Securitization Of Immigration Research Articles

The securitization of immigration in Poland. Social and political contexts

Currently, immigration issues occupy an important place in the debate on the future of Europe. One of the central themes of this debate is the issue of security. In spite of the functioning of supranational integration structures, individual states still remain a fundamental factor in shaping migration. In many cases, the issue of immigration is subjected to the process of securitization, framing immigration as a threat. It is the speech act that is important in this respect, being a kind of securitizing tool. Since 2015, one can notice elements indicating that the process of securitization of immigration has been present in Poland, too, which, among other things, is a consequence of the change of the ruling party, the immigration crisis that has taken place in Europe, and the migration situation on Poland’s eastern border. The article presents the factors that influence the process of immigration securitization. Additionally, it includes numerous statements from Polish politicians securitizing the problem of immigrants as well as the results of social surveys on attitudes towards immigration. The analysis of the collected material leads to the conclusion that the securitisation of immigration in Poland is not a completed process and that this process concerns a geographically defined group of immigrants.

The EU Agenda on Migration and Development towards ACP countries: Challenges of the Pandemic

The article covers 30 years of EU agenda on migration and development. The research objective was to assess its continuity, determine the main trends, and outline the challenges that the cooperation between the EU and the ACP has to face after the pandemic. The EU agenda on migration and development proved to be rather stable. However, the EU motivates migration cooperation by development aid while most ACP countries do not welcome this approach. As a result, the contradictions between the EU and the ACP still exist, despite their formal cooperation after the Cotonou agreement expired. The main trends in the EU policy were the principle of conditionality and the EU's attempts to abandon the universal approach to their ACP partners. The COVID-19 pandemic has aggravated the contradictions in migration and development issues, thus preventing the European Union from upgrading its development policy. The pandemic has the following consequences: global increase in securitization of immigration; strict entry rules and immigration policies; the prospect of expanding access to health care systems for citizens and immigrants. These consequences will inevitably affect the relations between the EU and the ACP.

Institutional racism within the securitization of migration. The case of family reunification in Belgium

ABSTRACT Institutional Racism (IR) in Europe is rarely mentioned in studies of race-based discrimination. Yet, structural racism occurs within most European societies. Due to the increasing securitization of immigration, countries have introduced several (in)formal strategies to exclude foreign populations. Given that, we propose an updated way of conceptualizing IR to uncover contemporary manifestations and practices of structural racist discrimination in a European country. By concentrating on the case of Belgium and, in particular, on family reunification, we first operationalize Agamben’s “state of exception” to show how exceptional measures applying to non-nationals conflict with other constitutional and international legal frameworks. As we discuss, such incompatible legal tools generate space for racist considerations to drive judicial decisions involving non-nationals. Second, in relying on Foucault’s governmentality, we explore migrants’ everyday experience of administrative discrimination – as the same procedures are implemented differently on foreigners of diverse nationalities.

A country of immigrants no more? The securitization of immigration in the National Security Strategies of the United States of America

ABSTRACT This article studies the securitization of immigration in the United States of America (U.S.), through the analysis of the National Security Strategies (NSS) published between 2002 and 2017, using a two-layered analytical framework that combines securitization theory and agenda setting theory. A discursive analysis of each NSS documents shed some light on how immigration and immigration-related issues emerged, were removed or were prioritized in the security agenda, and how they were framed (or not) as threats. Different contexts in which these documents were published were also taken into consideration, including major crisis or “shocks,” as well as political or institutional changes. The article also considered shifts in the conception of American identity, and the prevailing public opinion on immigration. The main findings demonstrate that the securitization of immigration should be understood as a dynamic process that depends on a variety of factors that change over time.

The Securitization of Immigration in the European Union

The European Union (EU) presents an intriguing case-study for examining the normative and empirical degree of the securitization of immigration in the post-9/11 context. The following paper uses the Copenhagen school of security studies to argue that in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the securitization of immigration (through direct and indirect elite speech acts) has legitimized exclusionary policies and practices, thereby constituting a “new (cultural) racism.” This new cultural racism acts as a justification against immigration. My argument will be presented in three parts. The first outlines how elite direct and indirect speech acts creates an “immigration-as-a-cultural-threat discourse” that constitutes a “new racism.” The second analyzes how the securitization of immigration discourse has been implemented through legal and institutional practices, including in the Convention Implementing the Schengen Agreement (CISA), the Dublin Convention, and various border security practices. The final section examines the significance of 9/11 in connecting perceived Muslim immigrants to terrorism, thus constructing a discourse that identifies immigration with a direct threat to European identity and social cohesion.

