Security and Migration in Asia

Melissa Curley, Siu-lun Wong, Melissa Curley, Siu-lun Wong

• Verlag: Routledge
• Jahr: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781134146260
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Economics
• Thema: International Economics

Security and Migration in Asia explores how various forms of unregulated and illegal forms of human movement within Asia and beyond the region have come to be treated as 'security' issues, and whether and how a 'securitization' framework enables a more effective response to them. The process and theory of 'securitization' and 'desecuritization' have been developed within the international relations literature by the so-call Copenhagen school scholars, including Barry Buzan and Ole Waever among others.

The topics explored in this well- presented and engaging book cover geographic areas of China, Northeast Asia, Central Asia, the Russian Far East, Southeast Asia, and the Hong Kong SAR, and includes research on:

• human trafficking and people smuggling
• financing illegal migration and links to transnational organized crime
• regulated and unregulated labour migration
• the 'securitization' of illegal migration in sending, transit and receiving countries.

This book provides compelling insights into contemporary forms of illegal migration, under conditions of globalization, and makes a contribution to the literature in international relations and migration studies.

Part I
Introduction and conceptual perspectives

1 Introduction

Applying securitisation theory to unregulated migration in Asia

Melissa G. Curley and Wong Siu-lun

The movement of people from one region to another—and in more recent times across nation state borders—is not a new phenomenon, particularly in parts of Asia. However the increasing interest in the way that migration flows present challenges and threats to states and their host societies, in terms of crisis, risk and threat, has emerged particularly in the post-Cold War period.¹ As James Hollifield points out, there are at least three themes that are prevalent in the Politics and International Relations literature relating to forms of migration. The first is the theme of control: focusing on to what extent states can control their border, and what rules of entry and exit are established/legislated (and consequently defended/policed) to maintain that control. The second is security and its relationship to various aspects of ‘the state’: what is the interrelationship between migration, and national security and foreign policy in controlling and managing migration at the international level, with its implications for the domestic population? Finally, the politics of incorporation are central to the relationship between social and political citizenship: how does migration impact on concepts of national identity, citizenship and rights?² This edited collection engages to some extent with all three of these themes, in an attempt to interrogate how states, international organisations, and non-state actors in Asia are managing both legal and illegal forms of migration through processes of control, security and incorporation.

This volume is based on a collaborative research project whose main aim was to examine whether and how unregulated human flows had become or are becoming seen as a security issue in East Asia.³ It does so by applying the Copenhagen School’s⁴ concept of securitisation and its related theoretical framework to cases in Asia where unregulated human flows have occurred, or are perceived to have been securitised by governments or other non-state actors. The term unregulated human flows is used as a broad term in this chapter to refer to the range of undocumented, unregulated and illegal migration of peoples both inter- and intra-regionally. This encompasses human smuggling and trafficking. Additionally, it asks whether non-state actors are present in the securitisation process and explores the relationship between state and non-state actors in relation to human flows, taking into account political and economic power relationships present in the region. Second, it aims to contribute knowledge on how migration patterns enter into the realm of security politics and generate detailed cases/country study material about how states and other actors attempt to securitise or desecuritise, as well as how this process may proceed simultaneously as a result of competing political/economic interests within bureaucracies, militaries and other state entities. The term Asia is used consciously in the title as the empirical cases in the book range from Central Asia, East Asia to Southeast Asia, and incorporate material that relates to the South-Pacific. As such, it was decided that rather that use the term Asia Pacific, which generally excludes Central Asia, the broader term Asia was more appropriate. Authors use other terms within their chapters however, as appropriate to their cases.

As a lens to examine the connection between migration and security, the Copenhagen School’s securitisation framework is adopted both as a case study methodology, and as point of departure for commentary and critique. Simply put, securitisation can be defined as the process by which something becomes a security issue, where the emphasis is on this process of making and unmaking (desecuritisation) security as a discursive practice. Security is therefore not something that can be defined a priori, but is rather the linguistic construction of a security problem. Rather than linking security to any particular actor or level, in their more recent work, the Copenhagen School contends that the securitisation framework enables an ‘open framework’ for the analysis of security discourse, where the outcome is not predefined, and not necessarily state-centred.⁵ The framework, it is argued, enables one to capture the emerging security agenda of the state in the post-Cold War frame, where security can be analysed in different sectors (for example, the environment, societal or political) and how those different sectors of the state’s interest are interconnected.

