International Migration into Europe

From Subjects to Abjects

Gabriella Lazaridis

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781349678013
  9781137384959
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137384966
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Social Sciences

This book aims to decipher the complex web of structural, institutional and cultural contradictions which shape the inclusion-exclusion dialectic and the multifaceted grid within which the 'us' becomes the 'other' and the 'other' becomes the 'us'. It looks at how international migrants in Europe transform from legal subjects into legal abjects.

1

Irregular Migration and Undocumented Migrants – the abjects

A considerable proportion of today’s global migrants – around 200 million – do not have the status of a regular resident. In the 1990s, irregular migration grew rapidly and affected many countries in Europe. Amongst the general public and politicians, irregular immigration to Europe has been associated with a wide range of fears: that countries are losing control over their borders, that social systems are overstretched by unauthorised use, that indigenous workers are being pushed out of the labour market and that criminality is growing. Strategic borders have been strengthened with guards, watchtowers, fences and state-of-the-art technology – such as infrared scanning devices, motion detectors and video surveillance. However, although irregular migrants are still here and their presence is now a fact of life in all EU member states, according to Morehouse and Blomfield (2011) the annual flow of irregular migration into Europe has decreased since 2002, although this has been masked by localised surges. Nevertheless, current estimates of the size and scope of the population of irregular migrants are characterised as ‘guesstimates’ – numbers which assume a life of their own, and are not relevant to national policy-level decisions regarding migration. The reduction in numbers coincides with an increase in border protection politics and the onset of the economic crisis. The focus has now shifted from the southern Mediterranean (Spain and Italy) towards the land border between Greece and Turkey, especially with regard to migration from northern Africa and refugee inflows from Syria.

In June 2000, customs officers at the port of Dover in the south of England opened a refrigerated lorry to find the bodies of 58 Chinese people who had attempted to enter the UK. In April 2009, 120 people were stranded in the Mediterranean on the Turkish ship Pinar E, which had retrieved them after the small inflatable boats in which they had been travelling had sunk. The governments of Italy and Malta argued for four days about which country had the responsibility for these 120 people. Desperate and vulnerable people who take enormous risks to migrate to Europe – either in rickety boats or concealed in the containers of articulated lorries – are familiar as images of irregular migrants portrayed in the media. On 11 April 2011, The Economist Online carried an article entitled ‘The next European crisis: boat people’. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), more than 20,000 boat people landed on the Italian island of Lampedusa that year, almost all of them from Tunisia. More than 800 arrived in Malta, mostly from Libya. On 7 April 2009, Spiegel Online International published an article entitled ‘Death on the Mediterranean’, referring to the hundreds of people who died the previous week when a boat carrying migrants capsized off the coast of Libya. Such incidents of attempts to smuggle migrants into Europe exemplify the human dimension of debates about irregular migration. They impress on public opinion the need for a coordinated European strategy to crack down on trafficking networks, opening up the potential for greater cooperation with other European countries on the issue of illegal migration. They also lend credence to the idea that Europe is invaded by migrants, despite the fact that the actual numbers of inflows have decreased during the last few years and that irregular migration is a problem of border control. In ongoing academic and political debates, the presence of the irregular migrant population in Europe is usually spoken of in terms of whether or not states have lost control on immigration (e.g. Cornelius et al. 2004).

The rise of the concept of ‘illegal migration’ dates back to 1920s, 1930s and 1940s; it was subsequently applied occasionally during the 1970s, before becoming widely used from the late 1980s, and especially from the 1990s onwards (Düvell 2006). Irregular migration sometimes refers to the undocumented, the unauthorised, the sans papiers, clandestinos or illegal migrants (all of which have different connotations in policy debates); it ranges from voluntary individual movement to trafficking and bonded labour (see Hugo 2005: 25). According to Castles and Miller (2009:135), this growth ‘is linked to the unwillingness of governments to effectively manage migration and to the desire of employers for easily available and exploitable workers’. These terms have shortcomings; for example, the term ‘illegal migration’, despite its widespread usage, can be seen as having pejorative connotations, as it criminalises migrants that may actually have entered a country legally but have fallen foul of immigration laws, sometimes through no fault of their own. The term ‘undocumented’ is also inaccurate, as most people described this way do have documents but these have either expired, or are not the ‘right’ documents (Boswell and Geddes 2011: 128).

Ideas about what is legal and what is not are often politically volatile and confusing. Illegal migration is often taken to refer to migrants who are not allowed to migrate. For most of these people, there are no alternative ways to travel other than to go to a smuggler – either because they cannot enter Europe, or because they cannot leave their own country. If migrants cannot find a legal way to enter a country, smugglers will help them to find alternative ways. Also, the EU member states have not reached a common agreement with regard to the definition of irregular migrants. Some argue that migrants who carry government-issued documents that protect them from removal for a period of time (and are registered by local authorities and may be entitled to benefits, but have no legal residence) should be treated as irregular migrants. The 2008 EU Returns Directive defines as irregular migrants those who do not fulfil, or no longer fulfil, the conditions of entry as set out in Article 5 of the Schengen Borders Code.

