Double-layer deterrence: cascading externalization for irregular migration control

Current representations of large movements of migrants and asylum seekers have become part of the global consciousness. Media viewers are bombarded with images of people from the global south riding atop of trains, holding on to dinghies, arriving at refugee camps, crawling beneath wire fences or being rescued after being stranded in the ocean or the desert for days. Images of gruesome scenes of death in the Mediterranean or the Arizona or Sahara deserts reveal the inherent risks of irregular migration, as bodies are pulled out of the water or corpses are recovered, bagged, and disposed of, their identities remaining forever unknown. Together, these images communicate a powerful, unbearable feeling of despair and crisis. Around the world, many of these tragedies are attributed to the actions of migrant smugglers, who are almost monolithically depicted as men from the Global South organized in webs of organized criminals whose transnational reach allows them to prey on migrants and asylum seekers' vulnerabilities. Smugglers are described as callous, greedy, and violent. Reports on efforts to contain their influence and strength are also abundant in official narratives of border and migration control. The risks inherent to clandestine journeys and the violence people face during these transits must not be denied. Many smugglers do take advantage of the naivetέ and helplessness of migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers, stripping them of their valuables and abandoning them to their fate during their journeys. Yet, as those working directly with migrants and asylum seekers in transit can attest, the relationships that emerge between smugglers and those who rely on their services are much more complex, and quite often, significantly less heinous than what media and law enforcement suggest. The visibility of contemporary, large migration movements has driven much research on migrants' clandestine journeys and their human rights implications. However, the social contexts that shape said journeys and their facilitation have not been much explored by researchers (Achilli 2015). In other words, the efforts carried out by migrants, asylum seekers, and their families and friends to access safe passage have hardly been the target of scholarly analysis, and are often obscured by the more graphic narratives of victimization and crime. In short, knowledge on the ways migrants, asylum seekers, and their communities conceive, define, and mobilize mechanisms for irregular or clandestine migration is limited at best. The dichotomist script of smugglers as predators and migrants and asylum seekers as victims that dominates narratives of clandestine migration has often obscured the perspectives of those who rely on smugglers for their mobility. This has not only silenced migrants and asylum seekers' efforts to reach safety, but also the collective knowledge their communities use to secure their mobility amid increased border militarization and migration controls. This paper provides an overview of contemporary, empirical scholarship on clandestine migration facilitation. It then argues that the processes leading to clandestine or irregular migration are not merely the domain of criminal groups. Rather, they also involve a series of complex mechanisms of protection crafted within migrant and refugee communities as attempts to reduce the vulnerabilities known to be inherent to clandestine journeys. Both criminal and less nefarious efforts are shaped by and in response to enforcement measures worldwide on the part of nation-states to control migration flows. Devised within migrant and refugee communities, and mobilized formally and informally among their members, strategies to facilitate clandestine or irregular migration constitute a system of human security rooted in generations-long, historical notions of solidarity, tradition, reciprocity, and affect (Khosravi 2010). Yet amid concerns over national and border security, and the reemergence of nationalism, said strategies have become increasingly stigmatized, traveling clandestinely being perceived as an inherently — and uniquely — criminal activity. This contribution constitutes an attempt to critically rethink the framework present in everyday narratives of irregular migration facilitation. It is a call to incorporate into current protection dialogs the perceptions of those who rely on criminalized migration mechanisms to fulfill mobility goals, and in so doing, articulate and inform solutions towards promoting safe and dignifying journeys for all migrants and asylum seekers in transit.

This article outlines Public Social Services’ encounters with irregular migrants in Sweden from the perspectives of institutional and street-level bureaucrats. Staff and executive considerations are influenced by a de jure exclusion of irregular migrants, which is an element of the control of migration. Staff face contradictory demands concerning international and national regulations, which leads to legal ambiguities open to discretionary powers. The aim is to explore the handling of such cases, experiences and considerations with an interest in the values that are invoked when enacting discretion and to discuss implications of the unclear legal situation. The material was obtained using web-based questionnaires. A tentative analysis confirms that the Public Social Services encounter irregular migrants and that handling differs greatly. It suggests that different approaches and the contradictory legal framework endanger the rule of law. Differing reference points appear to be invoked when enacting discretion: some related to social work and others to controlled migration. The social work values invoked by some respondents might imply an appreciation of a right to services and control of migration as independent processes and jurisdiction related to human rights that are applicable beyond the nationally framed legal status and not subordinated to policies of migration.

