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The Global Migration Crisis: Challenges to States and Human Rights
... The need to focus on the meaning of protection is especially relevant for International Relations (IR) discipline, which has traditionally focussed not on protection per se but on the limits of protection, that is, on those mechanisms that states introduce in order to make access to protection extremely difficult, if not impossible. More specifically, dominant IR literature have mostly focussed on states' sovereignty and admission policies (Joppke 1999;Weiner 1995), their interpretation of international law (Hathaway 1991b;Gowland and Samson 1992;Goodwin-Gill 1996), on their security and on refugees' 'solutions' (Gordenker 1987;Adamson 2006;Newman and van Selm 2003), on their cooperation during refugee crises (Loescher 1993(Loescher , 2003Cronin 2003;Betts 2009), on globalization and humanitarianism (Chimni 2000), as well as on global governance and international refugee regime (Barnett 2002). The question of what protection is has so far received little attention. ...
... At first sight, the plight of refugees in the Mediterranean context does not seem different from former experiences of massive refugee flows. More specifically, it is not new to discuss migratory flows in terms of crises (Nyers 2006), to report border crossing (dell'Orto and Birchfield 2014) or to acknowledge the limits of international protection (Loescher 1993;Weiner 1995;Spijkerboer 2007;Gibney 2010;Steiner et al. 2012). There is also nothing new about reporting forced migrants' flows in the Mediterranean as well as their transit towards northern European countries. ...
... The migratory dynamics, and in particular the activism of many migrants and refugees looking for a better future, makes us reflect on dominant images of sovereign states as well as at dominant images of refugees. Although states authoritatively control their borders and carefully select whom to admit (see Cohen 1995;Weiner 1995;Guiraudon and Joppke 2001), borders are much more porous than often assumed, and it is this very porosity that migrants and refugees are exploiting (see Papadopoulos and Tsianos 2013;Mezzadra 2004Mezzadra , 2011Mitropoulos 2006). Moreover, refugees are demonstrating a great sense of political activism when organising protests against unliveable conditions and when developing migratory strategies, including selecting the desired destination. ...
Rethinking International Protection should be read as an attempt to think afresh about core political categories that we take for granted. The analysis of the meaning of protection, sovereignty, state of rights and figure of the refugee is an attempt to reflect upon alternative starting points. To claim that protection and assistance need to be kept separate does not imply that assistance is something irrelevant but simply highlights the different rationales of each concept. The distinction between protection and assistance is especially relevant as we tend to articulate refugee protection as ‘negative’ protection, as protection from persecution, threats, physical assaults and sustained violence. We have argued that protection should not involve simply a state that refrains from committing abuses but a state that actively engages towards positive conditions for a dignified life, a dignified life for all those living in its territory.
... During the 1990s, several specialists of migration focused their books on the "global migration crisis" (Weiner, 1995) and on nation states "losing control" of borders , while others emphasised the contradiction between the contribution that mobility brings to human development and the closure of borders by visas systems across two-thirds of the planet, or highlighted the emerging demand for a right to emigrate and to practise mobility, as a world public good, in a world that is currently restricting that mobility. The gaps between policy objectives and their manifest failures led to the idea that migration would be better managed at a larger level than that of the nation state. ...
... Global Networks,22(3), 363-376. Weiner, M. (1995). The global migration crisis: Challenges to states and to human rights. ...
The management of refugees is perhaps the aspect of migration that has been most extensively viewed and approached from an international perspective. After a period when there was no public policy in place related to refugees, during which they were welcomed by churches and other private networks (such as French Protestants during the seventeenth century seeking refuge in Germany, the UK, and the Netherlands), and some individual elites went into exile in response to regime changes and revolutions (such as Chateaubriand, Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, and Victor Hugo, to mention the most well-known exiles from France), the topic became far more pressing on the international scene after the collapse of some of the Great Empires of the nineteenth century: the Russian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. The Nansen passport was created in 1922 in order to avoid a situation of statelessness for Armenians, Russians, and other populations of Eastern Europe, then to assist victims of fascism (the “fuorusciti” in Italy, and Spanish republicans from 1939). The Geneva Convention of 1951, written in the early years of the Cold War, defined refugees in terms of the persecution or fear of persecution of individuals, but definitions of refugees are now a matter of parallel processes of migration diplomacy.
... During the 1990s, several specialists of migration focused their books on the "global migration crisis" (Weiner, 1995) and on nation states "losing control" of borders , while others emphasised the contradiction between the contribution that mobility brings to human development and the closure of borders by visas systems across two-thirds of the planet, or highlighted the emerging demand for a right to emigrate and to practise mobility, as a world public good, in a world that is currently restricting that mobility. The gaps between policy objectives and their manifest failures led to the idea that migration would be better managed at a larger level than that of the nation state. ...
... Global Networks,22(3), 363-376. Weiner, M. (1995). The global migration crisis: Challenges to states and to human rights. ...
... During the 1990s, several specialists of migration focused their books on the "global migration crisis" (Weiner, 1995) and on nation states "losing control" of borders , while others emphasised the contradiction between the contribution that mobility brings to human development and the closure of borders by visas systems across two-thirds of the planet, or highlighted the emerging demand for a right to emigrate and to practise mobility, as a world public good, in a world that is currently restricting that mobility. The gaps between policy objectives and their manifest failures led to the idea that migration would be better managed at a larger level than that of the nation state. ...
... Global Networks,22(3), 363-376. Weiner, M. (1995). The global migration crisis: Challenges to states and to human rights. ...
The topic of the relationship between migration and development is one of the most controversial areas in migration research and policy. For a long time, it was considered that development was an alternative to migration, because in European history, emigration flows from Southern European countries came to an end when those countries experienced economic growth and developed more democratic political systems. In Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Greece, migration decreased or disappeared around the time of their entry into the EU. However, the assumption that the same patterns will emerge in countries on the southern rim of the Mediterranean Sea runs into several problems. The first problem relates to the demographic situation. Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece have all experienced a rapid demographic decrease and have thus ceased to offer a reserve of labour force for Northern Europe, as they did in the 1970s. The second reason is the gradual convergence of living standards in those Southern European countries compared with those of Northern Europe, which developed around the same time as European freedom of circulation was achieved. Freedom of circulation also created opportunities for circulation without settlement, a trend which similarly increased in Eastern European countries, when citizens of new EU Member States adopted mobility as a way of life between Romania, Poland, and Western European countries. For Eastern Europe after the 1990s, circular migration became possible as a result of the opening of borders thanks to their entry into the EU. Over the last 30 years, all Southern European countries, which were formerly emigration countries, became new immigration countries.
