasingly unobtainable, with probation and qualification periods that are long and extendable. Some groups, like irregular and forced migrants, may never have the opportunity of secure legal status but face a ‘permanent temporariness’, potentially for generations (Ali 2011; Chacon 2015; Simmelink 2011). This was the case for Salvadoran asylum seekers in the USA, relegated to long-term ‘Temporary Protected Status’ (Mountz et al. 2002). And, as demonstrated by the process of depriving dual and naturalised citizens of their citizenship, even the supposedly secure final stage of the migrant process is contingent, raising questions over whether migrants ever gain true permanence of belonging. Many countries recognise that length of time spent in a place is valuable enough to contribute to rights to remain, even if such time was not legal. This is reflected in widespread and longstanding practices of recognising the rights of long-term residents, including those illegally-present (Hammar 1994), as with amnesties and private life rights, in which rights increase over accumulated time. Legal philosopher Martijn Stronks (2017) argues that the principle is a mechanism to resolve the challenge of expelling long-term residents, recognising the difficulty of disentangling embedded people. The possibility of long-residency claims leads some policymakers to suspect undesirable migrants of purposefully living underground so as to illegitimately ‘steal’ time for claims. Recent changes to UK immigration policy have extended the lengths of time required by unlawfully-present migrants, qualified that time (that is, its nature and content matters), placing great emphasis on even the shortest period of prison time, and privileging financial independence over temporal durations (Griffiths 2017). These developments keep people temporary for decades and devalue phenomenological, lived time. Imposing or implying people’s chronic transcience is a mark of otherness and marginality, as in calls for ethnic minorities to ‘go home’. It is also a technology of governance, with temporariness written into immigration policies and practices. Examining the ‘time politics’ of impermanence offers routes into understanding how migration-related vulnerability is produced and experienced.
PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE The past, present and future are interwoven with the politics of nations, communities, bureaucracies and immigration. Political legitimacy is sought through shared memory and heritage (Buciek et al. 2006), as well as the power to pre-empt and prepare for future possibilities (Amoore 2013; Anderson 2010). Immigration is sometimes presented as a sign of a place’s modernity and advancement, as with Singapore (Lash and Urry 1994; Seng 2010), but often is seen as risking progress. Anti-immigration discourses draw on mythologised pasts and anxiety over the future, including fears that the number of newcomers will lead to social breakdown or demographic or ethnic change (Amin 2012; Baldwin 2012). Migration may even be associated with dystopic futures, such as conflict, terrorism, epidemics or environmental catastrophe (Blitz 2011; Schillmeier 2008). Migrants’ experiences and relationships (including to states) also draw on the past, present and future. Diasporic and transnational communities, for example, may appeal backwards,
322 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration to ‘roots’, genealogy and ancestral languages (Basu 2007; Berg 2011; Eisenlohr 2004; see also Fischer in this volume, Chapter 4). Decisions to migrate and acts of border-crossings are often considered future-facing (Radu 2010); built upon potentialities and becoming, infused with ‘future-driven emotion’ (Griffiths et al. 2013), such as aspiration and hope (Conradson and Latham 2007; Halfacree 2004). The idea of mobility as creating new futures and accessing ‘modernity’ (Lauser 2008; Vigh 2009), or escaping uncertain futures and leaving behind ‘backward’ or ‘traditional’ places (Helliwell and Hindess 2005; Salih 2002) has been described for a wide variety of types of traveller; from international students in Australia (Collins and Shubin 2017), to Moroccan women migrating through marriage (Cole 2010) (see also discussion of rural migration by Medland in this volume, Chapter 22). Tore Sager (2006) defines mobility as potential travel (not necessarily actualised) and argues that mobility is central to freedom. However, as Sager notes, not everyone has the opportunity to travel when and where they please, nor always the choice not to move. Borders and immigration governance intervene to interfere with people’s future-making travel and settlement plans. Fears and desires for the future are important throughout migration journeys. Hopes for a better future, for example, may provide people with the resilience to withstand arduous present lives in transit and arrival countries. Aspiration can also make people vulnerable to labour and financial exploitation; by government authorities and smugglers alike. ‘Mortgaging’ the present so as to realise one’s dreams has been shown for ‘unfree’ Bolivian garment workers in Argentina (Bastia and McGrath 2011), as well as destitute refused asylum seekers and people being deported from the UK (Hasselberg 2016; Rotter 2015). For some migrants and families left behind, however, the future is better characterised by uncertainty and absence (Sager 2006). The future may be so beyond one’s control or anticipation that only the nearest horizon is visible and people feel stuck in an overly powerful present. A prolonged and heightened present and difficulty establishing future-oriented perspectives has been described for various disenfranchised groups, including prisoners (Brown 1998), sex workers (Lainez 2018) and disadvantaged youth (Reiter 2003). The past, present and future provide ways into understanding nation-building and migration governance; from the obscuring of migrants’ pasts to attempts to predict and shape migration futures. The tenses also offer insight into studying migration decision-making, strategies and experiences, including the ways migration governance shape – sometimes thwart – people’s future-making projects.
TEMPORAL (A)SYNCHRONICITY In many ways, migration is characterised by temporal disjuncture, be it from one’s planned personal timeline, from local temporalities, or those of countries of origin or separated family. For example, Peeren (2006) describes diaspora identities as being produced through temporal disconnection: through people’s displacement from a specific location in time and space, and from particular social understandings and practices of time-space.3 Temporal discord is also a feature of immigration policies and policing. Border officials and immigration decision-makers may contest the measurement and value of people’s time, as with disputes over people’s ages or the durations of relationships and periods of residence. The assumptions of administrative and legal time (for example, that the clock stops between immigration applications, temporary migrants remain temporary) often clash with the realities of lived time, in
Interrogating time and temporality in migration governance 323 which pauses may last years and people continue to live, love and age. Enforcement measures such as detention and deportation violently rupture people’s anticipated futures, abruptly reconfiguring their time (Griffiths et al. 2013; Khosravi 2018; see also Lindberg and Khosravi in this volume, Chapter 29). Policies prohibiting immigrants from working or studying prevent people from sharing local schedules and ‘normal’ busy life. It is marginalising to live involuntarily outside ‘high-speed society’ (Bissell and Fuller 2011), as described, for example, by migrant Filipina domestic workers unable to participate in Hong Kong’s ‘fast life’ (Boersma 2015). Saulo Cwerner describes precarious migrants as not only excluded from ‘simultaneity’ (which he defines as the sense of doing the same things as others), but experiencing such temporal asychronicity that there is a breaking down of the ‘meanwhile’ (a looser feeling of sharing the same time) (Cwerner 2001: 23). Communities, be they diaspora or nations, build cohesion and collective identity through temporal harmony (Fischer in this volume, Chapter 4). This includes common imaginings of the future (Golden 2002), shared pasts (Buciek et al. 2006), and coordinated and scheduled presents (Allen 2008; Bastian 2014; Edensor 2006), including institutionalised synchronicity (see Eder 2004 on Europeanisation). The political deployment of the idea of a shared national future able to overcome diverse migrant pasts has been explored in relation to the UK’s ‘Commission on Integration and Community Cohesion’ (McGhee 2008) and the Israeli government’s ‘temporal reordering’ of immigrants from the former Soviet Union (Golden 2002). Chan (2015) describes diaspora as a series of temporal moments of reconnections with a homeland, illustrated well by the ‘nostalgic use’ of ancestral language by Hindi Mauritians (Eisenlohr 2004). The coexistance of diverse temporal rhythms and pasts can be celebrated as progressively modern, reflected in Cwerner’s (2000) concept of ‘chronopolitanism’, a temporalisation of cosmopolitanism. Often, however, temporal differences are framed as cultural conflict (Bastian 2014). Perceived asynchronicity of competing temporalities may have political implications (Hurd et al. 2017), perhaps especially when it involves migrants or minorities. ‘Integration’, for example, may be focused on migrants’ assimilation with dominant local temporal practices, such as punctuality and time keeping, and prioritisation of the past, present and future (Macduff 2006). As shown with other disenfranchised groups, such as the homeless (Rowe and Wolch 1990) and unemployed young people (Jeffrey 2010; Reiter 2003), temporal dissonance is a way by which people are marginalised. An appreciation of temporal dissonances and synchronicity provides new ways into understanding migration experiences, governance and politicisation, including in relation to nations, diaspora, cohesion and exclusion.
CONCLUSION Through discussion of time and its rhythms, tenses, speeds, tensions and (im)permanence, this chapter has explored how temporalities frame, constrain and offer opportunity for movement, settlement and immobility, and in so doing help produce borders and nations. Time is bound up in the exercise of authority and relationships of power, and is also embodied, psychological and affective, helping illuminate individual subjective experiences, agency and tactics of mobility. Although migration remains predominantly conceptualised as a spatial phenomenon, interest in time is growing rapidly in migration studies. Some areas are developing rich banks of ethnographic examples (particularly around slowness and waiting), whilst other aspects of
324 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration migration politics are calling out for more work on time, including around temporariness, (a) synchronicity, fast speeds, orientation towards the past and future, and on the ways time is written into discourse, policy and laws and operationalised in practice. This chapter argues that by seeking out the temporal as it arises in language, policy and experiences, we gain new perspectives into migration journeys and processes, diaspora and migration politics. Through temporal technologies of governance (‘time politics’, Cwerner 2004), policymakers seek to predict and shape people’s cross-border movements, variously slowing, halting, usurping or speeding migrants’ time, and subjecting some to extreme temporal uncertainty and powerlessness. This includes using time to categorise and sort migrants and to shape their treatment and trajectory, such as the speediness of border crossing, and accessibility of paths towards permanence or the routinised, productive time of employment. There are complex webs of temporal conditions, restrictions, stipulations and deadlines embedded in immigration administrations and decision-making (‘temporal governance’, Griffiths 2017), that are disciplinary, testing and punitive, working to manipulate rhythms, force delays and negate imagined futures and invested time. For the most disadvantaged migrants, this is increasingly an experience of permanent – but unpredictable – impermanence, conditionality and insecurity, of endless presents and excluded futures. It may be that as states lose sovereignty over their territories and borders (Sassen 1996), migrants’ time is becoming an arena of increased state interest and control. As is evident across marginalised groups, from migrants to prisoners, sex workers, the unemployed and criminalised (Jeffrey 2010; Khosravi 2017; Lainez 2018; Nyers 2013), neoliberalism, capitalism and global inequality are subjecting a growing number of people to chronic waiting, futureless tomorrows and extreme temporal instability.
NOTES 1. Drawing on Michelle Bastian’s extremely helpful scoping study on time and community (2014). 2. ‘Time-space’ is a concept recognising that the spatial and temporal are part of an inseparable continuum. 3. Synchronicity with homelands is strengthened through repetitive communication, visits, remittances and shared life-cycle rituals (Hurd et al. 2017), and by new communication and transport technology (for example, Paragas 2009), albeit not always in welcomed ways (for example, Carruthers 2008 on Vietnamese refugees accessing satellite television).
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328 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration Radu, C. (2010), ‘Beyond border-dwelling: temporalizing the border-space through events’, Anthropological Theory, 10, 409–33. Rajkumar, D., L. Berkowitz, L. Vosko, V. Preston and R. Latham, (2012), ‘At the temporary-permanent divide: how Canada produces temporariness and makes citizens through its security, work, and settlement policies’, Citizenship Studies, 16(3–4), 483–510. Reiter, H. (2003), ‘Past, present, future: biographical time structuring of disadvantaged young people’, Young, 11, 253–79. Robertson, S. (2014), ‘Time and temporary migration: the case of temporary graduate workers and working holiday makers in Australia’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 40(12), 1915–33. Robertson, S, and A. Runganaikaloo (2014), ‘Lives in limbo: migration experiences in Australia’s education–migration nexus’, Ethnicities, 14(2), 208–26. Rotter, R. (2015), ‘Waiting in the asylum determination process: just an empty interlude?’ Time & Society, 25(1), 80–101. Rowe, S. and J. Wolch (1990), ‘Social networks in time and space: homeless women in skid row, Los Angeles’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 80, 184–204. Sager, T. (2006), ‘Freedom as mobility: implications of the distinction between actual and potential travelling’, Mobilities, 1, 465–88. Salih, R. (2002), ‘Reformulating tradition and modernity: Moroccan migrant women and the transnational division of ritual space’, Global Networks, 2, 219–31. Sassen, S. (1996), Losing Control? Sovereignty in the Age of Globalization, New York: Columbia University Press. Scheuerman, W. (2009), ‘Citizenship and speed’, in H. Rosa and W. Scheuerman (eds), High-Speed Society: Social Acceleration, Power and Modernity, Philadelphia: Penn State University Press, pp. 287–305. Schillmeier, M. (2008), ‘Globalizing risks: the cosmo‐politics of SARS and its impact on globalizing sociology’, Mobilities, 3, 179–99. Seng, L. K. (2010), ‘Dangerous migrants and the informal mobile city of postwar Singapore’, Mobilities, 5, 197–218. Simmelink, J. (2011), ‘Temporary citizens: U.S. immigration law and Liberian refugees’, Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 9, 327–44. Slobodin, O. (2018), ‘“Out of time”: a temporal view on identity change in trailing spouses’, Time & Society, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0961463X17752283. Stock, I. (2019), Time, Migration and Forced Immobility: Sub-Saharan African Migrants in Morocco, Bristol: University of Bristol Press. Stronks, M. (2017), ‘Grasping legal time: a legal and philosophical analysis of the role of time in European migration law’, PhD thesis, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Turnball, S. (2015), ‘“Stuck in the middle”: waiting and uncertainty in immigration detention, Time & Society, 25(1), 61–79. Urry, J. (2007), Mobilities, London: Polity. Vigh, H. (2009), ‘Wayward migration: on imagined futures and technological voids’, Ethnos, 74, 91–109. Wajcman, J. and N. Dodd (eds) (2016), The Sociology of Speed: Digital, Organizational and Social Temporalities, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wang, B. (2019), ‘Time in migration: temporariness, precarity and temporal labour amongst Chinese scholars returning from the Global North to South’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, https:// www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369183X.2019.1642741. White, P. (2006), ‘Migrant populations approaching old age: prospects in Europe’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 32, 1283–1300.
27. Technology, knowledge and the governing of migration Julien Jeandesboz
INTRODUCTION References to technology abound in ongoing policy and political debates on the governing of people on the move. The United Nations (UN) Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration adopted in December 2018, for instance, foregrounds technological measures as an important component in achieving several of its objectives. Biometrics, information and communication technology, or generally speaking ‘digitalization’, are to be used to ensure that all migrants have an easily available ‘legal identity’, in the deployment of ‘integrated, secure and coordinated’ border management, to support predictable migration procedures or for the purpose of improving the transfer of remittances (UN General Assembly 2019). In these debates, the assumption is generally that technology can improve migration governance. This reasoning is analytically problematic, because it rests on the ontological assumption that technology can autonomously affect social practices. By contrast, this chapter argues that the effects of specific devices, such as biometric identification systems or computerized networks for migration and border enforcement should always be examined as unfolding within socio-technical and techno-political contexts. This claim is grounded in a selected review of the literature on technology and migration, developed in the next section. Based on this first step, the chapter then critically examines the sites of inquiry that the literature has privileged in investigating technology and migration governance. Two concrete features of the imbrication of technological processes and migration governing stand out here: first, the involvement of and reliance on large-scale information systems that collect, circulate and make the electronic data of persons on the move available for analysis by asylum, consular, migration, law enforcement or security authorities, and second, the involvement of and reliance on biometrics (fingerprinting, face or iris recognition in particular) for purposes of identification. In the process, I draw attention here to the literature’s common focus on practices of policy formation and formulation rather than on the enacting of policy, and to the privileging of studies on contexts of the global North rather than of the global South. Lastly, the chapter identifies the politics of knowledge as the core matter raised by the imbrication of technology and migration governance. A key issue emphasized in the literature concerns the knowledge practices underpinning the identification and sorting of persons on the move. The literature here argues that the main issue is not how technology can improve migration governance but how shifts within socio-technical settings in migration governance and beyond lead to transformations in the way persons on the move are known to governmental authorities, and are therefore acted upon.
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THE TROUBLE WITH TECHNOLOGY ‘Technology’ is a problematic category of analysis, because our understanding of it is at the same time very broad and underpinned by specific assumptions about the kind of technology that matters. In one of the main edited volumes on technology and migration governing in Europe, for instance, ‘technology’ is understood as encompassing ‘everything from age testing by means of bone scans on underage asylum seekers to the body scans at European airports, and everything from passport control to enormous European databases’ (Dijstelbloem et al. 2011: 172). The broadness of such understandings of technology poses analytical problems in and of itself, but also because it relies on implicit categorizations of what counts as technology. If we equate technology with ‘things’ that humans make and use, then it is hard to think of any individual or social context where such ‘things’ are not involved. As long-time student of technology Ursula Franklin once asked, then, ‘How does one speak about something that is both fish and water, means as well as end?’ (Franklin 1999: 6). Her take on the question is to understand technology as a practice or set of practices, as more than ‘the sum of the artifacts, of the wheels and gears, of the rails and electronic transmitters. Technology is a system […]. Technology involves organization, procedures, symbols, new words, equations, and, most of all, a mindset’ (ibid: 2–3, italics in original). This view entails that ‘technology’ is both at play in any socio-political process and constantly transforming across historical contexts (Guittet and Jeandesboz 2009: 234). If ‘technology’ is at the same time ‘fish and water’, it becomes necessary to examine the assumptions that guide the literature in singling out specific devices and practices as worthy of being characterized as ‘technology’. Such choice is indeed ‘already itself shaped by a socially organized field of choices’ (Sterne 2003: 368). What is striking in the literature, is the tendency to focus on the newness and ‘digitalness’ of technological processes involved in migration governance; to refer, for instance, to ‘new technological borders’ (e.g. Dijstelbloem and Meijer 2011) or ‘new digital borders’ (e.g. Broeders 2007). Such claims (to novelty, to ‘digitalness’) are hard to sustain, however, because electronic computerized devices have been around for longer than it may seem. The deployment of networked, computerized geographical interdiction and surveillance systems on segments of the Mexico–US border or at the European Union’s external borders (Jeandesboz 2018; Tazzioli 2016; Walters 2017; see also Follis, Chapter 5 and Rajaram, Chapter 15, both in this volume), for instance, can be traced back to the 1960s. In the context of the Vietnam War, the US military undertook the construction of a ‘virtual barrier’ of electronic sensors across the network of jungle paths known as the ‘Ho Chi Minh Trail’ to curb the entry of North Vietnamese soldiers into South Vietnam. Inspired by earlier attempts in decolonization wars such as the French ‘Morice Line’ completed in 1957 at the Algerian–Moroccan and Algerian–Tunisian borders, these devices were later repatriated to the US mainland in the context of President Nixon’s ‘war on drugs’ and deployed at the Mexico–US border (Shaw 2016: 695). Likewise, fingerprint biometric registration and identification might come across as a cutting-edge technological development, while these techniques in fact emerged in colonial India and later South Africa at the end of the nineteenth century. The South African Foreign Labour Department, for example, was able to build a fingerprint register of every Asian and South Asian indentured worker in the Transvaal, approximately 70,000 persons, by the early years of the twentieth century (Breckenridge 2014: 79–81).
Technology, knowledge and the governing of migration 331 Characterizing the imbrication of technological processes and migration governance in terms of a single feature – novelty or ‘digitalness’ – therefore amounts to an essentialization, in that such a characterization reduces multiple practices, trajectories and uses to a single outstanding element. While most of the contributions discussed in this chapter are far more nuanced, it is possible to encounter the occasional account where technology is imbued with a drive and logic of its own. Besters and Brom (2010: 457), for instance, argue that information technology relied on for migration enforcement purposes is ‘greedy’ and ‘elicits a dynamic of its own in which the political ends come to depend heavily on the technical means’. Dijstelbloem et al. (2011: 172) write explicitly about ‘technology out of control’ in the context of European border and migration enforcement. Such accounts tend to simplify our understanding of the imbrication between technological processes and the governing of people on the move as either pure instrumentality (technology is a ‘mere’ extension of human intention or will) or technological determinism (technology shapes or constrains human behaviour and practice). How, then, should we handle the troublesome category of technology? Rather than characterize contemporary migration governance in terms of (new) ‘digital’ or ‘smart’ borders, for example, it might be more relevant to track, among other things, shifts within socio-technical and techno-political arrangements related to digital devices (Kaufmann and Jeandesboz 2017) and ask what differences these shifts make in migration governing and its politics. Border fencing in relation to migration enforcement in Europe and the Mediterranean, for instance, has been a regular item of public debate in the last fifteen years, from the Ceuta and Melilla barriers to the border between Greece and Turkey, in Hungary and Estonia, or at the Libyan– Tunisian border. Fencing and walling are arguably one of the earliest ways in which settled, sedentary human communities have organized the movements of people, living beings and things (e.g. Nail 2016: 47–87) and would not be spontaneously characterized as ‘technological’ today. Yet shifts within the socio-technical and techno-political arrangements that we call fencing or walling change or inflect the effects that this practice has for the governing of people on the move. Looking at three separate cases (the ‘fences’ of Ceuta and Melilla, the Israeli ‘barriers’ in the Occupied Territories and the US counterinsurgency ‘wall’ in Falluja), Pallister-Wilkins (2016) shows, for instance, that the imbrication of barriers, fences and walls with digital technologies such as biometrics shifts the operation of fences from territorial interdiction to practices of interruption and data capture. In the process, it actualizes practices of governing unfolding over a longer period, connecting with the histories of occupation and colonization in Palestine or of counter-insurrection by European powers in the Middle East. The questions we ask of technological research objects in the field of migration governing, should then not be whether they are more or just literally ‘technological’, new, or ‘digital’, but rather about whether and how they ‘make a difference’ as part of socio-technical or techno-political settings. Technology, then, is not ‘pure instrumentality for social ends or an autonomous driving factor for social practice’ (Amicelle et al. 2015: 295). Technology in and of itself should not matter as much as the study of how specific devices become enmeshed with and contribute to shifts within migration ‘apparatuses’ or ‘industries’ (Andersson 2014; Feldman 2012) or ‘practice-networks’ (Glouftsios 2018), of how technical systems and technological artefacts ‘intra-act’ rather than ‘inter-act’ with human actors (Aradau 2010).
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SITES OF INQUIRY In which sites, then, does the literature locate imbrications of technology and migration governance? ‘Site’ refers here to issue areas, specific practices or actual terrains. Border controls and their articulation with security practices are possibly the most significant such site, together with asylum and migration procedures, and humanitarian and developmental contexts involving concerns with international protection or migration. Inquiries into border control have over the last decade paid significant attention to the deployment of ‘electronic’ or ‘smart’ border schemes (e.g. Côté-Boucher 2008; Jeandesboz 2016; Leese 2016), especially in Europe and North America. They have mapped how this deployment relates to the context and aftermath of the ‘war on terror’ declared by the Bush administration following the attacks of 11 September 2001 (Amoore 2006; Côté-Boucher 2008). This deployment was and remains predominantly justified by referencing the security concerns of self-identified countries of destination, associating the governance of migration with the countering of cross-border crime and terrorism. More specifically, the 9/11 attacks were construed as a radical break with previous patterns of transnational political violence and as ushering governments and societies of the global North into a new era of uncertainty and unpredictability. Thereby, they legitimized schemes that aimed at acquiring, with regard to movements of persons, as much electronic data as possible. The emphasis on the collection of information and personal data, including biometrics, has been characterized as a growing ‘dataveillance’ exercised over persons on the move (Amoore 2006), that is, ‘the proactive surveillance of what effectively become suspect populations, using new technologies to identify “risky groups” by their assumedly distinct patterns of “suspect behaviour”’ (Levi and Wall 2004: 200). Investigations into contemporary procedures for the administration of international protection and migration have also increasingly looked into the imbrication of technological processes and the governance of people on the move, in particular the collection and use of biometric identifiers. Irma van der Ploeg (1999) drew early attention to the project of deploying an EU-wide computerized fingerprint database for the purpose of implementing the Union’s asylum policy, now known as Eurodac (‘European Asylum Dactyloscopy Database’). Van der Ploeg outlines the problematics of embodiment and identification involved in the deployment of such procedures and systems. Biometric registration and its corollaries (verification and identification) bridge the space that remains between a person and their documentation, ‘as if the identity card was glued to your body’ and should be conceptualized as a modality of ‘inscription of the individual’s body with identity/-fiers’ (Van der Ploeg 1999: 301). Such inscriptions, however, are not limited to asylum procedures or to rendering bodies ‘illegal’, as Van der Ploeg argues (compare Squire in this volume, Chapter 11). Looking at the case of the Temporary Resident Biometrics Project (TRBP) introduced by the Canadian authorities in 2013, Pero and Smith (2014: 408) show that the promise of rapid and reliable identification and verification is expected to contribute to economic prosperity by simultaneously allowing for the recruitment of a flexible and temporary workforce while alleviating anxieties about identity fraud. The TRBP is a specific instance of labour migration programmes introduced by Western states, the purpose of which is not necessarily or inevitably exclusion or banishment (idem.). As such, some contributions, such as Btihaj Ajana’s comparative study of Eurodac and the British Application Registration Cards scheme for asylum applicants, have argued that
Technology, knowledge and the governing of migration 333 biometrics have ‘spilled over’ for use across ‘the entire migrant/asylum body’, although this spill-over does not affect all persons on the move in the same way (Ajana 2013: 592). The third group of sites surveyed in the literature involves development and humanitarian practices. Studies have plotted the course of technological processes within migration and refuge initiatives across developing countries in relation to concerns with border security (e.g. Frowd 2014, 2017, 2018) as well as in the name of counterterrorism and counter-narcotics policies (e.g. Sandor 2016), or in the handling of humanitarian emergencies (e.g. Jacobsen 2015, 2017). The rollout of biometrics and information systems for borders, asylum and migration is a transnational process that straddles the boundary between North and South, developed and developing countries, a synchronic rather than diachronic or developmental process whereby ‘advanced technology’ adopted in the North would subsequently spread to the South (on postcolonial asymmetries, see Mayblin in this volume, Chapter 2). Entry/ exit biometric systems are spreading through West African and Sahel countries, relayed by a ‘transnational community of practice’ involving border, migration and law enforcement officials from Europe and West Africa, officials from other services such as tourism ministries, officials from international organizations as well as private-sector actors (Frowd 2017: 357). This strand of literature also emphasizes the ‘mutability’ of the knowledge thus circulated, which changes from context to context through practices of appropriation and resistance and the agential effects of infrastructure, terrain and devices (Frowd 2014). Local circumstances and conditions (across North and South, arguably) have a significant impact on what the imbrication of technology and migration governances looks like, means, and does. Inquiring about the global South, furthermore, highlights the centrality of the work done by specific international organizations such as IOM and UNHCR through the relabelling of migration governance in developmental terms (Frowd 2018) or as humanitarian intervention to support internally displaced persons and refugees (Jacobsen 2017; see also Kabbanji, Chapter 6; Hart, Chapter 8; Crawley and Setrana, Chapter 16, all in this volume). The use of biometrics by UNCHR, argues Jacobsen, may seem a ‘technical procedure’ but it is one through which ‘new domains of life are rendered open to intervention’, thus expanding that agency’s reach and remit (Jacobsen 2017: 544–5). Moving now to the limitations of the existing literature, two main observations can be made. First, this literature altogether pays much more attention to practices of policy formation and formulation than on how policy is actually enacted, negotiated, circumvented or countered. This has been a recent, general criticism launched at border studies in particular (Côté-Boucher et al. 2014). For instance, the growing literature on the visa procedures of European states has convincingly demonstrated that expectations about how technologies should work are trumped by ‘street-level’ bureaucratic politics as well as circulations of ‘practical knowledge’ about the tactics of visa applicants, of, and among, consular staff (e.g. Alpes and Spire 2014; Infantino 2016). Likewise, the literature does not sufficiently engage with the practices of persons on the move themselves as they are confronted with migration governance through technological measures. One important exception here is the work of Stephan Scheel, who has studied the reliance on biometric identification in the context of Schengen visa procedures from an autonomy of migration perspective. His research demonstrates the relationality of biometric identification for visa procedures and how its introduction, justified in relation to the appropriation of said procedures by visa applicants from the global South, serves as a foothold for further border struggles and detournements, by means for instance of ‘doctored supporting documents’ (Scheel 2018: 2759). These findings certainly nuance the notion, for instance, that
334 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration biometric identification ‘inscribes’ the body with an identity and identifiers that cannot come unstuck. The second limitation concerns the fact that much more can be found on politics, policies, and practices in and of the global North than in and of the global South in the literature. There are, however, good reasons to look outside the ‘North’ or the ‘West’, as well as to question the boundary between North and South. There is, for instance, strong historical evidence that devices such as fingerprinting and biometric identification were first deployed in colonial contexts. Fingerprinting applied to whole categories of population, including migrant populations such as indentured workers, for instance, was initially developed and first spread in colonial India and later in South Africa while being considered for use in the British metropolis in the last decade of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth (Breckenridge 2014; Cole 2002). The literature that does look into developmental and humanitarian contexts, as we have seen earlier, challenges spontaneous views of the global South as trailing behind and in the process of catching up with the global North in the imbrication of technological processes and migration governance, by underlining how this imbrication unfolds transnationally and is at the very least deployed simultaneously across global North and global South contexts, rather than synchronically and as a projection of more developed states towards weaker states.
