Shifting Boundaries of Belonging and New Migration Dynamics in Europe and China

L. Pries

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9780230369719
• eBook ISBN:
  9780230369726
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book explores the role that boundary making plays in creating a societal understanding of current migration dynamics and, by extension, in legitimising migration regimes. By comparing most recent developments in Europe and China, it reveals insights on convergent social and political practices of boundary making under divergent conditions.

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Introduction: New Dynamics of Migration and Belonging

Ludger Pries and Robert Pauls

The mobility of people is increasing in quantity and in quality – not only spanning the limits of nation-states but also shifting the boundaries of belonging of social and cultural groups. Hundreds of millions are leaving the regions or countries where they were born to seek political liberties and security or better opportunities for work and education. Highly qualified workers and expatriates extend their range of job opportunities by commuting or circular migration. Retirees from wealthy countries and retired labour migrants create new patterns of pendular migration between different countries. Far greater still are the movements of people fleeing humanitarian crises or persecution on the grounds of political, ethnic or sexual orientations and of those seeking to sell their labour in the cities and factories of foreign countries or in their own, as in China.

In all countries significantly affected by varying forms and dynamics of migration, political actors create new rules, for example, to categorise and govern the migration of ‘refugees’ and the ‘highly skilled’. As a result, free movement on an almost global scale has become a privilege of those deemed wealthy or useful enough. The movements of the majority of migrants, however, people, who are often deemed to be a ‘burden’ to their host societies, have been made more difficult by new rules and regulations.

Accompanying the diversification of rules and regulations to categorise different forms of migration, massive public discourse has unfolded in all countries affected by significant migration dynamics on how to name and characterise those seeking entrance and to define who is a ‘good migrant’ (highly qualified people) and who is a ‘bad migrant’ (low-skilled, unemployed or ‘religiously incorrect’ people). Complementary to laws and official rules and regulations, it is in public discourse where the meanings of migrant belongings are defined and where the boundaries of belonging are reaffirmed or changed. It is in turn the reaffirmation and changing of these boundaries that legitimises and delegitimises institutions and policies, which regulate and control migration. Public discourse and institutions mutually influence each other in the process of defining and redefining the boundaries of belonging for migrant.

For example, many categories of migrants find themselves to be ‘irregular’ or ‘illegal’ in their countries of arrival, as most countries welcome only those whose skills they believe to benefit their economies. Migrants from Africa become ‘refugees’ or ‘asylum seekers’ when they reach the shores of Mediterranean Europe. Residents from China’s Western Provinces become nóngmíngōng (rural migrant workers) or are labelled as dǎgōngzǎi/mèi (young male/female household member on the job) when settling in the cities of the East. Other countries grant special rights to immigrants based on perceived bloodlines (however faint they may run, like ethnic Germans from the former USSR or the Argentine descendants of Italian immigrants) or their colonial heritage (like the Harkis in France or the Gurkha soldiers in Britain).

The purpose of this volume is to analyse the dynamics of (re)constructing categories and the role that trajectories, institutions and social actors play in creating and changing the boundaries of such belongings that define current migration realities in Europe and in China. By comparing experiences of current migration realities from Europe (France, Germany, Netherlands and the United Kingdom) and China, we want to illustrate how strategies of boundary making are commonly employed against varying historical backgrounds and in the context of different political and social-institutional settings. During the last two decades social, ethnic and national belonging has become more and more fluid, as it is increasingly perceived as not fixed and substantial but contested, negotiated and constructed. Against the traditional view on ethnic, national or socio-cultural groups as fixed and given entities on one extreme, there has developed a growing body of literature tending towards the other extreme of conceptualising belonging in a highly constructivist and relational manner (Yuval-Davis 2011). The chapters of this volume try to slip between the Scylla of substantialist ‘groupism’ (Brubaker 2004) and the Charybdis of constructivism without any preconditions by focussing on the historical development as well as on the institutional and actor-dependent embeddedness of categories and mechanisms of belonging. We appreciate the editorial assistance of Andrea Dasek and Xymena Wiezcorek.

The boundaries of belonging that will be analysed in the following chapters are mainly those defining and delimiting access to citizenship rights. These boundaries manifest themselves most visibly in national institutions, or the migration, citizenship and labour-market policies and their enforcing agencies. However, the categories of belonging ascribed to migrants by such institutions gain social meaning only in so far as they are reflected, debated and contested in public discourse. Through the question of ‘who are we and who are the others’ that underlies public debates on citizenship and migrant rights, answers are given on who may come, who may stay and under what conditions. The institutions regulating and categorising migration and the shaping of public discourse do not happen out of thin air. Historical antecedents take effect and are institutionalised in norms, categories and mechanisms that structure the perceptions and strategies of collective actors involved in this process. They employ a range of strategies to legitimise and realise their interests in making and shaping the institutions and discourse that in turn set the boundaries of belonging when defining migration.