... Desde la década de los años noventa a la actualidad, se han desarrollado distintas expresiones del desplazamiento forzado dentro de lo que Weiner (1995), secundado por Castles (2003) de manera alarmante, denominaron como la crisis global de la migración, caracterizada por contextos de movilidad humana causados por violencia que se observan en diversos nodos en las Américas, Medio Oriente y Norte de África, África Central, Asía y Pacífico. A este respecto, el informe Tendencias Globales del Alto Comisionado de Naciones Unidas para los Refugiados (acnur), muestra que hasta diciembre de 2015, alrededor de 65,3 millones de personas habían sido forzadas a migrar, de las cuales al menos 38 millones de los desplazamientos habían ocurrido dentro de sus fronteras nacionales. ...
... Ante posturas escépticas, tales como Herrera (2006) en torno al riesgo sobre teorizar acerca de la migración forzada (Castles, 2003) o la crisis global de la migración (Weiner, 1995), y considerando las implicaciones del fenómeno, en particular en la última década, se considera socialmente pertinente retomar el debate y aportar a la construcción teórico-conceptual ya que tiene particularidades más allá de ser accidentes macrosociales, la cualidad de "forzado" no solo es antónimo de la voluntad del migrante, sino que incluye categorías de problemas estructurales como la expulsión, violencia y factores de atracción diferenciados, elementos que no solo se definen a partir de la voluntad del sujeto migrante por abandonar su lugar habitual de residencia, sino a partir de la vulnerabilidad de su persona ante causas emergentes de expulsión con altos grados de impredictibilidad. Se concluye con la "Tipología de las migraciones y desplazamientos forzados" como una herramienta tipológico-conceptual, que pueda ser referente para futuras investigaciones en el área ante la relevancia que el tema tiene en la agenda internacional; como propuesta de acuerdos ante los recientes instrumentos internacionales, tales como la Resolución (07/1) Declaración de Nueva York para Migrantes y Refugiados (2016) y el Pacto Mundial para la Migración (Global Compact for Migration, 2018) y sus límites. ...
Este artículo tiene como propósito esquematizar las migraciones y desplazamientos forzados desde la dimensión social y espacial, con el objetivo de aportar una propuesta tipológica que contribuya a los debates y perspectivas teóricas para su estudio y abordaje. La estrategia metodológica se compone de la construcción de una cartografía conceptual, lo cual permitió mediante sus ejes brindar una clarificación de la noción, caracterización y dimensiones que integran los desplazamientos dentro del proceso migratorio. A partir del análisis y discusión, se concluye con una propuesta tipológica, y se describen los alcances y límites para el tratamiento conceptual y construcción social de perfiles migratorios de acuerdo a contextos de expulsión
... During the 1990s, several specialists of migration focused their books on the "global migration crisis" (Weiner, 1995) and on nation states "losing control" of borders (Sassen, 1996b), while others emphasised the contradiction between the contribution that mobility brings to human development and the closure of borders by visas systems across two-thirds of the planet, or highlighted the emerging demand for a right to emigrate and to practise mobility, as a world public good, in a world that is currently restricting that mobility. The gaps between policy objectives and their manifest failures led to the idea that migration would be better managed at a larger level than that of the nation state. ...
Various forms of migration diplomacy have now developed, which make use of several tools. This typically involves bilateral and multilateral agreements regarding the externalisation of borders and the provision of visas for highly-skilled migrants from the Global South in exchange for the repatriation of undocumented migrants and the creation of new development policies. Countries of origin have also adopted new strategies in this domain, including adopting a greater openness towards dual citizenship, allowing national voting rights for migrants in their countries of origin (notably in Latin America), developing remittance policies, supporting diasporic associations, and promoting their elites abroad. Migration diplomacy is also conducted at the regional and global level, including in contexts of free circulation at the regional level. New actors advocating for migrants’ rights and human rights are also emerging at the global level.
... National identity and culture were also identified in migration studies to explain the differences in migration policies across countries (Brubaker 1992;Weiner 1995). Weiner highlighted the importance of national identity -'whether a nation is built on the notion of cultural homogeneity or cultural diversity and whether the notion of pluralism extends from the political to the cultural realm' (Weiner 1995, 73-74). ...
... The push and pull methodological framework submits that the low wages and poor standards of living in less developed countries push away the labour force whereas high salaries and better standards of living in the more industrialised regions pull them in Harzig, Hoerder, and Gabaccia (2009). Under the push and pull factor model, the exodus of individuals from an area with low labour demands and low salaries to one with high labour demand and high salaries is expected to finally align the salaries and conditions of living between the sending and receiving regions so that migration would be beneficial to both (Nkamleu & Fox, 2006;Weiner, 1995). The emigration of workforces in a given area decreases the supply of labour in the labour market in the locality and enlarges its value causing higher salaries. ...
This study examined the leading causes and consequences of international migration in Nigeria. A survey research design was utilized for the study. The data was collected through a structured questionnaire. The opinions of 100 respondents selected through the purposive sampling technique were obtained on the principal causes and consequences of international migration in Nigeria. The findings revealed that the principal causes of international migration in Nigeria were job opportunities, unemployment, wealth prospects, safety and security, better conditions of service, low salaries and higher standards of living. These foremost causes of international migration in Nigeria were mostly economic factors. Furthermore, the findings showed that the foremost positive and negative effects of international migration in Nigeria were integrated development, increase in remittances, cheap and surplus labour, urban services and social infrastructure under stress, stricter immigration norms, multi-ethnic society and increased tolerance, Xenophobia, close gaps in skills and cultural dilution. These effects were economic, social and political. Among others, the study, thus, recommends that: the strategies of the government for stemming international migration should address push factors of unemployment, safety and security and low salaries and pull factors such as job opportunities, wealth prospects, better conditions of service and higher standards of living since they are the root causes of international migration. Furthermore, migration, a long-standing poverty reduction and strategy for human development need to be mainstreamed into policies of development in Nigeria at the Federal, State and Local Governments.
... Some studies have emphasized the onset of war as a trigger for refugee flows (Weiner 1996;Zolberg, Suhrke, and Aguayo 1989), and quantitative studies have corroborated this intuition (Moore and Shellman 2004;Schmeidl 1997;Melander and Oberg 2006). Other research, like Dowty and Loescher (1996); Posen (1996); Roberts (2010); Salehyan (2008); Weiner (1993); and Weiner (1995); Choi and Salehyan (2013); Salehyan and Gleditsch (2006); Stedman and Tanner (2003); Lischer (2005), has reversed the causal arrow to examine the role of refugee flows in generating violence. Drawing on the Copenhagen School's securitization theory (Buzan, Waever, and Wilde 1998), others have examined the social construction of asylum as a security issue, particularly after 9/11 (Hammerstad 2011;Brouwer 2002;Huysmans 2006;Guild 2003). ...