TECHNOLOGY, MIGRATION GOVERNANCE AND THE POLITICS OF KNOWLEDGE So how does the imbrication of technological processes and migration governing ‘make a difference’ to the politics and governance of people on the move? A key issue emphasized in the literature concerns the knowledge practices underpinning the identification and sorting of persons on the move. Part of the reason for this focus on knowledge is the ongoing, seemingly unprecedented generation, accumulation and processing of electronic data on persons on the move for purposes of border security, migration enforcement – ‘dataveillance’ – and more generally the administration of migrants, refugees, travellers and visitors. In the EU context, for instance, for which we have more readily available information, the VIS (Visa Information System) was storing approximately 48 million applications for short-stay visas by the end of September 2017 (eu-LISA 2018: 19), with most of these applications files comprising biographic and socio-economic data as well as biometrics (fingerprints and facial images). Eurodac, the fingerprint information system for asylum applications in EU member states, stored 5.3 million fingerprint datasets by the end of 2018 (eu-LISA 2019: 4). One way to make sense of this process is the ‘more of the same’ thesis: it perpetuates and reinforces the ‘embrace’ (Torpey 1998) of populations on the move by or through the state and other governmental bodies. This embrace used to rely on the constitution and documentation of ‘paper identities’ such as passports and other identity or travel documents (Caplan and Torpey 2001), and current developments update it through computerized means. The generation, accumulation and processing of electronic data on persons on the move on the kind of scale we are looking at in the current period does not, however, just amount to the ‘digitization’ of paper, but ought to be understood in terms of ‘datafication’ (e.g. Broeders and Dijstelbloem 2016). Breckenridge (2014: 14) writes that while ‘we are accustomed to thinking of [biometrics] as printed products of the body’, they are ‘intrinsically mathematical entities’; they are in fact ‘numerical representations of patterns on the human body’. What is actually
Technology, knowledge and the governing of migration 335 compared through biometric identification systems such as Eurodac are the mathematical models that have been extracted and processed from what may have originally been images or reproductions of a person’s fingertips, not the fingerprints as such. The ‘datafication’ of bodily features such as fingerprints or facial images is not simply the one-to-one transposition, in digital form, of these features, but a ‘conjoined’ process of ‘taking apart and making visible’ in a different, transformed and machine-readable way these features (Amoore and Hall 2009: 448, italics in original). The modes of knowing and reasoning involved here are different from the documentary logic at work in paper identities, and are sometimes characterized as ‘algorithmic’ (Amoore 2009; Aradau and Blanke 2018). Within the space constraints of the chapter, we can sketch at least one way in which this difference plays out. The registration of populations and the assigning of paper identities has typically performed and enforced hierarchies of worth, of desirability and undesirability based on intersecting considerations of class, ethnicity, gender, race and nationality as a feature of modern state-building and statecraft, as well as the governing of migration through the sorting of persons on the move (Balibar and Wallerstein 2010; Doty 1999; Mahler and Pessar 2001). Recent work, however, shows that risk calculations, mediated through digital devices, are becoming an increasingly central modality to dynamically alter these hierarchies toward more ‘targeted’ modes of governance (Valverde and Mopas 2004), especially in the areas of border and migration enforcement. The extent of risk calculation in migration governing is manifested, for instance, in ongoing efforts by European authorities to include and automate ‘risk assessment’ for travellers and visitors into decisions to issue travel authorisations and visas (see e.g. Spijkerboer 2018 for recent EU developments). The focus here is less on fixed, pre-established (gendered, racialized, classist) criteria for authorizing or denying access to the territory of a state, but rather on producing patterns (profiles, risk indicators) worthy of attention for sorting persons on the move. Amoore shows how, in the modes of knowing, reasoning and self-presentation of the (mostly commercial) actors involved in the development of software to perform such tasks, the focus is less on enforcing pre-existing hierarchies of desire and worth on persons on the move, but rather on making ‘association rules’ between disaggregated elements of data so that new categories and profiles of interest for risk assessment emerge and are constantly updated, and persons who might not have otherwise been ‘flagged’ are identified: … if past travel to Pakistan and duration of stay over three months, in association with flight paid by a third party, then risk flag, detain; if paid ticket in cash and this meal choice, in association with this flight route, then secondary searches; if two tickets bought on one credit card and not seated together, then these questions … (Amoore 2011: 27)
Pre-existing hierarchies of class, gender and race are not replaced wholesale. They are, however, supplemented, and in some cases exceeded by risk calculations that focus on what is not known and what could be imagined as relevant. A second dimension of difference related to risk is the relation to temporality (see Griffiths in this volume, Chapter 26). Risk, in the words of Aradau and van Munster (2007: 97–8) is best understood as a ‘dispositif’, a set of discourses and means for their realization that ‘creates a specific relation to the future, which requires the monitoring of the future, the attempt to calculate what the future can offer and the necessity to control and minimize its potentially harmful effects’. When it comes to governing people on the move, risk fundamentally involves determining what intentions individuals and groups entering the territory of a state have.
336 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration These knowledge claims are made by and have empowered specific actors, such as ‘mathematicians, software designers and computer scientists’ (Amoore 2011: 26), and data and risk analysts who previously were unfamiliar faces in migration governance. Recent research also outlines, in the European case, the role played by business actors and companies in driving and shaping a technology-centred EU border security policy (Baird 2018; Carmel 2017). This specification reinforces the notion that changes brought about in migration governance by the enrolment of devices such as algorithms or biometrics are not just the by-product of technological capabilities, but unfold through socio-technical settings. Because these changes are socio-technical rather than simply technological, furthermore, the prominence of technology-oriented modes of knowing and governing people on the move has also become a contentious matter. Bigo (2014) argues that the making of EU border security policies involves cooperative and competitive relations between at least three social universes: the military universe, the law enforcement (including border and migration enforcement) universe, and the social universe of data analysts and managers. The patterns of intra-action within these universes and the kinds of devices that are enrolled will vary according to the professional dispositions and routines that are valued and valorized within and across each of these. Conflicts over knowledge claims may emerge depending on which site of migration governance practice is considered: what constitutes a valuable and credible knowledge claim in the research and development units of technology companies or in the greige offices of policymakers may be challenged once the devices they develop and decide upon travel to the border crossing points and front offices of migration governance. Starting from the observation that border control professionals today work in a context of organizational instability, for instance, Karine Côté-Boucher (2018) has shown the importance of generational dispositions and socialization in shaping the relation that workers on the frontline have to anticipation, pre-emption and digital devices. The introduction of new expectations, new requirements and new tools, can both have disqualifying effects on modes of knowledge and know-how that were previously valorized but also elicit resistances and contestations from within governmental agencies, between and amongst upper and middle management and frontline staff. This is certainly a line of inquiry within the literature that deserves more attention. A final point on technology, migration governance and the politics of knowledge concerns the articulation between the socio-technical settings involved in governing persons on the move and those involved in governing societies as a whole. Breckenridge highlights, for instance, how migrants in member states of the European Union ‘have been subjected to much more powerful ten fingerprint and iris-capturing systems that are centrally gathered and shared’ than EU citizens (and to a lesser extent, permanent residents), not necessarily by the mere virtue of being categorized as migrants, but as the result of ‘some obvious imperial legacies in the identification, and policing, of these target populations’ (Breckenridge 2014: 17). The focus on risk found in the literature on border control and border security likewise relates to broader shifts in the politics of knowledge that are at work in other areas of governance, for instance the ‘new penology’ (Valverde and Mopas 2004: 238), or welfare governance. The imbrication of technological processes and migration governance should thus be understood as part of a broader field of ‘international population management’ where statuses such as citizen, migrant, resident or refugee are markers for the application of distinct yet related practices of governing (Hindess 2001). This is happening within practices aimed at governing persons on the move. As Didier Bigo (2008) argues, dataveillance practices can usefully be conceptualized as a ‘ban-opticon’ which
Technology, knowledge and the governing of migration 337 simultaneously produces abnormality and excludes the unwanted or ‘abnormals’ (the risky visitor, the unwanted migrant, the so-called ‘fake’ refugee or the actual one) and ‘normalizes the non-excluded through its production of normative imperatives, the most important of which is free movement’ (ibid.: 32). Systems such as the Canadian Electronic Travel Authorization (ETA), the US ESTA, or the still in development EU EES and ETIAS are indeed based on a seemingly contradictory imperative: that they should prevent undesirable and unwanted circulations while making desirable or wanted circulations speedier and relatively obstacle free. In such systems, habitual classist, gendered and/or racialized hierarchies are integrated into notionally individualized risk assessments. Thomas Spijkerboer (2018) writes in similar fashion about the ‘global mobility infrastructure’, consisting of laws, physical (as well as software, though he does not mention that) structures and services (the so-called ‘mobility industry’) that enable the expansion of human mobility. For him, migration governance is no longer about controlling access to state territory (particularly in the global North) but about controlling access to the ‘global mobility infrastructure’ through visa and travel authorization systems and other devices such as no-fly lists (ibid.: 456–7). Another way in which the articulation between technology, governing migration and population management plays out concerns the question of identification. The reliance on biometrics in the context of migration governance by authorities of the global North and South, simultaneously, is but the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Biometric identification is currently being deployed as a cheap alternative to civil registration through schemes such as the Aadhaar system in India (e.g. Bhatia and Bhabha 2017), or as a way to perform electoral registration in countries as diverse as Nigeria (Nkume-Okorie and Chouin 2011) or Uganda (Perrot and Owachi 2018). The rationales for deploying biometrics are arguably equally varied. For instance, studies on the rollout of biometric passports in developing countries find that they are in part justified as markers of sovereignty or symbols of modernity (e.g. Markó 2016 on South Sudan). Writing about ‘biometric citizenship’, Ajana (2012: 856) highlights how biometric identity projects are packaged in the global North with ‘individuated claims and practices based on the principles of choice, autonomy, flexibility and entrepreneurialism’. In this sense, ‘biometric citizenship’ is also ‘neoliberal citizenship’ (ibid.: 853) and reflects how devices such as biometric identification may make a difference in migration governance as well. What is clear, then, is that analyses of technology and migration governance speak to and should rest on broader analyses of ‘population management’, if only to avoid reproducing the assumption that migration is somewhat separate or differently problematic from other social processes.
CONCLUSION At the heart of the imbrication between technology and migration governance, this chapter finds, are a series of shifts in the politics of knowledge involved in governing people on the move. This should not be taken to imply that the effects of this imbrication are abstract or ideational. The reliance on biometric identification and the processing of electronic data shifts the milieu within which cross-border movements of persons occur – from shaping a ‘global mobility infrastructure’ and variable speed access to this infrastructure, to the operation of a ‘banoptic dispositif’, for instance. The persons and groups affected are not just those whose circulations are deemed illegitimate, but those who are considered to various degrees to be legitimate, desirable, wanted or simply tolerated visitors, migrants, or refugees. On the other
338 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration hand, such a general claim must be nuanced and examined across multiple sites of inquiry. We should expect the various devices that have become enmeshed in migration governance not to work as advertised by the legislators, policymakers, technology companies or consultants involved in their establishment, design or deployment. Failure or success, however, is probably not what should inform scholarship on these matters, as Anderson (2017) has argued, but rather the ways in which devices make or do not make a difference in a given socio-technical setting, for whom and how.
REFERENCES Ajana, B. (2012), ‘Biometric Citizenship’, Citizenship Studies, 16 (7), 851–870. Ajana, B. (2013), ‘Asylum, Identity Management and Biometric Control’, Journal of Refugee Studies, 26 (4), 576–595. Alpes, M.J. and A. Spire (2014), ‘Dealing with Law in Migration Control: The Powers of Street-level bureaucrats at French Consulates’, Social & Legal Studies, 23 (2), 261–274. Amicelle, A., Aradau, C. and J. Jeandesboz (2015), ‘Questioning Security Devices: Performativity, Resistance, Politics’, Security Dialogue, 46 (4), 293–306. Amoore, L. (2006), ‘Biometric Borders: Governing Mobilities in the War on Terror’, Political Geography, 25 (3), 336–351. Amoore, L. (2009), ‘Algorithmic War: Everyday Geographies of the War on Terror’, Antipode, 41 (1), 49–69. Amoore, L. (2011), ‘Data Derivatives: On the Emergence of a Security Risk Calculus for Our Times’, Theory, Culture & Society, 28 (6), 24–43. Amoore, L. and A. Hall (2009), ‘Taking People Apart: Digitized Dissection and the Body at the Border’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 27 (3), 444–464. Anderson, B. (2017), ‘Towards a New Politics of Migration?’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40 (9), 1527–1537. Andersson, R. (2014), Illegality, Inc., Berkeley: University of California Press. Aradau, C. (2010), ‘Security That Matters: Critical Infrastructure and Objects of Protection’, Security Dialogue, 41 (5), 491–514. Aradau, C. and T. Blanke (2018), ‘Governing Others: Anomaly and the Algorithmic Subject of Security’, European Journal of International Security, 3 (1), 1–21. Aradau, C. and R. van Munster (2007), ‘Governing Terrorism Through Risk: Taking Precautions, (un) Knowing the Future’, European Journal of International Relations, 13 (1), 89–115. Baird, T. (2018), ‘Interest Groups and Strategic Constructivism: Business Actors and Border Security Policies in the European Union’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 44 (1), 118–136. Balibar, E. and I. Wallerstein (2010), Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities, London: Verso. Bhatia, A. and J. Bhabha (2017), ‘India’s Aadhaar Scheme and the Promise of Inclusive Social Protection’, Oxford Development Studies, 45 (1), 64–79. Besters, M. and F.W.A. Brom (2010), ‘“Greedy” Information Technology: The Digitalization of the European Migration Policy’, European Journal of Migration and Law, 12 (4), 455–470. Bigo, D. (2008), ‘Globalized (In)security: the Field and The Ban-Opticon’, in D. Bigo and A. Tsoukala (eds), Terror, Insecurity and Liberty: Illiberal Practices of Liberal Regimes after 9/11, New York: Routledge, pp. 10–48. Bigo, D. (2014), ‘The (In)securitization Practices of the Three Universes of EU Border Control: Military/ Navy – Border Guards/police – Database Analysts’, Security Dialogue, 45 (3), 209–225. Breckenridge, K. (2014), Biometric State: The Global Politics of Identification and Surveillance in South Africa, 1850 to the Present, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Broeders, D. (2007), ‘The New Digital Borders of Europe: EU Databases and the Surveillance of Irregular Migrants’, International Sociology, 22 (1), 71–92.
Technology, knowledge and the governing of migration 339 Broeders, D. and H. Dijstelbloem (2016), ‘The Datafication of Mobility and Migration Management: the Mediating State and its Consequences’, in I. Van der Ploeg and J. Pridmore (eds), Digitizing Identities, New York: Routledge, pp. 242–260. Broeders, D. and J. Hampshire (2013), ‘Dreaming of Seamless Borders: ICTs and the Pre-Emptive Governance of Mobility in Europe’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 39 (8), 1201–1218. Caplan, J. and J. Torpey, (eds), (2001), Documenting Individual Identity: The Development of State Practices in the Modern World, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Carmel, E. (2017), ‘Re-interpreting Knowledge, Expertise and EU Governance: The Cases of Social Policy and Security Research Policy’, Comparative European Politics, 15 (5), 771–793. Castles, S. (2017), ‘Migration Policies are Problematic – Because they are About Migration’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40 (9), 1538–1543. Cole, S. (2002), Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and Criminal Identification, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Côté-Boucher, K. (2008), ‘The Diffuse Border: Intelligence-Sharing, Control and Confinement along Canada’s Smart Border’, Surveillance & Society, 5 (2), 142–165. Côté-Boucher, K. (2017), ‘Of “old” and “new” ways: Generations, border control and the temporality of security’, Theoretical Criminology, 22 (2), 149–168. Côté-Boucher, K., Infantino, F. and M.B. Salter (2014), ‘Border security as practice: An agenda for research’, Security Dialogue, 45 (3), 195–208. Dijstelbloem, H. and A. Meijer (eds), (2011), Migration and the New Technological Borders of Europe, Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Dijstelbloem, H., Meijer, A. and F. Brom (2011), ‘Reclaiming Control over Europe’s Technological Borders’, in H. Dijstelbloem and A. Meijer (eds), Migration and the New Technological Borders of Europe, Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 170–185. Doty, R.L. (1999), ‘Racism, Desire and the Politics of Immigration’, Millennium, 28 (3), 585–606. eu-LISA (2018), Technical Reports on the Functioning of VIS, Tallinn, doi: 10.2857/935830. eu-LISA (2019), Eurodac – 2018 Annual Report, Tallinn, doi: 10.2857/423772. Feldman, G. (2012), The Migration Apparatus, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Franklin, U.M. (1999), The Real World of Technology, Revised Edition, Toronto: House of Anansi. Frowd, P.M. (2014), ‘The Field of Border Control in Mauritania’, Security Dialogue, 45 (3), 226–241. Frowd, P.M. (2017), ‘The Promises and Pitfalls of Biometric Security Practices in Senegal’, International Political Sociology, 11 (4), 343–359. Frowd, P.M. (2018), ‘Developmental Borderwork and the International Organization for Migration’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 44 (10), 1656–1672. Glouftsios, G. (2018), ‘Governing Circulation Through Technology Within EU Border Security Practice-networks’, Mobilities, 13 (2), 185–199. Guittet, E.-P. and J. Jeandesboz (2009), ‘Security Technologies’, in J.P. Burgess (ed), Routledge Handbook of New Security Studies, London: Routledge, pp. 229–239. Hindess, B. (2001), ‘Citizenship in the International Management of Populations’, American Behavioral Scientist, 43 (9), 1486–1497. Infantino, F. (2016), ‘State-bound Visa Policies and Europeanized Practices: Comparing EU Visa Policy Implementation in Morocco’, Journal of Borderland Studies, 31 (2), 171–186. Jacobsen, K.L. (2017), ‘On Humanitarian Refugee Biometrics and New Forms of Intervention’, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 11 (4), 529–551. Jeandesboz, J. (2016), ‘Smartening Border Security in the European Union: An Associational Inquiry’, Security Dialogue 47 (4), 292–309. Jeandesboz, J. (2017), ‘European Border Policing: EUROSUR, Knowledge, Calculation, Global Crime, 18 (3), 256–285. Kaufmann, M. and J. Jeandesboz (2017), ‘Politics and ‘the Digital’: From Singularity to Specificity’, European Journal of Social Theory, 20 (3), 309–328. Leese, M. (2016), ‘Exploring the Security/Facilitation Nexus: Foucault at the ‘Smart’ Border’, Global Society, 30 (3), 412–429. Levi, M. and D.S. Wall (2004), ‘Technologies, Security, and Privacy in the Post-9/11 European Information Society’, Journal of Law and Society, 31 (2), 194–220.
340 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration Mahler, S.J. and P.R. Pessar (2001), ‘Gendered Geographies of Power: Analyzing Gender Across Transnational Space’, Identities, 7 (4), 441–459. Markó, F.D. (2016), ‘“We Are Not a Failed State, We Make the Best Passports”: South Sudan and Biometric Modernity’, African Studies Review, 59 (2), 113–132. Nail, T. (2016), Theory of the Border, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nkume-Okorie, N.O. and G. Chouin (2011), ‘L’enregistrement électronique des électeurs au Nigeria: Un dispositif biométrique au service de la démocratie?’, Afrique contemporaine, 239, 75–87. Pallister-Wilkins, P. (2016), ‘How Walls Do Work: Security Barriers As Devices Of Interruption And Data Capture’, Security Dialogue, 47 (2), 151–164. Pero, R. and H. Smith (2014), ‘In the “Service” of Migrants: The Temporary Resident Biometrics Project and the Economization of Migrant Labor in Canada’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 104 (2), 401–411. Perrot, S. and G. Owachi (2018), ‘L’enregistrement biométrique des “autres": Indigénéité négociée, citoyenneté et lutte pour les papiers de la communauté maragoli en Ouganda’, Genèses, 113, 122–143. Sandor, A. (2016), ‘Border Security and Drug Trafficking in Senegal: AIRCOP and Global Security Assemblages’, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 10 (4), 490–512. Scheel, S. (2018), ‘Real fake? Appropriating Mobility via Schengen Visa in the Context of Biometric Border Controls’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 44 (16), 2747–2763. Shaw, I.G.R. (2016), ‘Scorched Atmospheres: The Violent Geographies of the Vietnam War and the Rise of Drone Warfare’, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 106 (3), 688–704. Spijkerboer, T. (2018), ‘The Global Mobility Infrastructure: Reconceptualising the Externalization of Migration Control’, European Journal of Migration and Law, 20 (4), 452–469. Sterne, J. (2003), ‘Bourdieu, Technique and Technology’, Cultural Studies, 17 (3–4), 367–389. Tazzioli, M. (2016), ‘Eurosur, Humanitarian Visibility, and (Nearly) Real-time Mapping in the Mediterranean’, ACME, 15 (3), 561–579. Torpey, J. (2000), The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship and the State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. UN General Assembly (2019), Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 19 December 2018 – Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regulation Migration, New York, Resolution 73/195. Valverde, M. and M. Mopas (2004), ‘Insecurity and the Dream of Targeted Governance’, in W. Larner and W. Walters (eds), Global Governmentality: Governing International Spaces, New York: Routledge, pp. 233–250. van der Ploeg, I. (1999), ‘The Illegal Body: ‘Eurodac’ and the Politics of Biometric identification’, Ethics and Information Technology, 1 (4), 295–302. Walters, W. (2017), ‘Live Governance, Borders, and the Time-space of the Situation: EUROSUR and the Genealogy of Bordering in Europe’, Comparative European Politics, 15 (5), 794–817.
28. Governing migration by other means: criminalization, crimmigration, or legal pluralism? David Moffette
INTRODUCTION Immigrants are governed through a number of social, political and legal mechanisms, many of which also include a strong moral dimension (Chan 2005; Valverde 2008). While most states have by now devised specific statutes and regulations meant to govern the entry, presence, and removal of non-citizens from the country, the socio-legal regulation of immigration has always relied on a broad array of laws, regulations and ordinances deployed by a number of actors at different scales (Aliverti et al. 2019; Moffette 2018; Varsanyi et al. 2012). Among them, the reliance on criminal law to control and punish immigrants is most often discussed in the literature. Indeed, there appears to be a growing trend in, on the one hand, codifying migration strategies, such as unauthorized entry, as crimes and prosecuting them as such and, on the other hand, imposing immigration law sanctions, such as deportation, as consequences for the commission of criminal offences (Chacón 2009; García Hernández 2015; Kanstroom 2010; Stumpf 2006). This trend varies across countries, but regardless of the magnitude of the phenomenon, scholars and migrant justice activists insist that we should be worried about the exclusionary effect of criminalization, and the lack of procedural guarantees that come with the mobilization of practices and institutions traditionally associated with the criminal justice system – such as detention – within the context of administrative immigration law (Bosworth 2019; Legomsky 2007; Pratt 2012; Simeon and Atak 2018). Despite the existence of early alternative readings (e.g. Kanstroom 2004; Medina 1997; Miller 2005), much of the scholarship on the topic analyses this trend through the concept of ‘crimmigration’ or ‘crimmigration law’ – a concept first developed by Juliet Stumpf (2006) in the US context. While studying the various intersections between immigration law and criminal law is of utmost importance, I suggest that the term is often used as a buzzword without much conceptual depth, and that even when it is properly deployed, it is not always the best conceptual tool with which to make sense of these intersections. In this chapter, I first provide a soft typology of the various intersections between these two domains of law, which I illustrate with empirical examples from various countries. I then discuss the concept of crimmigration and suggest that it may conceal more than it reveals about the dynamics it aims to explain. In the third section, I argue that we should broaden the scope of our inquiry, adopt a legal pluralist approach, and pay attention to the interlegal jurisdictional games (Moffette 2020) of various actors who can cherry-pick legal tools from various domains of law to govern, control and punish immigrants.
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A TYPOLOGY OF POSSIBLE INTERSECTIONS In one of the first articles urging criminologists to study the detention of migrants and asylum seekers, despite the fact that is has little to do with criminality or criminal law, Leanne Weber (2002) provided a useful typology to organize the forms that the ‘criminalization of immigration’ can take. She distinguished between formal criminalization (codifying migration strategies as crimes and criminally prosecuting them), quasi- or procedural criminalization (incorporating practices and institutions traditionally associated with the criminal justice system, such as detention, within immigration law), and rhetorical criminalization (discursively and symbolically associating immigration and criminality). Among them, rhetorical criminalization is certainly the broadest category, one that could be used to describe a wide range of discursive practices whose connections to legal regulation are not always straightforward. I therefore chose not to venture in mapping it out in this chapter, focusing instead on Weber’s first two categories. To her list, I also add a phenomenon that mirrors the formal criminalization of immigration and that could be called – albeit awkwardly – the ‘immigrationization of criminal law’ (Legomsky 2007: 482), that is, the imposition of immigration law sanctions such as deportation as a result of often unrelated criminal convictions. Let us now look at each of them, starting with formal criminalization, then immigrationization, and finally quasi-criminalization. The formal criminalization of acts such as unlawful entry, forging or possessing forged documents, aiding and abetting, or unlawful presence is the most straightforward manifestation of crimmigration. As Chacón (2009) explains, while ‘unlawful entry’ has been a crime for a long time in the United States, it was usually dealt with through deportation (legally ‘removal’) as provided by the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), as it is a swifter tool than criminal prosecution (see Lindberg and Khosravi in this volume, Chapter 29). In recent years, however, a shift in legal strategy led to a sharp increase in prosecution for the misdemeanor of ‘unlawful entry’, as well as for the felony of ‘unlawful re-entry’.1 Another US example is the reliance on ‘aggravated identity theft’ to target undocumented workers who use fake documents or who, knowingly or not, are registered under someone else’s name (Chacón 2009). Similar offences exist in many countries (see Guia et al. 2013; Simeon and Atak 2018). According to a report from the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (2014), in 2014 the vast majority of EU member states imposed sanctions (fines and/or imprisonment) for unlawful entry and stay, with 20 of the 28 member states having provisions allowing for the use of imprisonment to punish unauthorized entry, and 11 allowing for imprisonment in the case of unauthorized stay. While refugees should not be criminalized for unlawful entry in accordance with the 1951 Convention relating to the status of refugees (see Crawley and Setrana, Chapter 16 and Hart, Chapter 8, both in this volume), signatory states find ways to circumvent this prohibition. For instance, a recent decision by the Supreme Court of Canada considered the case of people barred from making an asylum claim because they were charged with the crime of smuggling for having played a role in the arrival of the MV Ocean Lady, a boat carrying Tamil asylum seekers (Appulonappa 2015). This criminalization of asylum seekers through the crime of smuggling took place in a highly politicized context to send a message to asylum seekers and act as a deterrence measure (for wider discussion on trafficking, see Thibos and Howard in this volume, Chapter 12). In the end, the country’s highest court ruled that the legal provision allowing for the blanket criminalization of smuggling2 was too broad and that it should not apply to people who aid the unauthorized entry of asylum seekers for humanitarian reasons, as
Governing migration by other means 343 family members or, in this case, as a form of mutual aid between refugees (Moffette and Aksin 2018). In these various instances, the reliance on criminal law – supposedly reserved for the most harmful and serious acts – preoccupies scholars and migrant rights advocates both for the material consequences it has and for the message it sends to the public. A second intersection considered in the crimmigration literature is the imposition of immigration law sanctions as a result of criminal offences. This is what Legomsky (2007: 482), following Miller (2003), has described as the ‘immigrationization of criminal law’, a pattern that includes most infamously criminal grounds for inadmissibility and deportation. In the United States, there exist a number of grounds for removal based on criminal convictions. According to Legomsky (2007: 483), the category of ‘aggravated felony’3 is the most problematic and widely used, as ‘it applies regardless of either the length of the criminal sentence or the amount of time spent in the United States’, it ‘eliminates almost all the major avenues or discretionary relief from removal’, it allows for mandatory detention, and it generally leads to a lifelong bar on re-entry. The situation is similar in Canada, where even permanent residents can be deemed inadmissible and deported without access to appeal on the ground of ‘serious criminality’, defined as having been found guilty of an offence punishable by a maximum of ten years in prison – regardless of the sentence received – or for any offence for which a term of imprisonment of six months or more has been imposed.4 It is interesting to note that ‘serious criminality’ is an immigration law category and that it can include a number of not very harmful offences such as stealing a moped or breaking someone’s nose in a bar fight (Benslimane and Moffette 2019). The trend is widespread, and in various countries such as Spain, the UK, the Netherlands, and Australia, states prioritize the detention and deportation of non-citizens found guilty of a criminal offence, and politicians publicize this as a way to justify these exclusionary measures and discursively tie immigration to criminality (Bosworth and Guild 2008; Brandariz-García and Fernández-Bessa 2017; Fekete and Webber 2010; Gibney 2013; Pickering and Weber 2014; van der Woude et al. 2014; see also Lindberg and Khosravi in this volume, Chapter 29). There is even a growing trend in legislating provisions authorizing the revocation of citizenship of dual nationals for crimes such as sedition, terrorism or other ‘crimes against the state’ – thus further expanding the category of deportable ‘foreigner’ and weakening the protections of citizenship (Gibney 2011; Lavi 2011; Macklin 2014; Mantu 2015; Vaughan 2000). While removal is an administrative sanction – what Velloso (2013) calls a ‘police measure’ – it is a practice which bears material and symbolic similarities with exile and transportation as penal practices (Feeley 2002; Walters 2002) and, when imposed in addition to a criminal sentence, it can be productively analysed as a form of ‘double punishment’ (Sayad 2004: 282–3). For Sayad (2004), it qualifies as a double punishment not only because deportation can be understood as punishment, but because, in the national and racist imaginary, criminalized immigrants are seen as being at fault both as immigrants and as offenders. A third set of intersections is precisely this use of practices and institutions traditionally associated with the criminal justice system (e.g. policing, detention, conditional release, in-community surveillance) in the immigration realm. This can happen independently from any formal intervention of criminal law. Indeed, while administrative detention and deportation may – as we have just seen – be immigration law consequences of formal criminalization, they are not always linked. For instance, people are routinely forced to leave or actively deported simply for overstaying their visa, and asylum seekers can be preventively detained for identification purposes or systematically detained as part of a broad deterrence strategy.
344 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration The latter situation is most clearly exemplified by the infamous Australian ‘Pacific Solution’, a surreal set of policy instruments that includes the legal excision of parts of the Australian national territory to circumvent Australia’s international obligations toward asylum seekers and the systematic offshore detention of migrants arriving by boats (Mountz 2011; Pickering and Weber 2014; Rajaram 2003). While there is growing literature on various quasi-criminal justice practices, immigration detention is by far the most studied (see Lindberg and Khosravi in this volume, Chapter 29). This is so in two ways. On the one hand, there is research on immigration detention in a number of states that are less commonly the object of crimmigration research, such as Finland, Mexico, Cuba, Malta, Cyprus, and Turkey, which helps nuance our understanding of its role in controlling migrants and opens up new areas of inquiry (see Global Detention Project 2019; Nethery and Silverman 2015). On the other hand, for EU countries, Canada, Australia and the United States, there is extensive research focusing on several aspects of detention, such as detailed analyses of legal regimes, the punitive nature of administrative sanctions, its critique from a human rights angle, its impact on mental health, the lived experience of detainees, the particular situation of detained minors, and activist challenges against detention (e.g. Bosworth 2014; Flynn and Flynn 2017; Gros and van Groll 2015; Guia et al. 2016; Majcher et al. 2019; Turnbull 2016; von Werthern et al. 2018). This focus is important, since immigration detention is often lived as a form of punishment and can have tremendous consequences on people’s lives. But while we are starting to have a good picture of many aspects of immigration detention, research is urgently needed on the consequences of other practices borrowed from the criminal justice system and often presented as positive alternatives to detention. Condition-based release, bail, electronic monitoring, and in-community surveillance (Edwards 2011; Marouf 2017; Sampson et al. 2011) are worth exploring but we need to critically engage with their limits and consider more radical abolitionist possibilities (Benslimane and Moffette 2019; García Hernández 2017; Loyd 2019).
