Foucauldian Biopolitics, Irregular Immigrants and COVID-19 in Malaysia

This paper addresses issues related to irregular immigrants during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the aim of providing a better understanding of the migration process in Malaysia. This article uses Foucauldian biopolitics as a theoretical framework to explain state practices on immigrant bodies. Firstly, it provides a general picture of irregular immigration in Southeast Asia and Malaysia; secondly, it summarises the effects of the pandemic; and lastly it provides an overall outlook of irregular immigrants and the practices they were exposed to at this time. This study adopts exploratory and explanatory qualitative research design and data collection techniques such as document analysis of non-governmental reports on immigrants, official statistics, declarations and articles produced by third party organisations and interviews with experts. This paper then adopts a post-structuralist perspective within an interpretative paradigm to comprehend the main problems, social arrangements and rationality of institutional dynamics of the management of irregular immigrants. The main findings show that increasing human rights violations of irregular migrants generate from a biopolitical mentality.

Development of the German Immigration Policy after 2015

Germany is seen and presented by itself as a welcome country. It is a country of immigration. First, there was the “Gastarbeiter” period when within agreements made by Germany and southern European states several thousand worker arrived in Germany and most of them made the country their permanent home. The country experienced another migration wave when the former Central-European countries became members of the European Union. In 2015, similar to other European States, Germany too experienced a migration-shock which resulted in a political-social turmoil in the German society. Not only politicians, but average people faced the same never-seen-before challenge on different levels, due to the number of migrants arriving in short term onto the territory of the state: one in the everyday life of its community, one in the political and legal perspective. Irrespectively of their reactions or adaptation methods, one common point of these actors was that they had to come to terms with the fact that a huge number of irregular migrants will stay long-term in Germany. However, the wave challenged the “welcome” country attitude both at political and at societal level. The author argues that roles, namely, the country affected by the migration wave, and the country being a leading European Union Member State became contradicted because of the measures introduced after 2015. This is underlined by the normative analysis of the main measures in this article, but because migration policy overlaps other policy areas, for example integration policy, interior policy, these measures touch upon different issues.

Reflections of EU Migration and Refugee Crisis in Slovak Foreign and Security Policy

At the end of 2014, the numbers of irregular migrants and asylum seekers in the European Union began to sharply increase. This so-called European migration and refugee crisis culminated in 2015, but did not affect all EU Member States to the same extent. The aim of the paper is to evaluate the impacts of “the crisis” in the Slovak Republic. In addition to the recent developments in the area of irregular immigration and numbers of asylum applications, we focus on broader social, political and foreign policy implications. The research is primarily based on the analysis of the official statistics. We compare pre-crisis data, data in the period considered as “the crisis", and the current situation. The Slovak territory had not been influenced significantly by immigration flows during the European migration and refugee crisis. Nevertheless, migration flows became an important topic also in Slovakia: developments within the EU territory raised awareness on the topic among political representatives as well as among the Slovak public. The importance of migratory flows is growing. It reflects the increase in the volume of migratory flows but also how international migration is perceived and interpreted in society.

Voluntary and Forced Return Migration Under a Pandemic Crisis

The Covid-19 pandemic has an impact on migrants’ return desires and actual returns across the globe. Border closures in the face of pandemic lead to the panic mobility of those returning home. The ensuing lockdowns and economic difficulties restricted migrant workers’ access to income and protection, pushing them to return. The pandemic brought evident risks for the regular migrants’ access to healthcare, financial security, and social protection, forcing them to consider the return option too. For irregular migrants, the pandemic further increased the risk of forced returns, including detention, deportation, and pushbacks. For all migrants, decisions are marked by a deep dilemma between staying and returning. Meanwhile, receiving, sending, and transit countries, as well as international organisations are involved in return processes by providing logistics, on the one hand, and stigmatising returnees as carriers of virus, on the other. This study is based on desk research and analysis of the scholarly literature, reports, and grey literature from international organizations, civil society reports, scientific blogs, and media reports. An emphasis on returns provides us broader insights to evaluate changing characteristics of migration and mobility in ‘pandemic times’, the governance of returns, its consequences, and the rhetoric about returnees.

30 lat rosyjskiej polityki imigracyjnej i jej znaczenie z perspektywy Federacji Rosyjskiej i obszaru poradzieckiego

The article aims to analyze the immigration politics of the Russian Federation from the perspective of the last three decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union. We have considered its importance from the point of view of the domestic and foreign policy of the state. Since 2000, with the beginning of Vladimir Putin’s first presidency, we have been observing a significant increase in the importance of the immigration policy of the Russian Federation, which was an important component of the Russian population policy and one of the key instruments to counteract the deepening depopulation of the state. However, the growing popularity of labor migration to the Russian Federation and the low effectiveness of managing migration flows resulted in a massive influx of irregular migrants, which have used some of the Russian political circles to fuel anti-immigration sentiments. Because of this politics, since 2007, we have been observing a gradual departure from the earlier model of immigration policy, open to labor migration from the Commonwealth of Independent States, towards a policy limiting the influx of Muslim migrants from Central Asia. At the same time Russian government have invited Russian-speaking people from the post-Soviet area to settle in Russia. The introduced restrictions allowed the Russian Federation to use the facilitation of access to the Russian labor market as an instrument encouraging the political and economic integration of the post-Soviet states within the structures controlled by the Russian Federation. The increase in the political component of immigration policy did not change the fact that it was thanks to the influx of people from the post-Soviet area that Russia avoided the depopulation that is currently observed in Ukraine. Analyzing the situation of the Russian Federation and its politics towards the post-Soviet region, the realistic paradigm was used as it best reflects the specificity of the region.