Why do countries welcome some refugees and treat others poorly? Existing explanations suggest that the assistance refugees receive is a reflection of countries’ wealth or compassion. However, statistical analysis of a global dataset on asylum admissions shows that states’ approaches to refugees are shaped by foreign policy and ethnic politics. States admit refugees from adversaries in order to weaken those regimes, but they are reluctant to accept refugees from friendly states. At the same time, policymakers favor refugee groups who share their ethnic identity. Aside from addressing a puzzling real-world phenomenon, this article adds insights to the literature on the politics of migration and asylum.
... Some studies have emphasized the onset of war as a trigger for refugee flows (Weiner 1996;Zolberg, Suhrke, and Aguayo 1989), and quantitative studies have corroborated this intuition (Moore and Shellman 2004;Schmeidl 1997;Melander and Oberg 2006). Other research, like Dowty and Loescher (1996); Posen (1996); Roberts (2010); Salehyan (2008); Weiner (1993); and Weiner (1995); Choi and Salehyan (2013); Salehyan and Gleditsch (2006); Stedman and Tanner (2003); Lischer (2005), has reversed the causal arrow to examine the role of refugee flows in generating violence. Drawing on the Copenhagen School's securitization theory (Buzan, Waever, and Wilde 1998), others have examined the social construction of asylum as a security issue, particularly after 9/11 (Hammerstad 2011;Brouwer 2002;Huysmans 2006;Guild 2003). ...
Even as Turkey took in over 3 million Syrians at great expense, Turkish officials were referring to these individuals as guests rather than refugees. Despite significant legal developments in the country, and particularly the formalization of a temporary-protection regime, this choice of labels reveals the influence of underlying political trends on Turkish policymaking regarding refugees. This article compares Turkey’s reactions to the Syrian inflow with its responses to previous refugee groups, including Iraqis in 1988, Bosnians in 1992, Kosovars in 1998 and Chechens starting 1999. In so doing, it demonstrates that the refusal to designate certain populations as asylum seekers or refugees enables Turkey to opt in or out of what might otherwise appear to be generally applicable, national-level policies. Through these strategic semantics, policymakers retain a freedom to manoeuvre in response to international and domestic political incentives.
... National identity and culture were also identified in migration studies to explain the differences in migration policies across countries (Brubaker 1992;Weiner 1995). Weiner highlighted the importance of national identity -'whether a nation is built on the notion of cultural homogeneity or cultural diversity and whether the notion of pluralism extends from the political to the cultural realm' (Weiner 1995, 73-74). ...
While Japan has long been perceived as a country with restrictive immigration policies, it has been rapidly widening its immigration gates through various policy reforms in the past decade. The most prominent policy shift in Japan took place in 2018 when the government decided to officially open its labour market to migrants who work in 14 occupational sectors, including agriculture, elder care and construction, which used to be considered ‘unskilled’ and 'semi-skilled' in previous migration schemes. This study analyses how the major shifts in Japan’s migration policies have been introduced through the redefinition of ‘skills’ and ‘skilled migrants’. In doing so, it integrates the scholarly debates on immigration policymaking in Japan and the literature on the conceptualisation of skills. By reviewing the development of skilled migration policies and some impactful discourses driven by global, national and regional forces, this study argues that the ambiguous nature of ‘skills’ and the multi-level merits as outcomes have facilitated the major policy transformation in Japan.
... die Länderstudien in Cornelius et al. 2004). Diese Diskrepanz wird auf verschiedene Faktoren zurückgeführt: Der politische Wille fehle den Staaten (Weiner 1995); es herrschten divergierende innenpolitische Interessen (Freeman 1998); die Nachfrage nach billigen und rechtlosen Arbeitskräften bestehe fort und werde durch internationale Verflechtungen begünstigt (Cornelius et al. 1994); einmal in Gang gesetzte Migration lasse sich nicht wie ein Wasserhahn abdrehen und setze sich in Kettenund Familienmigration fort (Massey et al. 1998); die Verankerung liberaler Rechte in den Einwanderungsländern (Hollifield 2003, Freeman 1995, Joppke 1998 bzw. internationale Menschenrechtsregime (Sassen 1996) beschränkten die Handlungsfähigkeit und ein härteres Durchgreifen der Staaten. ...
The dominant view of political scientists on the increase of irregular migration is to diagnose the failure of migration control. Anti-racist theorists also question the nation state’s capability of controlling its borders, but they stress the productive power of the migrants (“autonomy of miration”). This contribution argues against simplifications: while the first concept focuses on state policies only, the second one tends to praise a masculinized autonomous subject. The authors argue for a more differentiated concept of the Eigensinn of migration.
... Indeed, when studying migration it is easy to overlook the fact that the majority of the world's population does not migrate. Contrary to sensationalist ideas that we live in the midst of a unique "global migration crisis" (Weiner 1995), 97-98 percent of the world's population stay in their countries of origin and this figure has remained stable for decades (Zlotnik 1999). Even when accounting for the larger phenomenon of internal migration, recent estimates show that only eight percent of the world's population has migrated in the last five years (Esipova et al 2013). ...
This paper addresses the subject of immobility, an often-neglected dimension in migration studies. It begins with a critical exploration of how the migration literature theorises non-migrants and organises the explanations for immobility offered therein. The concept of ‘acquiescent immobility’ is introduced to highlight the existence of non-migration preferences regardless of capability constraints. This paper argues that exploring the preference to stay, especially among poorer populations who stand much to gain economically from migrating, reveals the non-economic motivations that influence migration decision-making processes. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative data from the EUMAGINE project in Senegal, the demographic characteristics of young adults who do not aspire to migrate are examined, followed by an exploration of their perceptions of migration and motivations for staying. This paper finds that the preference to stay is generally positively related to being married and having children and negatively related to having only primary level education, while gender, age, household financial situation and rural/urban settings are not in themselves significant predictors of the preference to stay for young adults. In-depth interviews reveal the motivations behind these preferences. These include ‘retaining’ factors like the desire to be among family and loved ones, to live in a religious environment with spiritual values, the love of Senegal and the desire to contribute to its development, as well as ‘repelling’ narratives about the difficulties of life for migrants, especially undocumented, in Europe.
