Securitization Of Migration Research Articles

Securitisation of Migration in the Language of Slovak Far-Right Populism

Although the Slovak Republic is not a country of immigrants, since 2015 the topic of international migration has dominated its political discourse. Due to the migration situation in 2015, Slovak politicians have also begun to use the topic of migration to mobilise their voters. Paradoxically, there are no significant differences among the relevant Slovak political parties on this topic, hence Slovak politicians take a similar approach to the issue of migration. This article focuses on the People's Party Our Slovakia as a leading representative of far-right populism. We intend to explore how Slovak far-right populists articulate the issue of international migration. Our analysis has found that the language of far-right populists reflects a dichotomy of “we/us” (good) vs. “they/them” (evil). Far-right populists emphasise the negative consequences of migration, as they perceive migrants as a threat to national security. In-depth analyses of political texts have revealed that the securitisation of migration by far-right populists has several dimensions. Migrants are perceived as a threat to the economic, political and cultural security of the state.

Editorial

The new issue of Migration Letters reflects again on the complexities of a post-Covid 19 world, characterized by the overlapping of old and new migratory experiences, divided along old and new configurations of racial, ethnic and religious stratification. This issue includes several topics whose relevance in the inclusive recovery we wish for, has already been highlighted. These include the securitization of migration (Stefancik, Némethová and Seresová); the continuing relevance of global remittances (Biyase, Fisher and Pretorius); the structures of exclusion in naturalization process (Catherine Simpson Bueker); the health conditions of refugees (Mendola and Busetta) and the practices of ‘othering' during the Covid-19 pandemic (Lumayag and Bala). The articles in this issue also focus on the integration and irregular migration in the South of Europe (Hüseyinoğlu and Utku; Cela and Barbiano di Belgiojoso; Kobelinsky and Furri; Terzakis and Daskalopoulou) as well as in affluent EU countries like Austria (Rauhut). Finally, two important contributions reflect on the gender perspective, a most relevant approach needed to counterbalance the gender bias in much of Covid analysis so far. These articles analyze in particular ethnic minorities’ fertility practices in Southern Europe (Carella, Del Rey Poveda and Zanasi) and gender role perceptions among minorities in England and Wales (Zuccotti).

Securitisation of Migration Revisited: European Union Policies Through the Lens of Syrian Refugees Living in Turkey

The main aim of this study is to present migration as a ‘constructed’ societal insecurity threat that became substantial after the Cold War before peaking in 2015. This study applies securitization theory to the ongoing refugee crisis through in-depth interviews with a sample of Syrian settlers in Turkey to determine whether their reasons for choosing to stay in Turkey are linked to their perceptions of cultural insecurity in Europe. The interviews were made in November and December 2019 in Gaziantep, Antakya and İstanbul where most of the Syrian refugees are located. In that sense, the link between the securitisation theory and the interviews made in Turkey attempts to shed light on the awareness of Syrian refugees regarding the fact that the European Union (EU) has tried to create a culturally homogenous society and any kind of difference interfering in this homogeneity can be seen as a threat.

To understand and to challenge the politicization of migration and interculturality.Book review: Sandoval-García, C. (Ed.) (2020). Bridges, Not Walls: Contributions for a progressive policy on migration. CLACSO.

The welfare state, richness distribution, sustainable development, human rights are some of the elements identified in progressists policies. Forced displaced people have been excluded from these elements. Carlos Sandoval García analyzes this exclusion in this book which is the result of the colloquium: "Migration Politicization. Challenges for critical thinking and progressists policies" published in 2017. This book collects the thoughts of 12 authors and is organized into eight chapters regarding the securitization of migration, racialization of class, symbols and identity building, political movements, nativism, and the emancipation of the Global South, especially in the Central American context.

Siyasal Liderlerin Söylemleri ve Göçün Güvenlikleştirilmesi: Türkiye ve Amerika Birleşik Devletleri Karşılaştırması

With the growing importance of human mobility in the global agenda since the early 1990s, international migration has increasingly evolved into a securitized phenomenon. This has also made international migrantsa prominent target group of security speech acts. The main objective of this study is to explore migration-security nexus in the context of political discourses. The paper brings a comparative perspective to the role of political leader discourses in the securitization of migration by examining the cases of the United States (USA), hosting the largest number of international migrants, and Turkey, the world’s top refugee hosting country. Through the analytical lens of critical discourse analysis (CDA) and securitization theory, the study unpacks the rhetoric used by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and American President Donald John Trump towards migrants/ asylum seekers. As the key findings demonstrate, the way the two leaders reflect the migration-security relationship to their speech acts significantly varies. President Trump associates migrants with security issues in multiple ways including social, political and economic spheres, while President Erdoğan’s discourse links migrants with security issues inthe economic realm, but his general discourse reflects a desecuritization approach. In both countries, it is observed that the discourses of political leaders concerning migrants and asylum seekers exert influence on public opinion.