Protection of Migrant Workers under the ICMW: Incompatibility with Malaysian Laws and Position in ASEAN

The International Convention on The Protection of The Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (ICMW) is the only Human Rights Convention that distinguishes between normal and irregular migrants in great detail. An analysis of the situation in Malaysia, based on feedback from relevant stakeholders, shows that there are insurmountable obstacles to ratification in relation to the ambiguous policy status for migrant workers, which is based on ad hoc policies. Malaysian legislation appears to be straightforward in its approach to labour migration policies, as it defines and categorises migrants into two distinct ‘categories': registered migrant (regular migrant) and undocumented migrant (irregular migrant), regardless of ability level. This article demonstrates that, despite the barriers and incompatibilities with national laws, the Convention, which is primarily a human rights instrument aimed at protecting the fundamental rights of all migrants, could assist Malaysia in ensuring a holistic and sustainable migration management that takes into account the needs of a whole approach and support from all parties involved, including but not limited to the Malaysian government. Part I of the article will go through the history of the convention's adoption, followed by Part II on the state of Malaysia's migration laws and policies, Part III on the compatibility and incompatibility of Malaysian laws with the ICMW and the position in ASEAN, and Part IV on recommendations.

Myth and Reality in Irregular Migration from Myanmar

<p>Migration studies is an interdisciplinary study within a broader field of development studies due to its association with debates about development and underdevelopment. Irregular migration is one of the most significant topics in migration studies and its complex nature has attracted many scholars from around the world. Most literature on irregular migration has focused on its illegality and the situation of irregular migrants in the destination country and therefore, much of the previous literature on irregular migration only presents the process as a dangerous and abusive phenomenon for irregular migrants, and depicts brokers and agents as evil and exploitative. Public perception and policy discussions are dominated by myths, rather than facts, about debts and danger. These established myths often overshadow the reality about the impacts of irregular migration as experienced by actual migrants and their local communities. These confused interpretations of irregular migration highlight a need for further research. This thesis examines a case of cross-border irregular migration from Myanmar to Thailand in order to explore the impacts of irregular migration in a wider field. Its main purpose is to investigate the processes and impacts of irregular migration on families left behind in sending areas. This is achieved by employing a qualitative case study approach to gain deeper understanding of the topic in the local context, using two data collection methods: participant observation and semi-structured interviews. The study hypothesizes that irregular migration in the Myanmar context conforms less to the “evil” image, than to the patterns of conventional labour migration described by the “New Economics of Labour Migration” theory. The main research questions posed to achieve these aims were: What are the processes of irregular migration? What are its impacts on families left behind? How are these impacts different from the impacts resulting from legal migration? The study draws two main conclusions. First, human smuggling operations in this study’s context are based on the personal contacts, and therefore irregular migration is often accomplished with the help of friends, relatives or siblings of the migrants themselves and not by hostile, exploitative smugglers. Secondly, departing from the traditional notion that irregular migration is harmful, the findings from this study suggest that the social and economic impacts resulting from irregular migration are surprisingly similar to the impacts of conventional international migration in many respects.</p>

Myth and Reality in Irregular Migration from Myanmar

<p>Migration studies is an interdisciplinary study within a broader field of development studies due to its association with debates about development and underdevelopment. Irregular migration is one of the most significant topics in migration studies and its complex nature has attracted many scholars from around the world. Most literature on irregular migration has focused on its illegality and the situation of irregular migrants in the destination country and therefore, much of the previous literature on irregular migration only presents the process as a dangerous and abusive phenomenon for irregular migrants, and depicts brokers and agents as evil and exploitative. Public perception and policy discussions are dominated by myths, rather than facts, about debts and danger. These established myths often overshadow the reality about the impacts of irregular migration as experienced by actual migrants and their local communities. These confused interpretations of irregular migration highlight a need for further research. This thesis examines a case of cross-border irregular migration from Myanmar to Thailand in order to explore the impacts of irregular migration in a wider field. Its main purpose is to investigate the processes and impacts of irregular migration on families left behind in sending areas. This is achieved by employing a qualitative case study approach to gain deeper understanding of the topic in the local context, using two data collection methods: participant observation and semi-structured interviews. The study hypothesizes that irregular migration in the Myanmar context conforms less to the “evil” image, than to the patterns of conventional labour migration described by the “New Economics of Labour Migration” theory. The main research questions posed to achieve these aims were: What are the processes of irregular migration? What are its impacts on families left behind? How are these impacts different from the impacts resulting from legal migration? The study draws two main conclusions. First, human smuggling operations in this study’s context are based on the personal contacts, and therefore irregular migration is often accomplished with the help of friends, relatives or siblings of the migrants themselves and not by hostile, exploitative smugglers. Secondly, departing from the traditional notion that irregular migration is harmful, the findings from this study suggest that the social and economic impacts resulting from irregular migration are surprisingly similar to the impacts of conventional international migration in many respects.</p>