The experience of border crossing for refugees and irregular migrants challenges global border and migration controls in multiple contexts. Using qualitative field research in Tanzania, Spain, Morocco and Australia, Heather L. Johnson asks how a global regime of migration management and control can be perceived through the dynamics of particular border spaces: refugee camps, border zones and detention centres. She explores how irregular migrants are impacted by the increasingly security-oriented practices of border control, and how they confront these practices. Johnson rejects the characterization of border spaces as exceptional, abject and exclusionary, arguing instead for an understanding of politics as everyday contestation that reveals a radical political agency, re-imagining the global non-citizen as a transgressive and powerful figure. Building on recent scholarship that rethinks irregularity and non-citizenship, her conclusions have broad implications for how we understand irregular migration from a position of dialogue and solidarity.

In this article, I argue that identity documents (ID) and migration statuses are both tools of population control and subjectivities that individuals have an interest in holding. I use documentary analyses and interviews with 31 EU27 citizens in the UK, 21 UK citizens in Belgium and the UK and with nationality bureaucracies in the two countries. States create legitimate, illegitimate and in-between statuses, and in-between statuses show how being exempt from certain ID and migration controls can create paradoxical vulnerabilities. Windrush generation migrants in the UK were exempt from migration controls but then in some cases were treated as irregular migrants because of the lack of proof of status. EU citizens were free from many migration controls, but can have difficulties in naturalization and dealing with new requirements brought about by Brexit because the procedures can require proof of rights usually produced through the migration controls they were exempt from.

The factors that influence the formation of transit states' policies towards irregular migration have been insufficiently analysed. The case study in this article therefore investigates why and how Morocco, at the interface of Euro‐African migration flows, created a policy towards irregular migration at the beginning of the twenty‐first century. This article shows that Morocco's policy, rather than being a by‐product of European migration policies, was the authorities' strategic response to the country's complex geopolitical environment that aimed at restoring Morocco's pivotal role in the region via irregular migration control. By retracing the three‐phase inverted agenda‐setting process that occurred between 2000 and 2007, this article shows why and how irregular (transit) migration was set on Morocco's political agenda, transformed into a new area of public intervention and progressively framed as a national public problem. Policy Implications Morocco's irregular migration policy, unlike that of receiving states, is less guided by national‐electoral than by geopolitical considerations. Migratory flows considerably impact Morocco's regional negotiation capital; but while strengthening relations with Europe remains a top priority, Morocco's cooperation with African states is increasingly important. Framing irregular migration as an exterior threat by stigmatizing sub‐Saharan transit migration and concealing irregular national emigration is crucial for Moroccan authorities to assure popular adherence to restrictive policies. Civil society activism on migration is an important democratization vector in Morocco. However, selective state responses create a labour division between a state‐run border‐control and civil society‐run integration measures.

This case study focuses on addressing the question, “How do non-state actors address the predicament of the irregular migrants’ precarious status?” The study reveals that an unwanted irregular migrant will certainly seek recognition, not necessarily from mainstream society but from peers, networks, and most of the time from compatriots – establishing links, and building contacts – and thus negotiated their status with the host society. This research also generated an alternative hypothesis which states, “As migration control becomes much stricter, more irregular migrants are seeking assistance from non-state actors and the migration industry.” This paper finds that the collaborative effort of migrant and non-migrant organizations between Filipino-run and Japanese-run NGOs at the local level (including church and non-church based groups) play an immensely indispensable role in sending a message across national boundaries that transnational migration agency (actors forming as collectivities) inadvertently reshapes a new world order for the global migration process.

Emerging from the shadows or pushed into the dark? The relation between the combat against trafficking in human beings and migration control

Irregular migration is often used as a generic term, particularly in the media and in political discourses, to cove a wider variety of phenomena. Also migration control policies are seen as resulting from the need to manage irregular migration while in reality irregular migration is partly created by such policies. This chapter starts by discussing the different types of irregularity that can be found under the generic expression ‘illegal migration’ distinguishing between unlawful entry, irregular stay and irregular work. It then offers an overview of how states seek to control immigration through internal (within the country’s territory) or external (at the border or outside the border) migration control regimes, and through policies that have a fencing (stopping) or a gate-keeping (preventing) character. The chapter offers conceptual and operational definitions and illustrates these through concrete examples.