The social and political impact of the new (private) National Security: private actors in the securitization of immigration in the U.S. post 9/11

Neoliberal ideology has driven privatization across the globe steadily since the 1970s, advocating that the only way to meet macroeconomic objectives is to privatize public enterprise (Schmitt Journal of Public Policy, 31(1), 95, 1). As a result, market-like mechanisms are now embedded into what was traditionally public domain; this is the context under which immigration enforcement currently operates. Our previous research study showed the prison industrial complex is now also involved in immigration detention as a result of rigorous lobbying, policymaking, managing private contracts, and in the running of immigration detention centers themselves. We add to this line of research by suggesting that the ability of private actors to push for a more securitized state, due to their profit motive, results in a distortion of securitization that negatively impacts the groups it disproportionately targets, such as Latinos, immigrants, and Muslims in the U.S. Our research question is, what is the social and political impact of securitization of immigration in the U.S. on racial, ethnic minorities and immigrants? To do so, we turn to the existing lines of inquiry on prison privatization, its role in growing mass incarceration (due to profit motive), and its social and political effects on minorities in the U.S. because we believe these research areas overlap in a number of ways. Then, we run a series of quantitative analyses using hierarchical regression models to test nationally representative data from 2013 and compare our dependent variables measuring social and political elements across different social groups; our findings show that Latinos and immigrants in the U.S., which represent the groups most vulnerable to securitization, are worse off compared to whites and African Americans, even when controlling for education, income, and age in both social and political aspects.

Uninhibited violence: race and the securitization of immigration

Bringing a critical race analysis to existing literature on securitization, this article addresses a lacuna in securitization theory and offers a conceptual framework to account for the entanglements between the securitization of immigration and racial violence. First, we consider the limits of the concept of securitization to account for the normality of racial violence, and argue that responses to events deemed to be ‘crises’ need to be analyzed in relation to the juridico-political orderings of power formed under colonial modernity, of which race is a central organizing principle. Second, we discuss the framework of racial governmentality and suggest that securitization enables expressions of racial desires already constitutive of colonial modernity. Thus re-embedded in liberalism’s racial story, these processes of securitization are analyzed not as operating an exceptional rupture with normal liberal politics, but as enabling a lift on the prohibition of liberal intolerance that produces what we call uninhibited violence. Third, we present a brief empirical vignette of a case of securitization of immigration in Canada to illustrate our argument.

(In)securitization and illiberal practices on the fringe of the EU

ABSTRACTIlliberal practices of liberal regimes have been extensively studied by critical security studies. The literature on risk emphasises the idea of imminent dangers and the logic of worst-case scenarios, which eventually unsettle the balance between security and liberty by always favouring the former in its most coercive and exceptional forms. This paper, by drawing on (in)securitization theory, attempts to explain how particular illiberal practices with respect to the control and management of immigration on the fringe of the EU become normalised. It argues that (in)securitization of immigration and illiberal practices are effects of the very functioning of a transnational field of (in)security professionals that are produced through the structural competition between different actors of this field over the definition of security and the appropriate control and management of immigration. In this respect, it uses Greece as a case study and draws on material gathered through interviews with Greek security professionals in Athens, Lesvos, Orestiada, and Alexandroupoli, and analysis of their discourse in dissertations they prepared during their study in police academies.

Constructing Fortress Europe: Third Country Nationals As Unwelcome Guests

Ever since the introduction of the EU’s four freedoms, EU citizens have been promised the freedom to move freely within the confines of the EU. As the EU’s population expanded through enlargement, in conjunction with growing pressure on labor market, wages and employment, European public attitudes toward immigration seem to become more polarized. Thus, immigration, especially that of the admittance of non-EU thirdcountry nationals, may be rendered as a highly contested issue within Europe’s two-level systems. However, what is happening inside the EU, in terms of intra-EU immigration, is rarely considered within such contestation. This paper plans to address this issue by using a historical institutionalist approach in analyzing scholarly claims regarding the securitization of immigration vis-a-vis the development of EU immigration policies and approaches, as well as the role that citizenship plays on immigration. This way, a fuller understanding of Europe’s overall unfavorable attitude toward immigration could be achieved.