THE CONCEPTUALIZATION OF THESE INTERSECTIONS AS ‘CRIMMIGRATION’5 These dynamic intersections preoccupy researchers and activists, and force scholars to try to develop tools to make sense of them at different levels. For instance, the trend raises questions about the nature of punishment and whether administrative sanctions can be considered punitive despite the fact that punishment is officially a criminal law category (Bosworth 2012, 2019; Bosworth and Guild 2008; Bowling 2013; Franko Aas 2014; Pratt 2005; Stumpf 2013; Velloso 2013). It also pushes researchers to inquire into the similarity of criminalization and immigration exclusion as strategies to border people out of the political community (Bosworth and Guild 2008; Stumpf 2006). There is also a slowly growing but urgent call for research that empirically documents but also conceptualizes the role that race, racialization and racism play in the coercive legal regulation of non-citizens (Armenta 2017a; Bowling 2013; Garner 2015; Moffette and Vadasaria 2016; see wider debate on postcolonial migration governance by Mayblin in this volume, Chapter 2). There are thus many entry points, conceptual debates, and ways of engaging with these issues. But when it comes to naming the phenomenon and describing the forms that these intersections take, most scholars now use the term ‘crimmigration’, either deployed as a concept, as a descriptor of an empirical reality, or as the sub-field of legal and criminological
Governing migration by other means 345 scholarship concerned with this topic. In her landmark article, Stumpf (2006) first used the concept to describe what she saw as a ‘convergence’ (p. 377) or even a ‘merger’ (p. 369) of immigration and criminal law. Describing the US context, she claimed that ‘[i]mmigration law today is clothed with so many attributes of criminal law that the line between them has grown indistinct’, adding that ‘[t]he merger of the two areas in both substance and procedure has created parallel systems in which immigration law and the criminal justice system are merely nominally separate’ (p. 376). The article offered a detailed description of empirical legal dynamics as well as a convincing explanation of the phenomenon through membership theory, but it is the concept of crimmigration as merger that had the biggest impact and was most widely adopted in the following years. This growing scholarship on what is often now referred to as crimmigration or crimmigration law – whether or not the concept is actually deployed – has been very important in documenting these dynamics in various contexts. Stumpf was right when she wrote almost 15 years ago that ‘little ha[d] been written about why this merger has occurred, and what are its theoretical underpinning’ (2006: 377). But this scholarship now exists and various scholars, including myself, have grown worried that the convergence thesis may prevent us from seeing the more complex ways that various actors, practices and domains of law intersect (Ambrosini 2016; Moffette 2020; Moffette and Pratt 2020). For instance, in an article on ‘crimmigration in the Netherlands’, van der Woude et al. (2014: 561) explained that they used crimmigration ‘as a sensitizing concept’, that is, ‘as a starting point for a qualitative study’ (p. 562, n. 2). I think it is important to ask what the implications of starting with crimmigration as a lens for reading immigration policing, regulation, and punishment are. In most cases – especially in works that are not designed to study everyday practices – taking the concept and theme of crimmigration as a starting point leads us to look for the oft-mentioned convergence. And we usually ‘find it’, or at least we document these intersections by insisting on the dynamics that highlight a partial merger. This is often the case despite various attempts – including by scholars who embrace the concept – to move beyond the focus on convergence and try to capture the complex and multilayered empirical processes of legal governance. Indeed, early on, Legomsky (2007: 469) adopted the crimmigration research agenda but proposed the concept of ‘asymmetrical incorporation of criminal justice norms’ as a way to describe unequal influences that cannot be captured by the idea of a merger. Similarly, Sklansky (2012) was among the first to fully centre discretion and what he calls the ‘ad hoc instrumentalism’ that guides decisions to prosecute through immigration law or criminal law, highlighting how an instrumental understanding of law leads prosecutors and officers to cherry-pick legal tools for the coercive regulation of immigrants. These and other efforts have broadened the scope of what we understand crimmigration to be, but much of the literature using the concept as a starting point still insists on documenting a convergence. I suggest that while the concept of crimmigration may illuminate converging patterns, it also conceals more complex and less unidirectional dynamics. If, as Franko Aas (2014) argues, it is at times not so much the merger but the differentiation between the two types of laws (in terms of scope, objects, procedures, guarantees, and so on) that makes the encounter effective for the socio-legal regulation of immigrants, then we need tools to account for the ways this differentiation is made to matter. Similarly, once we know that the coercive socio-legal regulation of immigrants is not limited to immigration law, we may want to look at intersections with other types of laws (municipal bylaws, laws about access to welfare, healthcare or education, and so
346 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration on), or the role of actors whose work has nothing to do with immigration enforcement or the criminal justice system.
LEGAL PLURALISM AS AN ALTERNATIVE POINT OF ENTRY While studying the intersections of criminal and immigration law is essential, simplifying the messy legal assemblages governing migration under the umbrella concept of crimmigration risks making us lose sight of what Boaventura de Sousa Santos (1987) called interlegality – that is, the non-synchronic, unequal and unstable play between various laws, techniques and normative regimes, and that it can contribute to the evacuation of other realms of law. Adopting a broader legal pluralist approach might provide for empirically richer analyses. Legal pluralism was first coined to describe the ‘empirical reality’ of coexisting legal orders, especially in colonial contexts, and tended to oppose ‘state law’ to ‘customary law’. This definition is now often extended to also account for, on the one hand, less formalized normative regimes that provide a form of broadly understood legality (e.g. religious law, informal prison codes, Indigenous law) and, on the other hand, the various scales of law that coexist and intersect in a globalized world (Benda-Beckmann and Turner 2018). This is clearly the case in the legal governance of immigration, immigrants and refugees where rights claims drawing on various international treaty obligations coexist with municipal bylaws regulating racialized immigrants’ use of the public space, national immigration law regulating their stay, criminal law, EU Human Rights tribunal decisions, and sub-state level laws and regulations about access to healthcare or education. There are therefore a multiplicity of laws – governing distinct domains and existing at different scales – that may be mobilized (on the notion of legal mobilization, see Kawar in this volume, Chapter 31). Together, they provide legal devices that a multiplicity of actors can deploy with exclusionary or inclusionary objectives; and we have no certainty that even progressive inclusionary policies will not be used for the coercive moral regulation of immigrants (Dua 2007; Goldring and Landolt 2013; Moffette 2018; Rosenbloom 2018). Indeed, legal provisions are flexible technologies whose use is, to a certain extent, open and indeterminate (Valverde 2010). A socio-legal pluralist perspective also acknowledges that law (or legality) can even be used to govern situations where it does not officially apply. For instance, if a police officer threatens an immigrant youth with revoking her work permit for ‘not cooperating in a criminal investigation’ – knowing full well that he has no power to do so – and is able to make the person cooperate, the ‘law’ has worked. We see this also when frontline workers or school administrators invoke the law – which they at times clearly misunderstand – to guard access to education or other services (Goldring and Landolt 2013). Lawyers may object that these actors knowingly or unknowingly misinterpret the law – or that there is no such law to begin with – but a law or legal principle was nonetheless invoked successfully, thus contributing to our socio-legal regulation (Ewick and Silbey 1998). Adopting a broader sociological conception of what law or legality ‘does’, and considering the plurality of multi-scalar legal regimes at play, allows us to start mapping out the practices of immigration governance. Using a legal pluralist lens, we can therefore at once avoid the ‘merger’ or ‘indistinction’ thesis that accompanies much of the crimmigration literature; insist that it is the difference in scale, object, domains and procedures of these laws that is key to understanding how they are tactically deployed; acknowledge that this formal separation of various realms of legality
Governing migration by other means 347 is somewhat of a legal fiction resulting from the bracketing game of jurisdiction (Ford 1999; Valverde 2009); and try to document how they intersect and work together in practice. As Santos explained in a landmark article of socio-legal studies more than 30 years ago, ‘the different legal orders operating on different scales translate the same social objects into different legal objects. However, in real socio-legal life the different legal scales do not exist in isolation but rather interact in different ways’ (1987: 288). He adds: ‘The difficulty lies in that socio-legal life is constituted by different legal spaces operating simultaneously on different scales and from different interpretive standpoints. So much is this so that in phenomenological terms and as a result of interaction and intersection among legal spaces one cannot properly speak of law and legality but rather of interlaw and interlegality’ (1987: 288). While there are affinities between this position and the crimmigration thesis, the concept of interlegality invites us to account for the plurality of actors and logics, and to produce readings of the varied intersections between distinct but multipurpose sets of legal technologies. Paying attention to the scale-jumping practices and jurisdictional games of actors can illuminate how discretionary decisions to use municipal bylaws, welfare law, driving regulations, or criminal statutes instead of – or in conjunction with – immigration law is only possible because they are jurisdictionally separate.
AN EXAMPLE: THE JURISDICTIONAL GAMES OF IMMIGRATION POLICING IN BARCELONA I will briefly illustrate my argument with an example from Barcelona where I conducted fieldwork (for cities as governance spaces, see also van Raendonck and Meissen in this volume, Chapter 21). Since 2015, unauthorized street vending has become a political issue in Barcelona after conservative journalists, the police and some business people denounced the municipal government for not effectively dealing with the presence of some 400 to 1000 immigrant street vendors who sold fake brand clothing, such as Nike shirts or Gucci bags, to the millions of tourists travelling to Barcelona every year. As a response, elected officials put in place a ‘tough-on-street-vending’ discourse backed by a crackdown on Barcelona’s street vendors. At first glance, this is not technically about immigration. Indeed, the unauthorized selling of goods in a public space is a violation of two municipal bylaws on the use of streets and public spaces. And yet, municipal police officers regularly set up checkpoints at the turnstiles of important subway stations to intercept African immigrants circulating with big blankets tied up in the shape of a bag which they use to carry their merchandise – a practice of racial profiling that bears material and symbolic similarities with traditional forms of border control. The Commissioner of Security for the City of Barcelona highlights that controlling immigration is not a responsibility of the municipal police and that officers do not target undocumented people per se, but he acknowledges that ‘it remains true that if in the course of our activities we find someone who’s wanted or who doesn’t have papers we bring this person to [the National Police’s Alien Affairs Brigade] for them to do what they have to do. Most of the time. Every time there is a criminal offence, for instance.’6 We have a first set of intersections here, between the Barcelona Urban Police applying bylaws, and the National Police Corps enforcing the Alien Act. The fact that they more readily contact the National Police’s Alien Affairs Brigade when there are aggravating factors such as the commission of a crime is important, because the
348 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration selling of counterfeit goods (such as fake Gucci bags) is a criminal offence.7 This, technically, brings in a third police force as it is the Catalan Police who are supposed to act as the main judiciary police and are brought in for the criminal prosecution part of the multi-layered legal governance of street vendors. However, municipal police officers are the ones currently performing this work because it is presented as an issue of public space governance. The Commissioner of Security objects: ‘But it’s like if you told me that someone is selling illegal substances in a public space and that it’s a problem of street vending. It’s not a problem of street vending. It’s the commission of a crime!’8 Therefore, what the activity is called has an impact on who is in charge of prosecuting it and, based on interest, police forces can decide to bounce the ‘problem’ to their colleagues or to claim jurisdiction over it. Municipal police officers therefore train their own experts to identify counterfeit goods because while merchandise for sale without a permit can be seized until the owner pays a fine, counterfeit products will be destroyed and never returned to their owner, and thus taken off the streets. There is thus a second set of intersections here, between the Barcelona Urban Police applying bylaws and at times the Criminal Code, and the Catalan Police who are asked to be more active in exerting their authority as judiciary police. Finally, there is a third set of jurisdictional intersections at play, one that is more territorial. Indeed, at the bottom of La Rambla is the Port of Barcelona, where tourists go for strolls. Ports are governed by the Spanish state, a power that is often delegated to autonomous communities such a Catalonia, except in the case of ‘ports of interest to the state’ such as the Port of Barcelona. Here, the Port Authority and the Port Police are in charge. This geographic and jurisdictional border – separating the two sides of the same street along much of the seaside in the downtown core – means that the side of the street on which a vendor decides to sell his merchandise will determine who has the authority to intervene, a situation that was used strategically by street vendors who, after being pushed out of La Rambla and the subway in 2015–16, moved to the port area where the municipal Urban Police could not intervene without engaging in multi-corps interventions alongside Port police officers. This example only looks at strategies of urban policing involving four distinct police corps. It does not even consider the many other legal and non-legal actors involved, or the ways that the law regulating municipal census (a key piece of regularization programmes), or the patchwork legal regime regulating access to healthcare, may come into play (see Moffette 2018). And yet, we already see how various actors use different legal regimes to govern immigrants by intervening on a number of legal objects (crimes, sidewalks, foreigners, port space, counterfeit Gucci bags, public order, etc.). This ability to scale-jump, or switch legal gears, is possible because these different objects and domains of law are jurisdictionally distinct. I have therefore proposed that we use the concept of ‘interlegal jurisdictional games’ as an alternative point of entry to study the socio-legal regulation of immigrants (Moffette 2020). Jurisdiction is a legal mechanism that allows for the allocation of legal authority over various objects: territorial jurisdiction to distribute authority over space delimited by geospatial coordinates or by scale (e.g. municipal, national, international); thematic jurisdiction to distribute authority over objects and subjects (e.g. drugs, intellectual property, foreigners, crimes, torts); temporal jurisdiction to circumscribe the reach of a court or law (e.g. the International Criminal Court cannot judge crimes committed before 2002), and so on. But jurisdictions are not fixed or natural; they need to be constantly claimed and should be studied as ‘a bundle of practices’ (Ford 1999: 855). Jurisdiction is indeed the practice whereby legislators, courts, police officers, immigration agents, tax inspectors and anyone who wants to summon or enforce the
Governing migration by other means 349 law, make claims about the ‘where’, the ‘who’, the ‘what’, the ‘when’ and the ‘how’ of law (Valverde 2009) and provide rationales for why an act or a person, in a particular place, should fall under the authority of a particular body and should be treated according to this or that kind of procedures. The game of jurisdiction thus precedes – and is always reperformed through – negotiations over what belongs to immigration law, criminal law or other legal regimes. Therefore, moving a step back to ask questions about the types of jurisdictional claims that actors make and the various jurisdictional games they deploy in practice can provide us with better tools to grasp what is at stake when actors can cherry-pick what legal framework they use to govern, regulate or punish immigrants, and how immigrants can also play the game of jurisdiction to escape prosecution (see Kawar in this volume, Chapter 31). This type of analysis may also, perhaps, help us better resist the coercive interlegal regulation of immigrants than the sole focus on criminal law and criminalization. There is no doubt that criminal law is a powerful and preoccupying tool, but it is one that cannot be considered in isolation from driving regulations, municipal ordinances or legal provisions around social insurance, for instance (for empirical examples, see Armenta 2017b; Goldring and Landolt 2013; Moffette 2018, 2020; Varsanyi 2011).
MOVING FORWARD The inconsistent use of the term crimmigration to refer at times to the concept, often simultaneously, to the purportedly empirically existing new form of crimmigration law, or sometimes to a broad sub-field of research – competing here with other umbrella labels such as ‘border criminology’ or the ‘criminology of mobility’ – forces me to clarify that my critique is targeted at the concept and its usefulness, not at the otherwise solid scholarship that is sometimes gathered under this name. As scholars using the concept engage more and more with the ‘messy actualities of governance’ (O’Malley et al. 1997: 504) by conducting ethnographic work (e.g. Armenta 2017b), focusing on the discretionary decisions and practices of actors (e.g. van der Woude and van der Leun 2017), or studying immigration policing in action (e.g. Weber 2013), it becomes clear that their rich empirical descriptions portray an array of dynamics that do not fit neatly the merger thesis. In fact, in Stumpf’s own writing, there has been a growing emphasis on messier encounters, evident in words such as ‘interlacing’, ‘transmogrification’, ‘intermeshing’, and ‘cross-stiches joining’ of immigration and criminal law (2014: 237, 244). This is promising. But instead of trying to depict an all-encompassing crimmigration leviathan (Stumpf 2014), I argue that we need to operate a ‘practice turn’ similar to the one that is taking place in critical border studies (Côté-Boucher et al. 2014) and attempt to account for the multi-actor, multi-scalar and multi-jurisdictional socio-legal governance of immigrants. It is essential for the future of crimmigration scholarship, and it may also provide a useful lens for researchers studying governing logics and practices in completely different domains.
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NOTES 1. An unlawful entry offence (most commonly by crossing the border not at an authorized point of entry) is codified as a misdemeanour (a lesser crime punishable by less than a year of imprisonment or a fine), while an unlawful re-entry offence (re-entering the United States after having been removed) is codified as a felony (a serious crime punishable by one year or more of imprisonment). See 8 U.S.C., §1325, §1326 and Chacón 2009. 2. Section 117 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) as it read at the time. 3. See 8 U.S.C., §1227(1)(2)(A). 4. See IRPA, s. 36(1)(a). 5. The arguments in this section and the next were first developed in Moffette (2020), and parts of these sections are adapted from this article. 6. Interview, summer 2016. 7. Código penal, art. 274. 8. Interview, summer 2016.
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29. Situating deportation and expulsion in migration governance Annika Lindberg and Shahram Khosravi
INTRODUCTION: THE AGE OF DEPORTATION The removal and expulsion of people is not new. Sovereign powers have always forced people to move for different reasons: to confiscate their properties, as a form of punishment, or in order to make their territories more ethnically or religiously homogeneous. The modern form of removal that we call deportation, in contrast, is new. It emerged with the rise of the nation-state system (compare El Qadim in this volume, Chapter 19), and today we live in an age of mass deportation. The United States deported almost three million people between 2009 and 2016. Several million more are scheduled to follow them in the coming years. European Union member states are now, in early 2020, working to deport almost 100,000 people to Afghanistan alone. Readmission agreements with receiving countries and large quantities of money will make these deportations easier. And while the expense of deportation makes this largely a project of the global North, mass deportation is growing in the global South as well. Saudi Arabia has deported hundreds of thousands of migrants in recent years. Iran and Pakistan, meanwhile, have forcibly sent more than one million people to Afghanistan since 2016. Deportation in Europe is a huge enterprise, costing almost one billion euros annually (The Migrants’ Files 2015). An infrastructure of deportation has emerged, which includes detention, holding and deportation centres as well as various modes of transport. The removal operation itself is a transnational enterprise that involves a plethora of different actors, including state authorities, transport companies, private security companies, deportation escorts, as well as various other private companies. Deportation has merged with economic relations and market processes (Walters 2016) to become a financial and political feature of our age. Mass deportation is an expensive enterprise that only rich states can afford. Meanwhile, it targets people who have limited or no financial resources. Thus, deportation is not only a racial but also a class issue. Deportation – the forced removal of non-citizens – entails excessive state violence and causes harm to deportees, their families and local communities (Ellermann 2009). It is also, as scholars such as Coutin (2015) have shown, an ineffective way to regulate mobility. Yet despite all of this, deportation has become a widespread, normalized measure for governing populations (Walters 2002). This chapter provides an overview of critical scholarly perspectives on the politics, practices and experiences of deportation. It suggests that we study deportation not as a discrete event but as a process that, intertwined with other global processes, produces and sustains inequalities, exclusion and marginalization. Deportation as a form of forced mobility (Gibney 2013) was for a long time overlooked in mainstream migration studies but a growing body of critical scholarship provides insights into the role of deporation in producing and maintaining global inequalities. States’ steadily growing 354
Situating deportation and expulsion in migration governance 355 investment in deportation during the early 2000s, led scholars to declare a ‘deportation turn’ in migration control policy (Anderson et al. 2011; De Genova and Peutz 2010). Deportation studies subsequently emerged as a subfield of migration and border studies (Drotbohm and Hasselberg 2015) and security studies (Coutin 2015), respectively. The literature analysing the rise of deportation has explained this trend in part through the significant role it plays in global capitalist markets and in contemporary processes of state- and nation-building (Willen 2010). There is a need for more scholarly work that inquiries into the violent underpinnings of deportations and calls into question the nativist, statist assumptions that justify them. Such research could re-politicize deportation while positioning its micro-level practices within nationalist imaginations and global structures of social inequality and marginalization.
THE RISE OF A GLOBAL DEPORTATION REGIME Deportation has become part of the international relations between states. Authorities in both deporting and receiving countries collaborate to facilitate deportations. These collaborations entail significant financial transactions: deportation has been incorporated into development policy (Collyer 2016) and countries in the global South are often promised economic aid in exchange for accepting deportees. The threat of deporting a country’s nationals is also instrumentally used to influence and manipulate other states, as Iran does with Afghan migrants. Some scholars therefore see deportation as a part of the neoliberal economic restructuring of global capitalism (Golash-Boza 2015). Deportation is fuelled by its utility for political actors and capitalist markets. Adopting such a perspective allows us to see that deportation is more than simply relocating individuals from one country to another. It is a process that stretches across both time and geography. It involves many and diverse people and institutions: deportees, their families and communities, state officials, transport companies, bureaucrats, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), activists, media, as well as private security and other companies (Drotbohm and Hasselberg 2015; Kalir and Wissink 2016). Deportation has also justified the expansion of migration-industrial complexes, including privately run migration-related detention centres, in Europe, the United States and Australia (Hiemstra 2014). Deportation as a State-building Project Deportation enables states to expand and legitimate their punitive and security-related powers. Over the past two decades, they have created a broad array of techniques and discourses to regulate, control and remove undesired non-citizens in what scholars have termed the ‘securitization of migration’ (Huysmans 2000; compare Jeandesboz in this volume, Chapter 27). This security–migration nexus emerged following the Cold War but became the principal mode of governing unwanted mobility after the terror attacks in September 2001. In Europe, detention and deportation were normalized as elements of the border regime, through both the harmonization of migration and asylum policy within the European Union, and the moral panic around the so-called ‘refugee crisis’. As a consequence, migration has been increasingly governed through the techniques, institutions and discourses of crime and the penal state apparatus (Bosworth et al. 2018; Kaufman 2015).
356 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration Although the criminalization of non-citizens can be traced back to the early twentieth century, it has been radicalized over the last two decades. Detention and deportation have become the bodily sanctions of the migration regime, producing a condition of ‘deportability’ (De Genova 2002), threatening not only non-citizens but racialized and poor citizens as well (see Khosravi 2018). In some countries, the merging of immigration control and policing has a longer history: in South Africa, for instance, criminalization and intensive policing of racialized citizens and their mobility was a key tenet of the apartheid regime, which today extends to immigrant groups as well (Vigneswaran 2013). Across Europe and the United States, we can observe how the associations between migration, illegality and crime has justified not only intensified migration control measures but discriminatory policing of racialized communities as well (De Noronha 2019; compare Moffette in this volume, Chapter 28). States target undocumented migrants and undesirable non-citizens by framing them as a criminal population to be policed and excluded, justified on the grounds that they threaten the well-being of the social body. As Cohen (2002 [1972]) puts it, illegalized migrants have become the ‘folk devils’ of the contemporary world. Their association with criminality allows them to be constructed as a category of risky non-citizen, which is then deployed as a simplistic ‘cause’ for contemporary inequalities and insecurities (compare on ‘crimmigration’, Moffette in this volume, Chapter 28). This political strategy redefines a social issue as a criminal issue. Categorizing a group as ‘criminal’ is part of a political strategy that legitimizes further intervention into areas that had not previously been regarded as matters for the penal apparatus. This creeping intertwinement of migration and crime can be illustrated by the increasing criminalization of border-crossing, including acts of solidarity by those who try to offer border crossers their support. A notable example – lethal consequences – is the EU’s criminalization of search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean Sea (Fekete 2018). Deportation as a ‘Technology of Citizenship’ In addition to this (security) state-building function, deportation plays a crucial role in nation-building (compare El Qadim in this volume, Chapter 19). The construction of deportable groups of unidentifiable – and therefore unmanageable and unwanted – individuals allows an ideal nation to be imagined (Khosravi 2009). Deportations themselves reflect and reaffirm state power to establish a ‘citizenry as community of value and community of law’ (Anderson et al. 2011: 548). These are ‘technologies of citizenship’ (Walters 2002), which aim to construct responsible, self-regulating, prudent, rational and ethical subjects – citizens (compare Rodrigues de Castro and Moulin in this volume, Chapter 3). ‘Anti-citizens’ (Inda 2006), in contrast, are constructed as ‘unable or unwilling to enterprise their lives or manage their own risk, incapable of exercising responsible self-government, attached either to no moral community or to a community of anti-morality’ (Rose 1999). They live outside the ordinary regulatory system, violate established norms, and threaten the safety and quality of life of ‘normal’ citizens. Deportation is an act of corporal removal: by physically removing an anti-citizen, the purity of society is preserved. Thus, their deportation can be seen as a worship of nationhood or a celebration of citizenship. Following the American legal scholar Mary Fan (2008), who states that the more migration laws are shown to be inefficient, the more object-oriented bordering practices become (longer, taller, smarter walls), we argue that the whole apparatus of detention and deportation is part of the spectacle demonstrating the sovereignty of states. If a nation state is imagined through its
Situating deportation and expulsion in migration governance 357 borders, the ‘right’ to determine who can be included or excluded becomes fundamental for fortifying such imaginations. Gibney and Hansen (2003: 2) have suggested that deportations are ‘both ineffectual and essential’ for states. They perform and sustain the ‘fantasy’ (Coutin 2015) that states are able to control unwanted mobility. Thus, the removal of non-citizens can be seen as a nationalist project, a way of ensuring that people are in ‘their proper sovereigns’ (Walters 2002: 282). As such, deportation does not so much exclude non-citizens but rather keeps them in their place in terms of the racial and class hierarchy (compare Mayblin in this volume, Chapter 2).
DEPORTATION, RACISM AND GLOBAL INEQUALITY We thus come to understand deportation as embedded in global capitalist relations, nationalist imaginaries and expanding security state apparatuses. It both reflects and produces racialized and class hierarchies while negatively affecting individual deportees and receiving communities. Deportable communities are regularly excluded from rights protections and social service provisions (Ataç and Rosenberger 2018). Remittances, which are an important source of livelihood for many poor families, vanish after a deportation process begins. Deportees find themselves in societies already struggling with high rates of unemployment, social insecurity, political instability, and, in some cases, internal displacement. Deportation therefore needs to be read in a larger context of neoliberal social abandonment (Khosravi 2017) and as a technique for maintaining global apartheid (Bowling and Westenra 2018; Suárez-Krabbe and Lindberg 2019). It exposes vulnerable groups to multiple expulsions: from communities, housing, and work; from health and education systems; and from spheres of security and state protection. And it separates wealthy people, who can move freely, from poor, racialized people who cannot (compare Mayblin in this volume, Chapter 2). In this age of deportation not only non-citizens, but also citizens, are threatened by removal. In recent years there has been a proliferation of revocation of citizenship followed by deportation from Canada and Norway (Khosravi 2018) to Bahrain. Rather than being merely a strategy of immigration control, deportation is integrated in larger social and economic global transformations. For instance, in the past two years during mass arrests of undocumented Afghans in Iran, several hundred poor Iranian citizens who for various reasons lacked identity cards were also arrested and deported to Afghanistan.1 The ways in which racism is embedded in and reproduced by current deportation regimes (De Noronha 2019) can be illustrated with a few examples. First, while European states discourage their citizens from travelling to Afghanistan or Iraq for safety reasons, Afghans and Iraqis are regularly deported to these countries. The deportation regime demonstrates its sovereignty by deciding which lives are liveable and which are not, which deaths are ‘grieveable’ (Europeans’ death) and which are not (Afghans’ death). The lives of deportees are not seen as being in danger, injured, or lost because they are not recognized as lives at all. To give a second example, Somalis constituted the largest group in detention centres in Sweden in 2014. However, they were not among the first twenty most-deported migrant groups that year. The Somali migrants were detained even though they were not deportable. The question, then, is how the seemingly meaningless detainment of this specific non-deportable Muslim and black group can be justified (see DeBono et al. 2015). In her study of migrant sex workers in Finland, Niina Vuolajärvi (2018) shows that although Russian sex workers outnumbered
358 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration Nigerian sex workers, 70% of sex workers deported were Nigerians and only 30% were Russians. Both groups were ‘equally deportable’ third-country nationals. The examples signal that deportation practices can be selective and deeply racialized. While these examples show that deportation cannot be reduced solely to the logics of neoliberalism, seeing it as a neoliberal instrument makes it easier to understand deportation’s nature and current expansion (see Andrijasevic and Walters 2010; see also De Genova 2002). Labour markets demonstrate this well. Deportations are a part of the sharp edge of a racist border regime that regulates the global flow of surplus labour (Rajaram 2018; see also Rajaram, Chapter 15; Azmeh, Chapter 18; Squire, Chapter 11, all in this volume) – created in part by the outsourcing of services, the privatization of society, and withdrawal of the welfare state – and keeps two worlds apart: the world of surplus mobility and the world of checkpoints, borders, queues, gates, detentions and removal. This has several implications. First, the condition of deportability renders migrant workers a ‘distinctly disposable commodity’ and creates a flexible and docile labour force (De Genova 2002). Second, by controlling workers’ mobility it reinforces the wage gap between the global North and the global South. There is a direct link between outsourcing to countries with low wages and restricting the mobility of people from those countries (Jones 2016). Third, deportation maintains unequal access to resources, and thus not only upholds the unequal distribution of wealth but preserves and reproduces social inequalities and global injustices. For example, Bangladesh provides one of the lowest wage labour forces to global capitalism on earth. Twenty million people work in the transnational garment industry alone. Bangladeshis are, not coincidentally, also severely restricted in their ability to travel. Bangladeshi citizens can only travel to 37 countries without a visa – all of them other poor countries in the global South. German passport holders, in contrast, can travel to more than 170 countries without a visa. Recently, deportation scholars have paid particular attention to the relationship between mass deportation and outsourcing and offshoring. Scholars such as Golash-Boza (2015) and Rodkey (2017) argue that mass deportation provides a flexible labour force that is bilingual and has the ‘right’ cultural capital for transnational corporations. Rodkey (2016) demonstrates that deportees who grew up in the USA, who speak English fluently, and who are familiar with American society constitute the optimal workforce for any American company moving to the Dominican Republic in search of cheap wage labour. Deportees are spatially expelled from the global North in order to be re-incorporated within capitalist activities outsourced to the global South. Thus, rather than merely being excluded, deportees are, in Giorgio Agamben’s meaning, abandoned. They are ‘exposed and threatened on the threshold in which life and law, outside and inside, become undistinguished. It is literally not possible to say whether the one who has been banned is outside or inside the juridical order’ (Agamben 1998: 28). This is the sovereign abandonment, an inclusive exclusion. Deportation is thus a technique through which global injustices and inequalities are regulated, sustained and normalized. European and North American states use deportation so often that it, too, has become normalized and depoliticized (Bloch and Schuster 2005; Kanstroom 2012). As De Genova and Peutz (2010: 3) note, it is now considered a ‘standardized instrument of statecraft’. Therefore, as scholars critically engaging with these issues, we must begin a process of re-politicizing deportation. We suggest that a good place to begin is with terminology.