‘Request Denied’: Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation and Treason for Border and Migration Studies

ABSTRACT Digital information and identification technologies offer state authorities new means for rendering individual subjects and entire population legible. Based on fieldwork at a migrant reception centre in Berlin, this article investigates how migrants hitherto unknown to authorities are translated into re-identifiable, governable subjects with the help of various digital devices. Conceptually, the article complements a sociology of translation with a vocabulary of treason to better account for coercion, force and violence as well as instances of resistance, friction and break-down in the assembling of related socio-technical networks. It shows that such an ANT-inspired framework, while facilitating a radically situated analysis, allows for exposing larger strategies of power. Through a detailed analysis of migrant registration procedures the paper develops three interrelated arguments on the digitisation of border and migration management: First, processes of digitisation are not reducible to the securitisation of migration. They are interrelated with the logistification of migration management which revolves around a logic of efficiency. The link between the digitisation and the logistification of migration management resides, secondly, in authorities’ attempts to establish migrants’ traceability. This is accomplished through the production of biometric identifiers and the allocation of personal identification numbers (PINs) which function as spokespersons for migrants. The fact that migrants often have to contest accounts shared by these informants in future encounters with authorities highlights, thirdly, that the production of legibility by digital means involves significant degrees of ontological violence.

Beyond symbolic policy making: The Copenhagen School, migration, and the marked-unmarked analogue

This article problematizes the securitization of migration through symbolic policy discourse. Policy as discourse is not innocent. It creates not only instrumental outcomes, but can also signal deeply ideological and profound, symbolic meanings. This study discusses Germany’s controversial ANKER Center policy as a form of such symbolic signaling. Distinguishing between negative and positive securitization, this article then brings into focus the non-linear, non-fixed, political, and social construction of these two forms of securitization in the context of migration. Framed in part by the author’s ongoing field work with migrant organizations and volunteer groups in southern Germany, this article draws specific attention to a discursive marked-unmarked asymmetry. It then applies the sociologists’ method of ‘marking everything’ as a strategy to ‘write against’ securitization’s negative logic—toward a positive, more inclusive migration agenda.

God will reward you: Muslim practices of caring for precarious migrants in the context of secular suspicion

In recent years, Muslims have become more visibly invested in humanitarian work in France. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Marseille, this article examines local initiatives to care for precarious others whose lives are neither materially supported nor socially recognized within the current French political regime. Engaging with critical French scholarship on humanitarianism as care for others associated with emergency, suffering and the politics of compassion, I show how food-distribution (maraudes) by Muslim-run humanitarian associations also draw from Islamic ethics of care. While social dynamics related to gender, class, race and generation structure the maraudes, the foregrounding of shared precarity, and of religious duty and piety over pity, challenges the ‘hierarchies of deservingness’ established by humanitarian border regimes. In caring for precarious others, Muslims must navigate both the secular suspicion directed towards Islam and the securitization of migration. Carrying out the religious duty of helping those in need, they are ‘laying claim to public space’ for both Muslims and precarious migrants.

Verbal and multimodal metaphorical patterns in Wikipedia migration discourse

The use of metaphors in the refugee discourse since 2015 has so far mostly been explored in newspapers in different EU countries. In this study, we combine linguistic discourse metaphor analysis with a corpus-based approach, complementing qualitative and quantitative corpus evidence from Wikipedia migration corpus to explore verbal and multimodal metaphorical patterns. As a multimodal and multilingual hypertext, Wikipedia, represents a highly relevant source of information and a unique source for the multimodal and cross-linguistic discourse linguistic analysis. In this paper metaphorical expressions are considered as a transtextual discursive phenomenon in the light of Foucaudian tradition. The results of the study show that the analyzed migration discourse in Wikipedia is like the newspaper migration discourse predominantly structured by metaphorical patterns that draw from the source domains water flow/natural catastrophes as well as military/warfare. These source domains are conventionally used in relation to a wide range of target domains (multivalency), however, they play a constitutive role in the analyzed discourse by providing a specific view of events and emphasizing certain aspects and evaluations. The patterning of water flow metaphors across Wikipedia articles and talk pages is in multimodal metaphors extended, elaborated and reinforced in visual mode, referring to those migrating as a flow, wave, influx. However, especially on Wikipedia talk pages Wikipedians point to the dehumanization of those fleeing and the securitization of migration through metaphorical expressions as a problematic linguistic discourse practice

Populism and Securitization: The Corrosion of Elite Security Authority in a US–Mexico Border State

