Migration policies, rights and belonging

1
Migration policies, rights and belonging
2
Migration policies not only lead to regulation
but also to

• 1. Policy failuregoals are not achieved (not
  normative)
• 2. Unintended consequences
• 3. Contradictory outcomes migrants are
  development agents/ immigrants must integrate

3
Migration control in crisis?

• human mobility across borders out of control or
  in control?
• - increasing political concern with migration
  policies
• Europe? the challenge of selecting the right
  migrants

4
Assumption

• one explanation of the limits of migration
  policies must be sought at the level of social
  practices, i.e. the way that migrant networks
  adapt to or defy regulations of mobility.
• In other words, from a perspective which
  includes the sending as well as the receiving
  society, we assert that the agency of unwanted
  migrants constitute a source of information as
  regards the limits of migration policies.

5
The agency of migrants

• such agency is in existence in spite of
  regulations and restrictions on mobility,
  otherwise a central feature of contemporary
  social life.
• Unwanted migrants constitute a specific case for
  investigating agency
• under pressure by restrictive regulations on
  mobility and rights, most often issued by state
  authorities or state agencies

6
Migrants seek to preserve a span of
opportunities by combining the mobility of
sovereign bodies with specific politics of
belonging

• Can the agency of migrants be accounted for by
  linking it
• a. with the sovereignty of the body
• b. with politics of belonging?
• In what ways are unwanted migrants able to resist
  the regulations of their mobility laid down in
  migration policies
• to what extent is their mobility hampered by
  them?

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Politics of belonging

• Politics of belonging (boundary maintenance)
• Policies, political discourses and projects of
  nationalism, racism, ethnicity etc.
• - citizenship the distribution of civil
  rights example 24 years-rule
• Belonging
• - social locations
• - naturalized emotional attachment feeling at
  home or safe
• - Ethical and political value systems

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The night club line as a metaphor and an
important site for the politics of belonging

• The usefulness of the term of belonging is
  precisely its vagueness opening for suspicion
• (Crowley 1999)

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Sovereignty

• The ability to evade or utilize for ones own
  purposes the control and penalties of
  administrative entities.
• The sovereignty of social actors-cum-migrants
  (to be mobile) will in the projects be confronted
  with the sovereignty of administrative, legal and
  physical measures to regulate the actions of
  migrants and potential migrants
• (Agamben this approach is inspired by
  Blom- Hansen Stepputat 2005)

10
24 years rule, applied 2002Requirements for a
permit to stay

• - both bride and groom must be at least 24 years
  of age
• - a judicially valid marriage
• - after unification the couple must live on same
  address
• - it must not be a pro-forma/ forced marriage
• - the person in Denmark must be a resident
• - either Danish or Nordic citizenship, or have
  permit to stay as a refugee or had unlimited
  permit to stay for more than three years
• - must have own housing of appropriate size,
• - must be in possession of a reserve of no less
  than dkk 58.207 (Udlændingeservice, 2008 28).

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Castles, 2004 the factors that make and unmake
migration policies

• A range of factors shape state policies and
  undermines them
• states tend towards compromises and contradictory
  policies - due to the complexity of controlling
  migration
• An important underlying reason is the
  contradiction between the national logic and a
  transnational logic in an epoch of globalization

12
Factors shaping migration and migration policies

• The social dynamics of the migratory process
• Globalization, transnationalization and
  North-South relationships
• Political systems

13
The social dynamics of migration

• Economic belief in market behaviour
• Bureaucratic belief in regulations and
  categorizations of migrants as effectively
  shaping behaviour
• Instead
• The importance of migrant networks industry
• Migration as a collective issue, the lifecycle
  position
• Migrant agency migration as self-sustaining
  process
• Strucural dependence on migration

14
Globalization, transnationalism, North-South
relationships

• The North-South divide generates migration
  migration control is essentially about regulation
  North-South relations
• Globalization creates means capital and means for
  migration a pressure to move
• Globalization transforms the character of
  migration repeated sojourns, transnational
  migraton
• migration control follows a national logic,
  migration follows a transnational logic

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Political systems

• As economies become dependent on migration,
  effective regulation of it becomes difficult
• Interest conflict and hidden agendas in migration
  policies the state cannot easily favor one
  interest group and ignore the other
• Reality contradicts strong rhetoric to control
  migration
• The importance of rights and civil society
  campaigns, the welfare state

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Hypotheses stratification of migrants

• what are the practical consequences in terms of
  options and conditions of the migrants that are
  unwanted and for this reason experience that
  their mobility is restricted?
• Consequences for citizenship?

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Discussion

• Is migration policies that select certain
  migrants and reject others a viable path to go
  for European states?
• Considering
• - the possible consequences for sending
  (Southern) states and for North-South
  inequalities?
• - the social dynamics of migration
• - citizenship

18
Undocumented, semi-legal status

• Are undocumented migrants (semi-legal status, low
  wages) in fact an indispensible part of global
  capitalism?
• E.g.
• Phillippino au pair girls in Denmark
• - work migrants or young women in cultural
  exchange?

19
Group discussions

• Group 1 Arguments for the regulation of
  migration
• Group 2 Arguments for free migration
• Group 3 Arguments for a hierarchization of
  migrants in terms of migrants rights and
  citizenship
• Group 4 Arguments for equal rights among
  migrants and among migrants and non-migrants