Situating deportation and expulsion in migration governance 359
BEYOND THE NORMALIZED TERMINOLOGY OF DEPORTATION Deportation is a coercive and violent process – it is a form of forced movement (Gibney 2013; Walters 2002). Deportees have no control over where they are taken, when their removal takes place, or how they are removed. Depoliticization obscures this violence. It reduces the risk that deportees, their support groups or the general public will resist and obstruct deportation enforcement (Ellermann 2009). Depoliticization occurs in part by evoking the idea that deportation restores displaced, out-of-place people to their ‘natural’ place, their ‘homeland’. Governments use such nativist discourses in deportation policy and political campaigns to affirm the role of deportation in preserving a ‘national order of things’ (Malkki 1996) and to assert racialized boundaries of belonging. For instance, the UK government presented its infamous 2013 billboard campaign, in which Home Office vans circulated the streets carrying the message ‘In the UK illegally? Go home or face arrest’, as a simple matter of upholding immigration law. For racialized people in the UK, however, the message recalled decades of racist abuse and signalled a normalization of racist discourse (Grayson 2013). Or, in a recent campaign to enhance the ‘voluntary repatriation’ of rejected asylum seekers, the German Ministry of Interior used the slogan ‘Your country! Your future! Now!’ (Returning from Germany 2018). The campaign not only suggested that asylum seekers ‘belong’ to the country which they fled from, but also that they are responsible for its future. The language used by politicians, journalists, activists and even scholars when critiquing deportation is often permeated by similar notes of methodological nationalism and statism. Adopting statist terms like ‘administrative detention’, ‘removals’ and ‘voluntary return’ takes nationalist discourses for granted and depoliticizes the coercive and punitive underpinnings of deportation processes (Webber 2011). Moreover, a national-based territorialization of the imaginary and the analytical focus in this field (Wimmer and Glick-Schiller 2002: 307) has resulted in the recycling of misleading terms such as ‘home’, ‘homeland’, ‘country of origin’ or ‘reintegration’. The same is true for the terminology used to describe the process. State authorities insist that detention and deportation are not punitive but administrative in nature. Yet most deportees experience them as punishment. The excessive and disproportionate violence as well as the use of penal state institutions, such as police and prison authorities and private security companies, further illustrate how the discursive distinction between administrative and penal procedures is misleading in practice. Prisons are explicitly assigned both tasks: they punish while also administering someone’s life in ways that, according to most governments, foster ‘docile and useful bodies’ and support the transformation to beneficial and productive citizens. Deportation, in contrast, is pure punishment. It is nothing more than the permanent banishment of ‘wasted’ bodies (Aas 2013; Bosworth 2018). States take pains to distinguish between ‘voluntary’ and forced returns and insist that they prefer the former over the latter (compare Bakewell in this volume, Chapter 10). Yet scholars have highlighted the artificiality of this distinction (Webber 2011). They have shown how the discourse of voluntarism frames deportable individuals as responsible for their situation and conceals the state violence that always accompanies deportation processes (Khosravi 2009). For instance, state agencies and non-governmental organizations rationalize their participation in deportation as ‘helping’ deportees to a ‘humane and dignified’ return (Kalir and Wissink 2016). They leave out that this ‘assistance’ is underpinned by the threat of coer-
360 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration cion. Voluntarism enables states to avoid responsibility for the significant mental, physical and social harms that detention and deportation processes inflict on migrants, through direct coercion as well as denial of fundamental rights and services (Canning 2019; Suárez-Krabbe and Lindberg 2019). Another highly problematic term used in post-deportation studies is ‘reintegration’. The prefix re suggests that deportees go back to a society in which they had been previously integrated. However, ethnographies of what happens after deportation show that this is often not the case (Khosravi 2017; Schuster and Majidi 2013). Reintegration draws on the problematic ideology of ‘home’ and ‘homeland’ already discussed, which frames border crossing as pathological and suggests that being on the other side of a border is an ‘unnatural’ mode of being. Deportation and then reintegration supposedly restores the broken link between nativity and nationality. However, for many migrants, deportation hardly means ‘going back home’ to a place of safety and belonging. For them it is being forcibly displaced to a place they had left, escaped, or in which they had never actually lived. This understanding of deportation as ‘returning home’ moralizes and depoliticizes. It moralizes by reproducing moral messages about (home-based) family values: deportation is often described as a homecoming, as returning someone to their family. Yet, as Golash-Boza and Ceciliano-Navarro (2019) show, deportees to the Dominican Republic are held in the police station and are not released until a family member comes for them. Majidi (2017) notes that one part of the ‘assistance’ that young Afghans supposedly receive from deporting states is to be escorted back to their families. The involuntary return to one’s family is also observed among Ugandan deportees (Ahumuza Onyoin 2017). Forced family reunification becomes more brutal in cases of minors or women who had escaped patriarchal oppression. This false reverence for the security of the family comes into sharp relief when deportation is used to split up a family in the host country (Hasselberg 2016). In such cases, the stated logic behind deportation directly contradicts itself, as it stresses family values and reunification in the exact moment that it causes a family to splinter. The vocabulary used by policy-makers, researchers, and various stakeholders in deportation processes also depoliticizes deportation processes by neglecting the power relation between the deporting country and the country one is deported to, as well as the conflicts and struggles within the country one is sent to. By presenting deportation as homecoming, the brutality embedded in deportation is masked and thereby depoliticized. The notion of home(land) is naturalized and presents the family as the most optimal and normal place to ‘return’ to, while individualizing and personalizing the difficulties that deportees struggle with. Neoliberal policy measures normalize this idea of return as individual choice by supposedly responsible, prudent, entrepreneurial subjects, notably through the Assisted Voluntary Return and Reintegration (AVRR) programmes (Plambech 2017). Moreover, unlike the depoliticized official discourse presenting deportation as homecoming, deportation is not the end of the migration cycle but rather just a phase of recirculation (Khosravi 2016). The above examples demonstrate the ways in which certain terms have helped deportation to be normalized as a ‘legitimate’ response to unwanted immigration by states. Scholars and various civil society actors, even those who oppose deportation, are complicit in reproducing and sustaining this normalization. By inquiring into the violent underpinnings of deportations and calling into question the nativist, statist assumptions that justify them, scholarly work can produce knowledge that re-politicizes deportation and connects its micro-level practices
Situating deportation and expulsion in migration governance 361 to its embeddedness in nationalist imaginations and global structures of social inequality and marginalization.
TOWARDS A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR RE-POLITICIZING DEPORTATION PROCESSES The project of re-politicizing deportation necessitates research approaches that interrogate the processes that render some people vulnerable to deportation in the first place, and which capture the connections between daily practices and experiences and macro-level processes. A starting point for doing so is to approach deportation as a process. Natalie Peutz (2006) has called for an anthropology of removal that approaches deportation not as a single and simple relocation of a person, but as a process involving long periods of time, multiple geographical areas, and a plethora of different actors. Scholars have risen to the challenge, and a growing body of scholarship now exists that interrogates people’s experience of deportation and deportability (Drotbohm and Hasselberg 2015; Hasselberg 2016). It has documented the extended temporal dimension of deportation, including the time spent in detention (Griffiths et al. 2013; compare Griffiths in this volume, Chapter 26) and extending well past the moment in which the deportation takes place. In this process, deportees are dispossessed of the time and resources they have invested in the deporting country (Khosravi 2018). Moreover, research has documented how deportation processes expand across state territories to subject people to repeated confinement (Hiemstra 2014; Mountz and Hiemstra 2014) and displacement – for instance when asylum seekers are deported back and forth between European states under the Dublin Regulation (Schuster 2011). In addition to the lived experiences of deportation processes, another strand of research has analysed the motivations and practices of the many different actors and institutions involved in enforcing and challenging deportations. This includes interrogating the everyday work of bureaucratic agents (Bosworth and Slade 2014; Eule et al. 2019), NGOs and private actors involved in deportation procedures (Fischer 2015; Kalir and Wissink 2016). This work reveals how deportation processes, while designed to effect order, cohesiveness and definitiveness of state sovereignty, are in practice ridden by informality, messiness, and power and rights abuses. Deportation practices do not go unchallenged. Individual deportations are continuously contested in and out of court (Gibney 2008: 147; compare Kawar in this volume, Chapter 31). And while not all anti-deportation campaigns seek to challenge deportation power as such (Ataç et al. 2016; Hadj Abdou and Rosenberger 2019), they disrupt the taken-for-granted legitimacy of deportation and draw attention to its adverse effects. Importantly, deportations are also contested and resisted by deportees themselves (Campesi 2015; Turnbull 2018). Whether through engagement in public protests or by resisting and enduring their own states of deportability, deportees contribute to delimiting and challenging deportation power (on political mobilization compare Ataç and Schwenken in this volume, Chapter 30). Peutz’s (2006) call for an anthropology of removals has furthermore highlighted the need to investigate what happens after deportation. Although there has been a growing literature on deportation since the early 2000s, academic research regarding what happens after deportation remains scarce. Lack of interest and methodological difficulties have caused the scope of deportation studies to stop all too often at the national borders of deporting countries. There is
362 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration a risk that this methodological nationalism will further reinforce the ideas and perspectives of nation states. However, there is a small but nascent body of literature on what happens after deportation (e.g. Boehm 2016; Collyer 2012; Coutin 2015; Galvin 2015; Golash-Boza 2015; Hiemstra 2012; Khosravi 2017; Schuster and Majidi 2013). What these studies show is that deportation rarely means ‘returning home’ to a place of safety and belonging. Rather, it often entails a forced return to a situation that is politically, financially, and socially worse than the one prior to the initial departure.
FINAL REMARKS In the age of mass deportation, critical inquiry into these processes is indispensable yet requires careful ethical and methodological considerations. As Susan Coutin (2015) has argued, it is imperative to critically study processes of normalization of such extreme state measures, and the assumptions, ideologies, and economies that underpin and sustain them. As we have argued in this chapter, we should not look at deportation as a discrete event. Rather, we should investigate how the condition of protracted, multiple and ceaseless abandonment before, during and after deportation constitutes normality in the daily lives of deportees (Galvin 2015) and is absorbed into the cycle of individuals’ lives and the history of communities (e.g. Schuster and Majidi 2013: 235). Studying the various aspects of deportation, from a perspective which understands deportation as a non-linear, multi-sited and often contradictory process, contributes to further knowledge on how deportation is related to broader processes of social exclusion and marginalization. Once distanced from methodological nationalism, studies of deportation can reveal how the removal of non-citizens is part of broader processes of global expulsion and abandonment. Deportable non-citizens and deportees are exposed to multi-layered expulsions that deprive them of the promises and possibilities of the globalized world. They are expelled from communities, labour markets, housing markets, spheres of security, health care systems, education systems, and state protection. Deportation thus contributes to the perpetuation of the unequal global distribution of mobility, both spatially and socially.
NOTE 1.
See http://www.bbc.com/persi an/afgha nistan-45435273 (accessed 29 June 2019).
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PART VI CONTESTING MIGRATION GOVERNANCE
30. Reconceptualizing and de-nationalizing repertoires of migrant political activism Ilker Ataç and Helen Schwenken
INTRODUCTION Zintan, a migrant detention camp in the Libyan Desert. A crowd of Eritrean inmates has organized a vocal protest against the scandalous and, for some, deadly conditions in the camp and the role of the European Union and the UN refugee agency UNHCR. Banners made out of blankets with tomato-paste-written protest slogans state “We are Victim by UNHCR in Libya” (Channel 4 News 2019). Change of scene: Jaipur (India), a banquette dinner organized by the Global Organization of People of Indian Origin (GOPIO), within the framework of the Indian annual diaspora event Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD), organized by the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs and the Confederation of Indian Industry. The attendants lobby invited politicians to ease the administrative procedures for investments and extend social and political rights for citizens of other countries, but with family ties to India (fieldwork observation, January 2012). These two examples indicate that the spectrum of migrant political activism is broad, making it hard to draw generalizable conclusions about repertoires of activism, demands or level of engagement. This also means, as we will argue in this chapter, that the existing silos of literature on and conceptualizations of migrant political activism require better integration to capture the complexity of the phenomenon and its governance implications. Much of migrant political activism is directed against the governance of migration at different levels: be it on international or supranational migration policies (such as bilateral labour migration agreements, the militarization of border protection or the introduction of new visa regulations), against national and local policies and regulations as well as their implementation (e.g. deportations, racial profiling) but also as an expression against so-called homeland-related issues (elections, human rights, authoritarian governments, civil wars, etc.). Migrant political activism’s intensity differs and it can take different forms; be informed by different political normative backgrounds; be exercised by migrants with or without previous political experience; be a result of organized and institutional efforts or spontaneous nature, and lead to different results. Migrant political activism is particularly characterized by four aspects: first, as non-citizens with limited political rights, migrants are not seen as part of the polity due to a lack of voting rights and so far as objects of migration regulations. However, they are not passive recipients of regulations; therefore analyses need to go beyond a victim–agency binary. Second, migrants’ political activism is not external to the governance of migration; we aim to show how migrants become part of migration governance through contestation. Third, migrants’ activism is not to be understood as opposite to citizens’ activism. Migrants’ activism and rights claims, which are central to substantive citizenship, problematize the division between citizens and non-citizens and hence can transcend the binary logics of a conventional notion of citizenship that is bound to nationality. Fourth, in the context of the rise of populist and right-wing movements, discourses on migration produce a binary logic between ‘us’ and 367
368 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration ‘them’ by expecting migrants to either ‘successfully integrate’ or to be submissive temporary ‘guests’. These dominant societal discourses produce a framework in which migrants’ mobilizations are interpreted as a threat or as ingratitude. In the following, first the term migrant political activism is explained and discussed in the light of related terms. The second part identifies different theoretical schools and disciplinary lenses to analyse migrant political activism, because we consider it problematic that conceptual debates in different disciplines and thematic areas are often not connected. What follows in the third part is a discussion of repertoires of migrant activism. We identify two key lines of activism: first, activities that aim at improving migrants’ formal rights and their access to these rights; second, space-related activism that either uses spatial strategies for their collective action or creates new social and political spaces for their participation. We argue that only an integrated approach – of social movement studies, critical citizenship studies, international relations and diaspora studies as well as feminist approaches of intersectionality – allows a sufficiently differentiated analysis of migrant political activism. Such an integrated approach puts the effects of migration governance, which influence the conditions for mobilizing non-citizens, in connection with actual protest repertoires and mobilization strategies, and it is sensitive to power relations and differences (in citizenship status, gender, etc.) within and between movements, communities and geographic locations.
TERMINOLOGY: WHAT IS MIGRANT POLITICAL ACTIVISM? Migrant political activism belongs to a field of related terms and concepts. These terms and concepts mark differences but are often used interchangeably. Migrant political activism refers to modes of mobilization and organization of various forms with a low degree of formal institutionalization. The issues and demands are often, but not necessarily, related to migrant-specific demands; they can also be related to the countries of origin (diaspora politics or homeland mobilizations; compare Fischer in this volume, Chapter 4). Even the activism of returned migrants that refers to some aspect of migration (e.g. deportation) is part of migrant political activism. A distinction is made between self-organized forms and pro-migrant activism or advocacy depending on whether migrants are the prime actors. Migrants’ self-organizing refers to the subjects who self-identify as migrants and who are affected by a lack of rights and/or discrimination due to their degrees of legality or identification as minority. In much of the Anglo-Saxon literature, the term self-organization is rarely used. Preferred (but not identical) concepts are grassroots, migrant-led, community or community-based organizing (e.g. De Tona and Moreo 2012; Fine 2006; Jenkins 2002). The perspective of self-organizing focuses on the agency of non-citizens when analysing activities, conditions, experiences, knowledge and voices. It can be contested who belongs to the subject of migrant self-organization – does it include naturalized citizens, foreign students and academics, second/third/further generations or ‘expats’? Politicization of migration by racist stereotypes and by demanding limited social and cultural rights for denizens and citizens (see Guia in this volume, Chapter 33) who are not seen as equal due to their ethnic and cultural ‘otherness’ – provokes yet another form of migrant activism, showing the multiplicity of migrant actors and their allies. Demonstrations against structural and institutional forms of racism (for example against the right-wing terrorist network National Socialist Underground
Reconceptualizing and de-nationalizing migrant political activism 369 (NSU) in Germany) are means of mobilization by non-citizens as well as citizens with and without their own migration history. On the other end of the spectrum, pro-migrant activism or advocacy means that an actor articulates demands on behalf of migrants. The advocacy can take different forms, be it political lobbying, legal activism (compare Kawar in this volume, Chapter 31), the offering of services or as political mobilizations for migrants’ rights and against racism, deportation or discrimination. Pro-migrant actors can be non-governmental organizations (NGOs), trade unions, Churches, small groups or social movements. Some studies reflect on the challenges of advocacy for migrants’ rights, including the relationship between self-organized migrants’ groups and advocates – often uneasy and shaped by power relations (e.g. Gill et al. 2014; Jenkins 2002). We follow a broad understanding of ‘the political’ as related to antagonisms found in society (Mouffe 2005: 9; see also Carmel, Lenner and Paul in this volume, Chapter 1). In this sense it is not just migrants’ activities in electoral campaigns or institutionalized local participation that should be understood as ‘political’, but various forms of claims-making, when migrants with and without legal residence status are engaged in social movements, organizing resistance and campaigns, and taking part in social mobilizations and networking.
THEORIZING MIGRANT POLITICAL ACTIVISM There are astonishingly different perspectives on migrant political activism in different disciplines and interdisciplinary fields in the social sciences and humanities. These perspectives range from emphasizing problem-solving functions to its role for criticizing migration governance. Social Movement Studies Social movement studies focus on the role of resources and opportunities for the political mobilization of migrants explaining the cross-national variation of migrant collective action by different sets of institutional and discursive opportunities (compare Eggert and Guigni 2015). Studies have investigated the interactions between migrant and non-migrant organizations, and the role of the alliances for studying mobilization strategies (Eggert and Pilati 2014). In this research tradition, migrants are considered a historically and socially disadvantaged social group that potentially mobilizes around their grievances and against their position of unequal rights. However, migrant activism has long remained a ‘blind spot’ in the social movement literature (Eggert and Giugni 2015: 168), which paid insufficient attention towards resource-weak movements: migrants are perceived as unlikely subjects of mobilization owing to legal obstacles (including ‘deportability’; see Lindberg and Khosravi, Chapter 29 and Squire, Chapter 11, both in this volume), limited economic and social resources to mobilize and rather closed political and discursive opportunities (Ataç and Steinhilper 2020). Studies on the political mobilization of migrants by social movement studies were rare for a long time. They often studied the external conditions for, and internal dynamics of, mobilization separately. Another focus of the literature using social movement approaches has been on the saliency and politicization of migration issues as well as pro-migrant solidarity groups (e.g. Moran 2015; Rosenberger and Winkler 2014; Tazreiter 2010) or migrant political par-
370 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration ticipation, often in local elections or forums (e.g. Aptekar 2009). In the latter field, the modes of immigrant incorporation are often related to ideal-type forms of assimilation, integration or multiculturalism (e.g. Alexander 2013). Some studies, though, focused on groups, in particular those disenfranchised and considered to have ‘no rights’, namely undocumented migrants. These studies analyse how they build alliances, make use of less-formalized channels of political engagement and how they claim rights despite formally being deprived of many rights (Cissé1999; Patler and Gonzales 2015). With new waves of migrant and refugee activism in the new century, the academic field has experienced a renaissance (Refugee Review 2013) including, amongst other issues, focusing on the emotions of migrant activism (Steinhilper 2018) and how participants have been involved in and resisting migration management since 2015 (della Porta 2018). A stronger dialogue with migration studies and critical citizenship studies since the 2000s has allowed a more continuous examination of migrant political mobilization by considering the impacts of migration policies and dynamics on activism by migrants and other social movement actors (e.g. della Porta 2018; Rosenberger et al. 2018). Critical Citizenship Studies Critical citizenship studies put the social and political responses to restrictions on mobility and citizenship in the centre of its paradigm (Nyers and Rygiel 2012). This body of literature states that restrictions and controls lead to new forms of inequality and social exclusion, which in turn contributes to contestation of these controls and political activism by the subjected persons. Starting from the assumption that citizenship is more than a legal status and political institution (see Rodrigues de Castro and Moulin in this volume, Chapter 3), they focus on moments of political engagement by those lacking formal citizenship status. Critical citizenship studies (McNevin 2006; Rygiel 2011) see migrant protest as ‘acts’ against the exclusionary ‘technologies of citizenship’ (Tyler and Marciniak 2013: 146). They explore ‘how, through various strategies of claims-making, non-citizen migrant groups are involved in practices and ways of engaging in citizenship even when lacking formal citizenship status’ (Nyers and Rygiel 2012: 2). By reading migrant activism through the lens of citizenship, the main focus of critical citizenship studies is the constitution of political subjectivities, rights making, democratic inclusion, and re-defining notions of the citizenship (Ataç et al. 2016; Nyers and Rygiel 2012). The starting point of this approach is that ‘migrants’ claims for justice and the contestation of ascribed/prescribed categories challenges the presupposition that citizenship cannot be enacted by non-citizens’ (Andrijasevic and Anderson 2009: 366). They explore these acts as a form of subjectivity to mobilize for social justice, claiming rights to citizenship and in so doing, practising citizenship. It is especially the lack of non-citizens’ legal status or political membership that gives a particular power and boldness to their activity of enacting themselves as political beings who make claims (Ellerman 2010). Engin Isin (2009) uses the term ‘activist citizenship’, and the notion of ‘act’ refers to disruptive and performative dimensions of collective action. Irregular migrants produce citizenship through their acts: they enact a form of citizenship ‘from below’. Political philosopher Etienne Balibar (2013) emphasizes how the sans-papiers movement in France, through its activism, recreated citizenship for French citizens, ‘since [it] is not an institution nor a status, but a collective practice’. By engaging in a dialogue between critical citizenship literature and social movement literature, Ataç et
Reconceptualizing and de-nationalizing migrant political activism 371 al. (2016) emphasize the politics of migrant struggles and discuss their trans-categorical and trans-border forms of mobilization and alliance-building as well as consequences for forms of citizenship. This can be observed when transnational networks emerge around migrant and refugee deaths at sea or in transit (e.g. Watch the Med; Alarmphone Sahara1) and create relations of solidarity, or when mothers in Mexico mobilize through their transnational network of the ‘caravan of missing migrants’ for their missing relatives and develop a radical and political subjectivity, turning motherhood into a political category (Kron 2016). Critiques of critical citizenship studies emphasizes that the experiences shared by irregular migrants involved in mobilization actions are often more existential than transformative and political (Chimienti and Solomos 2011). Instead of seeing mobilization by irregular migrants through the lens of citizenship, critics see the need to recognize the complex lived experiences of irregular migrants in their heterogeneity and ‘social suffering’. This critique also states that making claims for basic needs and rights, such as access to the labour market, does not encompass aspirations of greater social justice or rights claims in the form of universal citizenship. According to critics, critical citizenship studies rely on an ideal representation of refugees as subjects of transformative politics. A different stream of critique points out that a positive perception of civil society activism can also have ambivalent effects, particularly when civil society takes over welfare state responsibilities and enables privatization (Scherschel 2018). International Relations and Diaspora Studies Many of those migrants who were active before their relocation continue their activities from abroad, which is referred to as homeland activism or diaspora engagement. Migrants’ political activism can often be linked to events and experiences in the homeland, and is sometimes interpreted as exporting ethnic conflict (on the case of Colombia, see e.g. Bermúdez 2016; on the Kurdish case, see e.g. Baysu and Coşkan 2018). Diaspora activism has often been researched by, first, international relations (for an overview, see e.g. Shain and Barth 2003) and peace and conflict scholars (see e.g. Demmers 2002; compare Orjuela 2008 on Sri Lanka) as a form of transnationalization of conflict and of transnational civil engagement more in general; second, by comparative politics scholars and political theorists as forms of political articulation and participation (e.g. campaigns for voting from abroad and the extension of other citizenship rights to overseas communities; compare Bauböck 2005; Lafleur 2015; Mikuszies 2018); and third, by diaspora, exile or refugee studies as a form of cultural knowledge production (such as literature, film, music) by those exiled and by diaspora communities (e.g. Kaminsky 1999 on Latin American exile writers’ works; Naficy 1998 on media productions in exile). As these theoretical perspectives differ significantly and are often not connected with the approaches introduced in the previous section of this chapter, the same is true for a critical assessment. Some analyses focus on the established lines of political participation (most prominently voting rights), and they tend to neglect other forms of migrant ‘homeland’-related activisms. Some studies though, do make the link when looking at the transformation, for example, when, after the return from exile, opposition leaders take over a new government. Prominent examples are the South African ANC leadership in exile (Ellis 1991) or the role of the Chilean opposition in exile after the defeat of dictator Pinochet and the democratic transition (Wright and Oñate Zúñiga 2007).
372 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration Intersectionality and Feminist Theories In many of the above-mentioned theoretical approaches, intersectionality fails to be addressed. An analysis of migrant political mobilizations with an intersectionality approach provides insights into the complex web of migrants’ identities and the varied forms of discrimination they face (related to race, class, gender, family status, religion and other relevant characteristics). Laperrière and Lépinard (2016: 2) distinguish between two modes of intersectionality: first, ‘intersectionality as a tool used for the inclusion of migrant women inside organizations, and intersectionality as a tool used to reveal their political marginalization within organizations’. This can be extended by a third mode of intersectionality, as a tool to challenge intersectional discrimination in law and society at large. Intersectionality matters therefore on the individual, the organizational and the societal level. All three play a role in migrant political mobilizations. Lee and Piper (2013: 6f.) make the point that a certain intersectional position is not a given, but that it can change within the migration process. They show how some Asian migrant women workers only ‘become intersectional’ in their destination countries, such as Singapore, when they lose their legal status due to pregnancy. Political mobilizations scandalized this reason for cancelling a work permit and the related deportations. In other contexts, women’s reproductive health and family status do not have such political and existential implications. The mobilizations of undocumented youth in the USA, also known as ‘dreamers’, clearly show how race, gender, sexual orientation, class and legal status are connected, and how the movement critically engaged with ascriptions and positions. Activist undocumented migrant youth, for example, reflected on the early public perception of the movement as one of college students that deserve a future in the United States because they will contribute to American society, and it has not been their fault that their parents raised them without legal status. Following an internal critique, they changed the logo of the movement, to represent not only college students, but also working-class immigrants. In this intersectionality struggle, the issue of class moved from being neglected to a central concern (Schwiertz 2019). The movement was also inspired by LGBTQ persons coming out, and used this idea as an empowering strategy for disclosing their undocumented legal status to each other (Terriquez 2015: 343). In turn, the coming-out events also made the LGBTQ undocumented youth within the movement more visible and self-confident. It became possible to address overlapping identities and to create an inclusive space for all activists. The recognition of marginalized identities has therefore been a precondition for the participation of queers in migrant political mobilizations. These examples illustrate that a sensitivity for intersectionality is fruitful, because migrants’ positions in society are shaped by multiple characteristics and identities. The case also makes the point that something often invisible, such as status or sexual orientation, can be made public with the necessary sensitivity. Intersectionality as a once feminist theoretical concept has made its way to being a successful political strategy, because it gave formerly unnamed forms and webs of discrimination and marginalization a name. These four, often analytically unconnected, key fields and approaches towards migrant political activism prioritize specific views on the phases of the migration process, on migrants’ demands and interpretations of these activisms. In the next section, we therefore examine in detail the repertoires of migrant political activism by delineating two emblematic types: struggles for improving rights of non-citizens and space-related activism as a mode that is closely linked to migration (and its governance) as a spatial process.
Reconceptualizing and de-nationalizing migrant political activism 373
REPERTOIRES OF MIGRANT POLITICAL ACTIVISM Migrant political activism takes place in a variety of forms and addresses many dimensions of migration governance. The repertoire is as broad as in other social movements and political mobilizations. However, due to the issues at stake for migrants, migrant activism particularly engages with the consequences of differentiation of rights, including the spheres of law and citizenship, and space and mobility, as key sites of border and migration regimes. Activism Contesting the Differentiation of Rights Migration and citizenship policies result in an unequal distribution of rights amongst those living in one country or city. Almost all these differentiations can become an issue of migrant political activism. In the following, we discuss three main, but not the only, fields: migrants’ struggles for better working conditions, the use of legal means for realizing their rights and, finally, community work and counselling to inform and raise migrants’ awareness of their rights. Labour organizing In contexts where migrants were recruited for work in large numbers, a significant part of their activism refers to work-related issues and poses the question of the relationship to trade unions and all forms of workplace representation and organizing (including ‘wildcat strikes’). Several studies discuss the ambivalent role of migrants in trade unions (e.g. Marino et al. 2017); including whether and how trade unions can be a space of activism for migrant women (e.g. Amrith and Sahraoui 2018). Contributions in particular from the United States (e.g. Fine 2006; Jayaraman and Ness 2005) or on (migrant) domestic workers organizing globally (compare Schwenken and Hobden forthcoming) have argued that precarious migrant workers constitute a new, organizable working class with new approaches of organizing (compare Piper in this volume, Chapter 32). Appropriate approaches combine the satisfaction of communicative and cultural needs, counselling and political struggles, and often do not take place in the (often dispersed) workplaces, but rather in workers’/community centres or public spaces. Legal activism Litigation is a form of activism which sees rights as something that does not simply exist, but in fact needs to be materialized through activities in the legal system, such as court cases and lawsuits (compare Kawar in this volume, Chapter 31). In recent decades, (international) legal norms have become increasingly effective in improving social rights of migrants. Activists translate political principles into a legal language of human rights. Basok and Carasco (2010) highlight how national laws were brought in line with international standards. Migrant organizations’, lawyers’ and advocacy organizations’ ability to use established legal channels depends on specific kinds of knowledge and expertise and their cross-actor networks. Ataç (2017) considers some changes in migration policy as the result of an interplay between international frameworks and the capacities of local actors to use courts and litigation as avenues to intervene in law-making processes. This approach considers the implementation of rights not as an action ‘from above’, i.e. as an effect of higher courts and human rights agreements, but as a movement ‘from below’.
374 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration Community work and counselling as spaces of politicization Service provision, such as legal or social counselling and social work, can be considered either just a service or as part of migrant political activism when those who provide the service relate it to political activism or consider it part of the process of consciousness-raising and politicization. ‘Clients’ can be empowered to organize and become activists themselves through popular education and leadership development, by taking over representative and decision-making functions in the organizations, by planning campaigns, and so on. However, these empowering intentions often do not work, because social conditions with their intersectional hierarchies structurally shape the struggles and pre-define roles in activist contexts (compare Jenkins 2002). Space-related Activism A form of space-related activism is the occupation of a public space, in which political conflict is used as a way of making migrants and refugees visible as political subjects (Jørgensen 2013). The protest movement of the sans-papiers in France have used church occupations and political strikes since the mid-1970s to protest against deprivation of rights, make claims for legalization and attempt to leave the realm of illegality (Chimienti and Solomos 2011: 348; McNevin 2006). Occupations of churches, buildings and public places re-emerged as a form of migrant activism with the post-2011 refugee movement in Europe. Part of the repertoire is hunger strikes (such as also in Indonesia by refugees protesting against the delay in their resettlement process). Edkins and Pin-Fat (2005) discuss hunger strikes and acts such as the sewing shut of one’s own mouths as forms of migrant resistance. By turning the body into a tool of resistance, the protest becomes powerful since it refuses the sovereign state’s inscription of the refugee as bare life and constitutes the asylum seeker as a subject with rights and agency. Another space-related form of migrant activism occurs within (tent) camps, often in inner-city locations or in borderlands. These were, in the 2000s, constitutive for the emergence of a new protest cycle of (rejected) asylum seekers in many European countries such as Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland (Ataç 2016). Many scholars have pointed at the effects of migrant camps as spaces of exception and exclusion (Agamben 1998). However, they are also spaces of contestation (e.g. on Calais, see Schwenken 2014) and political spaces with infrastructure necessary for discussions about demands and forms of activism (see Turner in this volume, Chapter 23). Variations of space-related activism are mobile actions such as long-distance marches and bus tours. These are a tool, in particular, for undocumented migrants and (rejected) asylum seekers to formulate claims in public space (e.g. Monforte and Dufour 2013). Marches are effective in developing feelings of empowerment and solidarity among undocumented migrants and thus marches work as ‘acts of emancipation’ in the context of exclusionary power relations. In 2003, the Immigrant Workers’ Freedom Ride and later the mega-marches in the USA were instrumental in the emergence of what became known as the immigrant rights movement (Leitner et al. 2008). By making references to the legacy and symbolism of the civil rights movement, the ride increased its political visibility and legitimacy. Also, recent protests of refugees in Germany and Austria in the 2010s started with marches, for example, a 600km protest march from Würzburg to Berlin and a one-day march from the reception centre in Traiskirchen to Vienna (Steinhilper and Ataç 2019).
Reconceptualizing and de-nationalizing migrant political activism 375 Space-related activism is also discussed through the lens of urban citizenship. This approach assumes that the conditions for the everyday life of migrants are strongly shaped by the local level (see Glick Schiller and Çağlar 2016; see also Van Raemdonck and Meissner, Chapter 21 and Medland, Chapter 22, both in this volume). Municipalities and urban social movements counter restrictive tendencies at the national level and develop practices of solidarity (Blokland et al. 2015). Two perspectives are discussed under the label of urban citizenship: (a) when a city government decides to extend rights for undocumented persons by offering welfare services to this group as well as political protection via sanctuary city policies (Ataç 2019; for the concept of sanctuary cities, see van Raemdonck and Meissner, Chapter 21, this volume) and (b) when social movement, civil society and community-based organizations provide migrants without residential status access to housing, health care and basic social rights (Schilliger 2018). Much of migrants’ political activism is not limited to the countries of immigration but has the quality of transnational activism. There are many examples in which migrants protest against political developments in their countries of origin. Collyer (2006) points to Algerians in France protesting against the Algerian regime in the 2000s. Another meaning of transnationalism is promoted by Constable (2009: 155) who considers the bearers of political activism in Hong Kong – migrant domestic workers from other Asian countries – ‘flexible noncitizens, who are transnational in the sense of both transforming and transcending the borders of nation-states, work in a space of exception that simultaneously permits their protests (within limits) and denies them the rights of citizens and citizenship’. Constable also points to transnational learning, which means that an activist attitude spills over from one migrant group to another; in the Hong Kong case the very active Filipina domestic workers become role models for Indonesian workers (ibid.: 161f.). The transnationalization of forms of activism has also been frequently reported. Protest forms that are common in political cultures in migrants’ countries of origin are ‘imported’ to new contexts and might be interpreted by non-migrant locals as alienating (such as street blockades or sewing shut of mouths). The examples in this section indicate that the spatial mobility of migrants goes hand in hand with space-related forms of activism and demands, which constitute an important characteristic of migrant political activism (see also the debate on workplaces by de Lange, Berntsen and de Sena in this volume, Chapter 24).