This introductory chapter will proceed by drawing on some recent examples of how new migration dynamics in Europe and China and the creation of new boundaries of belonging are connected. It will then proceed to outline some theoretical considerations, putting in relation institutions, public discourse and actors, as they shape the boundaries and categories of belonging related to the new migration dynamics in Europe and in China. Finally a short introduction to the contributions in this volume will be in order.

1.1 Boundary making and the politics of belonging in the EU and China

From the end of the World War II until the 1980s, migration to Europe had, arguably, been a rather manageable and straightforward affair. European countries had received a limited amount of refugees and asylum seekers mostly of Eastern European origin. Larger scale immigration was predominantly the result of planned guest-worker programmes to alleviate labour shortages in the booming post-war industries. However, with the oil crises of the 1970s, the planned recruitment of migrant labour was stopped. The economic restructuring that followed these crises, today commonly referred to as globalisation, soon led to the emergence of new forms of migration that also affected European countries (Castles 2009). As a result of these developments and political integration since the mid-1980s, asylum and immigration policies have become a prominent policy area in the European Union (Huysmans 2006: 109). The following examples are supposed to illustrate how new boundaries of belonging were created in Europe in dealing with these new forms of migration.

1.1.1 What is a refugee? The Kosovo crisis and temporary protection regimes

In the wake of NATO’s intervention in the Kosovo crisis in 1999, refugees from Kosovo were admitted to Germany, to many other European states and to the USA, under provisions for the temporary protection of refugees. The concept of temporary protection was designed as an alternative mode of refugee accommodation to the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (Fitzpatrick 2000). It emerged as a political compromise from 1993, when over 500,000 Bosnians fled the civil war in their home country, and was in part promoted by the UNHCR as an alternative to traditional asylum procedures for fear that states might otherwise refuse to accept such large numbers of refugees. Within the EU the adoption of the temporary protection concept was also seen as a chance for a harmonisation of EU asylum policies and as a mode of ‘burden sharing’ between member states (Koser and Black 1999).

The status of a refugee under temporary protection provisions diverges significantly from that granted under the 1951 United Nations Convention. Traditionally, Western countries had adopted the Convention by granting asylum rights and permanent residence on an individual basis to persons recognised as refugees. Admittance and recognition as an asylum seeker usually put a refugee on the fast track towards permanent residence or even citizenship. Under the 1951 Convention, a refugee was a person, who ‘owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion’ (UNHCR 1951/1967) had fled from his or her country.

Contrary to the provisions of the Convention, under temporary protection regimes, refuge is granted not on an individual basis but to refugee populations en masse that are assumed to be under general threat from crisis situations, such as civil war. Such general situational threats do not necessarily entitle one to asylum under the 1951 Convention as they may not necessarily present a threat to an individual applying for asylum. However, admittance under temporary protection regimes, removes an individual’s right to apply for asylum or permanent residence in the host country. His or her temporary status will be revoked and the refugee expected to repatriate voluntarily when the situation in the corresponding country of origin is generally deemed to be ‘safe’, without an individual assessment of the situation needing to be made.

The application of temporary protection to Kosovar Albanian refugees in European countries like Germany can be seen as the outcome of a wider trend in the interpretation and application of refugee conventions and asylum laws in Western countries. As Koser and Black (1999) tell us, European states’ policies towards refugees have changed as the composition of refugee populations has changed over time. Until the 1970s, most refugees received in Western European states were of Eastern European origin, often fleeing Communist regimes. The first larger influx of non-European refugees came from Vietnam and took place largely controlled and regulated by quotas between receiving countries. Because of an ideological affinity to refugees from Communist countries in the West and a lack of labour power in some countries, most refugees at that time were received rather openly.

The situation changed in the 1980s as more people from outside Europe started individually and ‘spontaneously’ to claim asylum at European borders, which met with public and political concern. The movement of these people was seen to be irregular and outside the capacity of the state to control. It was feared that the increasing number of individuals applying for asylum were at the forefront of a much larger ‘wave’ of refugees from the global South. In this context, the notion was coined that most of these asylum seekers were actually economic migrants who were trying to exploit the asylum regime for their personal benefit. The asylum policies of European states increasingly turned to curbing the number of applicants by tightening the conditions and procedures under which refugees could be admitted (Koser and Black 1999).