... This is by no means unique to the US: since the 1990s, migration has entered international relations as a 'security issue'. 26 In the US policy context, conservative American theorists like Myron Weiner have sought to establish taxonomies of migratory movements potentially threatening national security on the basis of concrete historical examples of conflicts caused by such movements (Weiner 1995). Against this form of causality, critical analyses have sought to explore the processes through which migrations were being 'securitised', that is, were constructed as security threats in different historical periods and different cultural settings (Waever et al. 1993;Huysmans 2002). ...
... This led to weakening entrance conditions and the strengthening of military forms of control and closure. The focus on closure in a world on the move can appear paradoxical (Weiner 1995;Sassen 1996). In the meantime, what were once countries of emigration have been transformed into countries of immigration and transit by Europe. ...
In spite of an increasing interest for how ICTs entwine with collective participation dynamics, the ways in which their relational and communicational potential is exploited by extreme right organizations remain overlooked. In this article, we aim at moving forward along this research avenue by focusing on how extreme right organizations and groups employ digital communications to sustain the construction of «inconvenient solidarities», i.e., systems of relations amongst actors that oppose and distort current efforts of transnational democratization - particularly at the European level. By focusing on the websites of extreme right organizations in six European countries (Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom) and by making a combined use of digital research tools and social network analysis, we explore how these organizations make a strategic use of ICTs to connect in the online space and the arguments they move forward to criticize and reform current projects of European integration. Our results suggest that ICTs sustain the construction of inconvenient solidarities in heterogeneous ways, supporting different modes of online conversations amongst extreme right websites which, in turn, affect their capacity to propose shared critiques and proposals to reform the European Union.
... As for Europe and the EU specifically this coincided with the establishment of the single-market area and the removal of internal barriers to mobility. In this context, migration scholars discussed the limits regarding control by the state or even its "loss of control" (Cornelius, Martin, and Hollifield 1994;Weiner 1995;Sassen 1996); however, critical border studies soon focused on the profound transformations that have reorganized the border beyond the state, both as a territory and as an institution Walters 2006b). ...
Over the past few decades, nation state borders throughout the world have been undergoing major transformations. These changes are perhaps particularly salient in the supranational space of the European Union, where new, diverse governance arrangements have emerged for the control of borders and migrations. This governance now involves national and supranational, state and non-state actors and territories beyond the external borders of the European states. At the same time, transformations are affecting the city and urban spaces where a plethora of new mechanisms of control are emerging. Cities are considered key sites for the inclusion of migrants, affording them substantial (urban) citizenship. Nevertheless, little attention is being paid to the role of cities in the exclusion and control of migrants. Through devolution from above, as well as through urban autonomy, both public and non-state actors in cities are increasingly engaged in matters such as migrants’ legal status, removal, and deportation. Thus, an account of the city in such control has to take issue with the notion that the urban scale is simply nested in, subordinate to, and bounded within the national state space. Rather, scales are constructed and produced, which includes the historically changing relationship of urban and national scales. Drawing on migration, border, and urban studies, this paper develops a theoretical approach that locates the city within contemporary border transformations, identifies several mechanisms of urban border control, and provides some empirical examples to illustrate these points. Against this backdrop, the paper suggests considering urban space as border space.
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... These flows grew rapidly in the early 1990s, following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Bloc. Migration became a major issue of public and political debate, leading some observers to speak of a 'global migration crisis' (Weiner 1995). The increased incidence of racist violence and the growth of anti-immigrant extreme-right movements led some policymakers to see immigration as a threat to public order and social cohesion, and national governments took measures to strengthen border controls. ...
The global refugee population in 2003 is more than 12 million. Over the last 15 years, Europe has seen the arrival of millions of individuals who have sought asylum within individual Member States. Despite the fact that the top ten nationalities arriving in European countries are from countries which have seen high levels of violence, oppression and conflict, asylum seekers have been treated with increasingly contempt and disdain by policy makers and the public alike.
States of Conflict undertakes for the first time an empirical analysis of the overall conditions in the countries from which asylum seekers originate. It asks some critical questions about the causes of forced migration and its consequences for patterns of migration to Europe. It also assesses the role of the European Commission in reducing the number of asylum seekers arriving at its borders.
... Any business that profited from transporting people illegally across international borders was addressed as 'trafficking' (Aronowitz 2001). The reappearance of the term 'trafficking' in the context of international crime prevention debates alluded to the fact that criminal networks often cared little about the well-being of their human cargo once the price for the journey was paid (Ghosh 1998;Taran 1994;Weiner 1995). ...
The 2000 UN Trafficking Protocol has obliged states to discourage demand that fosters exploitation that leads to trafficking. Fifteen years later, there is still no shared understanding of what demand means in the context of debates on trafficking in human beings (THB). Although debates are characterised by terminological ambiguity, even the claim that a definition is necessary is denied. This paper takes a contrary position. It aims to raise awareness that the usage of vague terms can produce misunderstandings and hamper evidence-based debates on important policy issues. In more general terms, we argue that terminological clarity improves the overall likelihood of policies being based on the best available evidence. After exploring the use of demand terminology in different contexts, the paper reviews historical and economic research with regard to the reference to demand arguments in past and present debates on THB. This review reveals that the term is often introduced in policy and academic debates without a clear definition, is inconsistently used and is applied to a range of different contexts. Subsequently, the economic understanding of demand is introduced in this paper and implications for the improvements of debates on THB are explored. Consequently, three terminological suggestions are presented regarding the purpose of the research in the DemandAT and similar projects.
... This led to weakening entrance conditions and the strengthening of military forms of control and closure. The focus on closure in a world on the move can appear paradoxical (Weiner 1995;Sassen 1996). In the meantime, what were once countries of emigration have been transformed into countries of immigration and transit by Europe. ...
Manuela Caiani and Elena Pavan chose an exploratory approach towards what can be described as “inconvenient solidarities”. They start from the finding that, in spite of increasing interest in how information and communication technologies entwine with collective participation dynamics, the ways in which their relational and communicational potential is exploited by extreme-right organisations remain overlooked. On this basis, they aim to move research in the field forward by focusing on how extreme-right organisations and groups employ digital communications to sustain the construction of “inconvenient solidarities”, i.e. systems of relations among actors that oppose and distort current efforts aimed at promoting transnational democratisation, particularly at the European level. By focusing on the websites of extreme-right organisations in six European countries (Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom) and combining digital research tools and social network analysis, Caiani and Pavan explore how these organisations use information and communication technologies strategically to connect in the online space, as well as to construct and distribute materials criticising and envisaging reforms of the current projects of European integration. Their results suggest that information and communication technologies sustain the construction of inconvenient solidarities in heterogeneous ways, supporting different modes of online conversation that, in turn, affect extreme-right actors’ capacity to propose shared and unified frames of opposition to and reform of the EU.
