International Migration and Security

Opportunities and Challenges

Elspeth Guild, Joanne van Selm, Elspeth Guild, JOANNE VAN SELM, Joanne van Selm

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• Print ISBN:
  9780415326544
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134339532
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Every day newspapers in the Western world carry articles about illegal immigrants, asylum seekers and other migrants. The focus of these articles varies greatly from migrants as a threat to one or another important social or societal interest, to migrants as an important asset to those same interests. The tone is most often emotional - whichever way the focus goes. The overall impact is to confuse: is migration good or bad? In this book Guild and van Selm seek to investigate these value assessments regarding migrants in Europe, the USA, Canada and Australia. While looking at issues such as security, human rights, legal systems, identity, racism, welfare, health and labour, the authors also respond to critics of immigration.

Part I
Political and Legal Security

1 Immigration and Regional Security

Joanne van Selm

Immigration is often described as one of globalization’s discontents.¹ However, when it comes to the security-sphere, collaborating countries in fact often come to view some forms of migration with contentment. Migration as a discontent throws up images of massive movements of mostly poor people, chiefly in the direction of rich states. Certainly, some of this migration can cause nothing but discontentment: trafficking, exploitation and modern day slavery are outcomes to some migrations, which need to be tackled head on for the sake of the victims involved.²

Often overlooked in the face of tragedies such as those of women trafficked into prostitution or refugees forcibly expelled from their homelands is the fact that much of the migration documented by such bodies as the International Organization for Migration and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is in fact the migration of the reasonably well-off (or at least not the poorest in their country of origin) to states which might be richer than their own, but often within their region rather than on the other side of the globe.³ The pictures of smuggled migrants entering Europe, Australia and the US packed alongside tomatoes in trucks, or crushed on to leaking, near unseaworthy vessels, are powerful images of only a small number of all migrants. Even the images we see of refugees around the world represent but some 13 per cent of the world’s migrants. With the majority of migrations taking place within geo-political regions, and the majority being of a voluntary nature, the contentment outweighs the discontentment with migration’s impact on the world numerically if not in visibility.

How migration relates to security issues is a many sided subject. In the build up to both wars in Iraq (in 1991 and 2003) states around the world became engaged in the evacuation of their nationals – migrants to the oil-rich Gulf States, either (chiefly from developed countries) working on the oil fields and in related industries or (chiefly from developing countries) working to service the lives of those making significant income from oil, as maids, nannies or working in the lower-paid ends of oil and petroleum production. The second war in Iraq in particular saw attention in the US drawn to the significant number of immigrants who were seeking, but had not yet received, citizenship through armed service in the US military.⁴ Harking back to centuries gone by in Europe, the US fighting forces drew on the strength and willingness of non-nationals prepared to fight for the American cause (and their own cause of a dangerous, if speedy, route to citizenship).

In this chapter, however, we are chiefly concerned with how immigration relates to some broader policy ideals of states engaged in cementing their regional peace and security. In the aftermath of two World Wars, as European states started to engage in the process that would lead to the European Union, the founders of the process stated in the Treaty of Rome that four freedoms should be achieved – one of which was freedom of movement between the member states for workers. Intra-European Union state migration, a goal that has led also to such phenomena as EU citizenship, is a part of the European integration project that can demonstrate that these once enemy nations are now truly in accord. The integration project, in the context of economic and political liberalism and of wider-spread globalization, focuses on the removal of borders, and the removal of any form of ‘problem’ at those borders, in a secure, peaceful and multinational space. Further discussion of this issue in the European, North American and Asian contexts will form the first section of this chapter.

While movement across the EU’s internal borders has become easier for those wielding the common red passport, the states which promote this free movement have embarked on a path which is intended to lead them to a common policy for dealing with all those people who would wish to enter the Union from outside, and may wish to remain in this now peaceful region of the world. The development of a common asylum and immigration policy as a tool both for setting out an integrated identity of the policy-collaborating states, and as a way of clearly defining the boundaries between ‘them and us’ is the second relationship between migration and regional security with which this chapter will engage in the settings of Europe and North America.