AbstractPopulists have often seemed influential in the securitization of migration, in great part through pressuring non-populist governing elites into “mainstreaming” more hardline immigration positions. This article asks why, given the presumption in securitization literatures that elite insiders possess strong authority in defining security, non-populist governing elites often in fact cede ground to populist challengers who paint immigration as a threat. Securitization and political science literatures paint very different pictures of elite–challenger dynamics, but populist and securitization claims possess key ideational similarities, in relation to the holism and autonomy of the political community, and the apoliticism of pursuing purportedly self-evident goals. However, populism articulates securitarian concepts through a moralized anti-elitism that impugns elite authority, portraying governing elites as corruptly inert toward threats facing “the people.” This article explores how this ideational relationship may affect securitization processes through a process-tracing study of the populist radical right's successful pressuring of governing elites to securitize migration in the US state of Arizona. There, populists’ moralized accusations of corrupt elite inaction toward urgent security threats moved governing elites to adopt positions intended to demonstrate responsiveness to public border-security anxieties, thereby inscribing securitization. Taking an “ideational” view of both concepts shows how they can form a politically influential account of “common sense.” By undermining elite security authority—thus inverting the typically theorized power dynamics of securitization—populism may open new pathways for securitized policies to emerge.

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.

Securitisation of Migration at the EU level after Paris’ Attacks: The Response of the European Public

By applying the Copenhagen School’s securitisation theory, this paper assesses the extent to which immigration has been securitised at the EU level after the 2015 Paris attacks. It is doing so by not only examining the presence of the securitisation actors and the security speech acts, as is commonly done in the current securitisation literature, but also by analysing from a legal point of view, two emergency measures implemented by the EU to deal with the migration crisis. Most importantly, this paper investigates the response of the European public to the securitisation moves and highlights that this aspect of the Copenhagen School’s analytical framework has been not only undertheorised but also understudied.

Cultural and legal aspects of migration in Hungary in the new millennium

The article analyses the anti-immigration campaign of the Hungarian government as an element of the securitization of migration, both at the level of political discourse and at that of political legislative instruments. The securitization of migration is seen as a filter through which all migrants are passed, in order to select those who have the same cultural background and, therefore, could adapt to the house country’s national culture and do not represent a threat to the national security. In the case of Hungary, the securitization of migration unfolds on two levels. At the discursive level the migrants are presented as a threat to Hungarian culture, endangering the nation-building process. The migrants are also identified as a threat to the Hungarian economy, since they are allegedly going to take up jobs that otherwise, Hungarians would have been able to access, and to the whole of Europe, creating a connection between the presence of immigrants and the incidence of terrorist acts. The second level is of an institutional kind, involving the adoption of public policies and the creation of security agencies that exercise control over migration through a certain set of practices, such as the bureaucratic ones. The Hungarian anti-immigration policy seems to serve the Kremlin’s objectives, being directed against the European Union.

Identification as translation: The art of choosing the right spokespersons at the securitized border

This article pursues a translational approach to the securitization of migration. It argues that sociotechnical processes of identification at the border can be conceived of as translations into legible identities of individuals who are unknown to authorities. The article contributes to the materiality debate on securitization across Critical Security Studies (CSS) and Science and Technology Studies (STS) by answering the call to conduct empirical explorations of security, and by revisiting the potential of the early sociology of translation (i.e. actor-network theory) to account for the identification of border crossers. Data collection was conducted at four identification facilities in the Hellenic Republic. Three sets of implications for the CSS-STS debate on the materiality of securitization are discussed. First, a translational approach can replace a representational understanding of identity with a performative apprehension of identification. Second, adopting a translational approach leads to acknowledge that the identification encounter is mediated by multiple, heterogeneous actors. It thus helps to open technological black boxes and reveal the key role of material qualities, affordances and limitations of artefacts. Third, a translational approach to the securitization of migration can help advance the field of ‘alterity processing’ by appreciating the de facto re-arrangements of institutional orders elicited by techno-political alignments with global security regimes.

The Securitization of Migration: An Indian Stance on the Securitization of Migration

The Securitization of Migration: An Indian Stance on the Securitization of Migration

Right-wing feminism and the securitization of migration: on the example of the german campaign 120 Dezibel

The “summer of migration” has facilitated a right-wing narrative that depicts migration and Islam as a security threat to European society, in which gender equality and women’s rights are instrumentalized for political purposes. This political strategy, defined by Farris as femonationalism, and its effects constitute the object of this paper. For this purpose, I analyze the German campaign "120-Dezibel", which takes advantage of migrant-led sexual assaults against European women in order to promote a xenophobic immigration policy that affects the current political discourse on refugees and the ›European border regime‹. It's concluded that, by focusing only on perpetrators of foreign origin and in white European victims, far-right feminists place the origin of gender violence beyond European borders, detracting attention from the violence rooted within them, perpetuating a colonial and patriarchal mentality. Finally, that such campaigns evidence how getting involved in the feminist struggle alone is insufficient if the anti-racist struggle is ignored.