In Germany, for example, the legal status of a refugee under temporary protection was defined in §32a, which was added to the Ausländergesetz (foreigner law, today §24 Aufenthaltsgesetz (residence law)) in 1993 after the constitutional right to asylum had been sharply restricted by a reform in 1992. Section 32a was part of the so-called Asylkompromiss (compromise on asylum) between the government and the opposition and referred specifically to war and civil war refugees and granted rights to groups of refugees according to the concept of temporary protection. About 15,000 refugees from the Kosovo were admitted to Germany under §32a (Koser 2000).

Preceding the Asylkompromiss was the politicisation of refugee politics from the mid-1980s by the centre-right coalition under Helmut Kohl. ‘The Christian parties introduced key terms into political debate, such as “over-foreignisation”, “flood of asylum seekers”, “limits of endurance” and “the boat is full”. Former interior minister of Bavaria, Edmund Stoiber (CSU) even spoke of “racialised society” (durchrasste Gesellschaft)’ (Faist 1994: 61). The public debate about asylum was thus cast in terms of cultural and ethnic belonging and legitimised the introduction of asylum policies that allowed for a quick repatriation of refugees.

The use of temporary protection regimes as the rule rather than the exception for the accommodation of refugees since the 1990s in many states of the European Union must be understood as an extension of that development. On the one hand, the temporary protection regimes do offer improved protection to large refugee populations as individual eligibility for refugee status according to the 1951 Convention need not to be proven under such a regime. On the other hand, the admission of groups of refugees from crisis areas and thereby the softening the requirements for refugee status of the 1951 convention, can be interpreted as a greater willingness on the side of Western states to grant, on humanitarian grounds, protection to those affected by civil war.

The introduction of temporary protection regimes significantly reduces the opportunity of refugees to apply for asylum on an individual basis and gain a more permanent status. While some commentators and researchers fear that with the introduction and increased use of temporary protection regimes, the determination of refugee status is more and more left to the discretion of individual states. ‘Temporary protection, with its overwhelming focus on repatriation, presents itself as an attractive option to prioritize migration control objectives while maintaining a credible commitment to humanitarianism’ (Fitzpatrick 2000: 291).

Therefore, while under temporary protection regimes the admission of refugees to host countries may follow less strict criteria than those given in the 1951 Convention on Refugees, it is those same criteria that entitle individuals to rights they could in principle claim for themselves under international law vis-à-vis states that had ratified the Convention. To admit whole groups of refugees under a temporary protection regime means at the same time to deprive them of that individual right. With the predominance of temporary protection regimes over asylum rights, the power to define who and under what conditions will be admitted as a refugee more and more rested within the discretion of political decisions of states. This may have decisive consequences for our understanding of who and what a refugee is, as the granting of refugee status becomes more of a ‘humanitarian’ gesture than an act required by legal obligations. Thus understood the status of refugee is degraded from being an individual that is bestowed with certain rights to being a petitioner of sorts. In Germany and in EU member states in general, the concept of temporary protection lost its significance with the growing weight of the Schengen Agreement (1985) and the Dublin II Regulation (EC 343/2003) by which immigration and asylum issues were increasingly regulated at the European level. This further complicated the entanglement of national, supranational and international mechanisms that define categories of belonging for refugees and asylum seekers.¹ The significance of the European level for defining categories and mechanisms of migration and belonging becomes very clear when looking at the Mediterranean border of the EU.

1.1.2 ‘Millions of Blacks’ invading the EU from the Mediterranean?

Irregular migration from African countries via the Mediterranean to the Southern countries of the European Union, that is, Spain, Italy and Greece, has become a major field of common EU policies and also an important topic in European political discourse. The topic was again strongly politicised as revolts and revolutions spread through many North African countries in 2011. On the eve of the revolution in Libya, Colonel Gaddafi tried to exploit the West’s fear of uncontrolled immigration and threatened that ‘millions of blacks’ would cross the Mediterranean to France and Italy, if his regime were to fall (Reuters March 7, 2011).

The purpose of this sec...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• 1   Introduction: New Dynamics of Migration and Belonging
• 2   Beyond Assimilation: Shifting Boundaries of Belonging in France
• 3   Changing Categories and the Bumpy Road to Recognition in Germany
• 4   ‘The Others’ in the Netherlands: Shifting Notions of Us and Them since World War II
• 5   Shifting Categories of Belonging in the United Kingdom Census: Changing Definitions of Migration, Labour-Market Access and Experience
• 6   Shifting Two-tiered Boundaries of Belonging: A Study of the Hukou System and Rural–Urban Migration in China
• 7   The New Generation of Migrant Workers in Labour Market in China
• 8   Migration and the Shifting Boundaries of Belonging
• Index