... It could be seen obviously from Weiner (1995) that immigrants are both officially or unofficially categorised when they enter a country. The issues from paying less attention to human rights would lead the immigrants to become subject of discrimination and that would later influence the ability for the unaccompanied members of immigrant groups to access housing, education, employment, social benefits, and attain normal legal status. ...
This paper investigates the issues of education and integration conditions for children of Vietnamese immigrants in Poland with the case of Pomorskie. It was conducted under the format of an empirical
study with three non-standardized interviews of the families, informal observations, and group discussions about the possible problems of Vietnamese children living and growing up in the research context. Regardless the limitation of small range of data collection, the study found the noticeable concerns for the process of education and integration of children in Vietnamese families. Four main findings were found answering the research question pointed to the issues of cultural differences and expectations of their parents, language barriers of the parents, the typical stereotypes of educating children at home, and the conflicts of self-identification in the future. The research implied that children of any immigrant groups should be considered their growth for the sake of well-adaptation into the society associated with their choices of good education, growth, and identity with issues-free regardless any conditions.
... Zolberg and his colleagues find that international factors often impact on the major types of social conflict that trigger refugee migration (1986). Weiner (1995) documents the sources and growth of refugee migrations and what this has meant for the international world order: a growing moral crisis in receiving countries. He considers that most of the world's population movements, certainly after World War II, did not just happen, but were made to happen in order to serve a variety of political purposes in the sending countries. ...
Forced migration as a substantive topic is a new field of academic scholarship. It was first delineated in Imposing Aid, the seminal work by Barbara Harrell-Bond (1986) and in the establishment of a center for the study of forced migration at the University of Oxford in 1982. Two important survey works in the 1980s and 1990s, Hansen and Oliver-Smith (1982) and Zolberg et al. (1989) contributed to the expansion of this academic field of study.
In this chapter, the case of UK borders will be further contextualised in the framework of EU borders and the state and discourse of migratory affairs. It will recap the EU ‘migration crisis’ by showcasing some developments that have taken place in Germany and discuss volatile discourses and the increasingly polarised public opinion that have been emerging in Germany and in other European contexts. The analytical lens will be sharpened at the same time in this chapter by the introduction of some related but significant concepts such as order, threat, citizen, otherness and deservingness. The described effects of the underlying discursive shifts and the re-ordering by re-bordering processes that can be observed add a valuable framework before we look closer at the more specific UK border configurations, its perceptions and consequences.
Latin American interregional migration has increased dramatically in the past two decades. One of the countries contributing to the growth of these flows is Brazil, whose participation was consolidated due to international factors, its reception and its legal labor policies. Despite this, the relationship between migration, development and remittances remains poorly studied by Brazilian scholars. The discussion presented here focuses on a circumscribed analysis of refugees who had been legally recognized by the Brazilian State by the end of 2018. Thanks to research data on 487 refugees living in Brazil by then, it was possible to analyze their life conditions, the value and regularity of remittances received and/or sent, among other aspects. The results showed that low wages did not prevent refugees, for the most part, from sending remittances abroad nor, for some, from receiving it. Despite its low value, its regularity seems to keep alive the networks and dependency relations between those who migrate and those who remain in the origin countries.
My thesis examines the plight of internally displaced women and children in Africa from the perspective of international and regional laws to investigate whether these legal frameworks are effective in protecting and assisting these people. The research uses both empirical and theoretical methods, borrowing from several disciplines – health, education, philosophy, psychology, and epidemiology. Researching this topic, from a legal perspective, requires a law- in-context approach, which examines the multifaceted nature of forced displacement in Africa. It also requires close dissection of the various laws, treaties and policies of host countries, as well as critical examination of the responsibility of international and regional institutions in assisting and protecting internally displaced women and children in Africa, in addition to close consideration of the role of local civil society groups and non-state actors in these legal processes is also considered. Noteworthy is the fact that my research acknowledges the immense suffering faced by refugees and internally displaced men, however, given the vulnerability of internally displaced women and children, couple with their special need for protection and assistance, my research chose to focus on legal challenges pertinent to internally displaced women and children in Africa. The severe lack of research in this subject area with respect to Africa, confirms this research contribution in helping to fill a major gap pertinent to understanding the legal position of internally displaced women and children in Africa, as most literature to date have extrapolated international refugee law to protect internally displaced persons, rather than conducting “on the ground” research to reflect protection needs of IDPs. The key finding of this research is that the creation of new laws (e.g., the AU Convention on the Assistance and Protection of Internally Displaced Persons) does not guarantee adequate protection of IDPs in Africa as the establishment of the AU 1969 Refugee Convention has not done much to curb the flow of refugees in Africa. Also, worth mentioning is that on 23 October 2009, the AU made history by adopting the first legal instrument ever to protect and assist internally displaced people during its Summit in Kampala, Uganda – the African Union Convention for the Protection and Assistance to Internally Displaced Persons in Africa. Against this backdrop my Thesis argues that regional institutions should invest more in preventing mass movement of people on the continent as well as developing long term strategies to promote good governance, participation, and state compliance to legal instruments in order to reduce violent leader transition which is significantly associated with internal conflicts. Albeit, to address the current situation of displacement, the Thesis suggests further examination of how implementation of a “Decentralized United States of Africa” may offer some hope. This research endured several challenges. They include the on-going struggle to find high quality evidence-base resources on protection and assistance of internally displaced women and children in Africa mainly due to the fact that the majority of the case scenarios used are not recognized as internally displaced communities internationally. Their experiences are poorly documented and are therefore not included in data collected by the United Nations, national governments, Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre and other relevant organizations. Secondly, due to lack of funding and time, fieldwork for this research was not possible. As a result, access to primary data set that could have been obtained through direct contact with internally displaced people (which could have provided an opportunity for IDPs to tell their stories) was replaced by conducting an academic exercise in Osgoode Hall Law library and online.