There are eight principal ways in which people become irregular migrants:

•illegal entry;

•entry using false documents;

•entry using legal documents but providing false information in those documents;

•overstaying a visa-free travel period or temporary residence permit;

•loss of status because of non-renewal of a permit, for failing to meet residence requirements or breaching conditions of residence;

•being born into irregularity;

•absconding during the asylum procedure, or failing to leave a host country after a negative decision;

•a state’s failure to enforce a return decision for legal or practical reasons.

In addition to these eight ways, there are also the over-stayers – those whose regularisation status has expired, so that they are in limbo, waiting for their papers to be processed; those who hold multiple jobs but do not declare them; or those who accept to work in the informal sector in order to secure a job.

Migrants have various levels of agency (except perhaps those who are trafficked) and can decide, within limits, if, how, when and where to go. Hence, it is individual migrants who are agents in migration processes, and who migrate across borders and into labour markets while disobeying legal requirements. On the other hand, it is also undeniable that states, in the course of exercising sovereignty over their territory and labour markets, determine what is regular and what is not. Therefore, politics and laws (national and supranational) set the conditions under which people can cross borders and can stay and work in a country other than that of their nationality. ‘It was only once states issued legislations that declared unwanted immigration illegal and punishable, and introduced technologies, administrations and enforcement procedures to support this legislation, that previously regular migration finally became irregular. Thus, irregular migration is not an independent social phenomenon but exists in relation to state policies and is a social, political and legal construction’ (Düvell 2011: 275).

In most countries, irregular immigration – entry, residence and/or employment – is considered a violation of administrative regulations and leads to detention and removal (The Netherlands, Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia). In others, however, irregular migration, or certain aspects of irregularity are criminal offences and penalised with fines (Austria), imprisonment (UK, Italy) or both (France). These are matters such as arrival without an ID, use of false papers (e.g. a borrowed driving licence), working without permission or on borrowed papers, non-cooperation in removal (the UK), or irregular residence (Italy). Also, facilitation of entry or stay and, increasingly, the employment of irregular immigrants are usually considered administrative violations or criminal offences, and thus the facilitator or employer – but not the immigrant – is penalised. On the other hand, offences that result in a large fine or significant prison sentence lead to one’s immigration status being withdrawn and subsequent deportation or expulsion (e.g. the UK, Germany and Poland).

In Austria and Germany, after serious offences, this even applies to persons born in the country who are considered immigrants due to the status of their parents. Behind these varied policies lie highly unstable and contradictory public and governmental attitudes to irregular migration itself. For many Europeans, the desperate conditions that people with irregular migration status are prepared to tolerate in order to arrive or remain in Europe are proof of the pressing need of these migrants for a new country of residence. If these migrants are not always refugees per se, they are clearly people driven from their homes by forces such as poverty and human rights violations that they are helpless to stem. Yet, many do not share this sympathetic view. For some, migrants without regular status pursue a quest for economic betterment at the cost of denying opportunities to refugees. By filing and pursuing frivolous asylum claims, irregular migrants overload refugee determination procedures in European countries, and thereby bring the institution of asylum into disrepute. The existence of both these perspectives on irregular migration demonstrates how the issue of irregular migration is currently entangled with that of asylum in Europe.

The attempt to disentangle these concerns is likely to have important implications for the way we view both asylum and immigration policy. Yet, for all its contemporary salience, irregular migration remains a very poorly understood phenomenon. In the midst of the cacophony of recent debates on asylum across Europe, there exists an important silence: the voices of migrants with irregular status themselves are rarely heard. This silence is rarely questioned, because migrants with irregular status are usually in no position to give voice to their treatment and experiences. European states ritually condemn irregular migration and, from time to time, enact measures to combat it. But they have been extremely reluctant to examine closely the conditions faced by status-less migrants within their territory.

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and other groups that assist and advocate for refugees and immigrants also have little incentive to break the silence. These organisations usually have their hands full responding to regular migrants and those, such as asylum seekers, at risk of being removed from the state. While they are often aware of the needs of irregular migrants, they rightly worry that involvement with them (or advocacy on their behalf) might tarnish the causes of their main constituency: regular migrants, asylum seekers or refugees.

The data on human smuggling is scarce, as most is collected by law enforcement agencies. Salt and Stain (1997) have conceptualised human smuggling as a global business with licit and illicit sides. They divided the process into three states: mobilisation, en route and insertion. In the mobilisation state, a contract is made between migrants and smugglers and the preparations are put in place. In the transit phase, the actual movement takes place, and documents, transport and shelter are arranged. In the entry phase, migrants need information on work opportunities and shelter. In some cases, the migrants have already established a network of friends and relatives in the host country.