CONCLUSION The spectrum of migrant political activism ranges from questioning any attempts of migration governance and creating utopian visions of a more just world to problem-solving approaches within hegemonic frames of migration governance and politics. The examples from emigration, transit and immigration countries show that migrant activism engages with issues that derive from restricted mobility and citizenship rights in the context of their new centre of life as well as with ‘homeland’-related questions; or, in the words of the introduction of this book, it is about, for, and of migrants. As shown, spatial strategies represent an important political resource for migrants. This is due to their vulnerable status, as a result of asymmetrical power relations that limit migrants’ access to public space and to other relevant resources being involved in the governance of migration. Migrant political mobilizations therefore need to
376 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration consider space not only as the location of activism, but as something that might set into motion unexpected dynamics. Migrant political activism, though, is a field that is not prominent in the discussion of migration governance and politics, because, in a mainstream understanding, activism and articulations by often relatively powerless subjects are sidelined. However, investigating migrant activism can shed light on the fact that their actions also shape the politics and governance of migration. This chapter has identified social movement studies, citizenship studies, international relations and intersectionality studies as key fields that take into account migrants as political activists and actors. Our critical review of these literature contributions to understanding migrant activism has exposed the following results: while most international relation literature primarily sees migrant activism as a form of homeland-related activism, the different camps in social movement studies, until recently, made too strong a distinction between internal and external dynamics of political mobilizations by and on behalf of migrants. Theoretical innovations in the past 20 years have come from critical citizenship studies in particular: the focus on the meaning of ‘acts’ and on the relevance of formation processes of political subjectivities has changed the epistemological understanding of what is considered as political and as citizenship – away from the purely national and away from a narrow understanding of the political. A combination of this approach with feminist theories of intersectionality allows consideration of newly claimed rights and spaces of empowerment without analytical neglect of experiences of violence, racism and discrimination.
NOTE 1.
See https://watchthemed.net/ and https://alarmephonesahara.info/en/, respectively.
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31. Contesting migration governance through legal mobilization Leila Kawar
INTRODUCTION How does the field of law matter in the governance and politics of migration? Over the past four decades, as immigration has emerged as one of the most pressing and polarizing areas of policymaking in both developed and developing economies, a large and growing sub-field of social science research has addressed human movement across borders and the political reactions such movements create. Yet on the question of who wields influence over immigration matters, the focus of attention tends to be directed to legislative politics and the exercise of executive discretion rather than to activity in court (but see discussion of the liberal constraint thesis, Natter in this volume, Chapter 9). When the juridical world does make an appearance in studies of immigration politics, it is discussed primarily in terms of judicial rulings that override policies enacted by the other branches. For example, studies of immigration politics acknowledge that massive immigration control sweeps, such as the US Government’s “Operation Wetback” in the early 1950s, “would be illegal today, given court decisions that have enhanced the rights of immigrants” (Andreas 2004: 34). Similarly, the constitution of a European immigration policy domain beginning in the mid-1980s has been described as an effort by national immigration officials “to regain the discretion taken away by courts” (Guiraudon 2003: 264). As these two illustrations show, studies of immigration politics generally pay attention to legal interventions only in passing and only to the extent that judicial review places limits on the more important political action that takes place in other venues of policymaking. Part of the reason for this is that judicial review is rarely actually exercised to overturn immigration policies enacted at the national level. Rights claims of individual foreign migrants, regardless of whether they are grounded in domestic or supra-national legal norms, tend to be “overshadowed” by a countervailing right of the sovereign nation to shut its borders (Dauvergne 2008: 27). While lower courts may be relatively less attuned to paradigms of sovereign authority and thus relatively more hospitable to immigrant claimants than courts at the pinnacle of the judicial hierarchy, the interventions of lower court judges in immigration cases are most often confined to an incremental “error-correcting function” that shies away from any direct challenge to policymaking (Law 2010: 174). Broadly speaking, empirical studies across national contexts indicate that immigration cases “have had generally conservative endings” (Legomsky 1987: 224), both in terms of their limited willingness to offer short-term remedies and in the sense that rules laid out in judicial opinions in immigration cases have rarely compelled other state officials explicitly to increase migrant admissions or to reduce migrant expulsions. Courts have been most assertive when applying sub-constitutional norms to immigration matters, but these interventions are rarely interventionist. 380
Contesting migration governance through legal mobilization 381 While courts have indeed eschewed an interventionist stance on matters of national immigration policy, the argument in this chapter is that the traditional “impact” analysis of legal politics is too narrow. By narrowing their understanding of law to the rules in judicial opinions, and then assessing the degree to which these rules do or do not constrain the realization of restrictionist policy preferences, traditional studies of immigration policymaking have focused on only one dimension of legal politics. In focusing on the coercive power of courts, they have failed to consider how the process of engaging with law and courts may construct migration governance in politically important ways. The constructivist socio-legal approach outlined here builds on a body of law and society scholarship emphasizing that law is not only a set of rules and remedies but also a field of cultural practice. Conceptualizing legal activity as a cultural practice highlights the symbolic power of court-centred contestation to reconfigure how migration politics is expressed and understood. It takes as its starting point the observation that practical engagements with legal forms and conventions construct webs of symbolic relations that have “radiating” and “centrifugal” effects that are more catalytic than coercive in nature (Galanter 1983). By shifting the focus away from the official rules laid out in immigration cases and towards the process of legal mobilization and its attendant assemblages of informal meaning-making, this post-positivist understanding of law allows us to explore how legal engagements generate new forms of action as well as new ideas about migrants and migration. The repercussions of engaging with these varying legal structures and conceptual assemblages may extend far beyond any single case’s short-term remedy or doctrinal contribution. In exploring how this constructivist socio-legal approach contributes to our understanding of the governance and politics of migration, the chapter analyses not only the social frames and narratives assembled through legal processes but also the political stakes of these assemblages. As the discussion below makes clear, law is not an alternative to politics but rather a deeply political terrain with the capacity to produce, reproduce and transform understandings of actors and relationships implicated by migration control policies. Drawing on recent socio-legal scholarship, the chapter elucidates these political dynamics by offering an overview of the context and conditions of contemporary immigration-centred legal mobilizations (second section), the process by which these legal claims are framed (third section), and the political stakes of this juridification of migration politics (fourth section). Attending to legal mobilization’s role in constructing migration governance and politics is both relevant and timely for advancing a critical research programme. The approach set forth here offers tools for scholars espousing various research methodologies and investigating a range of diverse contexts, who wish to develop a richer understanding of the dynamics of court-based contestations of migration policy.
CONTEXT AND CONDITIONS OF LEGAL MOBILIZATION In both Europe and North America, the 1973 oil shocks ushered in the contemporary period of immigration politics characterized by restrictive immigration policies. Across industrialized states, irregular migrants and guest workers were seen as a kind of “economic shock absorber”; they had been brought into the labour market under different economic conditions and they could be sent home when their labour was no longer needed. In Europe, the response to economic recession was particularly dramatic: governments abruptly suspended all foreign-worker
382 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration recruitment and took steps to encourage foreigners to return home. Restrictionism was also a feature of policy responses to the economic downturn in other migrant-destination states. This broad shift towards restrictionism thus offers a backdrop against which to understand contemporary legal mobilization and legal activism on immigration issues. Yet if the restrictionist turn in policymaking set the stage for legal responses, immigration-centred political lawyering was also inspired by and incorporated into contemporaneous social movements whose goals extended beyond the immigration domain. The emergence of immigration-centred legal mobilization is part of the transnational history of the New Left. Many of the lawyers drawn to contest immigration policies in court beginning in the 1970s were part of a cohort of recent law school graduates who, although they did not themselves identify as first- or second-generation immigrants, brought their experiences in student protest movements into their professional careers. In both the USA and elsewhere, this cohort of law graduates became enthusiastic participants in the mobilizations of immigrant groups against restrictive immigration policies, and at the same time viewed immigration-centred legal work as an area on which they could leave their mark professionally (Kawar 2015: 33–44). In some instances, recent graduates took inspiration from counterculture critiques developed by the student movement’s intellectual supporters as they experimented with nascent forms of “cause lawyering” (Israel 2003). In other instances, the New Left’s student protest agenda converged with immigration policy issues, as with efforts by some members of the American immigration bar to defend Iranian student activists protesting against US foreign policy in the 1970s (Schacher 2016). The emergence of immigration-centred legal mobilizations in the USA during the 1970s has also been associated with the somewhat distinct histories of civil rights protest movements (Buff 2018; Chavez 2002; Gutiérrez 1995), civil rights lawyering (Olivas 2005), and “public interest law” (Cummings 2007). Importantly, the breakthrough of human rights politics also provided resources and opportunities for the emergence of legal mobilizations targeting immigration policies. We see an early example of this confluence of immigration issues with human rights in the American legal movement for Haitian rights that began in the 1970s, which was significant for its capacity to leverage the resources of both developing human rights advocacy institutions and those associated with civil rights and New Left lawyering (Kahn 2013; see also Hamlin and Wolgin 2012). Since the mid-1990s, this nexus of human rights politics with legal mobilizations targeting immigration policies has substantially deepened. The so-called European “rights revolution”, propelled by EU integration and broader European-level developments, has provided a favourable context for court-centred contestation of immigration policies, which can be understood as a subset of the broader development of legal mobilization on behalf of minorities and vulnerable/marginalized groups in Europe’s multi-level legal-judicial system (Anagnostou 2014; more generally on the “liberal constraint” of European immigration policymakers through constitutionalism, see Natter in this volume, Chapter 9). Legal activists in a number of European countries have sought to mobilize human rights provisions in European treaties, such as those prohibiting torture, as an avenue for expanding the rights of asylum seekers and other migrants (Conant 2016; Kubal 2017; Psychogiopoulou 2014). Looking more broadly, we see that the growth of transnational human rights cause lawyering has offered both inspiration and resources for legal mobilizations targeting restrictive immigration policies in a number of settings in the global South. In Latin America, legal mobilization efforts have taken inspiration not only from the expansive migrant rights jurisprudence of the Inter-American human rights system but also from recent efforts to constitutionalize
Contesting migration governance through legal mobilization 383 international human rights treaties (Dembour 2015; Meili 2017). In the case of South Africa, litigation efforts on behalf of migrants and refugees have their roots in public interest law organizations forged during the country’s anti-apartheid struggle and continue to develop linkages with transnational human rights and refugee rights institutions (Handmaker 2011). What this brief overview of past and present immigrant rights mobilizations across national contexts clearly demonstrates is that the contemporary era of regulated national borders and restrictive migration governance has also simultaneously created space for a wide range of court-centred contestations of such policies.
THE FRAMING OF LEGAL CLAIMS In order to grasp the dynamics of legal mobilization, it is important to attend to the process by which these various efforts to mobilize courts have translated political goals into legal claims. Mobilizations taking place in and around courts can be distinguished from other political strategies, such as lobbying or protest, through their relatively greater reliance on law as a mode of enunciation. Certainly, individual non-citizens routinely draw on a mix of formal and informal norms when navigating their encounters with judges and other state officials, as ethnographic studies have demonstrated (for a summary, see Vetters et al. 2017: 26–7). Yet it is important to emphasize that professionally trained jurists are uniquely competent to identify and utilize margins of interpretation within the law to advance political goals. This process of knowledge production includes not only identifying legal issues but also constructing complex events and relationships as “facts” that can be presented to courts to support a claim. One way of mobilizing the categories of formal law to advance political goals is to present claims based within the normative corpus of immigration law itself. Marshalling evidence and formulating arguments about the meaning of immigration law’s normative categories is the stock-and-trade of the immigration bar. Qualitative research on legal mobilization efforts in Germany suggests that this type of claims-making, operating within the normative bounds of existing immigration law tends to be client-centred and tactically pragmatic rather than conflict-oriented (Hahn 2018). At the same time, a number of large-scale empirical studies have shown that representation by counsel is associated with dramatically more favourable outcomes for migrants (for a summary, see Eagly and Shafer 2015), suggesting that providing low- or no-cost legal representation promotes wider “access to justice” in migration governance. The non-negligible importance of such representation is made all-the-more appreciable by studies of political regimes which curtail migrant advocates’ access to the courts (Kemp and Kfir 2016). Its political valence might thus be read as effecting a marginal shift in power relations in favour of migrants even in the absence of any broader protest movement. Mobilization of immigration law is likely to effect more enduring structural change when it is organized on behalf of specific migrant communities. Often referred to as “movement lawyering” or “community lawyering”, this type of legal mobilization can provide an important resource for migrant protest movements that have developed their own political goals and strategies of protest. The bulk of such lawyering typically involves either advising on the immigration consequences of particular protest tactics or individual servicing of community members so as to identify possible avenues of relief. Legal practice may also involve mobilizing in court to defend movement participants targeted on account of their immigration status. The framing of legal claims in these contexts, while remaining within the normative
384 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration framework of immigration law, nevertheless creates space for political mobilization without fundamentally altering movement goals (Ashar 2017). For instance, lawyering of this type has a long tradition of defending movement leaders against deportation proceedings aiming to undermine their ability to undertake activist campaigns. When the aim is to effect immigration policy change more directly through litigation, then research suggests that legal mobilization will gravitate towards framing legal claims regarding the illegality of the immigration regime itself (but see the counter-tendency of ‘crimmigration’ discussed by Moffette in this volume, Chapter 28). This can be achieved by invoking higher-order norms, often drawn from constitutions or international treaties, so as to open new passageways of law. Social researchers have used the terms “impact litigation” or “legal activism” to distinguish this policy-oriented litigation (for a discussion of terminology, see Kawar 2015: 19–21). The concept of “lawfare” has also been used to describe efforts to “reorganize the cartography” of immigration law through intensive and persistent litigation (Kahn 2017). This invocation of higher-order norms is symbolically potent to the extent that it evokes foundational narratives of the political community. For instance, in calling upon the Warren Court’s equal protection jurisprudence when formulating claims on behalf of undocumented migrants and asylum seekers, American legal activists reframed their clients as members of a racial minority with a history of state-sanctioned discrimination justifying assertive judicial review. By contrast, immigration-centred legal activism in France has downplayed minority rights and has instead invoked norms against autocracy and administrative rule by fiat that have a particular potency in the French national experience (Kawar 2012). In both instances, the construction of “facts” and framing of legal claims was organized strategically with the aim of persuading courts to extend existing rights-based or authority-limiting higher-order norms into the domain of immigration policymaking, in effect using appellate litigation to create new law case-by-case. Impact litigation is a highly specialized form of mobilizing courts against restrictive immigration policies, and its practice may become further specialized as individual jurists or legal organizations develop targeted expertise in a particular subset of legal questions. This trend towards specialization is propelled in part by liberal elite supporters seeking to “rationalize” the activities of their funding recipients so as to avoid duplication of effort. For instance, in the USA, the Ford Foundation played a dominant role during the 1980s in structuring various specialties of immigration-centred impact litigation, with some groups tasked with constitutional due process issues while others were told to focus on refugee issues or the nexus of immigration and criminal law (Kawar 2011; cf. Moffette in this volume, Chapter 28). Moreover, while many practitioners are drawn towards the law-centred strategies of impact litigation, liberal elites have shown a tendency to support individuals and groups who are already endowed with qualities and dispositions that they value. Along these lines, one comparative study of post-9/11 immigrant defenders in the USA and UK identifies a correspondence between the level of “legal capital” held by professionally socialized jurists and the degree to which these attorneys were encouraged to pursue a policy-centred form of practice (Prabhat 2016: 61–76). As such studies demonstrate, different forms of migrant-centred legal mobilization vary substantially in how they engage with the legal field.
Contesting migration governance through legal mobilization 385
THE POLITICAL STAKES OF JURIDIFYING MIGRATION POLITICS How successful have these efforts at mobilizing law and courts been in curtailing the scope of restrictionist immigration policies? As discussed in the introduction to this chapter, traditional “impact studies” have addressed this question in terms of the capacity of the rules or outcomes of judicial decisions to coercively overturn existing policies and prevent their legislative reenactment. Viewed through this metric, legal mobilization in the immigration domain has had a relatively minimal impact. Without disagreeing with this proposition about the constrained nature of judicial review in immigration matters, the discussion in this chapter has suggested that a post-positivist legal analysis, that is, moving beyond a rule-based and top-down conception of law to focus on its discursive and performative dimensions, is helpful in turning our attention towards the broad range of legal mobilization’s potential radiating effects in the domain of migration governance and on relations of power more generally. We see one type of potential radiating effect in the association between immigration-centred legal mobilization and an enhanced visibility of the judiciary in immigration politics. National judges may be empowered by high-profile litigation contesting immigration policies on the basis of constitutional or international human rights, taking these cases as an invitation to enhance their position against other national or supra-national jurisdictions or against an autocratic president (on the human rights discourse in migration governance see Hart in this volume, Chapter 8). The judiciary’s greater visibility may shift the tenor and/or content of immigration policymaking, especially if administrators who previously had a relatively free hand in immigration matters must now formulate their policies more dialogically (Kawar 2014). In partial or transitioning democracies, legal mobilization on immigration issues can be part of a broader dynamic of constitutionalizing international human rights obligations (Meili 2017). This increased visibility of the judiciary has not gone unnoticed by immigration policy officials. Responding to the increased volume of appeals of agency decisions as well as to specific high-profile legal activist campaigns, national policymakers in a number of countries have sought to prevent certain types of immigration cases from gaining a judicial hearing. In the USA, legislative jurisdiction-stripping in the mid-1990s can be understood as a particularly visible manifestation of a spiralling adversarial dynamic in which routinized class action litigation played a prominent role (Kawar 2015: 103–26). During the same period, German politicians with an anti-immigrant agenda succeeded in granting administrative court judges more control over their asylum dockets in the hope of accelerating the removal of claimants and deterring future arrivals (Soennecken 2016). Some scholars have described these developments in terms of a conservative backlash operating against a steadily increasing number of precedent decisions interpreting international human rights norms in ways that are favourable to individual asylum seekers (Cummings 2007; Hamlin 2015). Considering the broader context, however, it becomes clear that many seemingly favourable precedents must be reassessed against a contemporaneous reshaping of jurisdiction to strip migrants of rights, which in a number of instances has been legitimized by appellate courts. Indeed, the recent transnational diffusion of a model of offshore interdiction and detention of asylum seekers, rather that harkening the victory of human rights, has been interpreted as signalling a return to immigration doctrines historically associated with judicial deference to territorial expansion and racially stratified imperial regimes (Kahn
386 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration 2018: 185–214). Regardless of whether the recent revival of such doctrines proves enduring, it reminds us that judges may exercise their power over migration governance while abdicating any responsibility for reviewing human rights or humanitarian claims. In short, critically minded scholars should avoid assuming that an increased visibility for the judiciary as an institutionalized player in immigration matters will inevitably produce results favourable for migrants. If impact litigation has not always produced the outcomes that immigrant rights legal activists have sought, this does not mean that the broader phenomenon of framing migrants’ claims in terms of formal law cannot have important radiating effects on groups and individuals mobilizing for social change. We might speak of legal mobilization operating in a “narrow but significant space” of possibilities; narrow because it is heavily framed by state interests but also significant in terms of the capacity to catalyse or facilitate policy change at the highest levels (Handmaker 2011: 81). To the extent that legal mobilization is associated with sustained mobilization, contestation, and protest by migrants and their supporters, it can operate to politicize migration governance. This association can take many forms: catalysing a coalition, crystallizing agendas, contributing resources for ongoing mobilization, reinforcing and encouraging movement participants, offering opportunities for exercising agency, calling into question existing ways of understanding the issues, etc. As anthropologist Susan Coutin insightfully points out, it is impossible to talk about “impact” of a movement because migrants and their advocates construct legal and political claims on the artefacts left by prior rounds of contestation (Coutin 2011). While there is nothing inherently empowering or disempowering about turning to law, some instances of legal mobilization may empower lawyers more than they empower excluded groups and communities. Some scholars, influenced by a more general critical legal studies analysis of public interest lawyering, have attempted to develop analytical rubrics capable of distinguishing forms of legal mobilization that tend to empower movements for social change, on the one hand, from impact litigation strategies, on the other hand, that tend to depoliticize or disempower (Ashar 2017). While it is important to continuously reflect on lessons learned from past experiences, scholars and practitioners must also remain cognizant of the context-dependent and thus shifting nature of power and resistance. Along these lines, Jamie Longazel’s in-depth case study of mobilization and backlash in one American town illustrates the complexity of these dynamics, showing how the lawsuit that overturned a restrictionist local statute in Hazelton, Pennsylvania was interpreted by some local politicians as an instance of “powerful litigators” and “activist judges” undermining their “innocent small town” (Longazel 2016: 10). In this case, it was the challenge to the law which reinforced an existing narrative of local Latino threat, with the result that an increasing number or locals participated in backlash mobilization. At the same time, the lawsuit allowed local Latina/o residents to see their plight through a new, legalistic lens. A high-profile lawsuit that inspired backlash thus also offered less powerful local groups “a stronger, more culturally resonant vision” of the legislation at issue “as impinging on immigrants’ rights” (Longazel 2016: 52). This points to a broader insight, which is that it is not simply the rules enunciated in a judicial decision that propel mobilization and counter-mobilization, but also how the various knowledge-assemblages forged through court-centred contestation are appropriated and reassembled by participants in both local and national-level politics. Three examples illustrate the diversity of ways in which frames, narratives and performances constructed through activity in court can take on a life of their own in national immigration politics. The first example comes
Contesting migration governance through legal mobilization 387 from the USA, where high-visibility courtroom proceedings in the early 1980s enhanced the prestige of immigrant rights legal activists and allowed them to claim a seat at the table when the US Congress turned to comprehensive immigration policy reform in the mid-1980s. In this case, apart from any specific ruling, the size of the class action lawsuit generated attention for asylum issues and galvanized the legal profession to become more involved in immigration politics (Kawar 2015: 71–6). A second example comes from France, where the 1978 Conseil d’État decision quashing a decree restricting family migration, while never binding in any technical sense on national legislators, nevertheless offered rhetorical building blocks for a narrative developed by legal activists that associated the sitting government and its ministers with autocratic rule. This narrative proved particularly potent, particularly when taken up by members of the opposition party and had the effect of tainting the legitimacy of the government’s ongoing immigration policy initiatives (Kawar 2015: 59–64). A third example comes from the Federal Republic of Germany, where judicial decisions on family migration in the mid-1970s inspired increasingly vocal opposition to these policies among some members of the government and progressive civil society groups, who liberally interpreted the decisions and appealed to rights never recognized by the courts. Courts thus supplied the “raw materials” from which proponents of more generous family reunification policies built a rights-based framing of the issues that was powerful enough to block a number of proposed restrictive reforms (Bonjour 2016: 341). Importantly, in all three of the examples discussed above, courts generally shied away from issuing wide doctrinal pathways by which immigration policy would be subordinated to higher-order norms. As we saw, however, even when they are doctrinally curtailed, court decisions may nevertheless provide textual support for migrant rights narratives in the broader politics of migration policymaking. Or they may be curtailed through policymakers’ creative exclusionary responses (see, for example, Kramer et al. 2018). The important point to take away is that the precise nature of these radiating effects and the conditions under which they will be produced cannot be known in advance and must be discerned through careful analysis that attends to the specificities of how, when, where, and why legal mobilization takes place.
CONCLUSION This discussion of legal mobilization has focused on how migration governance both shapes and is shaped by judicially supervised contestations of immigration law. As we saw, many of the contemporary organizational structures associated with this field of practice arose in response to a global turn to restrictive immigration policies that began in the 1970s. At the same time, this discussion emphasized links between the emergence of immigration-centred legal mobilizations and the broader context of rights-based political mobilizations, evidenced both in the new social movements of the 1970s and in contemporary international human rights activism. In addition, the theory of legal mobilization advanced here embraces a constructivist approach that conceptualizes activity in court as potentially symbolically potent apart from any rules or outcomes produced in judicial decisions. Seen in this light, both migrants and their lawyers are constructed through legal mobilization strategies that focus variously on margins of interpretation within immigration law or on higher-order norms of rights or legality. Seemingly technical procedures for framing legal claims and representing “facts” may also have radiating effects in the spheres of legislative and administrative policymaking, many of
388 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration which cannot be known in advance and must be studied afresh in each context in which legal mobilization takes place. In the guise of a conclusion, it may be helpful to mention three sets of questions that were largely left unaddressed in the foregoing discussion and which may thus be read as suggestions for future trajectories of research. First, it is important to note that the mobilization of legal discourses is not limited to formal state forums. Individuals and groups routinely mobilize legal strategies for negotiating exchanges and resolving disputes in many social settings without relying on direct official intervention. An important subset of the socio-legal literature on law and social movements advances a theory of legal mobilization whose “trademark” contribution involves shifting analytical focus toward such everyday struggle (McCann 1994: 8). Initiatives of individual citizens and non-citizens to mobilize discourses of rights or other legal ideologies as part of a strategy of protest outside of judicially supervised legal conflict situations are less easily distinguished from the broader phenomenon of political mobilization (see Ataç and Schwenken in this volume, Chapter 30), but this certainly does not imply that they are less important for analysis of the dynamics of migration governance. Nor has the preceding discussion considered in detail the efforts of jurists to mobilize politically through strategies such as lobbying or organizing that operate outside of judicially supervised legal conflict situations. The level and quality of these political lawyering strategies, sometimes aiming to defend rule of law values in the abstract, may have important consequences for migration governance, particularly when immigration law becomes an avenue for addressing so-called national security emergencies (Prabhat 2016). Moreover, leftist legal networks have a long history of political mobilization to defend labour movement leaders as well as rank-and-file union members from waves of “deportation terror”, such as those immediately after the First World War and during the 1930s and early 1950s. Recent historical scholarship, while not focused specifically on the politics of legal mobilization, has sought to excavate the history of this era of Popular Front legal and political advocacy on behalf of the foreign born (Buff 2018; Gutiérrez 1995). Finally, this discussion has centred on legal mobilization efforts that contest the scope and application of immigration law (including related legal regimes – such as refugee law – that offer affirmative avenues for non-citizens to acquire legal immigration status). Placing the focus on immigration law replicates a conceptual divide within formal law, one that separates the normative regime dedicated to control of migration (through conditions for admission and stay) from the broader body of laws that govern the welfare of migrants. Yet these two regimes are less easily separated on the ground: empirical research shows that individual worker legal mobilization is considerably dampened by a context of heightened local immigration control (Gleeson 2015), while at the level of policymaking there appears to be a close empirical relationship between social policy and the conditions placed on foreigners’ admission and stay (Blauberger et al. 2018). Analysis of the recent trend to subordinate labour and employment rights to immigration status further confirms that the hierarchical relationship that law asserts between these related normative regimes is in fact inherently political and thus something that can and should be contested through political and legal mobilizations (Fudge and Herzfeld Olsson 2014). Indeed, court-based contestation of migrant labour rights comprises one of several mobilization strategies recently deployed by an emergent alt-labour movement (cf. Piper in this volume, Chapter 32) that some see as pointing the way for a rejuvenated labour movement more generally (Dias-Abey 2018). For these reasons, critical analysis of migration governance should attend to the politics of these forms of legal mobilization and should
Contesting migration governance through legal mobilization 389 investigate their relationship to the forms of court-based contestation of immigration policy on which this discussion has primarily focused.
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32. Solidarities and disjunctures in the (global) mobilization of migrant workers Nicola Piper
INTRODUCTION Work, employment or income-generating activity is at the centre of the migrant experience. Discrimination, persecution and inadequate employment opportunities are key reasons why people migrate across borders or move internally. The last of these, the issue of work, cuts across the divide between refugees and economic migrants (a dichotomous categorization widely recognized as artificial and inadequate by critical scholars – see Bakewell in this volume, Chapter 10). As non-citizens, migrant workers are commonly subjected to various expressions of disadvantage, discriminatory practices and exploitative abuse. This is largely due to their specific position in the labour market, migration status, and unfamiliarity with aspects of the destination society (for example, language or institutional setup). In this chapter, I explore how migrant workers’ precarious legal status as (1) noncitizens or ‘denizens’ (Standing 2011); (2) undocumented migrants and unauthorized workers (Waite et al. 2015); or (3) participants in temporary or circular migration schemes (Wickramasekara 2016) impacts their political agency as they strive to overcome their marginalization. In the global North, trade unions and the broader labour movement have historically constituted one, if not the most, important vehicle for representing workers’ interests and improving labour rights. They have rarely, however, welcomed migrant workers into their ranks; history is replete with examples of resistance by trade unions to the inclusion of non-citizens into the broader labour struggle which was for long focused exclusively on class distinctions. There are some cases where, over time, migrants became immigrants and then ethnic minorities facing racial discrimination, a topic around which unions were more willing to mobilize (Penninx and Rooseblad 2002; see also Ataç and Schwenken in this volume, Chapter 30). But, until recently, unions showed little appetite for working with undocumented and temporary migrants, whose precarious employment can also hinder their ability to collectively organize and mobilize (Ford 2004). That attitude has slowly changed as accelerated economic globalization and the spread of neoliberal policies have weakened unions and hollowed out their traditional constituencies. Their power and relevance have reduced, and their appeal declined as flexible, deregulated and informal labour markets became more common. Migrant workers are often the dominant workforce in labour market sectors that are particularly affected or characterized by low-standard conditions (see also de Lange, Berntsen and de Sena in this volume, Chapter 24). To ensure or revive their political relevance, trade unions in the United States, United Kingdom and elsewhere are opening up to the idea of organizing migrant workers and are trying out a variety of new strategies to do so (Milkman et al. 2010; Wills 2004; Wills and Linneker 2013). 391
392 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration The situation is different in the global South, where capitalist development did not always result in European-style labour movements, especially in contexts where informal work is still the dominant form of income generation. Nevertheless, in both Northern and Southern contexts migrant workers are now using flexible alliances that engage with a range of sites and spaces to overcome individual precariousness and structural gaps in governance. Key to this has been a vital push from activists and organizations in the global South to shift policymakers toward a rights-based approach to labour migration governance. By drawing on scholarship at the intersection of global governance studies, human rights studies and political sociology, I argue that currently, collective, transnational advocacy organizations targeting state and non-state actors at the local, national, regional and global levels are the main tool by which migrant workers translate their experiences and hardship into effective rights claims. Their political agency is expressed through membership in these organizations and through the various alliances and coalitions that they form, both flexible and more formal. In conceptual and analytical terms, their method of political participation demonstrates the limits of a citizenship model based exclusively on nationality, nationally defined organizational membership, and political activism solely targeting state entities. The next section introduces the global and developmental aspects of migrant worker precarity. This contextualizes the main discussion on migrant political empowerment and the new migrant rights agenda emerging in particular from the global South based on the experience of low-wage migrant workers. The final section then synthesizes the discussion on citizenship and human rights perspectives in a global and developmental setting.