In an era of mass migration and restrictive responses, this book seeks to understand how migrants negotiate their place in the receiving society and adapt innovative strategies to integrate, participate, and access protection. Their acceptance is often contingent on the expectation that they contribute economically to the host country while remaining politically and socially invisible. These unwritten expectations, which this book calls the “invisibility bargain,” produce a precarious status in which migrants’ visible differences or overt political demands on the state may be met with a hostile backlash from the host society. In this context, governance networks of state and nonstate actors form an institutional web that can provide access to rights, resources, and protection for migrants through informal channels that avoid a negative backlash against visible political activism. This book examines Ecuador, the largest recipient of refugees in Latin America, asking how it has achieved migrant human security gains despite weak state presence in peripheral areas. The key finding is that localities with more dense networks composed of more diverse actors tend to produce greater human security for migrants and their neighbors. The argument has implications beyond Ecuador for migrant-receiving countries around the world. The book challenges the conventional understanding of migration and security, providing a fresh approach to the negotiation of authority between state and society. Its nuanced account of informal pathways to human security dismantles the false dichotomy between international and national politics, and it exposes the micropolitics of institutional innovation.
This article links the 2015 refugee and migrant crisis to colonialism and the nature of the decolonisation process. It argues that the legacies of colonialism produced the conditions and the tensions in postcolonial states that led to the origins of the refugees and forced migrants. In exploring the refugee crisis and why individuals embark on hazardous journeys to Europe and other destinations, this study analyses the narratives of 15 survivors collected from media accounts of the 2015 refugee and migrant crisis. It also examines the crisis from the historical accounts and theoretical perspectives of colonialism and forced migration, drawing from the scholarship of Dirks, Thomas, Cohn and Mueller who predominantly focus on the colonial past, but also recognise the present implications that colonialism continues to exert for colonised people. The article concludes that the outcome of the colonial experience persisting in many postcolonial settings has contributed to the biggest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.
Migration scholars have frequently emphasized the tremendous increase in international migration in recent years. But several advanced industrial countries — Japan in particular — have relatively small numbers of foreign workers. Most of the literature on labor migration relates only to “positive cases,” i.e., countries that have actually experienced significant inflows of foreign workers. This article proposes considering Japan as a “negative case” of labor migration in the post-World War II period. There has been much recent interest in the growing numbers of foreign workers in Japan, but what is most interesting about Japan is the fact that the numbers are relatively small (as a percentage of the labor force) and that they began to increase so late, in comparison to other countries. The main goal of the paper is to advocate consideration of negative cases in migration research; a proper theory of labor migration would distinguish between positive and negative cases.
The author suggests that Stephen Castles’ contributions to migration studies are threefold: an analytical investigation of the nexus between migration and citizenship, a global approach to migration with a particular emphasis on new migration regions and finally a sustained critical perspective towards refugee and migration policies that are implemented in Western countries. Applying Stephen Castles’ ideas to the French case, the author argues that the French model of migrant incorporation would benefit from an acknowledgment of the ‘multicultural reality’ in France, a balance between the will to control immigration and the demand for immigrant workers and finally a critical assessment of the immigration laws and their outcomes.
La Organización Internacional para las Migraciones (OIM) es una organización poco estudiada, cuyo mandato concierne, sin embargo, uno de los asuntos actualmente más politizados en los países occidentales. Este artículo presenta la historia, la doctrina y las prácticas de la OIM. Mostraremos que si bien durante mucho tiempo ha sido una organización frágil, en un contexto en el que las políticas migratorias no responden a un régimen internacional sólido, la OIM ha terminado imponiéndose-a partir de los años 1990-como un actor imprescindible de la mundialización y la externalización de dichas políticas. La estrategia de la OIM consiste en despolitizar los retos de los fenómenos migratorios y en promover una gestión técnica de las migraciones, centrada en la utilidad económica que estas últimas representarían para todas las partes (países de origen, países de destino y migrantes). Dicha estrategia le permite aparecer como un intermediario neutro, aceptado tanto por los estados como por los actores de la sociedad civil y del sector privado. Sin embargo, esta despolitización se ve acompañada por un alineamiento de la OIM con los intereses de los países occidentales de inmigración, lo que posibilita intervenciones altamente políticas, especialmente en los países de origen de los migrantes. PalabRas clave Organización Internacional para las Migraciones; ONU; politización; gestión de las migraciones; control de fronteras.
The paper highlights main disintegrational trends in the politics of the modern European Union. The analysis of scientific researches on this matter is provided. In author’s opinion, the major challenges that the European Union faces in the XXI century have become the institutional and financial crises, as well as the crisis of multiculturalism. The paper reveals the problems associated with multicultural policies in the European Union, as well as the development of modern Euroscepticism.
The current rules for “free movement” in the European Union (EU) facilitate unrestricted intra-EU labour mobility and equal access to national welfare states for EU workers. The sustainability of this policy has recently been threatened by divisive debates between EU countries about the need to restrict welfare benefits for EU workers. This article develops a theory for why the current free movement rules might present particular challenges for certain EU member states. It focuses on the potential roles of three types of national institutions and social norms in determining national policy positions on free movement in the EU15 states: labour markets (especially their “flexibility”); welfare states (especially their “contributory basis”); and citizenship norms (focusing on the “European-ness” of national identities). I show that these institutions and norms vary across member states and explain why we can expect these differences to contribute to divergent national policy preferences for reforming free movement.
This paper presents a sociopolitical assessment of the security primacy on human rights, civil liberties, and democracy at the European Union (EU), long before and especially after the September 11 tragic events. We focus upon the recent EU security agenda and the reinforcement of the Schengen's Information System (SIS) to provide documented evidence for the 'securitization' logic and practice, which perceive social issues like immigration, and anti-globalization protests as EU security threats. Real and perceived threats, various economic-political interests and vigilant civil society's coalitions are taken into consideration to assess whether an exclusivist, authoritarian 'fortress – Europe' or an inclusive, secure and democratic 'peoples Europe' will finally prevail. Although up to the present the pro-fortress coalition is very powerful, we do not consider the currently predominant 'securitization' trend as teleological; hopefully under the pressure of the growing civil society coalition " a secure peoples Europe " will prevail.
