Governing International Labour Migration

Current Issues, Challenges and Dilemmas

Christina Gabriel, Hélène Pellerin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781134080670
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Labour & Industrial Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book offers a critical examination of the way in which the nature and governance of international labour migration is changing within a globalizing environment.

It examines how labour mobility and the governance of labour migration are changing by exploring the links between political economy and differentiated forms of labour migration. Additionally, it considers the effects of new social models of inclusion and exclusion on labour migration. Therefore, the book troubles the conventional dichotomies and categorizations – permanent vs. temporary; skilled vs. unskilled; legal vs. illegal -- that have informed migration studies and regulatory frameworks. Theoretically, this volume contributes to an ongoing project of reframing the study of migration within politics and international relations.

Bringing together an interdisciplinary group of scholars, drawing on examples from the European Union, North America and Asia, Governing International Labour Migration will be of interest to students and scholars of migration studies, IPE, international relations, and economics.

Part I

Regulating labour migration

1 Managing migration and citizenship in Europe

Towards an overarching framework

Eleonore Kofman

Introduction

Managing migration, managing integration, managing diversity: these are all terms increasingly bound together, the first often being proposed as the condition of the latter two. Thus managing migration, as I shall argue, is not just about dealing with each form of migration separately, but about drawing together different forms of migration and stages of settlement within an overarching framework. Coupling immigration control and integration is not recent but has a lengthy history; it became the cornerstone of British immigration policy under the Labour government in the late 1960s (Schuster and Solomos 2002), though in reality, these two strands remained fairly distinct in policy terms until recently (Statham 2003). In many other European states, the guest worker dimension meant that integration was not a prime consideration for migrants who would supposedly return home. In other cases, as in France, the myth and facility of assimilation prevailed until it was disrupted by demands for recognition and rights in the 1980s. Until recently, most European societies blissfully considered themselves societies of non-immigration despite their immigrant pasts.¹ Interestingly, the European Committee on Migration (2002: 9, cited in Salt et al. 2004) sets out the level of foreign population at which a society ‘can be thought of as a country of immigration’.

However, by the beginning of this decade, the expansion of labour migration, legal and clandestine, and growing numbers of asylum seekers led both European organizations and nation-states to shift, to varying degrees, towards discourses and practices of managed migration. And the Europeanization of migratory policies has certainly pushed nation-states into at least considering more utilitarian policies. The reasons for adopting the idea, the rhetoric and practices of managed migration are varied. They include the need to pull together a multiplicity of statuses and agents involved in the migratory processes and to demonstrate the ability to exert control in a context of uncertainty and risk produced by globalizing processes. Being able to manage gives the idea of control by the nation-state and of its capacity to measure benefits against costs. And as some writers have suggested (Joppke 2004; Statham 2004), opening up economic routes has resulted in a decrease in official support for multiculturalism in response to perceived hostility to immigration.

In the first section, I examine the emergence of managed migratory strategies from what could be called a third way perspective on immigration, i.e. between zero and mass immigration (Crawley 2003), to its adoption as a policy framework by the European Commission and some nation-states. In the second section, I turn to the management of diversity and integration in the context of attacks against multiculturalism and the shift to neo-assimilationism in many states. Making claims against European states necessitates an immigration contract extending from entry to citizenship and including even those who wish to live in the country. As Morris (2004: 22) notes, the route to the acquisition of citizenship for those who are eligible has become more demanding and potentially provides yet another instrument for the supervision of immigrant communities. I argue that the increasingly close connection between the old couple of immigration and integration has led to the construction of an overarching framework driven by a combination of utility and disruption.

The emergence of managed migratory regimes

Originally intended as an argument for the expansion of labour migration (Spencer 1994, 2003), managed migration policies were seen as providing a middle way between highly restrictionist and expansive approaches. In the early 1990s, however, legal labour migration had not yet expanded, although irregular migration was on the increase, especially in Southern Europe. Geopolitical conflicts on Europe's borders and in nearby regions subsequently brought an influx of asylum seekers for which states were unprepared. It represented the beginnings of an increasing diversification of immigration to the European Union in terms of country of origin, entry status, educational levels and skills.

The outcome was a deepening civic stratification, whereby rights are granted differentially with a view to enabling or dissuading people from settling and becoming citizens (Morris 2001; Kofman 2002). In particular, there was a widening differentiation in entitlements between denizens, defined as long-term residents, temporary permit holders, those waiting for a decision about their status and the undocumented. Temporary permits became more common and were utilized for asylum seekers and beneficiaries of regularization programmes as in Mediterranean countries and, to a lesser extent, France. A temporary status is usually accompanied by limited access to economic, social and civil rights. Being on a temporary permit may mean that the residence is conditional: the migrant is placed in a probationary status subject to a willingness to assimilate and accept a common culture, as will be discussed more fully in the next section. Finally and crucially, it may be used to hinder or block access to citizenship, which generally requires continuity of residence. This reinforces the sense of the immigrant as a guest dependent on the conditional hospitality of the host (Rosello 2001). In relation to hospitality, a common metaphor is the country as a home (Home Office 2001; Firth 2005) but, in the case of the migrant with a temporary status, this is no home. It approximates more to a boarding house with vacancies. For asylum seekers, the initial response was to reinforce measures of deterrence by withdrawing them from normal benefit regimes (UK) and the right to work (France). Fine distinctions within categories of refugees were also made in order to reduce those entitled to full protection, such as the Geneva Convention, and push larger numbers into temporary and less secure statuses with lesser accompanying rights.