MIGRANT WORKER PRECARITY: A GLOBAL AND ‘DEVELOPMENTAL’ PERSPECTIVE A global policy framework has started to evolve in a more concerted manner on the basis of numerous efforts taking multiple forms (global commissions, inter-state forums, knowledge production by various international organizations) made by the United Nations since the early 2000s. This framework champions temporary and circular migration as a ‘triple win’ solution benefitting origin and destination societies, employers and migrants themselves (Piper and Rother 2014). Such policy frameworks provide work and residency permits to workers on a temporary basis while usually tying them to a single employer for the length of their contract. Highly paid workers in some countries may eventually achieve permanent status and the right to change jobs. But for low-paid workers, constrained and precarious employment is a permanent condition. The Kafala system practised by the Gulf States (Jureidini 2014) is the most extreme example, but derivations exist elsewhere. Temporary and circular migration schemes have a long history (Ciupijus 2010). They momentarily fell out of fashion several decades ago, but they quickly revived (Castles 1986, 2006) and are now in use throughout the world (Dauvergne and Marsden 2014). Such temporary, employer-tied contract systems disadvantage migrants by skewing power relations in favour of employers and states. A worker cannot easily vote with her feet and switch employers when she experiences abuse. In the major migration destinations in West, South East and East Asia this is referred to as ‘absconding’, an act which automatically places migrants into a state of illegality, as demonstrated in the case of Vietnamese migrant workers in Korea (Ngyuyen 2018). Precarity thus derives from not only the result of employers’ mis-
Solidarities and disjunctures in the (global) mobilization of migrant workers 393 conduct but is also structurally produced by the interaction of employment and immigration law designed by states (Freedland and Costello 2014; see also de Lange, Bernsten and de Sena in this volume, Chapter 24). Migrants are further disadvantaged by the lack of institutional channels of recourse, such as labour mediation or arbitration courts. Even where they theoretically exist, migrants generally refrain from using them. They fear losing their much-needed (even if temporary) jobs that provide for them and their families. This situation is compounded by the debt they frequently owe to a privatized, multi-layered ‘migration industry’ (Baas 2018), which offers loans and other migration services in exchange for often excessive fees (Thibos and Howard in this volume, Chapter 12). As many low-wage migrants have to finance their own migrations they are generally unwilling to risk their jobs to pursue recourse. Low-skilled/low-wage temporary contract workers are easily replaceable, meaning that the majority of migrants today find themselves in highly vulnerable if not exploitative situations (see Azmeh, Chapter 18; Vasey, Chapter 14; de Lange, Berntsen and de Sena, Chapter 24; Marchetti and di Bartolomeo, Chapter 25, all in this volume). It is vital that we re-frame the discussion around temporary migration in order ‘to find alternatives that have a greater emancipatory effect for migrants themselves’ (Dauvergne and Marsden 2014). Those alternatives must respond to migrants’ lived experience of hardship as workers and social beings. Emancipation is not only an individual matter. Social movement scholarship shows that it is a collective endeavour achieved through mobilization by civil society actors. For migrant workers, it is also an endeavour that, to date, has drawn more on the language of human rights than (national) citizenship. This reflects the temporary and precarious nature of labour migration today: without the possibility to settle, citizenship is not relevant. As a result, addressing labour precarity issues for migrant workers has necessitated resorting to global human rights standards. In times where both the idea of ‘migrant rights as human rights’ is refuted (Basok 2009) and also labour rights are being eroded and political activism obstructed, the impetus for economic emancipation must come in the form of complex political mobilization. Migrants’ participation in union and/or non-union civil society organizations has so far been, and will continue to be, a central factor in the advancement of a rights-based approach to migration that draws on the actual experience and priorities of migrant workers themselves. In the context of rigid, selective migration policies and temporary, tied migration schemes, the key political claim by migrant rights activists is that a rights-based approach must cover all stages of migration – from decent work deficits in countries of origin to labour rights violations in countries of destination (on migrant legal activism, see Kawar in this volume, Chapter 31).
MIGRANTS’ RIGHTS AND POLITICAL EMPOWERMENT OF MIGRANT WORKERS Historically, scholars have researched the issue of migrants’ rights using two alternative frames: citizenship, on the one hand, and human rights, on the other. Rights have been conventionally viewed as conferred through citizenship, understood as a legal and social status that defines responsibilities, prescribes collective identity, and bestows political membership through the exercise of democratic rights (Benhabib 2007). People’s increasing mobility across international borders, however, propelled scholars and activists to question the concept
394 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration of national citizenship (Benhabib 2007; Sassen 2002; Urry 2000; see also Rodrigues de Castro and Moulin in this volume, Chapter 3). They have argued, despite the reluctance of state governments and institutions to reconceptualize ‘global’ citizenship rights, that international human rights instruments provide just such a global approach to protecting migrants’ civil and social rights (Benhabib 2007; Soysal 1998). As a result, the rights of non-citizens and low-wage workers can be viewed as simultaneously subject to both citizenship and human rights frames (Basok and Piper 2013; Kolben 2010). Since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, both national and regional institutions have committed to making human rights real. Implementation occurs at the national level (Hart in this volume, Chapter 8). However, the idea of bestowing rights on non-citizens, especially when they enter irregularly or engage in activities outside of what their visas allow, is still considered ‘counter-hegemonic’ (Basok 2009). To bestow such rights would challenge the nation state’s traditional role in defending its own citizens’ rights (El Qadim in this volume, Chapter 19). Yet decentring the nation state is precisely what recognition of migration as a global process requires us to do. Soysal (1998) and Jacobson (1997) argue that migrants have acquired a legal status that bypasses state citizenship and needs to be recognized at a global or post-national level. Bauböck (1994) took this further by arguing that the dynamics of economic globalization make a new form of transnational citizenship necessary and inevitable. Castles and Davidson (2000) argue that citizenship is an ambiguous term in a post-national, global community characterized by supranational institutions and international legal conventions. They promote a model of citizenship based on civil society activism or organizing, one which understands belonging through strengthened social relations and community participation rather than national allegiance (Rodrigues de Castro and Moulin in this volume, Chapter 3). However, none of these conceptualizations accommodates perspectives from the global South or considers the multiplicity of institutions and collective practices surrounding citizenship and rights situated in different sites and places. Guendogdu (2016), in contrast, draws on the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt to offer an account of human rights bridging structural context and agency by conceptualizing rights as contesting practices in relation to institutional adaptation and change. She points out that, although a status of absolute rightlessness rarely applies, given the impressive institutionalization of ‘rights’ in the current era, precarious legal personhood is still surprisingly common among migrants in general and migrant workers specifically. The latter’s situation is often viewed as less pressing since the most widespread forms of abuse – underpayment of wages and over-work – have by now become the ‘new normal’ (Bylander 2019). Rightlessness must be addressed by attending simultaneously to its institutional and non-institutional aspects. Two such non-institutional aspects are, first, the opportunity to engage in remunerative activity; and second, mobilization into networks of activism. In this sense, two types of work are at the centre: paid work and political work carried out collectively across place and space. Those aspects are well-captured by the International Labour Organization (ILO) concept of ‘decent work’, which includes one of the ILO’s fundamental rights at work: freedom of association. Classically, rights questions with regard to labour migration referred to whether economic migrants could access political citizenship in their country of destination. This meant the right to vote, the acquisition of formal citizenship and membership in political organizations (Layton-Henry 1990) and trade unions (Penninx and Roosblad 2002). By contrast, the ‘new
Solidarities and disjunctures in the (global) mobilization of migrant workers 395 rights’ agenda focuses on the combined responsibilities of state actors in origin and destination countries as well as transnational and non-state actors, thus reflecting the growing centrality of rights in debates about global development in an era of emerging global migration governance (Piper and Grugel 2015). In the few debates which have highlighted the role of institutions, the delivery of both citizenship and classic human rights were long treated as the remit of states. Yet the study of human rights has shown that, because states can be unjust or weak, they should not be seen as primary agents of justice. The thinking around human rights has thus moved on to consider the responsibility of non-state actors, such as businesses, international institutions and non-governmental organizations as well (Kuper 2005). This mirrors developments in the field of social movement studies. Scholars there have also widened their gaze to look at the many actors now operating at and across different sites (Ataç and Schwenken in this volume, Chapter 30). Social movements today go beyond borders to engage in transnational alliances (Keck and Sikkink 1998), form global justice networks (Routledge and Cumbers 2009) and target global sites with their advocacy (Piper 2015). Neither conventional or cosmopolitan notions of citizenship, which tend to ignore global politics, nor liberal, individualistic notions of human rights are therefore at stake (Piper 2015). The ‘new rights’ agenda instead places migration squarely in the context of debates about global justice, and the combined responsibilities of multiple agents in multiple sites (Kuper 2005). It also reflects the growing centrality of rights in global development (Grugel and Piper 2009) as well as debates on democratic deficits in global governance (Scholte 2011). It questions the legitimacy of both the agents and the processes involved in generating governance outcomes which restrict migrant rights. Such shifts in emphasis and thinking are also reflected in the more specific discussion over how to secure labour rights in the twenty-first century, which is narrowing down to two key questions: how best to define the human rights responsibilities of non-state actors, and how labour rights apply to migratory or non-citizen workers, including undocumented migrants.
REMUNERATIVE AND POLITICAL WORK: A NEW RIGHTS AGENDA FOR AND BY MIGRANT WORKERS It has been argued that, given that low-skilled, low-wage migrant work is fundamentally and intersectionally subordinate to the national workforce in countries of destination, the provision of rights can only ever be partial (Dauvergne and Marsden 2014; Ferguson and McNally 2015). Such observations have, however, mostly been made in relation to the situation in destination countries of migration. However, some rights are more important to migrant workers than others in terms of urgency, such as those related to securing and remaining in work. Their families rely on them to cover daily expenses, they must urgently repay their debts, and most hope to build up savings as a cushion for the future (Nguyen 2018). The right to work and rights at work are paramount concerns which supersede all other rights. In light of the spreading and deepening of circular and strictly temporary migration, rights-based governance has to be located at the intersection of human rights and development. This is the only way to address the situation of lower-skilled migrant workers, who constitute the majority of foreign workers hailing from the global South and are often female (ILO 2015). The ‘new rights’ agenda emphasizes three innovations in particular, as follows.
396 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration The Right to Development: Right to Work and Rights at Work ‘Here and There’ The terrain of development/underdevelopment underpins the entire migration process, from the (more or less forced or constrained) decision to migrate through the physical being at the destination and to any return (compare UN 2006). Given the simultaneous implication of destination and origin country in migrants’ well-being, the issue of migrant rights is intimately linked to questions of the human right to development. Under Article 1 of the UN Declaration on the Right to Development from 1986, this right is understood as ‘an inalienable human right by virtue of which every human person and all peoples are entitled to participate in, contribute to, and enjoy economic, social, cultural and political development, in which all human rights and fundamental freedoms can be fully realized’. By invoking and addressing this right, migrants would not have to leave their places of origin to search for work and survival in the first place. The Global Commission on International Migration states in its final report that migration should be more a matter of choice than it presently is (GCIM 2005). According to the ILO report prepared for its annual congress in 2004, out-migration is principally due to the lack of ‘decent work’ locally. An integrated perspective on decent work as the driver for, and result of, overseas work is reflected in the Sustainable Development Goals in general and Goal 8 in particular. Recognizing the right to development without the need to migrate, and the obligation of states to broaden prospective and returned migrants’ choices, suggests that migration governance must challenge the underlying structures of unequal development. However, this is an issue that multilateral agreements have failed to address because of its political sensitivity (Simeone and Piper 2018). Portability of Justice and Rights: the Transnational Sphere Migrant workers live in the interstices between states and, therefore, between different welfare systems and transnational legal orders. This leads to particular difficulties when it comes to claiming benefits, payments or investments that are due or have accrued (Piper and Grugel 2015). For migrants to access benefits properly, these entitlements need to move with them as they travel. The concept of ‘portable rights’ (Caron 2006) specifically refers to social welfare entitlements, such as pensions and health insurance payments, that could be transferred back to countries of origin if older migrants choose to retire there, for example. But it can also broadly encompass claims for which new kinds of solutions are needed. When migrants’ labour rights – for example to a fixed number of hours per day, a safe and secure working environment, or payment – are violated, there are often legal obstacles to redress in the countries of destination. The situation is even more difficult when they are working outside formal arrangements or if they are made to return home at the end of a time-limited work contract (Caron 2006). In such cases, there should be an institutional framework in place which allows them to lodge their claims (Kawar in this volume, Chapter 31). Global unions such as UNI and Public Services International (PSI) have adapted this idea to create the concept of ‘portable membership’, which they now promote as a way of defending migrants’ rights.
Solidarities and disjunctures in the (global) mobilization of migrant workers 397 Political Rights of Migrant Workers Trade unions organize workers by sector and geographic location. Historically, however, they viewed new immigrants and especially undocumented migrants as competition and excluded them. As noted in the introduction, this attitude is slowly changing. But broad union membership for migrant workers is still a distant prospect. The freedom of association principle has, however, been widely promulgated as extending to migrant workers. Temporality and precarity continue to prevent their inclusion in local labour struggles. Innovative ideas like a union ‘global membership passport’ have so far been confined to specific sectors (for example, maritime) or to skilled professionals. Moreover, most migrant workers show little appetite for joining unions or paying membership fees. Nevertheless, innovative ideas of global membership ‘passports’ as promoted by global union federations, such as UNI and BWI, have been confined to specific sectors (for example, maritime) or to skilled professionals. Much work has to be done in this field to ensure mobilization of migrant workers in greater numbers. This gap has so far often been filled by non-union civil society organizations. The many groups of the domestic workers rights movement are a great example of this. Collaboration and cooperation between various civil society organizations is also on the rise. We now see networks of migrant rights activism, a development which highlights the need for scholars to go beyond studying migrant worker mobilization as a matter of industrial relations only. Instead, we need to look at wider forms of political organization and mobilization. Network-oriented approaches allow for new thinking around migrant rights to be applied to the multiplicity of actors located at various sites and places. They thus have the potential for an integrated perspective of institutional responsibility, beyond the national frame of reference (Piper et al. 2017).
THE WAY FORWARD: TRANSNATIONAL LABOUR CITIZENSHIP AND NOLA Jennifer Gordon’s (2007) concept of ‘transnational labour citizenship’ seeks to address the mismatch between legal citizenship and status for both documented/authorized and undocumented/unauthorized migrants (compare Fischer in this volume, Chapter 4). It provides a way forward from a situation of significant inequalities between countries where, on the one hand, preventing people from moving in search of work means curtailing their chance to build a decent life for themselves while, on the other hand, from the perspective of workers in the receiving country, more immigrants often means more competition in light of a lack of adequate workplace regulation and/or worse working conditions. Transnational citizenship links permission to enter a country in search of work, to membership in cross-border worker organizations, rather than to the current requirement of a job offer from an employer. It would require the enforcement of baseline labour rights, provide channels for recourse, and allow migrants to carry benefits and services with them as they move. Its goal would be to facilitate the free movement of people while preventing the erosion of working conditions in the countries that receive them (Gordon 2007: 504–5). Labour organizations operating across borders are central to this particular form of citizenship. According to Gordon, global labour mobility that ensures justice at work for migrants would be achieved through cooperative policies between countries of origin and destination on the basis of transnational membership in trade unions. The concept
398 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration is the product of worker agency and allows us to draw out the complexities involved in collective migrant worker organizing in settings where unions are weak, the political space narrow, and resources limited, resulting in alliances being forged with non-labour organizations. Giovanni Di Lieto (2015) builds on Gordon’s work to form the notion of ‘borderless industrial denizenship’ – a further novel contribution to conceptualizations of membership in organizations. It is a form of economic or industrial citizenship that is not state-centric and can be applied to the global and transnational sphere. Similar to Gordon, borderless industrial denizenship allows the labour movement to transcend the nation-state borders that so often undermine the practice and enforcement of labour and other human rights standards. Drawing on the academic fields of transnational industrial relations and supranational citizenship, Di Lieto’s concept redesigns the relationship between labour institutions and private actors in sending and receiving countries. Resonating Gordon’s thinking, he argues that ‘(r)ather than a job offer from an employer, membership in intergovernmental labour institutions would be the requirement to acquire denizenship and enjoy the related entitlements … migrants would carry benefits, services and duties with them as they move across borders’ (p. 23). By emphasizing the ‘intergovernmental’ nature of such labour institutions, however, Di Lieto eclipses the grassroots level which is so vital in the context of the politically highly marginalized workers. The concepts championed by Gordon and Di Lieto push the boundaries of our thinking around organizational membership. But they neither flesh out a concrete plan for achieving de-nationalized citizenship, nor offer practical ways for counteracting the dynamics of temporary migration and the resulting hyper-precarity, often long term, in which many migrants find themselves today. Political organizing around a rights-based perspective on migration governance, performed through networks of labour and cross-institutional alliances between migrant organizations and labour unions, is the missing link. Networks of Labour Migrant rights activism targeting various policy levels and actors is rising in both countries of origin and countries of destination. This often takes the form of transnational coalitions, where localized pockets of activism are interlinked with global and regional advocacy efforts via regional networks. One example is the Global Coalition on Migration, which includes regional networks such as PANdMIR and the Migrant Forum in Asia (MFA). The MFA is one of the most successful networks in the field, boasting a broad membership in terms of both geographic reach and types of organizations under its umbrella (unions, grassroots organizations, lawyers, etc.) and its delegation is typically the largest at most global forums (Piper and Rother 2019). It actively lobbies origin and destination countries along the major migration corridors in Asia, as well as the regional organization ASEAN. It has been instrumental in the formation of the global migrant rights movement. Regional networks like the MFA have been key in bringing the specificities of migration within Asia to multilateral forums. There they have joined global migrant rights advocates in voicing concerns over the fact that labour governance (labour rights embedded in functioning labour relations) has not kept up with developments in migration governance (policies that regulate the flow of people). This is evidenced by the under-ratification of specific international standards for migrant workers and the piecemeal and highly politicized process by which protection for migrant workers is addressed.
Solidarities and disjunctures in the (global) mobilization of migrant workers 399 The specific experience of temporary, employer-tied migration policies has led the MFA to develop its own comprehensive, rights-based approach to migration. This conceptualizes migrant rights as embedded in the full circle of migration: pre-migration, overseas stay, and return migration. The MFA’s rights-based approach thus covers the obligations and responsibilities of both destination and origin countries. In doing so, it addresses the driving factors of migration and the vicious cycle of migration and re-migration from a rights perspective. The MFA’s ultimate message is to stop what is essentially forced economic migration. They argue that fewer people will be compelled to migrate if decent work deficits in both origin and destination countries are addressed. Migration will still take place, but when it does it will be by choice. To support their case the MFA evokes the right to development found in the 1986 UN Declaration as well as the ILO’s notion of Decent Work. They demand the right to not have to migrate, alongside effective regulation of hiring and employment practices. The key challenge for the MFA is to increase concern for labour governance, including decent work at home as an alternative to migration, in a political climate that only seems interested in migration governance. The strategy of forging complex networks of labour helps them to do this by making it easier to navigate the fragmented architecture of migration governance at the global and regional levels. The gradual consolidation of cooperation between unions and migrant rights organizations reinforces the argument for blurring the lines between the human rights and labour rights frameworks (Piper et al. 2017). The formulation of the Ten Acts for the Global Compact1 is the product of this fledgling global migrant rights movement of global unions and regional migrant rights networks. It calls for responsibility sharing to tackle the complex drivers of precarious and forced migration. It emphasizes the central importance of access to stable work, and demands reductions in the cost of remittance transfers, financial literary training, and assistance with reintegration. Protecting migrant workers’ employment alongside broader rights advocacy has been a balancing act for migrant rights activists at the regional and global levels for a long time. They must always tread carefully. In the case of migrant domestic worker politics in Hong Kong, for instance, Briones (2009) has demonstrated how non-governmental organizations’ (NGOs) militancy on some issues has been complemented by strategic silence on other topics, such as radical demands around the global economic system and freedom of movement. Law (2002) has documented the wariness that individual migrant domestic workers display toward NGOs’ activities because they perceive such actions as jeopardizing their future employment. This is why some NGOs are reticent to speak about issues such as citizenship or gross structural inequality in the labour market – doing so may threaten the employment of the people for whom they advocate. Domestic workers’ expression of power is not so much in their activities of resistance but in their fight to remain in employment in the host state. Hong Kong’s domestic workers have set up their own unions and collaborate with the national trade union body, the HKCFTU. They have empowered themselves politically through self-organization, growing their numbers by forming alliances across nationality groups and with other sectoral unions. This has allowed them to become more vocal and to assert more pressure on the government in Hong Kong as well as governments of origin countries. The domestic workers of Hong Kong demonstrate the importance of networks and alliances for focusing campaigns and achieving positive outcomes.
400 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration The political messages of migrants’ regional and global advocacy networks are increasingly being addressed to the global level and are framed accordingly. The demand for more labour governance, for example, suggests that the ILO takes centre stage in global migration governance rather than its key rival, the International Organization of Migration. Explicit reference to migrant workers within Goal 8 of the Sustainable Development Goals – on decent work and economic growth – is another win for the broad-based alliances that were formed in the lead-up to the negotiations of ILO Convention 189 on Decent Work for Migrant Workers (Piper 2013). The emergence of networks of labour activism around migrant rights represents a step change in the activities of grassroots and migrant organizations. These networks have allowed these organizations to more effectively target not only national governments but transnational and global actors as well.
CONCLUSION This chapter has demonstrated a shift in thinking around the issue of migrants’ rights by integrating a global and ‘development’ perspective epitomized by the concept of ‘decent work’. It did so by highlighting the political activism undertaken by and for migrant workers exposed to precarity through either their undocumented status or their strictly temporary legal access to work overseas. Drawing on human rights, governance and social movement studies, this chapter focused on scholarship that has developed a multi-sited and multi-spatial approach to the notion of responsibility (Kuper 2005; Young 2006). Such an approach captures the role of organizational actors and institutional processes looking for solutions to large-scale and multi-dimensional societal challenges, such as immigration to search for paid work. It also teases out the complexity of the horizontal and vertical networks maintained by such organizations. This perspective also highlights the centrality of ‘the right to work’ and ‘rights at work’. These are well-established principles in existing international human rights instruments, yet they have not been realized and remain a distant aspiration. The important question that follows from this state of affairs concerns the issue of responsibility in terms of institutional agent (‘who’) and process (‘how’). Furthermore, addressing social problems such as under- or unemployment, discrimination and forced migration across borders requires a global perspective that reflects the fact that ‘we interact globally through a complex web of political and economic arrangements’ (Kuper 2005: xvii). This raises the question of the role of global rules and institutions in moving forward, including the possibility of developing an alternative conception of responsibility and political membership beyond the confines of states. The example of complex networks of labour has demonstrated that the experience of temporary contract migration has shaped a new conception of migrant rights, one which is embedded in global social justice concerns and multi-actor governance architecture. The discourse and actions of the global migrant rights movement and its members go beyond the confines of single nation states and singular institutions such as trade unions. The best platform for change, it was argued, thus derives from a combination of pressures articulated ‘from below’ (i.e. political activism by civil society, including network building between labour movements and migrant organizations) in coordination with forces ‘from above’ (especially the ILO)
Solidarities and disjunctures in the (global) mobilization of migrant workers 401 through a shared rights-based framework of decent work for all, regardless of geographic location and origin.
NOTE 1.
See http://www.madenetwork.org/sites/default/files/Civil%20Society%20-%20Now%20and %20How%20TEN%20Acts_%20English.pdf.
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33. Nativist politics and the mobilization of anti-immigrant discourses Aitana Guia
INTRODUCTION ‘Our decisions on immigration policies must always be made by Americans and Americans alone’, the United States of America (USA) Ambassador to the United Nations (UN), Nikki Haley, argued to explain her country’s refusal to join the Intergovernmental Conference to Adopt the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (UN General Assembly 2016, 2018; Wintour 2017). The Global Compact was approved by 164 countries in Marrakesh, Morocco, on 10 December 2018, but almost 30 rejected it, claiming it was a threat to their sovereignty and current hard-line immigration policies. Haley’s ‘Americans alone’ illustrates the latest reincarnation of nativism in the USA. Such nativist discourses and policies challenge the main tenets of liberal migration governance. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) defines migration governance as ‘the essential elements for facilitating orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration and mobility of people through planned and well-managed migration policies’ (IOM 2016). To achieve it, the IOM proposes to adhere to three procedural principles: (1) abiding by international laws regarding migrants’ rights; (2) creating policy based on evidence and a holistic approach; and (3) working in coordination with various partners. It aims to achieve three main objectives: (1) advance the socio-economic well-being of migrants and society; (2) effectively address mobility crises; and (3) ensure that migration takes place in a safe, orderly and dignified manner. Scholars still wrestle with the meaning of global migration governance (Betts 2011), but these IOM procedures and goals exemplify the main tenets of a mainstream liberal governance of migration (see also discussion and critique in Natter in this volume, Chapter 9). A nativist governance of migration does not abide by liberal conceptions of migration governance – such as the one proposed by the IOM. It rather aims to limit the mobility of people, as much the regular as the irregular, through eliminating legal immigration venues and strengthening border protection and policing. Its procedural means are to disregard international laws, create policies that address the ‘native’ communities’ fears, dismissing evidence-based and holistic policies, and hinder the work of organizations that aim to protect migrants’ rights. Its main goals are to limit migrants’ rights and hinder their access to citizenship, divert mobility crises, and limit or halt migration with disregard for the safety and dignity of migrants. Moreover, a nativist governance of migration challenges international refugee law and restricts citizenship regimes to curb and disincentivize mobility. Nativist parties are not the only ones to criticize current frameworks of liberal migration governance. Worldwide grassroot organizations, activists, and NGOs also challenge the inequitable, technocratic and depoliticizing nature of the liberal approach that the IOM exemplifies (Georgi 2010; Kalm 2010; see also extended discussion and critique in Crawley and Setrana, Chapter 16 and Pécoud, Chapter 17, both in this volume). 404
Nativist politics and the mobilization of anti-immigrant discourses 405 The key question this chapter addresses is how the mainstreaming of anti-immigrant nativist discourses has altered other political actors’ room for manoeuvring regarding migration governance. It argues that the strength of nativist cultural narratives, propagated by social movements and cemented in political parties, is transforming migration governance from its current liberal incarnations towards nativist positions. I first identify how anti-immigrant arguments have been studied so far and suggest incorporating a historical and cultural approach to understand nativism. Then I explain the peculiarities of post-war European nativism and the mobilization strategies of anti-immigrant groups. My last section dissects the characteristics of nativist migration governance.
GLOBAL NATIVIST ARGUMENTS Defining Nativism The term nativism was coined in the nineteenth century to describe principles advanced by the anti-foreign and anti-Catholic American Party, also known as the Know Nothing Party, in the USA in the 1850s (Higham 1955). Historians have notoriously found it a difficult term to define. In this chapter, nativism is understood as a philosophical position, sometimes translated into a movement, whose primary goal is to restrict immigration to maintain some deemed essential characteristics of a given political unit (Guia 2016: 16–17). Nativism is a mid-level concept that pitches deemed ‘natives’ against ‘foreigners’. It needs to be understood as a dynamic that obtains its specific features in a given historical context. Nativist waves are always context-dependent, that is, they do not share the same characteristics, but rather share the same dynamic of turning deemed ‘natives’ against ‘non-natives’. Nativism has a long history in countries such as the United States, Canada, and Australia. Today, it thrives in many post-industrial economies fractured by decades of unrestrained globalized capitalism that has favoured the accumulation of capital by transnational corporations and a few individuals. Increasing levels of inequality, compounded by the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent recession, are rapidly eroding the social gains made during the post-war period. Nativism, which usually begins in the right side of the political spectrum, has already straddled the boundaries of the traditional left–right divide and has been embraced by supporters of social democracy in, for instance, Denmark and Germany (Inglehart and Norris 2016). A Historical and Cultural Approach to Nativism and Populism The growing presence of nativist discourse and support for nativist parties has made populism and nativism become vibrant subjects of inquiry due to a shared perception of them being worldwide threats to liberal democratic systems. Scholars agree that radical right populist parties have moved their anti-immigrant narratives from the margins of the political spectrum to its centre. Less consensus exists on whether these parties form a single party family or should be primarily characterized by their right-wing agenda, their populist discourse or their nativism (Mudde 2007; Rydgren 2018a; Zaslove 2009). I believe that focusing on the left–right divide and engaging with the literature on party families and fascism spectrums can only partially explain the broad appeal of anti-immigrant nativist narratives (Rydgren 2018a). In order to have a nativist wave, ‘the socioeconomic
406 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration conflict dimension needs to become less prominent in relation to the sociocultural conflict dimension’ (Rydgren 2018b: 7), the one that deals with culture, values, and identity. When these issues are prominent in the political discourse and, therefore, rank high in the order of preference of voters, then parties with a nativist discourse, radical right populist in Europe or the Republican Party in the United States, see their voter mobilization increase (Kriesi 1999). A historical and cultural approach can enrich our understanding of the roots and toolkits of anti-immigrant movements and narratives. It helps us differentiate among various waves of nativism (Betz 2017) and understand the transition between interwar fascism and post-war populism. Federico Finchelstein (2017) argues that populism is the main defining feature of illiberal authoritarianism in the post-war period, once fascism has been discredited as a viable alternative to liberal democracies. Finchelstein argues that populism ‘cannot be simplistically defined by its claim to exclusively represent the entire people against the elites’ (2017: xv). Populism is rather ‘an authoritarian form of democracy’ (2017: xviii). Jan Rydgren argues that ‘it is the ethnic nationalism, not a populist ideology, that primarily defines the contemporary radical right’ (Rydgren 2018b: 6). Rydgren’s and Finchelstein’s approaches are not as contradictory as they may seem. Nativism is a better concept than ethnic nationalism to refer to European post-war xenophobic populism because most anti-immigrant movements justify their stances on cultural rather than ethnic grounds. Today’s nativism in Europe and North America embraces ‘whiteness’ as the ‘natural’ and ‘native’ position (Guia 2016). Culture, however, is often a euphemism or a hidden code for racism. This is part of a turn from delegitimized biological racism to cultural racism. The premise of cultural racism and how it is used in contexts of immigration is that some cultures are fundamentally incompatible and thus people from those cultures cannot coexist (Balibar 1991; Siebers and Dennissen 2015). Nativism and populism are indeed entirely compatible and in the current post-2008 recession context, they usually go hand in hand. This, however, does not need to be the case. Some authoritarian figures, such as Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s president elected in 2019, do not resort to nativist arguments. They use traditional targets of fascism: women, sexual minorities and ethnic and racialized minorities, within a populist framework. Brazil, like most other American countries, is considered a country of immigration, but since its independence from Portugal in 1822, its percentage of immigrants is only 2.6 per cent. In the last decades, only immigrants from Bolivia and currently Venezuela show in significant numbers, and Brazilian authorities have been quick to close its border with Venezuela to curb their entry. In the present context, Bolsonaro does not need a strong anti-immigrant discourse to go along with his illiberal populism. Anti-immigrant issues are, however, the core message of the populist radical right in Western and Eastern Europe and in the USA. These parties and movements perceive immigrants as a problem in four different dimensions: they are perceived as a threat to the ‘native’ community, often equated with ethno-national identity, as the major cause of criminality, as the main cause for unemployment for ‘natives’, and as burdens on and abusers of the welfare state provisions, resulting in fewer subsidies and benefits for deserving ‘natives’ (Rydgren 2003).
