Migration Control in Practice


Book Description

The book presents the results of several qualitative research project with different actors that put migration policies into practice. It shows the different ways in which day-to-day activities of organisations shape migration policies on the ground. This book offers a comprehensive exploration on how different migration policies are implemented day by day. Such an approach allows to show the different ways in which migration policies on the ground take a life of their own when compared to the letter of the law. The book shows the need to understand the specific logics and workings of the implementation of policies, while taking into account the continued role played by politicians and the judiciary, non-state actors and migrants. Qualitative research with different public institutions implementing migration policies are combined with an exploration of the role of NGOs, supranational institutions and the migrants themselves. Bringing together the results of several research projects with fieldwork in Belgium, the UK, France, Morocco and Malta, the book covers the different stages of the migratory career. It follows the potential trajectory of a migrant from visa obtention (both in general and for students specifically) to border controls, asylum (including resettlement and gender and sexuality-based asylum), access to residence (with a specific focus on marriage-based residence), healthcare and nationality, or to detention and managed return migration. Through its chapters it shows the day-to-day logics, routines and tactics that bureaucrats and other actors adopt, within the constrains of laws, social interactions, and ideas about policies. À PROPOS DES AUTEURS Djordje Sredanovic est chargé de recherche F.R.S.-FNRS au laboratoire GERME de l'Université Libre de Bruxelles. Sociologue spécialisé dans les études de la nationalité, citoyenneté et migrations, il a conduit recherches sur les expériences et l'implémentation des politiques migratoires. Federica Infantino est Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow au Migration Policy Centre à l'Institut Universitaire Européen à Florence est Maitre de Conférence à l'Université Libre de Bruxelles.




Migration Control in the North Atlantic World


Book Description

The migration movements of the 20th century have led to an increased interest in similarly dramatic population changes in the preceding century. The contributors to this volume - legal scholars, sociologists, political scientist and historians - focus on migration control in the 19th century, concentrating on three areas in particular: the impact of the French Revolution on the development of modern citizenship laws and on the development of new forms of migration control in France and elsewhere; the theory and practice of migration control in various European states is examined, focusing on the control of paupers, emigrants and "ordinary" travelers as well as on the interrelationship between the different administrative levels - local, regional and national - at which migration control was exercised. Finally, on the development of migration control in two countries of immigration: the United States and France. Taken altogether, these essays demonstrate conclusively that the image of the 19th century as a liberal era during which migration was unaffected by state intervention is untenable and in serious need of revision.




Externalizing Migration Management


Book Description

The extension of border controls beyond a country’s territory to regulate the flows of migrants before they arrive has become a popular and highly controversial policy practice. Today, remote control policies are more visible, complex and widespread than ever before, raising various ethical, political and legal issues for the governments promoting them. The book examines the externalization of migration control from an interdisciplinary and comparative perspective, focusing on ‘remote control’ initiatives in Europe and North America, with contributions from the fields of politics, sociology, law, geography, anthropology, and history. This book uses empirically rich analyses and compelling theoretical insights to trace the evolution of ‘remote control’ initiatives and assesses their impact and policy implications. It also explores competing theoretical models that might explain their emergence and diffusion. Individual chapters tackle some of the most puzzling questions underlying remote control policies, such as the reasons why governments adopt these policies and what might be their impact on migrants and other actors involved.




Migration Control and Access to Welfare


Book Description

The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. Over the past decades, European states have increasingly limited irregular migrants’ access to welfare services as a tool for migration control. Still, irregular migrants tend to have access to certain basic services, although frequently of a subordinate, arbitrary, and unstable kind. Drawing on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Norway, this book sheds light on ambiguities in the state’s response to irregular migration that simultaneously cut through law, policy, and practice. Carefully examining the complex interplay between the geopolitical management of territory and the biopolitical management of populations, the book argues that irregularised migrants should be understood as precariously included in the welfare state rather than simply excluded. The notion of precarious inclusion highlights the insecure and unpredictable nature of the inclusive practises, underscoring how limited access to welfare does not necessarily contradict restrictive migration policies. Taking the situated encounters between irregularised migrants and service providers as its starting point for exploring broader questions of state sovereignty, biopolitics, and borders, Migration Control and Access to Welfare offers insightful analyses of the role of life, territory, and temporality in contemporary politics. As such, it will appeal to scholars of migration and border studies, gender research, social anthropology, geography, and sociology.




Migration Control in Practice


Book Description

This book offers a comprehensive exploration on how different migration policies are implemented day by day. Such an approach allows to show the different ways in which migration policies on the ground take a life of their own when compared to the letter of the law. The book shows the need to understand the specific logics and workings of the implementation of policies, while taking into account the continued role played by politicians and the judiciary. Qualitative research with different public institutions implementing migration policies are combined with an exploration of the role of NGOs, supranational institutions and the migrants themselves. Bringing together the results of several research projects with fieldwork in Belgium, the UK, France, Morocco and Malta, the book covers the different stages of the migratory career. It follows the potential trajectory of a migrant from visa obtention (both in general and for students specifically) to border controls, asylum (including resettlement and gender and sexuality-based asylum), access to residence (with a specific focus on marriage-based residence), healthcare and nationality, or to detention and managed return migration. Through its chapters it shows the day-to-day logics, routines and tactics that bureaucrats and other actors adopt, within the constrains of laws, social interactions, and ideas about migration and policies.