In den vergangenen zehn Jahren hat sich in der internationalen Migrationspolitik ein neues Konzept etabliert: ‚Migrationsmanagement‘. ‚Migration muss gemanagt werden, um die Vorteile der Migration maximieren und ihre negativen Folgen minimieren‘ zu können, so lautet die utilitaristische Kernbotschaft. Ausgangspunkt dieses politischen Projekts war der ökonomische Globalisierungsschub nach der Weltwirtschaftskrise 1973. In seiner Folge verstärkte sich die internationale Mobilität von Menschen: Migration wurde zu einer offensiven und aus staatlicher Sicht potenziell unkontrollierbaren Strategie vieler Menschen, mit der sie auf die Folgen neoliberaler Reformen reagierten. Unter dem Etikett Migrationsmanagement propagierten Expert_innen aus dem Umfeld u. a. der International Organization for Migration (IOM) und des International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) eine Gegenstrategie: Die staatlichen Fähigkeiten zur Begrenzung unerwünschter Migration sollen gesteigert werden, um eine ,regulierte Offenheit’ gegenüber ‚nützlicher‘ Zuwanderung beherrschbar zu machen. Politisch lässt sich das Projekt der liberalen Strömung in den internationalen Beziehungen zuordnen. Migration wird als positiv betrachtet, weil und insofern sie ökonomisch nützlich ist. So wird deutlich, dass das Projekt den Interessen wirtschaftlich und politischer dominierender Kräfte im Weltsystem eher nutzt, als der großen Mehrheit der Weltbevölkerung.
Catherine Wihtol de Wenden analyses the implications of the refugee and migration crisis for the EU. She starts with the fact that, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, international migration reached 244 million people (i.e. 3.5% of the world population), with roughly the same number of flows going to the north (south–north and north–north: 120 million) as to the south (south–south and north–south: 130 million). This presents a new situation. Against this background, de Wenden maintains that all regions and countries are, in one way or another, part of the migration process by being involved in either emigration, immigration or transit flows (most of them in all three aspects together). As a result, categories such as ‘foreign workers’ and ‘asylum seekers’ are becoming increasingly blurry. The chapter also shows that new types of migrants—isolated women, unaccompanied children, circulating elites and experts—have entered into international mobility. At the same time, de Wenden reminds us that the right to move is among the least shared in the world: global mobility is highly segmented based on nationality, class, gender, race, etc. As well as this, the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall in Europe in 1989 brought about generalisation of the right to exit, with easy access to a passport, even in southern countries, along with more restricted rights to enter OECD countries.
Capital account convertibility in combination with fixed exchange rates historically promotes
a type of financial integration leading to sudden-stop crisis on the periphery, thus making a it
hard to pursue successful catch-up strategies. Indeed the successful catch-up of Western
Europe to the USA after 1945 was based on the rejection of capital account convertibility and
the introduction of current account convertibility only after the postwar reconstruction phase.
Economically, the EU's peripheral countries would be best served by a larger degree of
exchange rate flexibility, possibly in combination with limitations on capital account
convertibility. But it is doubtfully whether the the break-up of the Euro would be politically
stable. Some south European countries may not be able to contain distributional conflicts
without the constraint of the Euro whereas the core countries may interpret a successful
devaluation on the periphery as a beggar-your-neighbour strategy
Migration is a key interdisciplinary subject in the fields of Economics, Sociology and Geography. The chapter provides an in-depth overview of the economics of migration starting with an exposition on the nature and the facts of contemporary world-wide migration. It is followed by sections covering determinants of migration; migration and development; migration and innovation; and migration, trade and foreign direct investment. The chapter addresses both theoretical and empirical literature on migration and discusses the past and present issues of the economic migration literature and how the literature may evolve in the future.
A basic assumption in classic migration theory is that a search for better – or more secure – livelihoods is the main cause of migration (De Haan 1999; Ellis 2000). Poverty motivates individuals, families, and communities to embark on migratory projects. If successful, such movements may contribute to economic as well as human development. Yet migration and the development of economic and human capacity have been treated as two separate and distinct areas of concern, academically as well as politically. The failure to link migration and development and to study, for example, migration's poverty-alleviating effects, has been more pronounced in cases of international migration than in studies of population movements within nation-state boundaries. Over the last 10 years, however, attention to the migration–development nexus and the many links that exist between the two fields has moved to center-stage (Sorensen et al. 2002; Spaan et al. 2005; Glick Schiller & Faist 2009). This has generated a profusion of academic studies, policy analyses, international fora, and recommendations focused on to how to make migration work for poverty reduction and human development in concrete migration settings. However, the nature of the relationship between migration and development remains contested and the assumed links often entail a number of problems, if not contradictions.
Keywords:
poverty;
development;
immigration;
labor supply;
political economy;
capitalism
This study explores the process of internal displacement, settlement, return and resettlement in threatened villages in North and North-Central Sri Lanka during the ceasefire period between 2002-2006. The thesis investigates the diverse factors that affected internally displaced persons (IDPs) and their decision to stay in the host communities as well as their unwillingness to return to their original villages following the ceasefire agreement.
The study has two main aims: The first is to understand the factors that attracted the IDPs to remain in the host communities. The second is to understand the IDPs’ practical situation in the original villages compared with the host communities. Within this context, the thesis examines the nature of the IDPs’ socioeconomic and political relationships with the host communities as well as the obstacles encountered when they resettle in their original villages.
To explore this central question, this research examines three main factors: social relationships, economic relationships, and (in)security situations. The thesis explores how IDPs built social relationships, economic relations, and livelihoods, and their security amidst host communities as well as in their original villages. The thesis establishes how these social, economic, and (in)security factors affected the IDPs’ attraction to the host community, as well as how the factors operated as obstacles for IDPs to return to their original villages.
For its empirical evidence, the thesis is based on qualitative methods, and data for the research have been collected using primary as well as secondary sources. The qualitative data were collected mainly through interviews, including long interviews, key informant interviews, and focus group discussions. Secondary sources have been used to help interpret the primary data. The study areas lie within the districts of Anuradhapura and Vavuniya. Six village locations were selected as host communities for examination, and the northern part of Anuradhapura and the southern part of Vavuniya district were considered as the original villages.
The research finds that there is no one single reason that affected the decision to remain or to return, but rather a combination of several key factors. For example, accessibility of land for cultivation and residence are some of the main economic reasons for IDPs to return or remain. Social relationships and life (in)security situations affect the IDPs’ decision to find a place where they can stay with safety. In addition, the infrastructural facilities within the host community/area and the original villages have an impact on the decision to remain or to return.
Theoretically and conceptually, the research contributes to building up a new conceptual framework/model of social relationships, livelihood strategies, and security perceptions by using existing literature and new practical knowledge. The conceptual framework contributes to understanding matters pertaining to the field of displacement, settlement, and return and resettlement process in Sri Lanka. Empirically, the thesis undertakes a systematic data collection of social, economic, and (in)security factors. This thesis illustrates that the displacements and their settlements show both marginalization and innovation between both types of people: the IDPs and the people in the host communities.