By the beginning of the present decade, a series of developments was pushing policy discourses and practices towards a broader and more rational view of migration, which finally challenged the myth of zero migration and acknowledged the reality of labour migration. First, European harmonization post the Amsterdam Treaty in 1997 led the European Commission to take a more active role in pushing for a coordinated approach. Second, labour shortages emerged in many skilled and less skilled sectors so that, in certain states, such as the UK and Germany, work permits were more easily granted, and in the former, large-scale recruitment of skilled labour (information technology, health) was encouraged. Third, the volume of irregular migration was such that many states and international organizations concluded that legal channels had to be opened up. Fourth, the tensions and contradictions between and within different forms of migration were becoming more apparent (Sciortino 2000; Kofman 2002). Finally, the dismantling of border controls in the Schengen area led to accrued internal controls undertaken by a variety of administrative and welfare agencies and police, and therefore requiring internal management of immigrant labour (Jordan et al. 2003: 197). Hence, for all these reasons, it was considered by both the EU and many European states that managed migration would help to resolve demographic and labour shortfalls and confirm a more modern image of Europe attuned to and able to benefit from globalization. Immigration policies need to be understood within broader modernizing projects² in which a more dynamic Europe becomes a key player and competitor in the processes of globalization.

Initial proposals for managed migration stemmed from the Council of Europe (CEC) (Salt et al. 2004) in 1998. The Council (CEC 2002) called for a comprehensive and integrated package encompassing different kinds of migration (labour and humanitarian) rather than a series of disarticulated measures. Its objective was to connect not just different policies but also the different sets of institutions, agents and individuals. It argued that arthritic notions of immigrations based on past ideas to deal with settlement migration continue to dominate thinking about the management of migration but that the concept of permanent migration is not clear, indeed may never have been so (CEC 2002: 11). The Council concluded that the dual policy model based on closure and integration has proved to be inadequate in dealing with the diversity of migratory situations and that a management strategy must take into account the different types of individual migrants as well as the ‘range of institutional actors with a vested interest in promoting movement’. The weakness of excessive emphasis on control strategies and the treatment of labour as nothing but a commodity is that it overlooks accompanying and other forms of migration, such as family and humanitarian flows. A management strategy to be developed by all countries and involving a wide range of actors, including social partners, should be based on four principles: orderliness, protection, integration and cooperation (internally and internationally).

The EU has adopted a more utilitarian tone in its rejection of the myth of zero migration, arguing the need to adopt a more rational and flexible approach to shortages of labour and likely population shortfalls forecast by the UN Demographic Report. Legal economic immigration is seen in positive terms contributing to labour supply and helping with bottlenecks, and thus facilitating the goals of the Lisbon strategy. This was agreed in March 2000 in order to make the European Union the ‘most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion’ (European Commission 2003: 3). However, progress since the Tampere conference in 1999 towards furthering coordinated policies has been more forthcoming in the fields of asylum, illegal migrants and border controls than far more expansive economic migration or integration. Thus, closure has dominated over protection or extension of rights. More recently, the European Commission (2005: 4) published a consultative Green Paper On an EU Approach to Managing Economic Migration, which sought to relaunch debate on admitting economic migrants within a common policy which would nevertheless not ‘affect the right of Member States to determine volumes of admission of third country nationals coming from third countries to their territory in order to seek work’. In the face of hostility to these proposals, the Commission published proposals for a European Blue Card for the highly skilled only (23 October 2007).

Major recipient states with established migrant populations and labour shortages, such as Germany and the UK,³ have looked to traditional societies of immigration for models of how they have managed migration. Australia (Inglis 2004) has probably pushed this economic approach furthest, setting targets and quotas for specific forms of migration, including that of refugees, and taking into account economic considerations in family migration. Managed migration policies have been most enthusiastically adopted by the UK, seeing itself placed within a globalized and competitive system. Barbara Roche (2000), the then Immigration Minister, initiated the theme of a global world that had potentially huge economic benefits for the UK, in which international migration was a central feature, and emphasizing that Britain had always been a nation of migrants. The acceptance of immigration and the need to adopt a managed migration approach were officially enshrined in the introduction to the UK White Paper (Home Office 2001) by the Home Secretary, David Blunkett,

Migration is an inevitable reality of the modern world and it brings substantial benefits. But to ensure that we sustain the positive benefits of migration to our social well-bring and economic prosperity, we need to manage it properly . . . If managed properly, migration can bring considerable benefits to the UK, including improvements in economic growth and productivity, as well as cultural enrichment and diversity.