Finally, this chapter will address the issue of state engagements in conflicts where the exodus of refugees is perceived as having an impact on regional peace and security. Refugees, and those ‘irregular’ migrants who, whether because there are no other legitimate channels for migration or entry open to them, or out of any personal desire to ‘play’ the system, present themselves as in need of asylum when they are not in such need, are often seen as a challenge to the notion of security which has developed within the peaceful space which is the EU. In the European Union, one strand of the emerging common asylum system is an approach to the temporary protection of those people displaced by conflict and seeking safety in the EU, or evacuated to the EU member states for humanitarian reasons. This was the first decision made in the EU, prompted by the 1990s conflicts in the Balkans and the European reception of displaced persons in that context. Regional approach to the issue of refugee protection in North America and Africa are also assessed.

This chapter will look at three forms of migration:

• Migration between countries in a region which is seeking integration for political and/or economic security purposes;
• The coordination of policies on and approaches to immigration of people coming from outside that region – linked to the goal of free movement for people within the region; and
• The arrival of refugees and asylum seekers from conflict-type situations, which impacts the states involved in receiving them, for wider security reasons.

Attention will be paid to the ways in which these forms of migration are perceived of as strengthening or weakening regional security. In each case, migration is generally viewed differently – as a benefit to, or as a concern for, regional security. The question is why a single phenomenon – the movement of people across geo-political frontiers – can be viewed in so many different ways, dependent on who is moving, and to where.

Common to all three areas of investigation in this chapter is the focus on the border, and the desire to see the impact of any border on activities that are viewed as positive (including some forms of migration) minimized. As the European Commission has put it, in looking at the border issues in a newly enlarged European Union: ‘… new opportunities brought by enlargement will be accompanied by new challenges: … efficient and secure border management will be essential both to protect our shared borders and to facilitate legitimate trade and passage’.⁵ In seeking freedom of movement within the EU, the member states are essentially seeking a borderless region. Their problem arises in our second locus of attention in this chapter – that the external border to the collection of states as a whole seems to need strengthening as a result of the absence of internal borders. Yet, the governments need to make common policies, not only because they are integrating politically, but also because from a practical perspective they do not want friction in movement at any border – within the Union or on entering the Union. At the border, people should have the right documents: if there is friction anywhere, it should, if policy-makers successfully make policies to deal with realities, be at embassies, where visas are issued. However, refugees (people without protection in a world of states) as well as people seeking to abuse or take advantage of (dependent on your perspective) a weak migration regime through irregular movement, arrive without documents at borders. The policy-maker’s usual intent is to let the needy and the needed enter, while judiciously upholding a system which is regulated and not a chaotic free-for-all.

Intra-regional Migration

Many pro-EU politicians and commentators view intra-EU migration as something that should happen, and that will benefit and increase integration, forge a European identity, and increase economic prosperity. Yet, some see the migration of EU citizens as a threat, when they perceive job ‘stealing’ taking place, or migration for primarily tax and social security purposes. Likewise, the US is seeing increasing debate on the need to legalize or regularize more of the immigration from Mexico, while strengthening border controls facing new immigrants, and Canada is entering a debate on how strong the need is to maintain the border between itself and the US. The process of discussion in North America resembles that which has taken place in the EU, for example, with a focus not only on the people involved in movement, but on the symbols of their movement including the safety of trucks they are driving, and the question of tax and health benefits. These same impulses are not (yet) present in Asia and Africa, although there are some comparable signals to be seen.