Since the founding of the Kaiserreich in 1871, Germans have experienced five different regimes, with all but the current Federal Republic ending in crisis and collapse. Such traumatic experiences have rendered the linkage between national identity and political legitimacy especially problematic.
What is the relationship between security and United States immigration policy? This question is important because the volume of international migration has been rising in recent decades and American leaders since the 9/11 attacks are increasingly called to produce policy to address its perceived security implications. This chapter assists officials with this task and answers the above question by discussing two common ways or traditions of structuring security and US immigration (the national security and human rights/security traditions) that often lead to distinct policy outcomes, presenting an analytical framework of national security and American immigration policy, and using this framework to identify meta-security themes underlying major US immigration policy decisions since the country's founding. The chapter concludes by examining post-9/11 Americanimmigration responses and discussing the policy implications of its findings for contemporary reform.
Contemporary Chinese Political Economy and Strategic Relations: An International Journal (CCPS), Vol. 2, No. 3, December 2016, pp. 985-1265 (281 pp. + xiii). [Scopus] <http://rpb115.nsysu.edu.tw/p/404-1131-162781.php?Lang=en> <http://rpb115.nsysu.edu.tw/var/file/131/1131/img/2375/CCPS2(3)-full-issue.pdf> <https://www.dropbox.com/s/lmd1wr9nq8i7qk7/CCPS-V2N3-full-issue.pdf>
Despite its wide use, the meaning of protection remains open to interpretation. The lack of clarity is especially due to the fact that the concept of protection is often conflated with the concept of assistance to the point that refugee protection tends to refer to any policies for refugees, irrespectively of the ultimate outcome. The aim of this book is precisely to distinguish the politics of protection from the politics of assistance by highlighting the different rationale upon which each concept is articulated. In particular, it will be highlighted the difference between the public responsibility to protect and the private desire to assist, between guaranteeing rights and satisfying basic needs. It will be argued that there is a need to depart from the concept of (negative) protection that entails protection from—that is, protection from persecution, violence and life-threatening events—and embrace a concept of (positive) protection, a protection towards emancipation, which requires the direct involvement of the state, and particularly of the liberal/constitutional state. Instead of looking at protection from the sovereign states’ perspective—a perspective which privileges border controls and citizens’ safety—this book will discuss the key role of the state in providing protection. Because protection always already presupposes a national protection—that is a state that takes care of refugees as opposed to humanitarian assistance devolved to charities—it is here, at the national level, that our analysis will start by investigating, in particular, the specific role that the state is asked to perform as protector and guarantor of rights towards its own citizens and the aliens residing in its territory.
This chapter argues that there is a need to (re)think the concept of sovereignty if we are to discuss protection not simply as a protection from physical threats but protection as rights and emancipation. We have argued that the tension between the concept of sovereignty and the concept of protection cannot be reduced as long as the concept of sovereignty keeps maintaining its traditional Hobbesian attributes. The formula “protego ergo obligo” (I protect, therefore I oblige) is a formula, which sees the sovereign as the supreme authority of command and power and the entities subjected to it as non-agents, who simply obey orders. This picture of the Leviathan fits badly with the conception of protection as well as with the practice of protection. As long as we filter protection through the concept of sovereignty, we are doomed to devote attention not to protection but to the many practices that limits access to protection.
In recent years international migrations have become one of the major issues on the political agenda of many governments. The so-called “refugee crisis” in Europe has dramatically increased this trend, rousing alarm in public opinion, demands for protection of national borders, tensions between states, the electoral decline of established parties and the success of new political actors with tougher anti-immigrant and anti-asylum seeker stances.
The refugee crisis turned out to be an opportunity for reaf¬firming national sovereignty, while on the other hand Europe’s cooperation and approach solidaristic clearly finds difficulties in managing the present influx of asylum seekers. The European Union is under pressure, and walls are growing even on Euro¬pean soil. The controversial agreement with the Turkish govern¬ment has therefore been considered the most viable solution, due to the absence of adequate cooperation among national govern¬ments and European institutions (the full implementation of this agreement may be severely challenged by the recent events in Turkey).
However, as this reports shows, international migration is a more complex and multifaceted issue than the current dispute about asylum.
On the ‘doomsday clock’ of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which intends to caution ‘how close humanity is to catastrophic destruction’, ‘climate change’ joins the other two alarmist categories, namely ‘nuclear,’ and ‘biosecurity’. At the same time, there is a grudging acknowledgement of the fact, at least by some, that the geopolitics of fear, deployed at diverse sites by different agencies — individually and/or collectively — in pursuit of various interests and agendas, has failed to yield the desired results, including a change in public and private behavior and for that matter the ushering in of radical social movements (Lilley 2012). On the contrary, it appears to have resulted in ‘catastrophe fatigue, the paralyzing effects of fear, the pairing of overwhelmingly bleak analysis with inadequate solutions, and a misunderstanding of the process of politicization’ (ibid.:16; emphasis added). Could this be the reason that some of these multifaceted discourses of fear — that somehow remain open to political contestation and interrogation — are now being scaled up and upgraded by various regulatory agencies and alliances to the discourse of ‘climate terror’? This discourse can only have counter-terror as its Other in order to completely erase the hope (the Other of fear) of re-ordering and regulating spaces and societies allegedly more vulnerable to climate change and its threat-multiplying effects.
The last decades have witnessed a profound transformation in the ways that states perceive and politically confront the cross-border movement of people. States keep insisting on their authority and independence in determining who is allowed to stay, who can work and who becomes a permanent resident or a new citizen. However, confronted with increased mobility and migration trends worldwide, and with what they perceive as a challenge or a threat to their sovereignty, states have started to engage more actively in multilateral consultations with the stated purpose of finding common answers and solutions. In this context, international organizations (IOs) such as the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) have been able to strengthen their roles and capabilities. At the same time there has been a visible growth in the number of new policy actors in the area of mobility politics, examples include specialized regional agencies (e.g. the European Union border agency Frontex); international and local nongovernmental organizations (I/NGOs); migrant and diaspora groups; individual experts; business corporations; and private security providers — actors of different origins and orientations that assist states while alsofollowing their own agendas and vested interests within the framework of a newly emerging political economy of mobility management (or “migration industry”: Betts, 2013; Hernández-León, 2013).
Over the past decade, North Atlantic security officials have become increasingly preoccupied with climate change.2 This is not surprising. After all, climate change will likely prompt significant geopolitical competition as countries secure access to oil and natural gas, prevent food insecurities, and even cope with strategic challenges presented by the opening of Arctic sea routes and rising seas.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.