The rationale for the edited collection is connected to a wider intellectual project to explore processes and securitisation and desecuritisation in Asia more broadly.⁶ This has involved considering how in the post-Cold War security environment, East and Central Asia has adjusted to withdrawal of superpower rivalry within the region, and the emergence of the so-called ‘new’ security issue on the agenda of regional states, among other factors. While the project is necessarily closely engaged with the literature and debates within International Relations on security and regional security in East Asia, the collaborative nature of the research from the outset has attempted to promote inter-disciplinary dialogue and knowledge-sharing between participants. The presence of historians and sociologists, along with area specialists and migration experts, has encouraged a critical and historically informed entrée into the context of securitisation processes in Asia. We are mindful therefore of the rich and detailed historical studies on Chinese, Indian and other migrations throughout Asia, coupled with the idea that migration around the region is not a new phenomenum.⁷ In this context, the historical continuities which may be found between the present and the past are insightful.

Securitisation and desecuritisation

Securitisation as a methodology is most fully developed in Buzan et al.’s 1998 book, Security: A New Framework for Analysis. Although their more recent book Regions and Powers re-states the method, and contends that it has utility in ‘post sovereign, non-state focussed situations’, its central tenants are to be found in the 1998 work. Securitisation as a process, although useful to study the discursive relationships around ‘security’, is part of a wider intellectual project that focuses on the importance of regional security. The regional level of security within the international system ‘has become both more autonomous and more prominent in international politics’, Buzan and Wæver argue, contending that ‘the ending of the Cold War accelerated this process’. Regional Security Complex Theory (RSCT) is an attempt to explain how and why regions have an important place in the new structure of the post-Cold War international system, in order to evaluate the relative balance of power and mutual relationships between regions and powers (both major and minor). In this context, the securitisation framework is a tool to understand the ‘portrait’ of global security, the relationship between regional security dynamics and the patterns set by global powers,⁸ particularly the United States, and for the interests of East Asia, the major powers of China and Japan.

For our purposes however, the securitisation framework is used to focus on the way states and other non-state actors securitise, or attempt to securitise, forms of human movement. In this sense, the book does not engage with the role of securitisation as a causal agent of structural change in regional security complexes. All contributors were asked to consider the following factors in their application of the framework to their particular area of interest or country. In doing so, we were attempting to move beyond a strict reading of the securitisation framework, to build hypotheses around indicators of securitisation, resistance and resisting actors, regime type and its impact on securitisation, and likelihood of securitisation to be more successful in its ‘grafting’ to another already recognised threat (for example, securitising refugees from the Middle East as potential terrorist).¹⁰ These factors were:

1. Issue area. What is the area under threat and what/who is posing an existential threat. Is there consensus among various actors, such as governments and civil society groups, on the threat posed?
2. Securitising actors. Who are the main securitising actors in a particular case? If governments, which sections of the bureaucracy have interests to securitise or desecuritise? What other actors are involved, such as epistemic communities and international institutions and organisations?
3. Security concept. What type of security concept is used to identify a referent object? States usually invoke concepts of national security, while NGOs draw upon human and non-traditional security concepts to identify concerns of ethnic groups, women, communities and so on. What is the interaction and power balance between different concepts of security in the securitisation process?
4. Process. What is the process by which speech acts identify threats? Who or what are ‘speaking’ security? What are the politics of threat identification, and is the focus on the speech act sufficient in our analysis, or should we explore other forms of political communication such as persuasion via images?
5. Outcome I. Has securitisation actually taken place and to what extent? What indicators can one use to identify the outcome of securitisation? (recourses allocation trends, military involvement, legislation, institutionalisation). Equally important, what resistance is there to securitisation, and who/what is active? What is the overall outcome of the case: successful, failed, uncertain, unintended consequences and/or mixed evidence?
6. Outcome II. Impact of the threat. What impact has securitisation (or securitising moves) had on the handling of the problem or existential threat? Are calls to invoke national or military security useful or undesirable in resolving the issue? What are the potential downsides to securitising undocumented migration?
7. Conditions affecting securitisation. What general conclusions can be drawn between the following four issues in analysis of the particular case: (1) nature of the issue area and issue linkage, (2) role of powerful actors, (3) domestic political system and (4) international norms.

