This article provides an analysis of sub-Saharan migration governance in the light of the policy of spatial dispersal as a new modality of bordering in Morocco, in the post-2015 Valletta Migration ...Summit context. By conducting participatory action research over the period 2017-2020 with a cohort of 215 migrants dispersed by Moroccan authorities and focusing on two Moroccan cities (Tiznit and Taza), we explore the border and territorial turn in Morocco in migration management. The evolution of the forms and uses of the Euro-Moroccan border and the biopolitics of spatial dispersal operate according to the logic of division of spatial labour serving a territorial confinement of migrants. We show that the adaptation of national borders to the new mobility regime, by thickening for certain categories of individuals and weakening for others, is part of a new framework of local migratory governance developed on the basis of territorialization. The analysis of the protection-development nexus informs us of the rhetoric of the fixation of dispersed migrants in Morocco and about forced mobility as a new instrument of a soft geopower.
Over the last few years, the global face of the EU has been changing. The EU is spinning a global border web with regard to the battle against irregular migration. At the borders of the EU, a ...powerful and security-obsessed distinction between travellers is increasingly being constructed between the travellers who ‘belong to’ the EU and those who do not, based on the fate of birth. To this end, the EU has composed a so-called ‘white and black’ Schengen list, recently relabelled a ‘positive and negative’ list, which is used as a criterion for visa applications. What is striking is that on the negative list a significantly high number of Muslim and developing states are listed. Hence, there is an implicit, strong inclination to use this list not only as a tool to guarantee security in physical terms or in terms of ‘Western’ identity protection but also as a means of keeping the world's poorest out. Such global apartheid geopolitics—loaded with rhetoric on selective access, burden, and masses—provokes the dehumanisation and illegalisation of the travel of those who were born in what the EU has defined as the ‘wrong country’, the wastable and deportable lives from countries on the negative list. Such unauthorised travelling is increasingly dangerous as the high death toll suggests. It has led to a new and yet all too familiar geopolitical landscape in Europe, a scene many of us hope to never see again in postwar Europe, a landscape of barbed wire surveillance and camps. And hence, the EU—which started out as a means to produce a zone of peace and comfort ruled by law and order—has now in its self-proclaimed war on illegal migrants created a border industry that coconstructs more, not less, ‘illegality’, xenophobia, and fear: the EU as a global border machine.
This open access short reader investigates how migration has become an increasingly important issue in international relations since the turn of the 21st century. It investigates specific aspects of ...this migration diplomacy such as double citizenship or bilateral agreements on border controls which can become important tools for bargain or pressure. This short reader also discusses the intersections between migration and international relations concerning issues of global governance such as conflicts and refugees, development and mobility, or environmental migration. The book thereby shows the extent of bargaining involved in migration and international relations, the so called “soft diplomacy of migrations” as seen in the EU/Turkish agreement on borders in 2016, or the EU negotiations with Maghreb or Sub-Saharan countries on read missions against development programs and visas. As such this reader provides a must read to students, academics, researchers and policy makers and everyone who wants to learn more about the international relations aspects of migration governance.
A paradox of officially rejecting but covertly accepting irregular migrants has long been identified in the immigration policies of Western immigrant receiving states. In South America, on the other ...hand, a liberal discourse of universally welcoming all immigrants, irrespective of their origin and migratory status, has replaced the formally restrictive, securitized and not seldomly ethnically selective immigration rhetoric. This discursive liberalization has found partial translation into immigration laws and policies, but contrary to the universality of rights claimed in their discourses, governments reject recently increasing irregular south–south migration from Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean to varying degrees. This paper applies a mixed methodological approach of discourse and legal analysis and process tracing to explore in how far recent immigration policies in South America constitute a liberal turn, or rather a reverse immigration policy paradox of officially welcoming but covertly rejecting irregular migrants. Based on the comparative analysis of Argentina, Brazil and Ecuador, the study identifies and explains South American "populist liberalism" in the sphere of migration. We highlight important implications for migration theory, thereby opening up new avenues of research on immigration policy making outside Western liberal democracies, and particularly in predominantly migrant sending countries.
The acceptance of newcomers as either immigrants or asylum seekers has been a recurring issue in Australian politics. Both the size of Australia's intake of economic migrants and the resettlement of ...asylum seekers held offshore have been contentious political issues. Research in other immigrant-receiving countries has identified numerous factors shaping attitudes toward immigration and asylum policy. These include political factors (such as party identification) and local demographic context – both immigrant concentration and change in immigrant concentration over time. Still, few studies of Australia have considered the effects of genuinely local demographic context, or how local context moderates the effects of political factors on attitudes toward immigration and asylum policy. Drawing on survey data from the Australian Election Study (2010–2016) and local-level census data, this article advances an explanation of Australians' attitudes toward immigration and asylum policy centring on the roles of party identification, local demographic context, and their interaction.