Examining the everyday micro-economies of migrant detention in the United States

Abstract. Securitization of immigration, the rise of interior immigration policing, and forces of carceral privatization have occasioned a remarkable expansion of immigrant detention throughout the United States. Previous studies have drawn attention to the importance of the daily rates paid by the federal government to individual facilities in driving the emphasis on detention. This paper, in contrast, argues that tracing the political and economic geography of money inside detention facilities is also critical for understanding detention expansion and its consequences. We define the processes, mechanisms, and practices of generating profit above and beyond the "per-bed" daily rate as "internal micro-economies" of migrant detention. Drawing on an ongoing examination of migrant detention facilities in the greater New York City metropolitan area, we identify four micro-economies evident in detention facilities: the commissary systems, phone and other forms of communication, detainee labor, and detainee excursions outside detention. These economies show how detained migrants' needs and daily routines are tailored in ways that produce migrants as both captive consumers and laborers. Recognition of multiple micro-economies also highlights the fact that the numbers of individuals and entities invested in the incarceration of immigrants proliferate in tandem with the objectification of detainees. The paper further suggests that attending to relationships embedded in the inner workings of detention exposes economic links across carceral boundaries, rendering visible the porosity between government, private companies, and publics.

Asserting criminality and denying migrant belonging: The production of deportability in US judicial court hearings

Recent interest in the securitization of immigration has highlighted a significant shift in immigration enforcement, from border regulation to the control of territorially present populations. Emphasis has focused on the production of migrant illegality and strategies that criminalize undocumented workers. In this article, we shift the focus of analysis to examine how legal residents convicted of non-immigration-related criminal offences are also actively produced as deportable subjects. Drawing on research examining records of appeal cases involving Jamaican nationals in removal proceedings consequent to a criminal conviction, we illustrate how deportability is produced by the deportation process itself, through legal practices that assert migrant criminality and alienage. We suggest ‘criminality’ not only comes to represent migrant subjectivity, at the expense of other forms of subjectivity based on belonging and territorial presences, but acts as affirmation of alienage.

Confined within: National territories as zones of confinement

The securitization of immigration has led to increased reliance on border enforcement, detention, and deportation to control unauthorized movements. Based on a case study of the ways that Salvadoran immigrants to the United States have experienced these tactics, this paper analyzes the spatial implications of current enforcement strategies. As movement across borders becomes more difficult for the unauthorized, national territories become zones of confinement. This carceral quality is a dimension of national territory in that undocumented and temporarily authorized migrants cannot exit their countries of residence without losing territorially-conferred rights, while if they are deported, their countries of origin become extensions of the detention centers they occupied before exit. This transformation of national spaces is accompanied by internal differentiation, as interior enforcement confines migrants to subnational spaces where they must remain to avoid detection or harassment. Securitization thus entails both extraterritoriality, that is the extension of U.S. legal regimes into foreign territories, and intraterritoriality, or the operation of different legal regimes within national territories. The paper also highlights the ways that securitization contributes to multidimensionality, such that spatial locations are rendered ambiguous, both inside and outside at the same time. Finally, the paper considers how these spatial transformations redefine citizenship and belonging.

Pathways from September 11: Politics, Policy, and State Sovereignty in an Age of Terror

My nascent book project seeks to identify and assess the effectiveness of European state strategies since September 11, 2001, to navigate the policy contradictions raised by the securitization of immigration. Framing my research is a nearly universal dilemma for politics and policy in a post-September 11 international and domestic security environment: Is the liberal state's traditional role as the guarantor of the physical safety of its citizens reconcilable with its pursuit of expansive immigration policies and inclusive immigrant incorporation policies? While I cannot answer this question definitively, I hope to illuminate the broad parameters of states' policy making freedom under the unfavorable domestic and transnational security conditions within Europe and, by extension, other advanced industrial democracies including the United States.

What European Union Strategy for Integrating Migrants? The Role of OMC Soft Mechanisms in the Development of an EU Immigration Policy

AbstractThe paper maintains that OMC mechanisms, if adequately designed and used, as policy instruments which combine the use of soft and hard law at all levels of decision-making, could help promote the adoption of a human rights model in immigration policies and foster the protection and strengthening of TCNs human rights. In particular, OMC mechanisms could help revisit the philosophy underpinning EU immigration policy and foster a process which entails a shift from a central focus on securitization of immigration towards a more inclusive and proactive immigration policy and, consequently, provide the basis for a more coherent EU framework.