<p>While the control of irregular migration and the return of undocumented migrants to their countries of origin has been a priority in the European migration policy since the late 2000s, it has now achieved a new sense of urgency. The EU is faced with a double challenge: to limit irregular migration while keeping its borders open to people in need of international protection, in line with its traditions as well as with its own international conventions and declarations. Offering asylum to those who are persecuted or are unable to return to their countries of origin includes a set of inter-related challenges. It requires providing access to asylum (notably the information and ability to file a claim), safeguarding the fundamental rights of asylum seekers while their cases are being processed, while also ensuring that the asylum “burden” is shared among member states and that borders remain tightly controlled as regards overall irregular migration flows. This policy paper takes a closer look at these challenges and offers recommendations on how to act upon them. The paper starts with an overview of numbers (of immigration flows, stocks, asylum seeking flows and estimates of irregular migration) so as to put the overall issue into perspective (How large are the irregular migration or asylum seeker flows? How large is the overall migrant population in the EU? What are the trends?). Second, it discusses the main features of the EU policy on irregular migration and asylum and highlights the key problematic issues, notably the fuzzy line that separates irregular migrants from asylum seekers; and the systematic use of detention for disciplinary rather than administrative purposes. It proposes new strategies for dealing with these two challenges that do not require legislative changes but rather a change in the practice and an implementation of both national and EU legislation and an increase in cooperation among member states.</p>

This chapter focuses on the important issues that are conspicuously absent from the Commission's Communication and the Council's Comprehensive Plan to Combat Illegal Immigration. It outlines the general human rights framework within which action against irregular migration should be located. The chapter considers the importance of the developing EU law and policy on irregular migration, both for European Union (EU) Member States, candidate states as well as countries further afield. It proposes some positive measures that would restore, or at least alleviate, the human rights deficit in EU law and policy aimed at controlling irregular migration. Cross or mutual recognition of national decisions constitutes the basis of EU action in respect of irregular migrants. It means in effect the recognition and enforcement of the decisions of the authorities of one Member State by another notwithstanding that they are made on the basis of different procedural and substantive rules. Keywords: European Union (EU) law; human rights deficit; irregular migration

<p>While the control of irregular migration and the return of undocumented migrants to their countries of origin has been a priority in the European migration policy since the late 2000s, it has now achieved a new sense of urgency. The EU is faced with a double challenge: to limit irregular migration while keeping its borders open to people in need of international protection, in line with its traditions as well as with its own international conventions and declarations. Offering asylum to those who are persecuted or are unable to return to their countries of origin includes a set of inter-related challenges. It requires providing access to asylum (notably the information and ability to file a claim), safeguarding the fundamental rights of asylum seekers while their cases are being processed, while also ensuring that the asylum “burden” is shared among member states and that borders remain tightly controlled as regards overall irregular migration flows. This policy paper takes a closer look at these challenges and offers recommendations on how to act upon them. The paper starts with an overview of numbers (of immigration flows, stocks, asylum seeking flows and estimates of irregular migration) so as to put the overall issue into perspective (How large are the irregular migration or asylum seeker flows? How large is the overall migrant population in the EU? What are the trends?). Second, it discusses the main features of the EU policy on irregular migration and asylum and highlights the key problematic issues, notably the fuzzy line that separates irregular migrants from asylum seekers; and the systematic use of detention for disciplinary rather than administrative purposes. It proposes new strategies for dealing with these two challenges that do not require legislative changes but rather a change in the practice and an implementation of both national and EU legislation and an increase in cooperation among member states.</p>

A number of non-western source countries have been involved in the control of migration and borders leading to the adoption of restrictive laws and policies aimed at 'fighting against irregular migration'. North African countries are a case in point. This article sets out to look beyond the oft-cited securitisation of migration policies and the consequential criminalisation of irregular border-crossing. North African countries' proactive involvement in the reinforced securitisation of migration policies is examined while making use of the various heuristic devices produced by the scholarship and focusing on policy transfers, socialisation, norm diffusion and localisation in international systems. By adopting a non-western perspective, this study demonstrates that, ultimately, there is no stable point from which to observe cooperative systems and analyse socialisation, for both socialisees and socialisers may play interchangeable roles, under specific conditions. These conditions are thoroughly examined.