The following is a brief description of the key elements of the securitisation framework, which are used throughout the main case studies, and also form points of commentary and critique in other chapters.

Securitisation is a process through which issues become referent objects of security analysis. ‘Security’, the authors argue, ‘is the move that takes politics beyond the established rules of the game and frames the issues as a special kind of politics or as above politics.’¹¹ The meaning of security within their approach ‘lies in its usage and is not something we can define analytically or philosophically according to what would be “best”’.¹² The meaning lies not in what people consciously think the concept of security means, but in how they implicitly use it in some ways and not others. This represents the use of ‘speech act’ theory within their framework and defines the environment where discussion or ‘speech’ about certain security issues emerge. The authors argue that security is a self-referential practice ‘because it is in this practice that the issue becomes a security issue—not necessarily because a real existential threat exists but because the issue is presented as such a threat’.¹³ Desecuritisation is the opposite process: ‘the shifting of issues out of emergency mode and into the normal bargaining processes of the political sphere’.¹⁴

The Copenhagen School’s intellectual goal is to widen the security agenda by not only exploring different types of threats in different sectors—for example, military, political, societal, environmental and economic¹⁵ – but also ‘by the logic of security itself to find out what differentiates security and the processes of securitisation from that which is merely political’.¹⁶ Within this framework, what constitutes a security issue becomes more that just any threat or problem; they must ‘meet strictly defined criteria that distinguish them from normal political issues’. These criteria consist of ‘an existential threat to a referent object by a securitising actor who gained the recognition of the security threat as legitimate from a particular audience and gains approval to take emergency measures against the threat which otherwise would be disallowed’.¹⁷

The five categories (or sectors) mentioned above also require further analysis which relates to the specific types of interaction within each sector and their interrelationship with each other. Thus the military sector concerns relationships of forceful coercion, or the societal sector examines relationships of collective identity. Their multisectoral approach to security, Buzan et al. argue, requires the desegregation of sectors followed by the reassembly of their interactions to understand how security issues in different sectors are mediated and affected by factors in other sectors. Sectors encompass different levels of analysis. As such, this ‘multisectoral’ process does not seek to prioritise the state level. Levels of analysis, rather, are used to identify actors, referent objects and patterns of interaction that operate in the realm of security.

The societal security sector is one of the most pertinent patterns of interaction that relate to unregulated human flows. Societal security according to the Copenhagen School refers to collectivities within given society and their identities—not to the societal security of individuals, or to the general state population. Societal security can refer to the degree of collective identity in a state and the action that may be taken to defend such ‘we’ identities.¹⁸ In sum, this refers to the possibility of an issue—such as migration flows –becoming a threat to the dominant identity of a given society. Migration can be viewed in these terms, and is often characterised as one group of people having feelings of being overrun or diluted by the influences of another people or ethnic group.¹⁹ This type of threat perception and the use of fear of the influx of ‘other’ by political elites is examined in latter chapters in case studies of Chinese migrants to the Russian Far East and to Taiwan.

To summarise, securitisation theory is an attempt to understand the process by which certain issues, within a given political context, are politicised, and more importantly, securitised ‘above’ (or beyond) what is taken to be the ‘normal’ realm of politics in that context. It focuses on identifying and analysing the interrelationship between (1) an existential threat, (2) securitising agent/s and (3) the referent object (that which is to be secured). Hence it aims to answer those ever-present questions po...