Militarizing Migration

Author(s):  
Jenna M. Loyd ◽  
Alison Mountz

Chapter 2 discusses the politics of deterring asylum seekers by exploring the simultaneous efforts to find new detention space for Cubans and Haitians who had already arrived in the United States and to develop “contingency” space in the event of another mass migration. This chapter focuses on the pivotal role of military bases in the ad hoc creation of U.S. migration policy during the Carter and Reagan administrations. Haitian and Cuban asylum seekers who arrived in 1980 found themselves confined on separate military facilities from Florida to Wisconsin and Arkansas. The search and negotiations surrounding new places to detain reveal racialized imaginations and seemingly irrational investments in new places to detain. The deeply contingent and contested use of decommissioned military bases led ultimately to the search for more permanent detention space.

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Smita Ghosh ◽  
Mary Hoopes

Drawing upon an analysis of congressional records and media coverage from 1981 to 1996, this article examines the growth of mass immigration detention. It traces an important shift during this period: while detention began as an ad hoc executive initiative that was received with skepticism by the legislature, Congress was ultimately responsible for entrenching the system over objections from the agency. As we reveal, a critical component of this evolution was a transformation in Congress’s perception of asylum seekers. While lawmakers initially decried their detention, they later branded them as dangerous. Lawmakers began describing asylum seekers as criminals or agents of infectious diseases in order to justify their detention, which then cleared the way for the mass detention of arriving migrants more broadly. Our analysis suggests that they may have emphasized the dangerousness of asylum seekers to resolve the dissonance between their theoretical commitments to asylum and their hesitance to welcome newcomers. In addition to this distinctive form of cognitive dissonance, we discuss a number of other implications of our research, including the ways in which the new penology framework figured into the changing discourse about detaining asylum seekers.


2021 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 178-195
Author(s):  
Johanna E. Nilsson ◽  
Katherine C. Jorgenson

According to 2019 data, there are 26 million refugees and 3.5 million asylum seekers around the globe, representing a major humanitarian crisis. This Major Contribution provides information on the experiences of refugees resettled in the United States via the presentation of five manuscripts. In this introductory article, we address the current refugee crisis, refugee policies, and resettlement processes in the United States, as well as the American Psychological Association’s response to the crisis and the role of counseling psychology in serving refugees. Next follows three empirical articles, addressing aspects of the resettlement experiences of three groups of refugees: Somali, Burmese, and Syrian. The final article provides an overview of a culturally responsive intervention model to use when working with refugees.


2018 ◽  
pp. 51-70
Author(s):  
Carl Lindskoog

Immigration detention was formally reborn in the United States when the Reagan administration reinstituted a policy of detention in 1981. And at that moment, the new detention policy applied exclusively to Haitians. Chapter 3 documents how and why Haitian asylum seekers were the first targets of the revived detention program; it considers how the Reagan administration’s concerns about surging numbers of asylum seekers and anxiety over mass migration to the United States also influenced its decision to redeploy immigration detention. Finally, this third chapter documents the government’s early efforts to construct its new detention system and the movement that emerged to resist it.


Author(s):  
Craig L. Symonds

‘An ad hoc navy: the Revolutionary War (1775–1783)’ describes the Patriots’ response to the British Royal Navy strongholds in Boston and New York and the role of armed vessels during the Revolutionary War. It begins with George Washington’s attempts to threaten the British supply line using boats. The Continental Navy was founded on October 13, 1775, but the new program could hardly challenge the Royal Navy. With the exception of John Paul Jones, the Continental Navy proved mostly disappointing. The United States won its independence largely because the determination of the Patriot forces outlasted the British willingness to fight—and to pay for—a war three thousand miles away.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeff Strickland

Jeff Strickland tells the powerful story of Nicholas Kelly, the enslaved craftsman who led the Charleston Workhouse Slave Rebellion, the largest slave revolt in the history of the antebellum American South. With two accomplices, some sledgehammers, and pickaxes, Nicholas risked his life and helped thirty-six fellow enslaved people escape the workhouse where they had been sent by their enslavers to be tortured. While Nat Turner, Gabriel Prosser, and Denmark Vesey remain the most recognizable rebels, the pivotal role of Nicholas Kelly is often forgotten. All for Liberty centers his rebellion as a decisive moment leading up to the secession of South Carolina from the United States in 1861. This compelling micro-history navigates between Nicholas's story and the Age of Atlantic Revolutions, while also considering the parallels between race and incarceration in the nineteenth century and in modern America. Never before has the story of Nicholas Kelly been so eloquently told.