This model has been criticised for presenting the smuggling business as a closed circuit while, in reality, in order to reach their final destination migrants may need several smugglers who are not all connected with each other. The process does not always evolve in the linear fashion assumed by the model. Moreover, the migrant in the model is seen as a passive actor, a commodity, who simply follows the smuggler; in reality, migrants can have preferences for specific smugglers, or arrange certain parts of the journey themselves, or change destination en route. An important issue here is the development of trust between migrant and smuggler. The migrant pays large sums of money to come to Europe, and room for negotiation is usually limited (see Chapter 5, on trafficking).

Migrants who have irregular immigration status, whatever they do they will always be perceived as illegal: thus, ‘irregularity begets irregularity’ (Erdemir and Vasta 2007). This is the case in the labour market where, if you are an irregular migrant, your work is always perceived as illegal even if you are paying national insurance. If regularised (see Chapter 7, on regularisation), people could fall back into illegality. Some Eastern European women who work in southern Europe’s care sector (see Chapter 4, on gender and migration in this book), may be regularised but still work in the twilight zone – accepting poor work conditions; low pay for many hours of work; and experiencing deskilling due to lack of jobs, or difficulties encountered in the processes associated with the recognition of qualifications. But how do people engage with and accommodate irregularity? The answer is with extreme fluidity and flexibility. Flexible and fluid work strategies have become even more prominent in the context of the current economic crisis in Europe. The different political and socio-economic contexts within Europe allow for different forms and degrees of regularity–irregularity. Those regularised in Greece, for example, operate within what Erdemir and Vasta (2007: 306) call irregular formality; that is, the attempt to regularise themselves within the constraints of the local labour market, which requires flexibility and informalisation, consequently makes it impossible to ‘arrange immigration status and work life through legal means’ (ibid.). As discussed in Chapter 4, on gender and migration, such irregular migrant workers experience a trampoline effect; in the case of migrant women, they can move from employment as maids or nannies to unemployment, back to employment as prostitutes, back to unemployment, and so on. People also move from regularity to irregularity in terms of the type of job they do. For instance, if regularised, they can move from a job in the formal sector to take up a job in the informal sector, or hold a job in the formal sector for part of any specific day of the week and a job in the informal sector for another part of the same day, thus ensuring the right to live a reasonable life. Boundaries between regularity and irregularity are thus fluid and permeable. In today’s economic crisis, such behaviour is not regarded amongst migrants as ‘deviant’ but, rather, as ‘a normal survival strategy’.

Since the fall of the Iron curtain in the late 1980s, we have also the arrival, in member states of the European Union, of thousands of unaccompanied minors from ‘third countries’ seeking a new life. The majority has fled from wars, conflicts or other difficult living conditions, and some have even lost family members along the way. These are children aged under 18 seeking refuge in Europe without accompanying papers and without accompanying legal guardians. The arrival of unaccompanied minors from third countries is not a temporary phenomenon; rather, it a long-term feature of migratory flows to the EU. In 2011, there were 12,225 asylum applications by unaccompanied minors across the EU27, a number comparable with previous years and unlikely to change in the years to come. A much greater overall number of unaccompanied children are entering Europe by means of irregular migration channels, as estimates provided by some member states suggest. Italy provided data, which indicated that there were 5,959 unaccompanied minors on Italian territory on 31 December 2011; France provided an estimate of 6,000 unaccompanied minors on its territory; in Spain, the aggregated figure for the period 2008 to 2011 was over 5,500; Belgium estimates the number as 4,000.

The story of A.R., aged 17 years, from Afghanistan

While fleeing from Afghanistan and in search of safety and dignity, A.R. experienced detention and deportation on countless occasions. After leaving Afghanistan, he lived together with his parents and his younger siblings in Pakistan until 2007. He then travelled to Turkey via Iran. He was arrested near the Turkish border town of Van, detained in Ankara for two months, and then deported to Kabul. From Afghanistan he fled again, crossing Iran and Turkey, this time reaching as far as Greece, where he was detained yet again. After his release from detention, he continued his journey to Albania, where he was detained in Tirana for one month. Kosovo was his next stop, where he spent two days in prison. Later, while in Serbia, he was put into an orphanage for three months together with Serbian children and adolescents. A.R. was still striving to reach Europe, a place that he identified as safe, and where he thought he would receive protect...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction and Theoretical Context
• 1  Irregular Migration and Undocumented Migrants the Abjects
• 2  Documented Migrants: Skilled Migration the Injects
• 3  From Undocumented to Documented: Migration and Self-employment
• 4  Migrant Women: Maids, Nannies and Nurses, and the Ban on the Headscarf
• 5  Human Trafficking and Smuggling: The Production of Ultimate Abjects
• 6  The Securitisation of Migration
• 7  Migration Regime/s, the Multiculturalism Question and Regularisation Policies in Europe
• 8  The Challenges of Migration for EU Citizenship: From Abjects and Ejects to Subjects?
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index