Irregular migrants, neoliberal geographies and spatial frontiers of ‘the political’

2007 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 655-674 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANNE McNEVIN
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Multidimensional Approach ◽  
Irregular Migration ◽  
Irregular Migrants ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Us ◽  
Migration Flows ◽  
Political Communities ◽  
The Right ◽  
Economic Zones

AbstractIn this article I argue that the demands of irregular migrants to belong to political communities constitute key contemporary sites of ‘the political’. I also argue that geographies associated with neoliberal globalisation (transnational production circuits, special economic zones and global cities) are implicated in irregular migration flows and in new conceptions of political belonging. In relation to these claims, I reflect upon recent mobilisations in the US context, in which hundreds of thousands of irregular migrants and their supporters asserted the right to belong. I suggest that similar claims to belong are likely to proliferate and that neoliberal geographies may provide some clues as to where and how these contemporary frontiers of the political might proceed. I conclude by suggesting that a multidimensional approach to political belonging provides a sound conceptual starting point for the analytical and normative challenges raised by both the claims of non-status migrants and the sovereign practices of contemporary states.

scholarly journals Punitive inclusion: The political economy of irregular migration in the margins of Europe

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonidas K. Cheliotis
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
State Policies ◽  
The Political ◽  
Irregular Migration ◽  
Irregular Migrants ◽  
Critical Scholarship ◽  
Labour Exploitation ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
Migration Control ◽  
Market Needs

Focusing on the treatment irregular migrants have received in Greece since the early 1990s, this article seeks to advance critical scholarship on how European countries have responded to migration from impoverished or otherwise disadvantaged parts of the globe over recent decades. The article first draws attention to ways in which purportedly exclusionary approaches to irregular migration control may be imperfect by design, insofar as restrictions are imposed on outflows to secure an exploitable workforce that serves important labour market needs and, by extension, dominant political interests in the ‘host’ state. Moving on to address the precise ways in which labour exploitation of irregular migrants is brought into effect, the article demonstrates how seemingly unrelated state policies and practices regarding matters of migration, welfare, employment and criminal justice, as well as certain manifestations of anti-migrant violence by non-state actors, may act in combination with one another to this end.

Chronicle of a Crisis Foretold: The Politics of Irregular Migration, Human Trafficking and People Smuggling in the UK

2005 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 324-339 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Geddes
Keyword(s):  
Human Trafficking ◽  
Irregular Migration ◽  
Limited Effect ◽  
Irregular Migrants ◽  
Bilateral Relations ◽  
Human Rights Regime ◽  
Political Contention ◽  
Migration Flows ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Impact

This article argues that a distinct repertoire of social and political contention associated with migration and the presence of immigrants in the UK plays a large part in structuring responses to ostensibly ‘new’ migration challenges such as people smuggling and human trafficking. This repertoire includes the elision and confusion of migration categories (particularly in this instance between irregular migration and asylum); the impact of state policies on the creation of ‘unwanted’ migration flows; fears of floods and invasions by ‘unwanted’ migrants; concerns that the state is losing control of migration; the depiction of migration and migrants as causes of increased support for the extreme right; the existence of labour market pull factors that provide economic spaces for both regular and irregular migrants; the symbolic power but limited effect of an international human rights regime and discourse; and problems of policy implementation. The contemporary twist is provided by the links made between irregular migration and the ‘war on terror’ and the ways in which migration has become a component of bilateral relations between the UK and other states, particularly those structured by EU competencies.

Citizenship and family life in Ireland: asking the question ‘Who belongs’?

Legal Studies ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 578-600 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siobhán Mullally
Keyword(s):  
Family Life ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Immigration Control ◽  
Migrant Families ◽  
The Us ◽  
Political Communities ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Right ◽  
Citizenship Laws ◽  
Migrant Parents

Citizenship laws provide us with models of membership. They define the terms on which strangers and natives belong to political communities, allocating both the benefits of membership and the brutalities of exclusion. Recent legal changes in Ireland, restricting the right to citizenship by birth and limiting the rights of migrant families, highlight the vulnerability of children in migrant families and the limits of citizenship status. Many other states have grappled in recent times with the right to citizenship by birth and the entitlements to family life that come with such a claim. In both the UK and Australia the jus soli principle has been significantly restricted. In the US, Canada and elsewhere, while the jus soli principle continues to apply, citizen children born to undocumented migrant parents are subject to de facto deportations, their right to membership of the nation-state ‘postponed’ because of the legal status of their parents. In challenges to deportation proceedings involving such children, the perspective of the child as a bearer of rights is marginalised, with disputes turning largely on the balancing of states' interests in immigration control against the residence claims made by migrant parents.