In the first decade of the 21st century, several countries introduced a series of strikingly similar international student mobility policies and initiatives. Driven by a desire to expand their ...international student market share and to benefit from the potential contributions that international students can make to national innovation agendas, comparable policy tools were introduced in multiple states across the fields of international trade, higher education and immigration. This paper challenges depictions of these changes as a natural evolution of economic globalisation and draws on the policy mobility literature to interrogate the why and the how of the policymaking process. Drawing on research with policymakers, the paper comparatively examines the introduction of international student policies and initiatives in Canada and the UK from 2000 to 2010, and illustrates that the policy development path is the result of a competitive process wherein certain policy ideas become popular and travel, or become mobile. In so doing, I draw attention to the relationship between international student mobility, changing geographies of higher education and global knowledge economy discourses, highlighting the interconnected nature of the policy sphere as competitor jurisdictions seek to outdo each other in their attempt to attract and retain international students.
Abstract From 2015 to 2016 onwards, migration has been subjected to intense political contestation within EU Member States. In this context, sustainable migration has become the new overarching ...objective of the Commission. Despite the various references to sustainable migration, a closer investigation of EU migration law and policy does not provide a coherent picture of the legal implications of this concept. This article examines the links between sustainability and migration in EU law and policy and suggests that sustainable migration should be perceived as a political concept that was central for EU migration politics following the so‐called migration crisis. Sustainable migration is a powerful tool at the hands of the Commission and has been used to forge consensus between Member States that might profoundly disagree on the future of EU migration. At the same time, the concept offers little guidance in terms of legal obligations for the protection of migrants.
The EU's response to the European 'refugee crisis' has involved parallel efforts to strengthen the EU's capacity for external migration management in the domains of CSDP and AFSJ. To provide a swift ...response to the 'refugee crisis' in 2015, EU member states decided to utilise existing operational CSDP capabilities as a short-term foreign policy tool. Simultaneously, we have seen an impressive strengthening of the mandate and capabilities of ASFJ actors in external migration governance. Although institutional links between civilian CSDP and AFSJ have existed for over two decades, the parallel task expansion has created new demands for inter-institutional coordination between the two policy areas. Combining neofunctionalist theory with insights from research on inter-institutional overlap, this article argues that responses to neofunctionalist spillover pressures may trigger inter-institutional dynamics, which can involve both cooperation as well as conflict. Empirically, we find that these inter-institutional interactions have had important implications for integration in both policy areas, which cannot be fully understood by studying these policy domains in isolation.
This article analyzes the non-elite human rights vision promoted by the Russell III Tribunal and the Committee for Fundamental Rights and Democracy (Komitee für Grundrechte und Demokratie, ...Grundrechtekomitee). The article centers on leftists who utilized human rights to challenge state power since the late 1970s. The III Russell Tribunal (1978–79) brought international scrutiny to the West German state's restrictions against civil employment for suspected subversives. Policymakers, politicians, and liberal public intellectuals rejected the use of human rights rhetoric to address domestic wrongs. In their view, the sobriquet ‘human rights abuse’ was befitting solely to the cruelties committed by the National Socialists and in countries in the Global South and Eastern Europe. Veterans of Russell III founded the Grundrechtekomitee in 1980 to challenge this limited understanding of human rights. The second part of the article focuses on the Committee's engagement against Helmut Kohl's asylum policy and domestic racism. While focused on West Germany, the Committee mobilized a cosmopolitan vision of human rights that mobilized Holocaust memory to advocate for the rights of migrants and asylum seekers. The article argues that Russell III and the Grundrechtekomitee saw domestic human rights advocacy as a bulwark against undemocratic and xenophobic tendencies in Germany.
The article examines the question of the feasibility of expanding the object of ethnopolitics at the expense of ethnic groups, formed as a result of migration, as well as the need to take into ...account the ethnic characteristics of migrants while regulating migration processes on the background of the current migration situation in Ukraine and the prospects for its further development. On the basis of the analysis of the theoretical works of Ukrainian and foreign authors, political and international legal documents, legislation of Ukraine, it was concluded that in the interests of social unity is the recognition of diversity as a value and resource of development, the spread of ethnopolitics measures to „new” migrant minorities, the provision them guarantees against violation of rights, marginalization, forced assimilation. Unfavorable demographic situation, massive forced migration of Ukrainians abroad because of the war, as well as irreversible military losses of the population can lead to a shortage of labor force necessary for the post-war reconstruction of the country. If own labor and intellectual potential will be insufficient, Ukraine may need additional labor force from abroad for post-war recovery. Although Ukraine is currently unattractive to immigrants, their number compared to other countries is small, due to the war it has decreased, potential economic development and the need for additional labor force, closer ties with the EU may increase immigration, which will lead to the growth of ethnic, linguistic, cultural diversity The complexity of the ethno-cultural structure of society can have a positive character, contribute to the mutual enrichment of cultures and the common good, but it can also lead to negative consequences – a conflict of values, cultural norms, a breach of social unity. Under such conditions, the requirements for the migration policy of the state, as well as for its ethnopolitics, will naturally grow. This actualizes the intensification of the state's activities on the integration of newcomers into Ukrainian society, the formation of a tolerant attitude of the indigenous population towards migrants and migration, the prevention of all forms of discrimination, the prevention of racism and xenophobia, the deepening of intercultural dialogue, the awareness that unconditional protection of the rights of national minorities in the civilized world is impossible without ensuring a general climate of tolerance towards "others", which also applies to migrants.
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