Nativist politics and the mobilization of anti-immigrant discourses 407 The Anatomy of Emotions Our understanding of anti-immigrant narratives and movements also needs to move beyond the left–right divide of the political spectrum, debates about party families and electoral politics (Mudde 2007) to incorporate a complementary approach that analyses the discursive power of nativism via postmaterialist and cultural concepts. New research on anti-immigrant discourses and mobilization needs to unpack the cultural arguments used by these movements, such as their uses of nostalgia, resentment, victimhood, masculinity/misogyny, and ethno-nationalism/ whiteness. What role do these narratives play in the articulation of nativism in various case studies and continents? In this section, I delineate the parameters of the debate by highlighting how various authors have incorporated the study of narratives and emotions. Francis Fukuyama (2018) argues that the reason for the rise of ‘identity politics’ and anti-liberal populism lies in the ‘politics of resentment’ on the part of the ‘losers of globalization’, the defeated, humiliated and marginalized. The collective anger of a sub-group of people that feels disenfranchized in its own country fuels reactions against the liberal-democratic order. Ruth Wodak (2016) argues that it is not so much resentment but fear, irrational and manufactured by illiberal political actors basking in demagoguery and ethnic pride. The old defence of a blood and soil identity against religious and ethnic minorities has re-emerged with updated foes: immigrants and Muslims. Nativism is a dynamic that takes on different characteristics in each national setting and relies on a cultural ‘deep story’ that needs to be unveiled to understand all the raw emotions that are fuelling it. Scholars such as Arlie Hochschild (2018) and Gloria Wekker (2016) go searching for what Hochschild calls ‘deep story’ and Wekker the cultural archive of white innocence. They focus on the narratives that justify a sense of victimization by dominant groups, white Republican Americans and ethnic Dutch respectively, that feel their hegemony threatened by the rise of minorities or the arrival of immigrants. Hochschild explains that Louisiana Republicans place their resentment within a national narrative. They believe in the American Dream of rags to riches. They are ‘waiting in line’ for the reward they deserve for their hard work and law-and-order behaviour. Whenever they react against minorities or immigrants, it is not a racial or xenophobic statement in their eyes. They are merely reacting against those who are cutting the line improperly, with undeserving liberal and government help (Hochschild 2018: 136–45). Hochschild highlights that the difficulties of Republican Louisianans are due to a real structural socio-economic squeeze, but her interviewees are unable to see it and blame racial minorities, feminist women, and liberal government for their frustration, anger and sense of betrayal (Hochschild 2018: 146–51). One of the raw emotions fuelling nativism is nostalgia, a sentimental longing for the past, for a period with successful and happy collective and personal associations. Nostalgia is hegemonic in some nativist movements, but absent from others. Many European nativists are forward-looking movements, mostly because nostalgia in Europe involves contending with the Second World War, Nazism and the Holocaust, but not all. Italian and British nativists regard their fascist and imperial pasts with nostalgic sorrow for greater lost times. America First has the clearest component of nostalgia for an imagined time when the American Dream worked and white American men were supposedly rewarded for their efforts (Maskovsky 2017). Nostalgia for a holy time where Hindus did not have to share their land with foreign religions and the ‘sons of the soil’ got what they deserved has also played a part in the rise
408 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration of the Bharatiya Janata Party in India since the 1980s, but nostalgia does not play as well in some countries, such as South Africa or Spain, where a highly divisive event, apartheid and the Spanish Civil War, respectively, is still living memory, hindering the emergence of an imagined wholesome narrative about the past. Hochschild and Fukuyama agree that misplaced resentment is an important part of the new politics of emotions connected to the rise of nativism, but Hochschild and Wekker remind us that without understanding the highly localized ‘deep story’ or ‘cultural archive’ where these emotions makes sense, we witness the effects (emotions) without understanding the causes (deep cultural and historical narratives).
EUROPE: NATIVISM WITH A PROGRESSIVE MASK Despite nativism having become a mainstream political position in post-1989 Europe, Europeans have been slow to apply the term to themselves, both in popular media and academia, because Europe’s national myths of origin, based on the settlement of peoples and their consequent rootedness, ‘naturalizes’ their nativist positions. Today’s narratives of belonging still claim that there are ‘true’, ‘autochthonous’, ‘de souche’, ‘de socarel’ Europeans who are the ‘natural’ inhabitants of a territory, while others cannot establish that centenarian or millenarian connection to the land. The evolution of anti-immigrant parties and how they connect with larger historical trends helps us in understanding the arguments they use to justify their nativist migration governance. If we look at the post-war period, right after the economic miracle ended and most European governments eliminated their guest-worker programmes and moved to curtail further immigration, two distinct phases emerge. The first phase begins in the 1970s and ends in the early 2000s. In this phase, most radical right parties still had personal and ideological associations with fascism and limited electoral appeal and ability to govern. Their greatest successes were the 2002 National Front (FN), Jean-Marie Le Pen, achieving 4.8 million votes (17 per cent of the electorate) in the second round of the French presidential elections, as well as the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), 27 per cent of the electoral vote in the 1999 national elections. The second phase, from the late 1990s to the present is a product of a Janus-face shift in radical right parties. First, the generational and ideological separation from interwar European fascism has deepened. While Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the French radical right party Front National, embraced anti-Semitism and the legacy of Vichy, his daughter, Marine Le Pen has, painstakingly attempted to cleanse her party from the fascist legacy to focus on immigration and Euroscepticism. Tony Judt argued that the growth of xenophobic parties in France, Britain, Austria, Denmark and the Netherlands since the 1970s ‘could not be dismissed as simply an atavistic, nostalgic regurgitation of Europe’s Fascist past’. In particular, the Dansk Folkeparty (Danish People’s Party) and the Dutch Pim Fortuyn List ‘took care to emphasize their desire to preserve their countries’ traditional tolerance—under threat, they asserted, from the religious fanaticism and retrograde cultural practices of the new Muslim minorities’ (Judt 2010: 745). Most radical right parties have incorporated seemingly progressive elements that originated in the late 1960s–1970s New Left and social movements to fuel their anti-immigrant toolkit. This paradoxical radical right that defends the welfare state, albeit only for deserving natives, gender equality, sexual freedoms and the rights of sexual minorities was triggered by the emergence of the Danish People’s Party in 1995 and the entry into politics of Pym Fortuyn
Nativist politics and the mobilization of anti-immigrant discourses 409 in 1999, but today influences most anti-immigrant discourses in Europe. In Germany, for instance, anti-refugee demonstrations chanted against ‘rapefugees’, as if the main reason to reject refugee claimants from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan was that they were a sexual threat to native women. Instead, the ‘deep story’ of protestors connects the protection of women to their role as carriers of nationhood and to the society’s track record of controlling women’s sexuality. This new phase not only is generationally far apart, but is also increasingly led by radical right female and gay leaders in France, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands: Pia Kjaersgaard (1995–2012) for the Danish People’s Party, Marine Le Pen for the French FN (2011–present), and Frauke Petry (2015–17) and Alice Weidel (2017–present) for Alternative for Germany; the late Pim Fortuyn was gay and Weidel is a lesbian who opposes same-sex marriage and instead advocates for civil partnerships for LGBTQ+ Germans. Part of the unease of scholars in analysing nativist narratives is that, on the one hand, radical right populist narratives do not fit neatly the traditional ‘right’ label of the political spectrum in their embrace of socio-economic equality and sexual rights. Some nativist parties defend the welfare state, which marks them as part of the post-war Western European social-democratic consensus. Defending the welfare state provisions but only for deserving ‘natives’ has been labelled ‘welfare chauvinism’ (Andersen and Bjørklund 1990). On the other hand, some ‘left’-wing leaders, such as Sahra Wagenknecht in Germany’s Left Party or Mette Frederiksen in Denmark’s Social Democrats, also adopt nativist positions (Oltermann 2018; Orange 2019). The characteristics of a European nativism are also no longer primarily informed by biological racism or anti-Semitism, broadly discredited during the Holocaust, but rather reside in cultural elements and values that are deemed progressive and ‘European’ versus those immigrant cultures and values defined as backward or barbaric. Nativists mainly target European Muslims because they consider that through their religion and cultures, Muslims are re-introducing patriarchal, anti-secular, anti-modern, anti-LGBTQ+ rights, and anti-sexual freedom attitudes into Europe (Essed and Hoving 2014; Wekker 2016). The embrace by nativist parties of the legacy of the 1960s New Left is uneven and moves along a diverse spectrum. Among the mainstream areas incorporated into the new lexicon of the nativist parties is a defence of women’s rights vis-à-vis Muslim immigrants presumed to import patriarchal and discriminatory practices. Following the theoretical framework of ambivalent sexism that argues that sexism operates on a spectrum ranging from benevolent sexism to hostile sexism (Glick and Fiscke 1997), three nativist positions can be identified. In most countries, nativist parties are blind to and in denial of sexism coming from the ‘native’ community. In some instances, such as Spain or Italy, nativist and populist radical right parties paradoxically embrace women’s rights while denouncing feminism and what they call ‘gender ideology’ (Campbell and Erzeel 2018). This position is the one closest to hostile sexism. In Germany or Austria, for instance, the argument is that ‘white native women need to be protected from “rapefugees” and other Orientalized uber-sexualized dark men’, an example of benevolent sexism. In a minority of countries, such as the Netherlands, nativist parties embrace a genuine concern for women’s equality and freedoms devoid of both types of ambivalent sexism. Another area of mainstream consensus is the nativist defence of secularism, or laïcité in the case of France, vis-à-vis religious minorities aiming to re-introduce religion in public spheres. As Scott (2017) argues, current nativist argument is not anti-clerical in the European tradition, but rather an inconsistent pro-secular position that makes exceptions for ‘our’ religious traditions while applying strict secular regulations to minority or immigrant religions (Scott 2017).
410 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration More divisive are issues related to sexuality. A defence of the sexual freedoms that emerged after the Paris May 1968 protests as a European value is prominent in the Netherlands and part of the lexicon in other European countries. Equal rights for the LGBTQ+ community, however, is a more contentious demand. Only in a minority of countries is a defence of gay rights and equality against religious minorities that are perceived to oppose it well established. Fortuyn clearly summarized this line of argument when he said in February 2002 that ‘I have no desire to have to go through the emancipation of women and homosexuals all over again’ (Buruma 2006: 56–7). This phenomenon has been alternatively called homonationalism (Puar 2013) or sexual nationalism (Mepschen and Duyvendak 2012). In sum, masking anti-immigrant narratives with progressive causes facilitates the adoption of a nativist governance of migration in three ways: first, it allows these parties and movements to distance themselves from the stigma that traditional far-right parties still carry among mainstream citizenry. Second, it allows them to garner the legitimacy of progressive movements to naturalize a nativist approach to immigration and belonging. And finally, it allows them to reach supporters that care about progressive causes but would not prima facie embrace a nativist agenda.
MOBILIZATION AND STRATEGIES Nativist mobilization has two broad goals. It aims to shift public opinion against immigration and particularly challenges liberal elements of existing migration governance frameworks, as well as supports political parties that embrace a nativist understanding of migration governance. The growth of nativist movements does not differ from other social movements. In France and Austria, for instance, the FN and the Austria Freedom Party began at the local and regional level and then grew to reach the national theater (Mammone 2012). The growth of PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident) in Germany or other identitarian movements in various European countries also began with local presence and mobilizations aimed at changing the cultural discourse about immigration. Salzborn (2016) points out that one of the goals of these social movements is to achieve ‘cultural hegemony’, that is, to have their narratives accepted by mainstream political and social actors until they become the default dominant discourse. The local level is also where the lines between party politics and social movement activities become blurred, for example when nativist agents organize local initiatives to oppose the building of mosques or asylum-seeker reception centres in Europe. Some groups aligned with the various Identitarian Movements also create spaces of socialization, such as the CasaPound network in Italy, as well as provide aid and social services for socio-economically vulnerable (and native) segments of their populations (Jones 2018). This strategy is well targeted to reinforce the populist rhetoric of these movements. They take over services the state should be providing but does not because, they claim, cosmopolitan elites deviate tax dollars to support immigrants rather than natives (Rydgren 2018b: 9). As social media become the most important means of information for many, nativist movements have embraced the Internet as a low-entry-barrier-with-geographical-compression forum where they ‘share ideas, coordinate activities, disseminate propaganda, form alliances, sell merchandise, and recruit members’ (Veugelers and Menard 2018). Online networks
Nativist politics and the mobilization of anti-immigrant discourses 411 facilitate the normalization of hate speech and threats, and allow supporters of the radical right to embrace violence as a distinctive feature of their masculine nativeness (Weinberg and Assoudeh 2018). Nativist mobilization, and the spread of nativist sentiments, has arguably reinforced the electoral support for the radical right. A look at supporter profiles in Europe reveals that, in socio-demographic terms, working-class and male voters are overrepresented while highly educated and female voters are underrepresented (Arzheimer 2018; Coffé 2018). The single issue that draws voters into these parties – anti-immigrant sentiment – is, however, not related to their economic preferences (Arzheimer 2018; Rydgren 2008). As the work of Wodak (2016) and Fukuyama (2018) discussed above confirms, in Western countries, voters support radical right parties because of their socio-cultural programme, nativism and anti-immigration policies especially, not because of economic policy preferences (Oesch 2008).
A NATIVIST GOVERNANCE OF MIGRATION A nativist migration governance radically transforms immigration, citizenship and refugee protection regimes of liberal democracies. It is a step away from liberalism and towards oxymoronic illiberal/authoritarian democracies (for a more extended discussion of these distinctions, see Natter in this volume, Chapter 9). While a nativist migration governance overlaps to some degree with a restrictive liberal migration regime – one that undermines the international refugee protection regime without directly rejecting it and that discourages legal immigration to a country without eliminating this possibility altogether – a nativist migration governance is incompatible with robust and transnational efforts to solidify the governance of migration along liberal lines. Nativist mobilization has become part of migration governance to different degrees. Initially, nativist arguments are presented as simple solutions to complex problems and conveyed as an emotionally charged truth-telling message for the ‘real’ people who are supposedly being deceived by the elites. Then, nativist ideas become mainstreamed and normalized by their repetitive use and populist rhetoric. Afterwards, they move out of their initial constituency and conservative parties embrace nativist narratives to avoid losing support and, by doing so, further normalize and ‘naturalize’ them. The last stage is when left-wing social democratic parties also join the nativist wave (Guia 2016), making migration governance on liberal grounds irrelevant, if not unthinkable. Immigration and Refugee Protection Regimes A nativist migration governance threatens the obligations that liberal democracies have accepted under international refugee law and hinder any multilateral approach to humanitarian crises (see Crawley and Setrana, Chapter 16 and Hart, Chapter 8, both in this volume). Regarding the immigration regime, nativist actors advocate restricting the entry of immigrants in general while discouraging those deemed unable to culturally assimilate in particular. This is as unsurprising as it is well documented. The mechanisms proposed involve a combination of eliminating or reducing quotas for legal immigration, migrant workers’ programmes, and family reunification, while at the same time buttressing border control (see Pécoud, Chapter 17 and El Qadim, Chapter 19, both in this volume).
412 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration For example, former US President Donald Trump’s zero tolerance policy regarding immigration exemplified the turn from a (restrictive) liberal immigration regime into a nativist one. Donald Trump’s policies not only aimed to build a wall on his country’s southern border to curb undocumented migration from the rest of the Americas, but also hindered legal means for immigrants to enter the country. Work visas for skilled workers became more difficult to obtain and the path towards permanent residency also tightened, with threats of eliminating full categories, such as the diversity lottery system, altogether. Discretionary exceptions of immigration rules for certain undocumented residents, such as families of US military personnel, disappeared. Family separations at the border, and the consequent detention of thousands of children, became the natural conclusion of a zero-tolerance policy against illegal entry (Smith et al. 2019; on the concept of irregularity, see Squire, Chapter 11; on the politics of family migration policies, see Bonjour and Cleton, Chapter 13, both in this volume). Externalizing border control by recruiting neighbouring countries to stop the flow of immigrants or intercept refugee claimants before they touch a country’s soil are also mechanisms used by Australia, the European Union, and the USA. Australia’s lengthy detention of immigrants, both within the country and on neighbouring islands, is another step towards a nativist migration governance. Among liberal democracies, Australia (for settler colonial societies) and Hungary or Denmark (for traditional European states) have moved further along in their adoption of a nativist migration governance (Opeskin 2012), but the USA under the Trump administration moved in the same direction. Citizenship Regimes Nativist actors also question those features of the citizenship regime that regulate mobility and the emergence of multicultural societies (on the role of citizenship, see Rodrigues de Castro and Moulin in this volume, Chapter 3). Nativist actors aim to eliminate ius soli citizenship, harden criteria and introduce cultural requirements for naturalization, and oppose dual or multiple citizenship. Nativists in France and the USA question their ius soli citizenship, one of the most revered pillars of their citizenship regime. In France, the FN, now National Rally (NR),has supported limiting the republican ius soli citizenship tradition by rejecting the automatic acquisition in adulthood of French citizenship by children born in France to foreign parents (Marcus 1995: 107). In the middle of the 2018 mid-term Congress and Senate election campaign, Donald Trump echoed this very same demand by suggesting that his presidential authority allowed him to eliminate the country’s ius soli citizenship, guaranteed by the 14th amendment to the US Constitution. Whether Trump was legally entitled to do so is perhaps less relevant than his nativist political challenge to the very idea of ius soli citizenship. This type of nativist politics can also veto changes intended to accommodate already-resident populations with a migration background. In Italy, the Lega Nord, now The Lega, has long pursued a strategy based on restrictive immigration laws (for example, the Bossi-Fini Act in 2002), increasing border controls, making deportations of undocumented migrants easier and opposing centre-left coalitions’ efforts to facilitate naturalization in 2006 and 2016 (Zaslove 2011). In 2015, the Democratic Party government of Matteo Renzi proposed a new citizenship act that made naturalization easier for the children of immigrants who had been raised and schooled in Italy. This would have added what the Italian press called ius culturae citizenship (for children who had been acculturated in Italy), to the 1992 Citizenship Act’s ius sanguinis
Nativist politics and the mobilization of anti-immigrant discourses 413 citizenship. The Lega Nord members of parliament booed it with cries of ‘shame’. The modification never made it.1 Naturalization within liberal citizenship regimes has functioned as a way to tie immigrants’ loyalty to their new country, give them access to political rights, and improve social cohesion. The higher the rate of naturalization, the better a country is incorporating new residents into its political body. While both Canada and the United States had rates near 60 per cent in the 1970s, by 2006 Canada’s rate of naturalization had risen to 79 per cent while in the USA it had fallen to 46 per cent. It is easier in Canada to become a citizen and thus immigrants seek Canadian citizenship earlier than they do in the USA. Moreover, various nationalities, such as Mexicans, have lower naturalization rates and this impacts America’s lower numbers (Picot and Hou 2011). The Trump administration created a new office with the sole mandate to investigate, review, and if necessary, revoke decades-old claims to citizenship of people born in border states such as Texas. The intent of this measure was notionally to identify fraudulent claims. However, this focus on naturalization – particularly for people of Latinx origin – begins to cast doubt over its validity as a secured path into Americanness. It is also a nativist measure as it signals an ethnic/white dimension to what legitimately constitutes ‘Americanness’. In practical terms, it may also lower the rates of naturalization that were on an upward trend since 2005. Moreover, most nativist actors question dual citizenship and wish to return to single national loyalties. The NR has been calling for two decades for an end to dual citizenship (Marcus 1995: 107). With the leadership of Marine Le Pen, the NR has refined its position and now advocates a ban on dual nationality for non-Europeans. Le Pen justified these restrictions because dual citizenship undermines republican values in France. Nativists in Holland are moving towards a full rejection of dual citizenship that, if implemented, will hurt their diasporas and divide ethnic Dutch between ‘native’ Dutch who are still rooted in the country and immigrant Dutch, whose ties to the ‘native’ land are under suspicion. Citizenship revocation, promoted by the Trump administration and increasingly common in northern European countries, is also a measure to hinder citizenship for those deemed ‘non-natives’ (see Rodrigues de Castro and Moulin in this volume, Chapter 3).
CONCLUSION The greatest success of nativist movements and parties is that they have created a political-religious master frame with influence on public discourse far larger than their actual electoral support. Part of the strength of nativists’ ‘deep stories’ lies in their ability to activate raw emotions such as nostalgia, resentment, fear and anger. Nativism reflects the cultural values of the historical context in which it emerges. In post-1945 Europe, nativist parties are increasingly adopting a progressive mask to support their policies. In a novel way that has little parallel in other parts of the globe, many European nativists embrace secularism, animal rights, sexual freedoms, women’s rights and the rights of sexual minorities, to a certain degree, to oppose immigration and equal rights for religious minorities in Europe. In liberal democracies elsewhere, nativism is coupled with more traditional conservative positions on gender roles, sexuality, religion or the environment. This chapter has highlighted how the increasing influence of nativist discourses and those promoting them unfolds far-reaching and transformative implications for the migration gov-
414 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration ernance domain. In many parts of the world, nativist parties have successfully activated such cultural discourses to challenge liberal frameworks for migration governance. Their growing influence effectively undermines liberal immigration regimes by halting legal immigration procedures and curtailing undocumented immigration by illiberal means. It weakens international refugee law and protections, as well as transforms liberal citizenship regimes by challenging ius soli citizenship, hindering naturalization processes, and problematizing dual or multiple citizenship. Anti-immigrant discourses form the basis of ‘deep stories’ of resentment and anger that justify abandoning a liberal framework for migration governance in favour of a nativist approach.
NOTE 1. See ‘Cittadinanza: sì della Camera allo ius soli. La nuova legge passa al Senato’, La Repubblica, 13 October 2015, https://www.repubblica.it/politica/2015/10/13/news/legge_cittadinanza_senato -124967907/[last accessed 10 January 2019].
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Nativist politics and the mobilization of anti-immigrant discourses 415 IOM [International Organization for Migration] (2016), ‘Migration Governance Framework’, https:// publications.iom.int/system/files/migof_brochure_en.pdf. Jones, T. (2018), ‘The Fascist Movement that Has Brought Mussolini Back to the Mainstream’, The Guardian, 22 February, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/feb/22/casapound-italy-mussolini -fascism-mainstream. Judt, T. (2010), Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945, New York: Penguin Books. Kalm, S. (2010), ‘Liberalizing Movements? The Political Rationality of Global Migration Management’, in M. Geiger and A. Pécoud (eds), The Politics of International Migration Management: Migration, Minorities and Citizenship, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 21–44. Kriesi, H. (1999), ‘Movements of the Left, Movements of the Right: Putting the Mobilization of Two New Types of Social Movement into Political Context’, in H. Kriesi et al. (eds), Continuity and Change in Contemporary Capitalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 398–425. Mammone, A. et al. (eds) (2012), Mapping the Extreme Right in Contemporary Europe: From Local to Transnational, London; New York: Routledge. Marcus, J. (1995), The National Front in French Politics, Basingstoke: Macmillan. Maskovsky, J. (2017), ‘Toward the Anthropology of White Nationalist Postracialism’, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 7 (1), 433–40. Mepschen, P. and Duyvendak, J.W. (2012), ‘European Sexual Nationalisms: The Culturalization of Citizenship and the Sexual Politics of Belonging and Exclusion’, Perspectives on Europe, 42 (1), 70–76. Mudde, C. (2007), Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe, Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press. Oesch, D. (2008), ‘Explaining Workers’ Support for Radical Right-Wing Populist Parties in Western Europe: Evidence from Austria, Belgium, France, Norway, and Switzerland’, International Political Science Review, 29, 349–73. Oltermann, P. (2018), ‘Germany’s Left and Right Vie to Turn Politics Upside Down’, The Guardian, 22 July, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/22/german-leftwingers-woo-voters-with-national -social-stance. Opeskin, B. (2012), ‘Managing International Migration in Australia: Human Rights and the “Last Major Redoubt of Unfettered National Sovereignty”’, International Migration Review, 46 (3), 551–85. Orange, R. (2019), ‘Mette Frederiksen: The Anti-Migrant Left Leader Set to Win Power in Denmark’, The Observer, 11 May, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/11/denmark-election-matte -frederiksen-leftwing-immigration. Picot, G. and Hou, F. (2011), ‘Divergent Trends in Citizenship Rates among Immigrants in Canada and the United States’, Statistics Canada Analytical Studies Research Paper Series, 11F0019M No. 338. Puar, J. (2013), ‘Rethinking Homonationalism’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 45 (2), 336–40. Rydgren, Jan (2003), ‘Mesolevel Reasons for Racism and Xenophobia: Some Converging and Diverging Effects of Radical Right Populism in France and Sweden’, European Journal of Social Theory, 6 (1), 45–68. Rydgren, J. (2008), ‘Immigration Sceptics, Xenophobes, or Racists? Radical Right-Wing Voting in Six West European Countries’, European Journal of Political Research, 47, 737–65. Rydgren, J. (ed.) (2018a), The Oxford Handbook of the Radical Right, New York: Oxford University Press. Rydgren, J. (2018b), ‘The Radical Right: An Introduction’, in J. Ridgren (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Radical Right, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 1–16. Salzborn, S. (2016), ‘Renaissance of the New Right in Germany? A Discussion of New Right Elements in German Right-Wing Extremism Today’, German Politics and Society, 34 (2), 36–63. Scott, J.W. (2017), Sex and Secularism, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Siebers, H. and Dennissen, M.H. (2015), ‘Is It Cultural Racism? Discursive Exclusion and Oppression of Migrants in the Netherlands’, Current Sociology, 63 (3), 470–89. Smith, S., Vasudevan, P., Serrano, C. and Gökarıksel, B. (2019), ‘Breaking Families: Whiteness, State Violence, and the Alienable Rights of Kin’, Political Geography, 72, 144–6. UN General Assembly (2016), New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, https://www.iom.int/ sites/default/files/our_work/ODG/GCM/NY_Declaration.pdf.
416 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration UN General Assembly (2018), Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 19 December 2018, A/RES/73/195, https://www.un.org/en/ga/ search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/RES/73/195. Veugelers, J. and Menard, G. (2018), ‘The Non-Party Sector of the Radical Right’, in Jan Ridgren (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Radical Right, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 285–304. Weinberg, M. and Assoudeh, E. (2018), ‘Political Violence and the Radical Right’, in Jan Ridgren (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Radical Right, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 412–31. Wekker, G. (2016), White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race, Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press. Wintour, P. (2017), ‘Donald Trump Pulls US Out of UN Global Compact on Migration’, The Guardian, 3 December, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/03/donald-trump-pulls-us-out-of-un -global-compact-on-migration. Wodak, R. (2016), The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Populist Discourses Mean, London: Sage Publications. Zaslove, A. (2009), ‘The Populist Radical Right: Ideology, Party Families and Core Principles’, Political Studies Review, 7 (3), 309–18. Zaslove, A. (2011), The Re-Invention of the European Radical Right: Populism, Regionalism, and the Italian Lega Nord, Montréal and Kingston: McGill–Queen’s University Press.
