MigrationControl1
From Noborders Network Wiki
The globalisation of migration control
part 1
by Franck Düvell
19.May.03 - The IOM recommended the Turkish government "to prevent irregular migration and to fight trafficking".[2] Later a daily paper reported, "in Turkey, nine people are shot and five other injured at an attempt to illegally cross the border. 139 people from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh had tried to cross the Iranian-Turkish border".[3]
The tension between the right to free movement[4] and the nation states' claim to defend their borders and control access to their territory in the last consequence inherence a matter of life and death. What happened at the Iranian-Turkish border was no coincidence but reflects the discussion on the international stage. "Many members of the more prosperous economies are beginning to agree with Raspail's vision of a world of two 'camps', separated and unequal, in which the rich will have to fight and the poor will have to die if mass migration is not to overwhelm us", that is how the conservative French thinker and Figaro essayist has been appreciated by US-American policy advisors.[5] It prepares the ground for a 'militarisation of migration control',[6] and also signals the willingness of the international community to sacrifice life for the sake of defending the status quo of social injustice, inequality and exclusion. However, what here comes as an appeal to more irrational emotions of fear has some very rational backgrounds.
Freedom of movement versus economic migration management
Worldwide, migration has become a major topic; frequently, asylum or migration crises are generated and migrants scapegoated in countries as different as Germany and the UK, Australia and Malaysia, Lybia and Argentina, Nigeria, Kenia and most recently in Ivory Coast. It is acknowledged that globalisation corresponds with an increase in mobility and migration. Irregular migration in particular, though sometimes appreciated as cheap labour but generally a term used to defame the unwanted, is perceived a number one threat to the world order and to nation states integrity.[7] The IOM and other sources estimates up to 33 million 'illegal immigrants' worldwide, four times the population of Sweden.[8] Frequently, warnings are issued that half the Moroccan youth or 50 million Russians wish to move north, respectively west; some simply equalise global population growth with future migration pressure.[9] Migration has also often been related to some kind of resistance[10], a 'revolution of expectations' (Jungfer), to 'the revolution of the barefoot' (Club of Rome) and to 'an action against poverty' (Galbraith). Any study in migration typically highlights the wishes, dreams, expectations and demands of immigrants. Therefore migration is also some kind of a 'social movement towards global social justice'.[11] Exclusively victimising migrants or simply downplaying does not help to understand the phenomenon and the deeper meaning of the antagonism; distinguishing between refuge, internal or border crossing migration and mobility does not help either. Sivanandan is right arguing that the situation of refugees, displaced persons, guestworkers or those internally moving from poor villages to a shining metropolis are related to the same socio-political-economical context, they are in one way or another uprooted by the same politics and its many facets: globalisation.[12] In fact, 'the world is on the move'[13] and the full extend is rather somewhere near half a billion to one billion people worldwide.[14] Beyond that, an Italian leaflet for the protest against the G8 summit, arguing that migration is the new ghost haunting the world, expresses some truth as well.[15] Indeed, at the core of migration lies the social question, it represents part of a globally mobile world proletariat. In response, national governments and international organisations agree that migration needs to be regulated and 'orderly managed' (IOM). It is often international conferences, such as 'Managing Migration in the 21. Century' (Hamburg 1998) or the 'International Symposium on Migration: Towards Regional Cooperation on Irregular Migration' (Bangkok 1999) that identify and analyse perceived problems and prepare the ground for what has been to come. Meanwhile, there are rarely international agreements, stability pacts, bilateral action plans or contracts that do not also refer to migration and the necessity to jointly contain it. And since neoliberalism, and along with it utilitarian principles, are accepted as the dominant ideology within the industrialised world it is no surprise that both now also inform migration policy.
Migration control has never been aimed at 'zero migration', although for a short period of time between 1973 and 2000 that could have been assumed. Instead, migration has often been analysed as vital to economic growth such as for the US-American history and the Mexican-US maquiladora industry, the German Ruhr region, during the post-war boom, the Gulf States industrialisation, the economic success of global cities or the South Asian growth triangle.[16] Migration policy is closely related to population policy, labour market policy, but also foreign policy and wars. It has many facets such as containing the movement of the poor to the centres of wealth, or in opposite the recruitment of migrant labour to accumulation centres, it can be the expulsion of 'surplus people' from their soil or the blocking of escape moves from war or ecological disaster. Migration has been analysed as a potential of being a precondition to economic growth as well as a threat to capitalism and accumulation; therefore recruitment and containment are so closely related. History is not at least about a continuous wrestling over access to territories and resources.[17]
In 1999, the European Union and its member states at their summit in Tampere decided to modernise their immigration policy along three lines, (a) containing asylum migration, (b) fighting irregular migration, and (c) opening up new migration channels to migrant workers. Its 2002 summit in Seville confirmed another point, (d) the extension of European migration policy onto any other country of origin or transit. Suggesting an integrated approach, the EU aims to respond to combine solutions for internal problems such as 'ageing societies, a lack of certain professionals, and a lack of internal labour market mobility, a slow-down of economy, with attempting to get its hands on what is perceived migration pressure, the business of trafficking, and the positive elements in immigration.[18] Since the Tampere summit, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK did begin modernising their immigration policy by introducing Green Cards, increasing quotas for foreign workers, signing contracts over guest workers or allowing the number of work permits to rise. Economic migration, until recently a term to discredit asylum seekers, rapidly got a positive connotation. However, these governments did not only selectively opened up its borders to some kind of migration but also strengthened a major rational for exclusion: economic considerations.