The Treaty of Rome in 1957 first set out the goal of freedom of movement for workers between the new club of states known as the European Economic Community. Italy was keen to see family unity made possible for its emigrants in the other member states – and Germany and other northern states were keen to allow easy access for workers from the south. The continent of Europe, devastated by the Second World War, was largely reconstructed by migrant workers. These included Italians who found work in other European states and sent back money to their homeland, which in turn played a part in its reconstruction. The EEC was an economic forum: and workers were a factor of production. However, workers are also people – and have families, and make decisions about where to live (and work) based on an enormous range of very subjective factors, as well as the simple rationale of whether or not there is a good enough paying job and a nice enough life to be had. Over the years, a number of resolutions, measures and programmes have been agreed upon by the member states of the EEC. These agreements have impacted the rights, and entitlements of the citizens of one of those states who moved to another state for work, or to join immediate family members. Gradually the project of free movement for the people who work developed into what might have been the core of the idea of a united Europe in the minds of early integrationists. Citizens of the member states became citizens of the European Union with the Maastricht Treaty in 1992.

By 1997, five years after real residency rights accompanied by political rights across the Union became enshrined in the Maastricht Treaty, a Commission led by Simone Veil reported that only some 5.5 million people out of a total EU population nearing 350 million people had actually taken up these opportunities. That is 1.6 per cent of the EU’s citizens – a figure well below the percentage of people anywhere in the world who have migrated, the vast majority in the absence of any agreements between their country of origin and destination state, or of any rights and entitlements after moving. The vast majority of the few people who had migrated within the EU were either students or senior citizens. The latter were frequently seeking a place in the sun, at least for parts of the year. Students, meanwhile, had been encouraged to move between EU states to study for at least a few months and often for a full year, under the Erasmus and later Socrates schemes. While initially it was mainly people who were anyway studying for a language degree who participated in these programmes. By the mid-1990s, however, students had started to take up the opportunity of a ‘year abroad’ regardless of their field of study: and the dream of an emerging European identity, at least among this relative elite was starting to become a reality. (A reality which has even become the subject matter of popular independent films such as L’Auberge Espagnol in 2003:⁶ the experience is mainstream enough for filmmakers to believe that enough people will recognize it to bring a paying audience to the cinemas.) Whether consciously or not, students’ participation in these exchange programmes is forging a new form of European identity, or at least understanding between some citizens of the EU’s member states.⁷ Likewise, the gradual increase in professional mobility, with people working in one EU member state while officially residing in their member state of origin appears to be increasing, as does labour mobility, with construction workers, for example, going to where the work is, for periods of several weeks, then spending some time at home, before taking up another short-term contract in another member state. (Another famous popular exposé of this latter phenomenon came in the 1980s British TV series Auf Wiedersehen Pet.)

No other region has seen such fully sanctioned and reciprocal migration. No other region has sought to really remove borders, making free movement a totally frictionless experience for citizens of participating states (although in some cases, local agreements may exist, facilitating movement for people in border communities). The North American Free Trade Agreement has instituted special visas for businesspersons to travel and work between Canada, the US and Mexico. However, these have nothing like the impact on actual relations between the peoples of the three countries that (often irregular in both cases) migration of Mexicans and Canadians to the US has had. Prior to 9/11,⁸ the US and Mexico had appeared to be very close to entering agreements which would have regularized the status of a massive number of Mexican immigrants in the US and created new legal channels for new migrations. These agreements collapsed, however, with renewed focus on (and tension surrounding) immigration and immigrants in the US, and as Mexico’s reactions to the events of that day were slow and not always viewed as supportive. Nonetheless, the impact of migration on the lives, and sense of common security of these three countries is tangible. It also gains some overtones of the European process of integration when one considers that a major reason for the creation of ‘smart border’ agreements between the US and its neighbours post-9/11 was the need to allow legal transport for business and commercial purposes to pass freely between the countries – and a perceived need for the development of trust expressed on...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of Illustrations
• List of Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I: Political and Legal Security
• Part II: Cultural and Identity Security
• Part III: Personal and Economic Security
• Part IV: Conclusion