Index
‘abyssal line’ 29, 30 access to rights 39, 45, 129–31, 132, 133 Africa 26, 29, 31, 74, 76, 110, 111, 116, 118, 127, 130, 132, 138, 139, 160, 198, 231, 233, 234, 257, 258, 271, 272, 282, 295, 304, 347 Central 91, 307 East 98, 104, 105, 107, 112 North 60, 80, 191, 232, 233, 245, 274 South 132, 138, 232, 256, 306, 307, 330, 334, 356, 371, 383, 408 Sub-Saharan 79, 118, 128, 274, 275, 319 West 74, 79–80, 91, 140, 155, 333 anti-immigrant discourses 60, 61, 195, 257, 385, 404–14 Anti-Slavery International 99 Argentina 111, 113, 166, 322 ASEAN see Association of Southeast Asian Nations Asia 26, 31, 32, 89, 110, 111, 116, 130, 132, 150, 161, 162, 164, 167, 221, 224, 233, 243, 282, 293, 295, 304, 309, 372, 375, 398 Central 112, 125 East 231, 246, 307, 392 South 176, 231, 307, 330 South East 189, 197, 272, 392 West 392 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) 398 asylum 65, 104, 125, 126, 130, 132, 138, 144, 195 burden sharing 199–200 citizenship 125, 133 claim 342 decisions 4, 319 European Asylum Dactyloscopy Database (Eurodac) 249, 332, 334, 335 policy 332, 355, 387 processes 139, 198, 332, 333 right to 63, 64, 134, 196, 208 route 138, 142, 143, 145 seekers 33, 65, 106, 113, 130, 133, 187, 199, 231, 262, 320 activism 374 detention of 342, 343, 385 protection 142, 143, 199, 382, 384 underage 317, 330 Australia 31, 64, 65, 111, 112, 115, 138, 143, 162, 164, 165, 166, 174, 177, 195, 199, 202, 213, 243, 319, 322, 343, 344, 355, 405, 412 autonomy of migration 63, 237, 333
Bangladesh 93–4, 218, 222, 224, 270, 279, 358 Barcelona, Spain 260, 347, 348 biometrics 3, 140, 211, 329–38 bio-politics 190, 317 Black Skin White Masks 29 border control 60, 68, 79, 90, 156, 206, 207, 274, 336 externalized 138, 187, 213, 236, 243, 245, 412 forms 68, 191, 347 migration management 65, 210, 213, 214 militarization of 65, 69 politics of 66, 67 practices 64, 187, 199, 332 technology 331, 332, 335, 336 border policy 60 border regimes 64–6, 119, 179, 185–92, 237, 311, 355, 358 border security 60, 61, 66, 67, 140, 333, 334, 336 border–security nexus 13, 60, 68 bordering 10, 60, 61–2, 92, 189 diffuse 61 discourses 69 everyday 179, 304, 310 humanitarian 66 initiatives 62 migration routes 243, 244 practices 64, 65, 67, 69, 179, 186, 187, 356 spectacular 61, 65 brain drain 75, 173, 175, 235 Brazil 111, 113, 117, 237, 307, 309, 406 burden sharing 80, 98, 195, 196, 199–201, 202 camps 104, 105, 131, 245, 255, 257 control 282 governance 284 internally displaced people (IDP) 132, 282 labour 286–7 life in 284–5 non-forced migration 286–7 politics of 282, 285 purposes 280, 283 role in migration policy 284 self-organization 283 Canada 31, 143, 163, 164, 165, 166, 174, 243, 244, 259, 307, 309, 342, 343, 344, 357, 405, 413 capitalism 76, 77, 82, 148, 188, 207, 273, 319, 324 global 17, 186, 214, 218, 355, 358, 405 rise of 26, 191
417
418 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration care and welfare regimes 306–7 Central Asia 112, 125 China 99, 117, 120, 162, 167, 175, 218, 219, 220, 221, 224, 250, 255, 270, 272, 307 Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) 111, 231 circulation 38, 44, 75, 77, 229, 230–32, 337, 360 labour 209, 211, 214, 221, 224 citizenship 36, 37, 38, 40–41, 42–5, 65, 125, 143, 163–4, 167–9, 191, 293 critical citizenship studies 370–71 entitlements 38, 39 industrial 293, 398 ius culturae 412 ius sanguinis 230, 412 ius soli 230, 412, 414 national 36, 38, 40, 41, 42, 139, 143, 394 nativism 412–13 strategic 36, 41, 42 supranational 398 technology of 356–7 transnational labour 397–8 city makers 260–3 climate change 86–95, 101, 207, 209, 269, 272 climate change–migration nexus 87, 90, 94 climate change-induced migration 86, 87, 88, 90, 94, 127 climate refugees 87–9 Colombia 28, 133, 237, 371 colonialism 14, 25, 26–8, 30–3, 111, 187, 197 colonial present 26–8 neo-colonialism 19, 77, 91 post-colonialism 7, 8, 26, 28, 77, 139 coloniality 26, 27, 29, 38 ‘coloniality of power’ 27, 31 coloniality/modernity 26, 27, 31, 32, 33 Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF) 200, 201, 202, 203 construction sites 296–7 contestation illegality 143–4 immigration policy 308–9 migration governance 380–89 Continuous Passage Act (1908) 243 controlled mobility 221, 224 Convention concerning Decent Work for Domestic Workers (Convention No. 189 (C189) 2011) 297, 305, 310, 400 conviviality 261 cosmopolitanism 41, 42, 105, 188, 231, 323, 395 courts 114, 117, 348, 373, 380, 381, 383, 384, 385, 387, 393 Covid-19 1 criminal law 341–6, 349, 384 Criminal Law Amendment Act (1885) 150 criminalization 154, 236, 341–4, 349, 356
‘crimmigration’ 341–9 crisis 33, 63, 67, 73, 88, 105, 107, 199, 255, 283 of capitalism 82 economic 63, 75, 274 financial 405 humanitarian 63, 105, 107 imagery of 60 migration 63, 89, 207, 208 political 219, 231 refugee 89, 90, 91, 94, 163, 200, 201, 245, 257, 258, 260, 355 rural 271 decolonial 25–31, 33 decolonization 25, 31, 32, 33, 111, 144, 330 Department for International Development (DFID) 80 deportability 137, 139, 141, 234, 356, 358, 361, 369 deportation 124, 131, 140, 141, 142, 154, 234, 317, 354–62 after deportation 361, 362 the age of deportation 354–5 anti-deportation movements 143, 361 corridor 246, 247 depoliticization 359–61 global deportation regime 355 immigration law 341, 342, 343, 367, 384, 388, 412 journeys 250, 318 migrant activism 368, 369, 372 re-politicizing 361–2 rise of a global deportation regime 355 spectacular bordering 61 speed 319, 320 state-building project 355–6 terminology of deportation 359–61 deskilling 178, 180 destination countries 6, 75, 78, 247, 309, 372, 395, 398, 399 detention 66, 67, 199, 200, 250, 317–20, 341, 342, 361 centres 195, 354, 355, 357, 367 and deportation 318, 323, 343, 355, 356, 359, 360 offshore 344, 385 development development–displacement nexus 80, 81 migration and development 73–82, 89, 244, 258, 203, 286, 391, 394 Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (2018) 76, 80, 98, 141, 196, 208, 213, 260, 329, 404 migration–development nexus 73–4, 76–80, 90 DFID see Department for International Development
Index 419 diaspora 47–56, 76, 322, 323, 413 concept 49 engagement 47, 52, 236, 371 governance 47, 51, 52 institutions 47, 50–52, 53, 54, 56 policies 47, 50, 51, 54, 56, 116, 117, 235, 236 politics 52, 368 populations 47, 49, 50, 55, 56 studies 47, 368, 371 differentiated inclusion 39, 110 domestic work 297–9, 304–11 donor 92, 98, 101, 281 countries 6, 80, 102, 198, 201 governments 7, 102, 103, 104, 106, 107 politics 10 East Africa 98, 104, 105, 107, 112 economic governance 267, 268, 269, 271, 272, 276 economic migrant 28, 33, 124, 127, 129, 130–32, 203, 286, 391, 394 Egypt 117, 143, 219, 221, 257, 308 El Ejido, Spain 274 emigration 57, 74, 114, 231, 232, 276, 375 encouraging 111 governance 229 ‘highly skilled’ 75 policy 110, 112, 116, 117, 234–7 reducing 76, 214 enacting rights 36, 41 encampment 15, 257, 279–87 environmental migration 91–4 Eurocentrism 10, 25, 30–32, 168, 195 Eurodac see European Asylum Dactyloscopy Database Europe 27, 29, 30–32, 55, 63, 65, 76, 81, 87, 99, 106, 125, 127, 128, 130, 131, 144, 149, 196, 197, 198, 200, 208, 212, 232, 235, 246, 247, 282, 286, 306, 307, 308, 309, 374, 381 border regimes 188, 189, 191 detention/deportation 354, 355, 356 Eastern 112, 115, 231, 304, 406 family migration 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168 modern states 38, 62 nationalism 61, 68, 69 nativism 406, 407, 408, 409, 410, 411, 413 Northern 111, 115, 231, 245 refugee crisis 89, 201, 260 right-wing parties 60, 62, 67, 68, 195, 406 Southern 115, 189, 231, 233, 275 technology 330, 331, 332, 333 trafficking 149, 154 Western 77, 79, 86, 111, 112, 114, 115, 207, 231, 304, 406
European Agenda on Migration 2015 141 European Asylum Dactyloscopy Database (Eurodac) 249, 332, 334, 335 European Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) 310 European refugee crisis 89, 90, 91, 94, 163, 200, 201, 245, 260, 355 European Union (EU) 61, 63, 79, 105, 127, 138, 163, 212, 219, 222, 233, 274, 275, 307, 336, 342, 354, 355, 367, 412 European Union Emergency Trust Fund 127 exclusion 44, 45, 62, 110, 113, 162 border regimes 65, 186, 188, 189, 190, 191 from citizenship 38, 39 Continuous Passage Act (1908) 243 deportation 354, 358, 362 labour migration 295, 320, 332 racial 65, 111, 167, 243 Refugee Convention 197 social 65, 362, 370 spatial 259, 287, 304, 374 urban policy 259 exploitation 10, 26, 60, 143, 148, 153, 157, 187, 248, 260 migrant labour 128, 139, 141, 142, 156, 214, 305, 322 sexual 150, 151, 152, 154 family migration 161–9, 387, 412 reunification 114, 139, 163, 165–6, 206, 233, 319, 360, 387, 411 sponsors 163–4, 317 feminist theories 150, 151, 162, 305, 368, 372, 376, 407, 409 fingerprinting 248, 249, 329, 330, 332, 334, 335, 336 forced migration/displacement 25, 28–9, 31, 49, 74, 80–81, 124–34, 198–9, 201, 203, 255, 399 Foresight Report on Environmental Change and Human Migration (2011) 89, 92 Foucauldian 60, 230, 284 FRA see European Fundamental Rights Agency free movement 89, 142, 163, 210, 256, 337, 397 freedom of association 222, 223, 394, 397 FRONTEX (European Border and Coast Guard Agency) 27, 68, 242, 249 GAMM see Global Approach to Migration and Mobility gender 14, 32, 33, 152, 168, 169, 175–8, 180 activism 368 discrimination 372, 409 equality 5, 17, 132, 164, 168, 234, 270, 283, 408 hierarchies of worth 335 inclusion 162, 186
420 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration and nativism 409–10 norms 162, 164 recruitment 233 regimes 305–6 skilled migration 176, 177 Geneva Convention 1951 88, 126, 133, 142, 163, 196–200, 202–3, 206, 208, 342 geo-politics 4, 126, 196, 197, 199 Germany 39, 133, 154, 163, 167, 245, 304, 307, 308, 309, 369, 374, 383, 387, 405, 409, 410 Ghana 89, 138, 155, 271, 272, 276 Global Approach to Migration and Mobility (GAMM) 141 Global Coalition on Migration 398 Global Commission on International Migration (2003) 76, 396 Global Compact Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (2018) 76, 80, 98, 141, 196, 208, 213, 260, 329, 404 Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) (2018) 80 Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) 310 global membership passport 397 Global Migration Group 78 global North 1, 6, 7, 9, 30, 52, 106, 110, 139, 142, 178, 211, 218, 255, 279, 282, 329, 391 borders/bordering 60, 61, 65 climate change 90, 94 deportation 354, 358 Eurocentrism 30 global South divide 13, 110, 114, 115, 118, 143, 198 migration governance in 10, 144, 206, 242, 337 migration routes 242, 250 migration to 10, 33, 138, 174, 206, 250, 305 refugee protection 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203 rural spaces 274, 276 technologies 332, 334, 337 global refugee regime 80, 195–203 global South 1, 6, 7, 30, 73, 81, 110, 142, 201, 218, 255, 262, 297, 329, 382, 392, 394, 395 borders/bordering 60, 65, 213 climate change 86 deportation 354, 355, 358 encampment 279, 282 global North divide 13, 110, 114, 115, 118, 143, 198, 229, 334, 358 migration from 10, 65, 76, 77, 138, 173, 175, 305 migration governance in 13, 30, 81, 234, 333 refugee protection 197, 198, 258 technologies 333, 334 global value chains 218–25 labour standards 221–5 migrant workers 219–21
globalization 32, 40, 50, 62, 75, 77, 127, 151, 207, 293, 295, 394 governmentality 105, 167, 187, 236, 320 governing practices (concept of) 3–4 Gramsci, Antonio 13, 73, 74, 78, 81, 186 Greece 39, 62, 237, 331 guest-work 179, 233, 235, 408 Gulf states 139, 309, 392 hegemony 73–82, 407, 410 ‘highly skilled’ migrants and migration 32–3, 76, 164, 173–6, 179, 214, 292 Hong Kong 150, 176, 224, 298, 307, 309, 323, 375, 399 Hukou registering system 220–21 human smuggling 60, 65, 156, 207, 245, 248, 342 human trafficking 67, 88, 148–57, 210, 212, 231 humanitarian border 66 humanitarianism 66, 98–107, 133, 143, 201, 285, 287 definition 99–100 impartiality 98, 100, 101, 103 independence 101–5 resilience 73, 89, 90, 104, 105–6, 107, 322 self-reliance 98, 104, 105, 106, 107, 200, 201, 285 Hurricane Katrina 88 ICMPD see International Centre for Migration and Policy Development IDWF see International Domestic Workers Federation illegal entry 5, 200, 318, 412 illegality 62, 137–45, 242, 356, 374, 384, 392 illiberal paradox 110, 116–18 ILO see International Labour Organization immigrant integration 47, 50, 52–4, 56, 260 Immigrant Workers’ Freedom Ride 374 Immigration Act (1924) 231 immigration detention 318, 319, 320, 344, 412 law 138, 154, 166, 298, 341–3, 345–7, 349, 359, 383–4, 412 policy 60, 75, 112, 113, 119, 206, 380, 389 regulation113–17, 119–20, 319, 341, 345, 346, 348, 349, 381, 384, 385 Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) (1952) 342 Immigration Restriction Act (1901) 111 India 115, 126, 173, 175, 224, 231, 232, 236, 237, 243, 280, 304, 307, 330, 334, 337, 367, 408 Indonesia 115, 188, 202, 272, 273, 276, 304, 309, 320, 374, 375
Index 421 inequality 31, 95, 132, 206, 370, 405 borders 185, 186, 191 employer/employee 305, 311 global 142, 324, 357–8 labour market 177, 399 refugee 203 social 355, 361 spatial 255 integration 55, 62, 79, 165, 167, 174, 210, 220, 229, 318, 367, 370 European 63, 117, 382 immigrant 47, 50, 52–4, 56, 80, 260, 291, 323 policies 50, 53, 54, 56, 164, 259 refugee 80, 104, 106, 119, 163, 201, 257, 280 regional 117, 199, 259 reintegration 359, 360, 399 requirements 166, 168 rights 118, 201 International Agenda for Migration Management 208 International Centre for Migration and Policy Development (ICMPD) 212 International Domestic Workers Federation (IDWF) 310 International Labour Organization (ILO) 208, 222, 223, 224, 295, 297, 304, 394, 396, 400 international law 27, 28, 105, 106, 126, 127, 208, 297, 404 international migration 25, 28, 47, 79, 173, 175, 177, 180, 195, 208, 229, 255, 272–3, 307 international migration governance 29, 30, 32, 77, 174, 254, 259 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 77 International Organization for Migration (IOM) 78, 79, 89, 212, 213, 295, 310, 333, 404 International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) (1992) 151 International Red Cross 98, 99, 101, 282 international trade agreements 219, 222 intersectional 176, 167, 374, 395 gender regimes 305–6 inequality 5, 17, 305 intersectionality 176, 167, 368, 372, 374, 376, 395 IOM see International Organization for Migration IPEC see International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour Italy 50, 79, 117, 138, 155, 187, 213, 229, 232, 234, 237, 307, 308, 409, 410, 412 Jordan 80–81, 103, 107, 132, 197, 219, 223–5, 257–8, 282, 285 ‘Jordan Compact’ 80–81, 106
Kafala system 139, 308, 309, 392 Kenya 117, 129, 130, 200, 202, 279, 280, 285 knowledge production 6, 7, 11, 27, 49, 110, 115–6, 286, 371, 383, 392 labour control 220, 221, 223, 297 forced 153, 224, 298 laws 222, 223, 291, 310 market segmentation 177, 291, 292, 294 migration 75, 90, 119, 127, 153, 155, 246, 367 management 214 policies 293 precarity 141, 234, 295, 392, 393, 397 programmes 211, 293, 332 regulation 291–300 rights 208, 393, 394 rural spaces 267–76 regulations 143, 218, 222, 223, 308, 399 rights 222, 223, 299, 388, 391, 393, 394, 395–9 standards 219, 221–3 language barrier 178, 220 Latin America 26, 27, 28, 106, 110, 111, 112, 117, 162, 223, 272, 273, 371, 382 Lebanon 74, 80, 81, 82, 106, 112, 197, 202, 233, 257, 262, 283, 307, 308 legal entry 5, 199 legal mobilization 380–9 legal pluralism 346–7 liberal paradox 8, 77, 110, 112–14, 117, 118 Libya 62, 63, 105, 118, 187, 199, 331, 367 local labour control regime (LLCR) 220, 221, 223 London, England 177, 262, 316 MAFE see Migration between Africa and Europe ‘means of movement’ 38, 230 methodological nationalism 9, 10, 13, 49, 110, 116, 189, 229, 359, 362 Mexico 50, 64, 66, 106, 111, 117, 200, 218, 236, 237, 242, 330, 344, 371 Middle East and North Africa (MENA) 60, 191, 232 Migrant Forum in Asia (MFA) 398, 399 migrants agency 7, 32, 75, 88, 127, 134, 153, 155, 248, 254, 270, 276, 283–5, 295, 297, 367, 391, 392 categorisation 4, 8–9, 12–4 city makers 261–2 economic 28, 33, 124, 127, 129–32 forced 6, 9, 12, 84, 99, 104, 106, 124–7, 130–34, 320–21 ‘highly skilled’ 32–3, 76, 164, 173–6, 179, 214, 234, 292
422 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration irregular 113, 137, 155, 187, 189, 234, 293, 317–18, 370–71, 381 labour 139, 141, 142, 152, 175, 187, 220, 274, 291–4 ‘low-skilled’ 33, 113, 118, 119, 129, 138, 164, 232, 233, 393, 395 political activism 66, 367–76, 398 anti-immigrant 404–416 labour organizing 373 legal activism 373 space-related activism 374 remittances 51, 73–8, 89–90, 117, 212, 236, 270, 329, 357 rights 68, 79, 229, 233, 257, 368, 370, 380, 385, 394, 397 seafarers 294–5 spaces 48 stratification 32, 163, 173–80, 186, 257, 260, 294 undocumented 33, 118, 119, 143, 233, 309, 310, 311, 356, 370, 372, 374, 384, 391, 395, 397, 412 voluntary 124, 125, 127–9, 131–4 vulnerability 87, 90, 148, 152, 201, 210, 296, 311, 321 workers 1, 5, 73, 118, 139, 142, 177, 225, 271, 307 construction sites 296–7 demand for 75, 214 deportation 234, 358 domestic work 15, 164, 272, 292, 293, 294, 297–9, 304–11, 323, 373, 375, 397, 399 global value chains 219–25 governance of 14, 218–226, 296 labour organizing 373, 391, 393–4, 397–8, 399–400 networks of labour 398, 399–400 offshore work 294–5 political rights 397 posting 296–7 precarity 392–3, 397 programmes 234, 411 protection 113, 212, 224, 233, 296, 310, 320, 392, 399, 400 rights 213, 293, 296, 299, 310, 374, 392–4, 395–7 skill level 32–3, 76, 164, 167, 173–6, 179, 214, 234, 292, 293 spaces 255, 268, 269, 286, 291, 294 UN Convention on Migrant Workers 295 workplaces 294–99
migration as adaptation 89–90, 91 categorisations 4, 8–9, 12–4 circular 76, 233, 268, 271, 391, 392, 395 control 113, 148–57, 196, 207, 213, 245, 276 European 62, 111, 230 externalization of 137, 140, 235, 236 gender 272, 273, 275 labour 220, 221, 223, 225, 297 migration routes 244 policy 355, 380, 381 racialized processes 111, 144, 208, 356, 357 securitization of 65, 140, 231, 355 definitions of 4, 7 economic 399 environmental 91–4 experiences of 124, 267, 268, 270, 271, 279, 316, 323 family 161–9, 387, 412 flows 6, 32, 75, 195, 208, 209, 211, 243, 255, 275 forced 6, 25, 28–9, 31, 74, 81, 124–34, 198–9, 201, 203, 255, 399 governance 1, 2, 4, 5, 7 camps 279–87 categorisation 4, 8–9, 12–14, 125–9, 137–41, 148–52, 161–62, 173–5 cities 258–60 ‘constitutive contradictions’ 2, 3, 7–12 definition 3–4, 404 diaspora institutions 47, 50–52, 53, 54, 56 duality of 1, 3 global 208, 263, 271, 310, 392, 395 homes 308–11 human trafficking 148–57 immigrant integration 47, 50, 52–4, 56, 260 inequalities 32, 33, 396 international 29, 30, 32, 77, 174, 254, 259 legal mobilization 380–9 liberal paradox 8, 77, 110, 112–14, 117, 118 migration management 60, 78, 79, 80, 141, 206–14, 317 nationality laws 230 nativism 404, 408, 411–13 politics of migration 4, 5 practices 9, 10, 11, 395 ‘regimes of governing practices’ 3–4 routes 242–51 rural spaces 267–76 seasonal 89, 91, 164–5, 233, 268, 271, 318, 320 spaces 10, 11, 15, 218, 242–311, 374, 410
Index 423 technology 5, 15, 16, 40, 66, 67, 68, 91, 137, 142, 176, 188, 214, 242, 249 and governance 44, 321, 324, 329, 330, 332, 333, 334, 336, 337 bio-technology 3, 11, 140, 211, 331 of citizenship 356, 370 communication 93, 207, 218, 219, 320, 329 companies 1, 102, 336 control 10, 62, 63, 65, 140, 244, 329 information 187, 207, 331 legal 346, 347 military 65 surveillance 140, 211, 332 transport 316, 320 workplace 294 time 316–24 international 25, 28, 47, 79, 173, 175, 177, 180, 195, 208, 229, 255, 272–3, 307 journey 243, 247–9, 318, 319, 322, 324 labour 75, 90, 119, 127, 153, 155, 246, 367, 393 control 220, 221, 223, 225, 297 governance 392 migration management 214 policies 293 programmes 211, 293, 332 regulation 291–300 rights 208, 394 neoclassical model 74–5 patterns of 8, 25, 255 policy 10, 119, 212, 213, 229, 235, 237, 293, 373, 381 politics of 2, 4, 12 racism and 27, 33 reasons for 1, 75, 77, 86, 128, 129, 391 routes 242–51 air travel 249–50 corridors 245, 246, 247, 398 rural beyond rural and urban space 269–70 blurred categories 275 gender patterns 270–71 international migration 272–3 spaces 267–76 rural–international 267, 272–3 rural–rural 93, 267, 268, 269, 273–4 rural–urban 93, 257, 258, 269, 270, 271, 273, 275 work 274 securitization of 65, 73, 140, 141, 231, 355 skilled 32, 75, 76, 138, 173, 176, 233 concept of 173–5 transit 231, 244 urban spaces 254–63 voluntary 6, 28, 124–34, 142
Migration between Africa and Europe (MAFE) project 76 migration management 60, 78, 79, 80, 141, 206–14, 317 border control 65, 210, 214 external 140 migration routes 244, 245 multilateral 77 rationales 232 state driven 90 trafficking 148 migration–development nexus 73–4, 76–80, 90 mobilities 13, 87, 91–5, 187, 191, 229, 230, 231, 237, 249, 251, 305, 316, 318, 319 mobility rights 37, 42, 299 mobilization of migrant workers 391–401 Networks of Labour Activism (NOLA) 398–400 modern statehood 37, 119, 38, 130, 230, 280, 335 modernity 26, 27, 31, 32, 33, 67, 73, 319, 322, 337 Morocco 115, 117, 118, 119, 120, 128, 229, 232, 234, 236, 237, 248, 269, 272, 319, 404 NAFTA see The North American Free Trade Agreement Nansen Passport 126 NATO see The North Atlantic Treaty Organization national identity 40, 133, 231, 283, 311, 406 national states 229–38 nationality laws 230 nationhood and citizenship 36–45 nation-state 111–12, 114, 354, 375, 398 nativism 231, 404–14 neo-colonialism 5, 77 neoliberal 53, 64, 76, 77, 105, 120, 167, 188, 337, 357 approach 77, 79, 358, 360 economic development 73, 74, 81, 151, 355 globalism 41, 151 policy 360, 391 self-responsibility 89, 90, 91, 92 values 40, 214 networks of labour 398, 399–400 Networks of Labour Activism (NOLA) 398–400 New International Regime for Orderly Movements of People (NIROMP) 208, 212 New Left 382, 408, 409 New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants 2016 200 New Zealand 115, 165, 166
424 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration nexus border–security 60, 68, 259 climate change–migration 87, 90, 94 development–displacement 80, 81 migration–development 73–4, 76–80, 90 security–migration 355 state formation–migration policy 111, 112 NIROMP see New International Regime for Orderly Movements of People NOLA see Networks of Labour Activism non-refoulement 130, 196, 197, 198, 208 North Africa 60, 80, 191, 232, 233, 245, 274 North America 30, 32, 61, 62, 65, 69, 77, 111, 114, 115, 117, 130, 162, 187, 188, 230, 231, 250, 255, 259, 282, 286, 304, 309, 332, 358, 381, 406 The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) 62 The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 242 offshore work 294–5 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) 76, 79, 131, 161 Palermo, Italy 260 Palermo Protocol 151, 152, 153, 156 passport 28, 38, 41, 42, 111, 140, 230, 236, 250, 334, 337 Peace of Westphalia (1648) 38 political activism 66, 367–76, 398 political belonging 36–41, 43, 44, 45, 111, 143 political economy 4–7, 15, 17, 27, 81, 101, 110, 114–116, 214, 219, 255, 276 regulation challenges 294 construction sites 296–7 households 297–9 offshore workplaces 294–6 labour market segmentation theory 292–4 workplaces 291–9 political membership 39, 40, 42, 44, 112, 370, 393, 400 politics of emotion 407–8 politics of knowledge 6, 7, 27, 329, 334–7 politics of mobility 37, 43 population management 1, 336, 337 populism 63, 98, 405–6, 407 populist politics 61, 67, 98, 105, 259, 367, 405, 406, 409, 410, 411 ‘portable rights’ 396 post-colonialism 7, 8, 26, 28, 77, 139 power dynamics 3, 5, 6, 11, 73, 94, 115, 119, 120, 291 precarity 10, 137, 139, 141–4, 234, 247, 295, 317, 392–3, 397–8
race 5, 27, 31, 40, 132, 161, 162, 231, 286, 344 racism 25, 27, 28, 30, 33, 156, 233, 274, 344, 357, 368, 369, 376, 406, 409 refugees 3, 6, 8, 10–14, 28, 31, 33, 41, 49, 55, 64, 66, 80, 89, 116, 125–7, 130, 134, 163, 195–203, 242, 245, 247, 255, 257–8, 260, 275–6, 279–86, 355, 371, 374, 388, 404, 409, 411–12 agricultural labour 275 camps 10, 104, 106, 202, 255, 258, 279–287 European crisis 89, 90, 91, 94, 163, 200, 201, 245, 260, 355 Iraqi crisis 257 law 64, 197, 200, 388, 404, 411, 414 protection 66, 126, 196, 197–9, 200, 201, 202–3, 281, 411–12 protests 43 Refugee Compact 196, 199–202, 203 Refugee Convention 28, 126, 133, 163, 196–200, 202, 203 regime 80, 104, 126, 195–203, 280 status 8, 130, 131, 133, 163, 189 urban 257–8 regime autocratic 110, 112, 114, 117–20 border 64–6, 119, 179, 185–92, 237, 311, 355, 358 care 305, 309, 311 democratic 10 gender 305–6 of governing practices 3 illiberal 64, 229, 232, 406, 411 liberal 27, 64, 68, 110, 112–19, 129, 229, 232, 405, 406, 411, 412, 413 national state 14, 229, 230, 232, 234, 237, 238 refugee 80, 104, 126, 195–203, 280 welfare 306–7 religion 32, 100, 126, 132, 207, 231, 305, 309, 372, 409 remittances 51, 73–8, 89–90, 117, 212, 236, 270, 329, 357 resilience 73, 89, 90, 104, 105–6, 107, 322 restrictionism 381, 382, 385, 386 right to work 130, 200, 229, 395, 396, 400 risk 11, 13, 60, 61, 67, 68, 69, 242, 335, 336, 337, 356 rural spaces 10, 15, 220, 255, 267–76 rural–rural migration 93, 267, 268, 269, 273–4 rural–urban migration 93, 257, 258, 269, 270, 271, 273, 275 sans-papiers 66, 293, 370, 374 Schengen 234, 245, 333 securitization 64–6, 91, 137, 140, 141, 185, 188, 231, 355
Index 425 security–migration nexus 355 self-reliance 98, 104, 105, 106, 107, 200, 201, 285 Senegal 79, 80, 140 sex workers 154, 322, 324, 357–8 sexuality 5, 17, 149, 162, 169, 409, 410, 413 skilled migration 32, 75, 76, 138, 173–80, 233 slavery 26–8, 31, 99, 11, 125, 128, 149–51, 295 Singapore 112, 115, 119, 164, 165, 167, 236, 255, 306, 307, 309, 321, 372 social movement studies 369–70 social networks 176, 177, 179, 284, 306 social security 5, 38, 237, 259, 295 South Asia 176, 231, 307, 330 South East Asia 189, 197, 272 sovereign authority 38, 188, 380 sovereignty 65, 190, 236, 244, 337, 357 concepts 37, 62, 111 state sovereignty 8, 119, 197, 206, 207, 208, 212, 283, 356, 361 Spain 79, 119, 138, 232, 233, 234, 274, 308, 343, 348, 408, 409 ‘spectacular bordering’ 61 sponsors 163–4, 166, 317 Sub-Saharan Africa 79, 118, 128, 274, 275, 319 Sudan 82, 103, 106, 112, 143, 195, 337 superdiversity 261, 262 technology 5, 15, 16, 40, 66, 67, 68, 91, 137, 142, 176, 188, 214, 242, 249 bio-technology 3, 11, 140, 211, 331 of citizenship 356, 370 communication 93, 207, 218, 219, 320, 329 companies 1, 102, 336 control 10, 62, 63, 65, 140, 244, 329 and governance 44, 249, 321, 324, 329, 330, 332, 333, 334, 336, 337 information 187, 207, 331 legal 346, 347 military 65 surveillance 140, 211, 332 transport 316, 320 workplace 294 temporality 271, 316–24, 335, 397 temporariness 76, 132, 133, 139, 163, 164, 199, 211, 221, 232, 233, 256, 267, 274, 279, 280, 292, 293, 294, 295, 305, 308, 311, 318, 320, 321, 322, 324, 332, 368, 391, 392, 393, 395, 398, 399, 400 Temporary Resident Biometrics Project (TRBP) 332 territorial rule 37, 38, 230 Thailand 130, 202, 218
trafficking 65, 148–57, 190, 207, 210, 211, 342 anti-trafficking 148, 149, 150, 152, 153, 154, 155, 210–211 child 151, 155 drug 231 human 67, 88, 148–57, 210, 212, 231 morality 148–57 Palermo Protocol 151, 152, 153, 156 regime 148, 152, 153–7 Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) (2000) 152, 153 transit country 76, 81, 138, 232, 236, 243, 244, 322 transit migration 231, 244 transnational 32, 47–56, 117, 180, 375 citizenship 394, 397, 398 families 161, 167 mobility 91, 213 perspective 47, 48–9, 50, 54, 75 social spaces 48 ways of being 48, 51, 52, 55 ways of belonging 48, 51, 52, 54, 55 Tunisia 220, 236, 237, 330, 331 UN Convention on Migrant Workers 295 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989 151 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees 88, 126, 133, 142, 163, 196–200, 202, 203, 206, 208 342 UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement 126 UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) 11, 98, 104, 132, 196, 198–200, 212, 257–8, 280–2, 285, 333, 367 Policy on Refugee Protection and Solutions in Urban Areas 2009 281 undocumented 234, 236, 248, 274, 308, 347, 357, 375, 400, 414 migrants 33, 118, 119, 143, 233, 309, 310, 311, 356, 370, 374, 384, 391, 395, 397, 412 workers 142, 154, 309, 342 youth 372 UNDP see United Nations Development Programme United Kingdom (UK) 89, 90, 259, 318 colonialism 27 deportation 154, 250, 319, 322, 343, 359 domestic workers 307 immigration policy 117, 321, 384 language barrier 178 migration routes 249 regularization 138 restrictions 231 skilled migration 173, 175, 176, 177 trafficking 150 workers 308
426 Handbook on the governance and politics of migration UNHCR see UN High Commission for Refugees United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 78 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 112, 394 urban spaces 254–63 United States of America (USA) 112, 115, 207, 235, 413 anti-trafficking 149 border/bordering 61, 68, 187, 189, 208 Bracero programme 233 deportation 342, 343, 354, 356 detention 344, 355 family migration 166 immigration policy/control 111, 117, 307, 404 labour organizing 373, 391 migration management 79, 213 nativism 231, 404, 405, 406 refugee protection 195 trade agreements 219, 222, 223, 224 undocumented youth 372 unlawful entry 342 Vietnam 112, 218, 235, 309, 330, 392 voluntary migrants 124, 125, 127–9, 131–4 voluntary migration 6, 28, 124–34, 142 war 89, 127, 156, 196, 207 231 Balkan 207 civil 231, 275, 367, 408 Cold War 40, 67, 69, 112, 126, 167, 198, 207, 355 on drugs 330 First World War 98, 125, 388 Second World War 98, 111, 126, 195, 196, 198, 202, 212, 232, 242, 280, 407 on smuggling 65 Syrian 156, 195, 275 on terror 332 Vietnam 330
welfare 10, 42, 130, 166, 206, 336, 346, 375, 388 access to 130, 345 costs 206 governance 336 law 347, 388 precarity 10 protection 237 regimes 305, 306–7, 311 services 375 social 42, 131, 231 state 166, 167, 179, 207, 308, 358, 371, 406, 408, 409 systems 396 women’s 272 West Africa 74, 79–80, 91, 155, 333 West Asia–North Africa (WANA) 80 Western liberal democracies 110, 114–17, 129 white slave traffic 149–51 White Slave Traffic Act (1910) 150 workplaces 141, 176, 270, 275, 291–9 accountability 296 domestic 297, 298, 304, 309–10 experiences 176 exploitation 128 gender 270 governance 300 law 294 multinational 293 offshore 294–5 precarity 141 regulation 299, 397 representation 373 rights 15, 295, 296, 299 rural 268, 275 segmented 291, 293, 294, 296, 299 social interaction 291, 294 spatially hidden 293 standards 296 structures 293 World Bank 52, 76, 78, 80, 106, 212 Zimbabwe 132, 176