Инструментализация миграции: управление миграционными потоками в двустороннем формате

This article assesses the theoretical contours and effectiveness of migration governance and diplomacy as an instrument of statecraft in interstate relations. The first part provides an overview of the stakes and challenges of migration within the fields of international relations and political theory. In particular, the category of migration defies the theoretical model of the nation­state, on which traditional IR and political theory are grounded. The second part highlights how the state, through the securitization of migration, uses migration as a tool to reaffirm its defining features: reinforcing its borders, legitimating state sovereignty, and building societal security. The third section demonstrates the usefulness of the category of statecraft within the context of migration governance at a bilateral level owing to the absence of a global normative framework. This relationship can serve different purposes, depending on the context: to harm, to deter, to bargain, to escalate. The last section presents contemporary case studies of the application of migration statecraft by the United States and Russia, as well as by member states along external border of the European Union and within the Schengen space. The elements of "migration statecraft" evidenced by these episodes focus on several objectives: trade blackmail, cooperation in an asymmetrical relation, political threat, and diplomatic escalation for electoral purposes. The variety of these cases illustrates the specificity of statecraft in comparison with foreign policy analysis. While the latter refers to a general and long­term strategy, the former is context­dependent and specific to achievement of a precise desired outcome.

СЕКЬЮРИТИЗАЦИЯ МИГРАЦИИ: ОБЗОР ЗАРУБЕЖНЫХ ЭМПИРИЧЕСКИХ ИССЛЕДОВАНИЙ

Securitization theory has been actively used in foreign migration research since the 2000s, but little is known about it in Russia. In a few domestic works on migration securitization, this theoretical approach is often completely misinterpreted. In addition, in these works, as a rule, there is practically no empirical base. This would suggest that securitization is perceived by a significant number of Russian authors not as a productive analytical framework, but as a fashionable term, the use of which makes it possible to give the text the necessary sciolism. At the same time, securitization theory is valued abroad for its high heuristic potential. The large amount of high-quality empirical research carried out in this theoretical paradigm makes it safe to say that it is a useful analytical tool that allows taking a fresh look at many processes associated with security problems and come to theoretically sound conclusions. This review will focus on foreign works devoted to the migration securitization in different countries of the world, which provide a good example of how securitization theory can be effectively used in empirical research.

ARİSTOTELES'İN BİLGİ GÖRÜŞÜNÜN EMPİRİZM VE RASYONALİZM BAĞLAMINDA DEĞERLENDİRİLMESİ

This study examines the approaches and practices of states and religions on immigration. States construct their immigration and border policies and practices within the framework of security. Operating from within this securitising framework, immigrants are perceived as a potential threat to the security and stability of the nation state. Accordingly, the public perceive immigrants as a threat to national security. While these practices and policies secure the immigrant issue for the host community, they make immigration dangerous for immigrants. In this case, it becomes a requirement to the question the security practices and policies and to examine the approach of religion to the immigration issue. In the context of migration, due to secular prejudices, religions have recently attracted migrant researchers' attention. Religions have long been known to interact with the dynamics of migration and play key roles for immigrants. Religions that travel with/to migrants help them in constructing their identity, a sense of belonging, a space and boundaries as well as in making their journeys and grounding in a new context. These factors indicate that the interaction between religion and immigration needs to be reinterpreted in the context of securitization of migration. The research explores how/ the manner in which religions approach the issue of migration by prioritizing social solidarity and hospitality.

Exit Rights, Seamless Borders and the New Nation-State Container

Enlisting states of origin or transit to prevent exit from their own territory has become a tool of extraterritorial migration control for states of the global North. Violeta Moreno-Lax and Mariagiulia Giuffre (2019) dub this trend ‘consensual containment.’ I view it as the harbinger of a loosely networked global migration regime for governing the circulation of people. This article first explores the practical erosion of the right of exit since the demise of communism. Next, I turn to the legitimating function performed by anti-trafficking and anti-smuggling campaigns in reframing breaches of exit rights as an exercise of the cynical practice now dubbed ‘penal humanitarianism’. I conclude by querying whether a paradigm of mobility organized around entry and exit is veering toward obsolescence. Current trends, particularly in relation to securitization of migration, push the logic of migration governance beyond obstructing exit and preventing entry as ends in themselves. I suggest that the logic is increasingly directed more at assuming control over movement as such. Against the contemporary claim of increased global mobility for some and decreased mobility for others, I contend that mobility - understood as the capacity for 'free movement' - is on the decline for everyone, even if actual movement by some is on the increase.