Citizenship and Paternalism*

2021 ◽  
pp. 9-27
Author(s):  
Luara Ferracioli
Keyword(s):  
Prima Facie ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Political ◽  
Philosophical Literature ◽  
Political Communities ◽  
The Right

Do states have a right to exclude prospective immigrants as they see fit? According to statists, the answer is a qualified yes. For these authors, self-determining political communities have a prima facie right to exclude, which can be overridden by the claims of vulnerable individuals. However, there is a concern in the philosophical literature that statists have not yet developed a theory that can protect children born in the territory from being excluded from the political community. For if the self-determining political community has the right to decide who should form the self in the first place, then that right should count against both newcomers by immigration and newcomers by birth. Or so the concern goes. This chapter defends statism against this line of criticism and defends a new account of the value of citizenship for children.

Editorial: Survival Strategies of Irregular Immigrants

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Martina Cvajner ◽  
Giuseppe Sciortino
Keyword(s):  
Developed Countries ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Border Crossing ◽  
Survival Strategies ◽  
Irregular Migration ◽  
Public Identity ◽  
Irregular Migrants ◽  
Paradoxical Situation ◽  
Irregular Border ◽  
Migration Flows

While there are numerous research efforts, supported by substantial budgets, to study the process of irregular border crossing, there is very little sustained research on how irregular migrants live for remarkable spells of time in social contexts where they lack any certified public identity. This leads to a paradoxical situation. We know that sizeable irregular migration flows cross the borders of all developed countries (as well as some developing ones). But we know very little of how, once entered, these migrants becomes immigrants, how they achieve the minimal goals of making an income, finding a place to sleep, avoiding being caught by the police and, not infrequently, attaining some degree of security and self-respect.

Ethical Aspects of Migration Flows

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandria Innes
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
International System ◽  
Human Migration ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
International Borders ◽  
National Affiliation ◽  
Migration Flows ◽  
Political Communities ◽  
The Right

A comprehensive review of the scholarly literature that considers ethical questions surrounding human migration flows across international borders covers themes of membership and belonging, the right to exclude, the liberal impasse with regard to immigration, the role of property rights at the international level, movement through visa categories, and the problem of jurisdiction during migration journeys. Such an examination reveals that migration provokes a particular problem for international relations when the nation-state is the primary unit of analysis, and that the current literature acknowledges yet does little to correct a Western bias at the heart of scholarly work on the ethics of human migration flows. Ethical questions regarding human migration have been at the forefront of news and public debate, particularly in recent years. The implications of human migration for membership in political communities have received much attention in political theory, international relations theory, international law, human rights, and ethics. Migration, by definition, challenges some of the key assumptions, categories, and ways of theorizing international relations (hereafter IR). The conventional assumptions of IR reproduce the notion that states as unitary actors interact with each other in a global sphere or within the confines of the international system and its structure and rules of behavior. In this rendering of the global, there is little room for people who seep outside of state borders, people who move with no national affiliation, or people who retain multiple national affiliations. The embodied contestation of the territorial categories of IR that is practiced by the movement of people is particularly relevant to constructivist IR theory. If the world is constituted through social interactions and intersubjective understandings, when social interactions happen across borders the intersubjective understanding of state units containing human populations is called into question. When people manifest multiple identities, the state-based identities of the international system are called into question. Studies of the ethics of migration flows then must tackle these lines of inquiry.