The dissertation thesis of Holk Stobbe on undocumented migration in Germany and the United States analyses the effects of internal migration controls on the scope of action of sans papiers (migrants without a valid residency permit). Accordingly, it comparatively looks at internal controls in the fields of surveillance, the labor market, health care, registration and housing as well as schooling and childcare.Empirical sources include interviews with experts in the area of migration control and from support organizations as well as in-depth, semi-structured interviews with forty sans papiers. In each country, a systematic sample of twenty migrants, who were of working age and had been undocumented for at least six months, were chosen according to the criteria of gender, country of origin and job skills. They were asked to relate their experiences with migration and internal controls.In migration studies there is an ongoing discussion over whether global economic, political, and social processes restrict the ability of advanced capitalist countries to control migration. Such economic processes generally fall under the label of globalization : the increasing exchange of goods and services, especially of information and capital; political processes are international agreements on rights and the creation of supra-national structures such as the European Union or the free trade agreement NAFTA; and social processes are the emergence of complex social networks of migrants and transnationalism. Supporters of the loss of control thesis see their assumptions confirmed by a convergence of migration policy and the increase of undocumented migration in the OECD countries since the mid-1980s.This dissertation shows that the convergence of migration policy in the area of internal controls only takes place at the level of policy objectives and legal norms (output level). At the outcome level - the level of implementation and execution -, national differences persist. Internal controls are embedded in the areas of surveillance, the labor market and social policy, which are intertwined in rather different ways and operate with different resources. Also, in the U.S., often there is a conflict of objectives between the institutions involved, whereas in Germany, they are usually congruent. In the United States, the reach of these controls is therefore significantly less than in Germany. The findings of this study show that there is not a loss of control and that the scope of action open to sans papiers depends upon the national context.

The dissertation thesis of Holk Stobbe on undocumented migration in Germany and the United States analyses the effects of internal migration controls on the scope of action of sans papiers (migrants without a valid residency permit). Accordingly, it comparatively looks at internal controls in the fields of surveillance, the labor market, health care, registration and housing as well as schooling and childcare.Empirical sources include interviews with experts in the area of migration control and from support organizations as well as in-depth, semi-structured interviews with forty sans papiers. In each country, a systematic sample of twenty migrants, who were of working age and had been undocumented for at least six months, were chosen according to the criteria of gender, country of origin and job skills. They were asked to relate their experiences with migration and internal controls.In migration studies there is an ongoing discussion over whether global economic, political, and social processes restrict the ability of advanced capitalist countries to control migration. Such economic processes generally fall under the label of globalization : the increasing exchange of goods and services, especially of information and capital; political processes are international agreements on rights and the creation of supra-national structures such as the European Union or the free trade agreement NAFTA; and social processes are the emergence of complex social networks of migrants and transnationalism. Supporters of the loss of control thesis see their assumptions confirmed by a convergence of migration policy and the increase of undocumented migration in the OECD countries since the mid-1980s.This dissertation shows that the convergence of migration policy in the area of internal controls only takes place at the level of policy objectives and legal norms (output level). At the outcome level - the level of implementation and execution -, national differences persist. Internal controls are embedded in the areas of surveillance, the labor market and social policy, which are intertwined in rather different ways and operate with different resources. Also, in the U.S., often there is a conflict of objectives between the institutions involved, whereas in Germany, they are usually congruent. In the United States, the reach of these controls is therefore significantly less than in Germany. The findings of this study show that there is not a loss of control and that the scope of action open to sans papiers depends upon the national context.

Can state sovereignty justify privileged receiving countries exercising authority over non‐members in a third country to safeguard their own interests? Under the current migration governance of the EU, state sovereignty is manifested in migrant interdiction, interception and detention policies employed to prevent unauthorized migrants from reaching the EU, and even from attempting to embark on cross‐Mediterranean journeys. While reinforcement of the Schengen region's external borders is a key aim of the EU's internal migration politics, collaboration with third countries regarding migration control has, in the last decade, become a key feature of its external migration policy. In close collaboration with third countries, the EU has managed to curb the outflux of migrants from transit and sending countries. In effect, irregular migrants are prevented from exiting as well as from entering. This article explores the justifiability of such practices, by questioning commonly invoked models of justification such as the sovereignty “model”, with a special focus on partnership agreements regarding migration control between the EU and Libya.