The International Organization for Migration in North Africa


Book Description

This book examines the International Organization for Migration’s (IOM) practices of international migration management and studies current transformations of migration governance and the role of international organizations outside Europe. While so-called migration crises in North Africa in 2005 and 2011 made the instability of the increasingly militarized border regime visible, they also created space for new actors and instruments to emerge under the label of international migration management, promising softer forms to control migration outside Europe. Who are these actors, and how do they think and practice migration control without the use of physical force and obvious repression? This book develops an innovative theoretical framework that mobilizes Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice to critically investigate the work of the IOM in Morocco and Tunisia between 2005 and 2015. Analyzing its information campaigns, voluntary return programs, and anti-trafficking politics, the book shows how this organization teaches (potential) migrants and North African actors to understand migration as their own problem and its management as their own responsibility. This book advances our understanding of the complex and ambivalent practices of controlling migration through information, protection and repatriation, and the implications of ubiquitous but underresearched institutions, such as the IOM, in this contested field. It will appeal to postgraduates, researchers, and academics in International Relations Theory, Border and Migration Studies, International Political Sociology, international organizations, and contemporary politics in North Africa.




Crime Prevention, Migration Control and Surveillance Practices


Book Description

EU expansion has stoked fears that criminals from the East may abuse freedom of movement to exploit the benefit systems of richer states. This book examines the way in which physical state borders are increasingly being replaced by internal border controls in the form of state bureaucracies as a means of regulating westward migration. The work examines the postmodern effect of globalisation and how ontological anxieties contribute to securitisation and social sorting in Western countries. It discusses the changes in control societies and how targeted surveillance as a geopolitical tool leads to new digitalised mechanisms of population selection. The book presents a casestudy of Roma migrants in the UK to examine the coping strategies adopted by those targeted. The book also critically evaluates the limitations of digitalised bureaucratic systems and the dangers of reliance on virtual data and selection methods.




Race, Criminal Justice, and Migration Control


Book Description

In an era of mass mobility, those who are permitted to migrate and those criminalised, controlled, and prohibited from migrating are heavily patterned by race. This volume places race at the centre of its analysis; 14 chapters examine, question, and explain the growing intersection between criminal justice and migration control.




Migration Law and the Externalization of Border Controls


Book Description

Over the last few decades, both the European Union and European States have been implementing various strategies to externalize border controls with the declared intent of saving human lives and countering smuggling but with the actual end result of shifting borders, circumventing international obligations and ultimately preventing access to Europe. What has been principally deplored is the fact that externalizing border controls risks creating ‘legal black holes’. Furthermore, what is particularly worrying in the current European debate is the intensification of this practice by multiple arrangements with unsafe third countries, exposing migrants and asylum seekers to serious human rights violations. This book explores whether European States can succeed in shifting their responsibility onto Third States in cases of human rights violations. Focusing, in particular, on the 2017 Italy-Libya Memorandum of Understanding, the book investigates the possible basis for triggering the responsibility of outsourcing States. The second part of the book examines how the Italy-Libya MoU is only a small part of a broader scenario, exploring EU policies of externalization. A brief overview of the recent decisions of the EU Court vis-à-vis two aspects of externalization (the EU-Turkey statement and the issue of humanitarian visas) will pave the way for the conclusions since, in the author’s view, the current attitude of the Luxembourg Court confirms the importance of focusing on the responsibility of European States and the urgent need to investigate the possibility of bringing a claim against the outsourcing States before the Court of Strasbourg. Offering a new perspective on an extremely topical subject, this book will appeal to students, scholars and practitioners with an interest in European Law, International Law, Migration and Human Rights.




Schengen Visa Implementation and Transnational Policymaking


Book Description

This book examines the timely topic of controlling the borders of the European Schengen Area. It considers the state perspective on border regulation, subjecting day-to-day practices of EU visa policy implementation to close analytical scrutiny. The objects of the analysis are three European Member States—France, Belgium, and Italy—that implement EU visa policy in Morocco, a country whose nationals are considered to be a migratory ‘risk’ for the EU. The book focuses on the implementation of EU visa policy in the consulates of Belgium, France and Italy in Casablanca. The empirical research and the comparative perspective make this book distinct. The book uses a ‘comprehensive implementation approach’ by taking account of the local, national and supranational locations of policy-making. It builds on in-depth pioneering fieldwork and a comparative research design that includes those three locations. The research design has determined the evolving of the puzzle and the realizing of the unanticipated: cross-national differences diminish when policy is put into practice. Extensive research into the visa sections of those EU Member States provides highly original material that sheds light on the obscure black box of EU visa policy implementation, therefore contributing to policy studies, migration studies, and studies on the European Union.