Author(s):  
Catherine Gegout

Chapter four shows that France has reduced its economic impact in Africa in comparison with other world powers; but as core realists would expect, France still maintains an important ad hoc and permanent diplomatic and military presence in Africa. Case studies of French intervention and non-intervention show that French leaders have always acted first and foremost to ensure security interests, that is, the support for ‘cooperative’ regimes and the removal of ‘uncooperative’ regimes in African states, the safety of France’s own military bases and citizens, and the fight against terrorism. They also want to gain personal prestige, prestige for French citizens, and prestige for France in the international community (the United States, the United Nations, and the Arab world). France promoted its economic interests through intervention in the 1990s, but after 2000 it merely made sure those were not harmed. France is still tied to its colonial past, even if it has declined to help only three former colonies in the past ten years. Humanitarianism is never the only motive for French intervention, but it has been one of the motives, especially in operations since 2004.


2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Enock Ndawana

The nexus between foreign policy and the granting of asylum exists, but scholars have not yet reached a consensus regarding the nature of the relationship. This study examines the role of foreign policy in the granting of asylum using the case of Zimbabwean asylum seekers in the United States (US). It found that although other factors matter, foreign policy was central to the outcomes of Zimbabwean asylum seekers in the US. It asserts that explaining the outcomes of Zimbabwean asylum seekers in the US needs to go beyond the role of foreign policy and be nuanced because the case study rejects a monolithic understanding.


Author(s):  
Jenna M. Loyd ◽  
Alison Mountz

The United States currently maintains the world’s largest migration and deportation system. Yet there has been no systematic account of its construction. Boats, Borders, and Bases traces the rise of detention through Cold War efforts to deter Haitian and Cuban migrants from arriving in the United States by boat. Caribbean migration and deterrence efforts are related to much-better-known policies that have shaped the U.S.-Mexico boundary. This account situates both the Caribbean and U.S.-Mexico boundary within maritime and territorial grounds of U.S. empire. Drawing on extensive archival research, this account brings together histories of refugee resettlement, asylum, and criminalization to explore the racialization and interrelations in these policies. The turn to criminalize migration in the 1980s built upon both domestic crime politics and efforts to prevent the arrival of asylum seekers. The location of detention facilities in relatively remote places is not determined by formal policy or proximity to international boundaries, but rather by the contingent outcome of political negotiations. Boats, Borders, and Bases shows how the location of migration detention commonly builds on prison and military geographies. The expansion of jails, prisons, and restructuring of military bases contributed to the expansion of migration detention space.


2019 ◽  
pp. 71-101
Author(s):  
David Scott FitzGerald

The U.S. Coast Guard intercepted more than a quarter of a million migrants, including an unknown number of refugees, between 1982 and 2015. Practices developed by the United States to stop Haitians were then copied to prevent Chinese asylum seekers from crossing the Pacific. The 1993 Sale decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to allow refoulement on the high seas still stands. The fact that there are screenings at all, whatever their serious inadequacies, is evidence of diffuse international pressure articulated through the U.S. State Department and the influence of civil society. The Canadian government flirted with maritime refoulement but was constrained by greater deference to international law and the concern that openly flouting it would potentially damage Canada’s international reputation. The United States is a world leader in defining military bases strewn across the globe as territories under its control but not its sovereignty and thus spaces where asylum seekers have limited rights.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dr. Faisal Javaid, Dr. Suwaibah Qadri

The rise of independent Central Asian states after the disintegration of the USSR has transformed the regional geostrategic environment. America quickly established diplomatic relations with the Kyrgyz Republic in 1991. Kyrgyzstan is not a wealthy state and it is facing several challenges such as ethnic issues, bad governance, narcotics, and foreign involvements. After the 9/11 events, the state got special attention for America due to its geographical position towards Afghanistan. Kyrgyzstan condemned these attacks and supported to anti-terrorist alliance. It offered military bases for operation in Afghanistan after the relation between America and Kyrgyzstan have strengthened. After the tulip revolution, both states' relationships were affected. This research examines the role of the United States in Kyrgyzstan. It also examines the political, economic, and security relations between the U.S. and Kyrgyzstan. This study evaluates the several challenges tackled by the United States.


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