The White Paper defines the meaning of managed migration as:

having an orderly, organised and enforceable system of entry. It also means managing post-entry and inclusion in the economy and society, helping migrants to find their feet, and enabling members of the existing population to welcome them in their communities.

Home Office (2001: para. 1.3)

The modern migration system is characterized as one which successfully harnesses the entrepreneurship and energy of prospective migrants. The acknowledged corollary of the pursuit of the national economic interest is the closure of other possible reasons for and routes of entry, notably for undocumented migrants and asylum seekers requiring tighter control and deterrence (Morris 2004: 3). The latter, in particular, have been recast as superfluous to the needs of the modern capitalist global economy (Flynn 2003), although it is still desirable to demonstrate commitment to obligations to those genuinely fleeing persecution and conflict, which is marked in bold in Controlling Our Borders (Home Office 2005). A demonstration of tolerance (in the words of Tony Blair's preface to it) is part of British values which migrants must subscribe to.

As each form of migration has thrown up specific problems to be resolved by managing its flow and composition, the process of management articulates the different forms of migration within an overarching system within which a distinction is made between useful exploitable human capital and human byproducts of global crises, who are accepted grudgingly as a result of an earlier recognition of universal human rights. It is not surprising that a renegotiation of asylum within international conventions and obligations of European states has been most forcefully expounded by the British. And with higher levels of migration, there is accrued pressure to control diversity resulting from immigration. In the British case, Joppke (2004) argues that, in a similar vein to changes in Australia at the end of the 1980s, economic migration could only be expanded at the expense of asylum and a reduction in multiculturalism. Increased levels of immigration would only be tolerated if the populace saw that ‘migration is being controlled and managed, that it is beneficial economically and that they are assured that migrants have a sense of ‘‘belonging and identity’’’ (Home Office 2001).

Attempts to modernize immigration policies while managing diversity have made more evident a series of contradictions and tensions in European immigration and settlement policies. They emerge from the clash of different forms of migration and principles; these may focus on globalizing market forces and continuing closure of territorial politics (labour migration), universal principles versus the preservation of national identity (family migration), and humanitarian principles and national sovereignty (asylum). They play themselves out differently in each form of migration. Their resolution on the part of the state has been through classification, differentiation, selection and stratification, which seek to filter, as far as possible, welcome from unwelcome strangers (Schuster 2003). Communitarian considerations and national interests are clearly prevailing in the system of selection and stratified rights.

Labour migration

In European states where shortages of skilled labour⁴ have been most severe, such as Germany and the UK, the highly skilled have been welcomed and their route to citizenship facilitated. In announcing the expansion of the highly skilled route on 31 October 2003, Beverly Hughes, the Home Office Minister, stated:

Globalisation has meant that individuals are increasingly mobile – many working in other countries for a few years before returning home. The Government welcomes those who come over to the UK through proper channels who can play a full and productive part in our economy and society. We are committed to expanding schemes which enable us to attract unique talent to the UK and plug skills gaps in the labour market, while ensuring that we continue to take firm action against those who break the immigration rules.

Home Office (2003)

Migration is seen to be driven by globalization which, though not new, has increased in scale (Home Office 2005). Like other developed states, the UK competes for the skilled. Coupling globalization with the skilled, of course defined in certain ways to privilege the scientific, financial and managerial sectors and more recently health, tends to marginalize the less skilled who, in contrast, are deemed to compete with internal labour forces and pose pressures on welfare expenditure. Hence, the key divide, which the EC effectively leaves up to states to decide, is that between the skilled and the lesser skilled. In Northern states, the politicization of immigration has ensured that the entry and rights of less skilled migration are severely limited. This is most clearly seen in the programme for a five-tier points-based system in the UK which enables the highly skilled (tier 1) and the skilled (tier 2) to benefit from eventual settlement unlike the highly limited route for the less skilled (tier 3) who are restricted to a one-year permit without the right to bring their family or to settle (Home Office 2006).

In general, the value of less skilled labour is played down or denied, especially that of household labour (cleaning and care), largely supplied by female migrants (Kofman et al. 2005). Traditionally, migrant women filled this labour niche, but it was more as a result of migrating rather than filling a demand for labour recognized by immigration policy. The invisibility of care as an area of shortage in the Northern regime reflects the failure, theoretically and in policy terms, to acknowledge the role of social reproduction and its fragmentation across numerous sites (household, private commercial, associational and state). Theoretically, there has been a revival of interest in the globalization of care and social reproduction, primarily in the growth of household labour (Hochschild 2000; Hill Maher 2004) and the role that immigration policies play in shaping transfers of care labour from the South to the North (Kofman 2007; Misra et al. 2006). In policy terms, the current shortage has led to interest in social care (defined broadly from the skilled such as social workers to the less skilled such as care assistants in residential homes ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part I Regulating labour migration
• Part II Constructing Categories of Migrant Labour
• Part III Regional Dynamics
• Bibliography
• Index