To that extend to which market laws become a dominant motive in migration politics those people are rejected for whom there is no demand on the labour market. Schemes such as the point system of the US or German Green Card to assess the 'human capital of an applicant or the Daily Telegraph's call for a 'quality control' of future immigrants clearly make this point.[19] The 'unwanted' and the 'surplus people' will and already do suffer from the whole brutality of economic laws. In continuity of notoriously racist patterns it is the populations of the Black, Asian or Slavic world that are perceived a threat to world order, the fabric of social hierarchies and economics. For many of them there is no place in the world of investments and profits. Stuck in poor, exploited or robbed parts of the world, for them it can become a matter of life and death as the worldwide 2.1 billion poor or those 800.000 suffering from starvation shows.[20]
Modernising the European migration regime
The European migration regime is comparably most advanced. From its starting point in 1985, the extension of the Trevi group's responsibility towards migration issues, the Schengen agreement, the Dublin convention, the 'harmonisation' of asylum politics, and in 1999 the Amsterdam Treaty creating a 'single area of freedom and security' represent the cornerstones of a supranational approach to migration. A whole range of agencies with shiny names such as the Ad Hoc Group Migration, the High Level Working Group on Migration, the Strategic Committee on Migration, clearing centres on asylum and on border crossing (CIREA, CIREFI), or the Working Community Police Cooperation with Middle and East European Countries, many of them rather secret and not accountable to democratic control have been set up. All of them are concerned with asylum, migration, 'illegal immigrants', 'trafficking' and border crossing.[21] From the core of the Schengen states, pacemakers such as France, Germany and the Netherlands, and more recently the UK and Spain, have always pushed for a more pro-active, preventive and outreaching approach. First, the 1990 were characterised by creating a cordon sanitaire towards its Eastern European neighbours, meanwhile as they become European Union member states the implementation of the Schengen aqui has been made a precondition.[22]
Second, the EU has been keen to reach bilateral agreements with all its other neighbouring states mainly those bordering the Mediterranean sea, for example with the Barcelona Declaration; and also those who are now outside the EU's new external borders such as Yugoslavia, Moldavia and the Ukraine, for example the Balkan Steering Group Migration. Third, it aspires common understanding with the Americas through the EU-US action plan or an Interregional Frame agreement between the EU and Mercosur (an acronym for South America) And finally, the EU targets any other regions or countries of origin and transit. The 'ASEM Ministerial Conference on Cooperation for the Management of Migratory Flows between Europe and Asia' in April 2002 illustrates the commitment to integrate 10 major Asian governments into European Union migration policy concepts.[23] A concrete tool in tackling migration is the European Action plans on Albania, Morocco, Iraq, Sri Lanka, Somalia and Afghanistan. Their titles are misleading as they do include any other relevant neighbouring or transit country.
The Action Plan Iraq for example puts a crucial focus on Turkey and in that on migration from Pakistan and Bangladesh though these countries.[24] Albania too has been identified as the major transit route now replacing migration though the East. Another tool, is to deploy European police and immigration officers and policy advisors at foreign airports and border guard headquarters, such as in Moscow, Bangkok and Sarajevo. But it is the EU major development policy document, the Cotonou Convention, successor of the Lome Convention that targets all African, Caribbean and Pacific states (ACP). Drafted in 2000, the EU summit in Seville agreed in adding a paragraph on migration control and readmission of migrants in to bilateral agreement with an ACP state over development policy, technical cooperation or trade.[25] And similar, the ASEM-EU agreement makes clear that migration control is an 'important element' and precondition for good bilateral relations. If that fails the EU has agreed to establish a final defence line by integrating the military alliance WEU into its structure, setting up a paramilitary force of 5.000 officers, that shall be deployed for example to contain 'massive population movements'.[26] When it comes to immigration, the EU reflects a very aggressive approach, which does not hesitate to interfere with domestic affairs of other states, even using some blackmailing over development aid or threats of military intervention.
The EU tries to force compliance with its migration policy that spreads like shockwaves onto wide parts of the world. However, beyond any such development lies another level of transnational cooperation and planning.