Ambivalence and Citizenship: Theorising the Political Claims of Irregular Migrants

2012 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 182-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne McNevin
Keyword(s):  
Human Mobility ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Irregular Migrants ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
International Theory ◽  
Political Relations ◽  
Starting Point

Irregular migration gives rise to political claims that test the limits of political community and the expression of human rights in an increasingly interconnected world. This article provides a theorisation of the political claims of irregular migrants that starts with the notion of ambivalence. I argue that the ambivalence present in such claims can be understood as a political resource that is generative of new political relations across the terrain of human mobility and border control. In order to discern the generative quality of ambivalence, I argue in addition for an approach to theory production that is grounded in concrete migrant struggles. The argument is made via a critique of two theoretical perspectives that are influential amongst scholars working at the intersection of Migration Studies and Political and International Theory: the work of Giorgio Agamben and the ‘Autonomy of Migration’. An approach that avoids the reductive accounts of power evident in both perspectives provides a better starting point from which to assess the transformative potential of irregular migrants’ political claims.

scholarly journals ISU DASAR NEGARA INDONESIA MENJELANG PEMILU 1955: Studi Kasus Pidato Politik Soekarno Di Amuntai 27 Januari 1953

2011 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Iqbal
Keyword(s):  
Political Discourse ◽  
The Political ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Political Issue ◽  
National State ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Political Communities ◽  
The Right ◽  
First Time ◽  
Secular State

"Islamic State versus National State" was a heated political issue throughout the 1950s that created highly tense and dividing debates among Indonesia's political communities. President Soekarno, a leading proponent of National State, raised this issue for the first time in his speech in Amuntai on January 27th, 1953. The present paper contends that this speech was crucial for the political discourse contestations that followed between the religiously-neutral Nasionalist camp and the Islamic camp. The former argued against the latter's idea of building an Islamic state in Indonesia and proposed instead, a secular state that guarantees the right of its citizens to observe their religious teachings. The value of Soekarno's speech could be seen from reactions it generated from the supporters of Islamic State who called it a smear campaign and a doctrine dangerous to their struggle to erect an Islamic state in Indonesia.

scholarly journals The Readmission Agreement of Turkey

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (2SI) ◽  
pp. 571-581
Author(s):  
Evrim Çınar
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Irregular Migration ◽  
Irregular Migrants ◽  
State Security ◽  
Transit Migration ◽  
Migration Flows ◽  
Irregular Migrant

The irregular migration flows in the last decade from countries, where there are social unrest, civil wars and economic turmoil, towards developed western countries are one of the most populated human movements since the WWII. Hence each immigration flow has its own characteristics, the current irregular flows reveal a new migration outcome; the balance between State Security and Migrant Security. Since the migration policies are control based in some destination countries, they take precaution in order to reduce the irregular immigration flows by signing bilateral readmission agreements with 3rd countries. In that respect, Turkey and European Union relations in terms of irregular migration flows play a crucial and critical role due to its condition of transit migration state. The European Union accession process brought Turkey heavy duties. Controlling and preventing irregular migration became an obligation to its membership and to achieve its goals Turkey signed a readmission agreement with European Union. However, as any method of preventing irregular migration flows, Readmission Agreement of Turkey effect the balance between destination country security and irregular migrant security, especially refugees and asylum seekers rights. The main goal of this article is to find an answer to this question: does the Readmission Agreement of Turkey provide a balance between State Security and Migrant Security? This article intends to analyze the adverse security conditions of irregular migrants and state security compulsions.

scholarly journals Authoritarian populism in the US: context and continuity in a post-truth era

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-44
Author(s):  
Richard C. Box
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Dominant Ideology ◽  
The Public ◽  
Limited Government ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Authoritarian Populism ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Right ◽  
Elite Influence

Abstract An enduring theme in US politics is tension between people on the right who favour limited government that serves individual and elite interests and people on the left who prefer active government with emphasis on a broader public interest. Recently, the political landscape has shifted from the dominant ideology of neoliberalism toward a far-right authoritarian populism with parallels to mid-20th century fascism. This shift appears in regressive societal characteristics - such as xenophobia, racism, homophobia, and misogyny - that were thought to have diminished in an increasingly progressive 21 st century. An argument can be made that authoritarian populism is a continuation of longstanding patterns of elite influence, in which regressive elements serve as techniques to distract the public from the governing economic agenda. The essay examines this phenomenon and explores potential future effects on US society.

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