East Asian Exceptionalism to Western Populism and Migration Crisis

In the 2010s, the world is seemingly awash with waves of populism and anti-immigration movements. Yet virtually all discussions, owing to the prevailing Eurocentric perspective, bypass East Asia (more accurately, Northeast Asia) and the absence of strong populist or anti-immigration discourses or politics. This chapter presents a comparative and historical account of East Asian exceptionalism in the matter of migration crisis, especially given the West’s embrace of an insider-outsider dichotomy superseding the class- and nation-based divisions of the post–World War II era. The chapter also discusses some nascent articulations of Western-style populist discourses in Northeast Asia, and concludes with the potential for migration crisis in the region.

The Myth of a Migration Crisis in France

France is an old immigration country but has been slow to recognize itself as such. Since 2000, the Western security context has produced a new stage in migration and asylum policies. The tragic and traumatic nature of terrorist attacks in France and other European countries has legitimized the strengthening of national security laws, fueled more conservative attitudes regarding cultural and ethnic diversity, and fed into debates on communitarianism, multiculturalism, and universalism. This chapter analyzes how migratory dynamics have been constructed as a crisis in contemporary France and examines the initiatives of civil society towards what politics and media consider to be a migration crisis. Finally, it analyzes the modes of action used by various social and institutional actors in the context of an imagined migration crisis.

Human Trafficking as a Migration Crisis

Human trafficking is considered one of the key humanitarian crises of our time. Public opinion and policymakers alike call for meaningful responses to human trafficking and modern slavery as criminal law problems, which can be remedied through tougher border controls. This chapter argues that human trafficking cannot be solved through border-focused anti-immigration measures, but needs to be approached as a gendered migration problem, which requires greater protections for vulnerable workers, particularly for female workers in private households and in the sex industry. Therefore, this chapter discusses root causes of human trafficking and migrants’ exploitability in gendered immigration and emigration policies, as well as in insufficient labor protections for vulnerable workers. In doing so, it also challenges the role of states in creating migrants’ precarious statuses through insufficient safe migration routes and labor protections in destination countries.

Sanctuary and Unsettling “the” Refugee Crisis

This chapter examines how discursive framings of ‘the refugee crisis’ problematically reduce the intractable politics of displacement to a singular and sudden event. This chapter also argues that sanctuary—as a lexicon and practice—potentially disrupts this problematic lens in two important ways. First, sanctuary unsettles a crisis lens that depicts displacement and persecution in ahistorical terms; instead, this rich tradition of sanctuary situates contemporary politics within more complex genealogies. Second, sanctuary challenges a crisis lens that frames displacement as an isolated problem, exclusively impacting refugees. The chapter concludes that these sanctuary expressions cannot be confined to traditional scalar logics of the city, the state, or even the planet. Instead, sanctuary is better understood as a movement, enacted through the register of the global-intimate.

Migration Crises in Turkey

Turkey is the country that hosts highest number of refugees in the world. The paradigm of crisis nurtures and sustains legislation and policies in the field of migration and asylum in the country. Migration legislation of the Turkish state consists mainly of the subsequent codifications of its practice relating to different crises constructed around the mass influxes of migrants into its territory. This context of crisis determines not only the scope and content of the legislative and political measures but also shapes the structures of the institutions in the field of immigration. The second paradigm governing Turkish migration policies is ‘Europeanization.’ This paradigm materializes in the effort of the subsequent governments of Turkey to align national legislation with the two contradicting legal regimes governing migrants in Europe: the European Union’s migration regulations and the Council of Europe’s regime framed by the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights. This chapter aims to study the dynamics of migration policies in Turkey and the self-interest of Turkish state as a motivating factor to its legal responses to refugee ‘crises.’

The Politics of the Refugee Crisis in Hungary

This chapter describes the production of a migration crisis in Hungary and examines the politics it authorizes. After providing context into the emergence of the discourse of crisis in Hungary, the chapter examines the mechanisms used by the Hungarian authorities to keep the crisis alive in spite of the limited number of people receiving asylum in the country. Finally, the chapter studies the connections between the “migration crisis” and the marginalization of other social groups, particularly Roma. It argues that both are connected to the adoption of capitalist modes of development underpinned by moral economies that rely on the production of various “others.”

Migrants in Crisis in Nineteenth-Century Britain

Most emigration and immigration in Victorian Britain was volitional and economic in character. But recurrent crises, internal and external, often induced episodes of migration, of people under duress seeking relocation or asylum either within Britain or by emigration. Such crises derived, for instance, from food emergencies or industrial downturns, were not of their own making; migrants entangled in these episodes were governed and directed by structural forces at work in the Victorian world. The greatest crisis was the Irish Famine of the 1840s which produced massive flows of migrants; other episodes exposed rifts in the fabric of Victorian society.

Migration Crises

This chapter introduces the two interrelated aspects of migration crises that animate this volume. It summarizes the range of historical, economic, social, political, and environmental conditions that generate migration crises around the globe which the contributions in the book address. The chapter challenges the term “crisis” as overused and normalized today, offers conceptual explanations of migration perceived as crisis, and questions the influence of nation-state ideologies as well as the reasons why some migrant groups are framed as crises and others are not, mainly based on ethnicity and economic arguments. Finally, the chapter introduces the wide variety of case studies from historical contexts, conflicts, climate change, transit countries, policy responses, the media, gender issues, as well as integration and multiculturalism to account for the global construction of migration crises.

Migration Crisis and Social Trauma

In this chapter, the author examines the emergence of the expression “migrant crisis” in the French public debate in 2015. This “migrant crisis” can be considered as the product of a crisis in migration and asylum policies that led to an externalition of the treatment of asylum-seekers and that resulted in their being forced into a migrant condition. Using a field survey carried out in 2007, in which she interviewed asylum-seekers living in Ile-de-France, and drawing on work in the fields of social science and psychoanalysis, the author develops several aspects of this migration policy crisis and investigates their impacts in terms of individual and social trauma.

Migration and Integration in China

This chapter addresses three major trends of migration in China. The first part of the chapter explores the causes, characteristics, and consequences of migration from rural areas to the city. Our discussion focuses on earning differentials, workplace experiences, intergenerational occupational mobility, housing, residential segregation, health care and social services. The second part discusses the characteristics and issues related to migration from one city to another. Finally, the chapter investigates international migration to China. The discussion highlights the extent of rural-to-urban migration in China, which has often been described as a crisis, and explores why and how the trend in migration has reached a crisis level.