Irregular Citizenship Immigration And Deportation

Deportation has again taken a prominent place within the immigration policies of nation-states. Irregular Citizenship, Immigration, and Deportation addresses the social responses to deportation, in particular the growing movements against deportation and detention, and for freedom of movement and the regularization of status. The book brings deportation and anti-deportation together with the aim of understanding the political subjects that emerge in this contested field of governance and control, freedom and struggle. However, rather than focusing on the typical subjects of removal – refugees, the undocumented, and irregular migrants – Irregular Citizenship, Immigration, and Deportation looks at the ways that citizens get caught up in the deportation apparatus and must struggle to remain in or return to their country of citizenship. The transformation of ‘regular’ citizens into deportable ‘irregular’ citizens involves the removal of the rights, duties, and obligations of citizenship. This includes unmaking citizenship through official revocation or denationalization, as well as through informal, extra-legal, and unofficial means. The book features stories about struggles over removal and return, deportation and repatriation, rescue and abandonment. The book features eleven ‘acts of citizenship’ that occur in the context of deportation and anti-deportation, arguing that these struggles for rights, recognition, and return are fundamentally struggles over political subjectivity – of citizenship. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of citizenship, migration and security studies.

In recent years states across the world have boosted their legal and institutional capacity to deport noncitizens residing on their territory, including failed asylum seekers, “illegal” migrants, and convicted criminals. Scholars have analyzed this development primarily through the lens of immigration control. Deportation has been viewed as one amongst a range of measures designed to control entrance, distinguished primarily by the fact that it is exercised inside the territory of the state. But deportation also has broader social and political effects. It provides a powerful way through which the state reminds noncitizens that their presence in the polity is contingent upon acceptable behavior. Furthermore, in liberal democratic states immunity from deportation is one of the key privileges that citizens enjoy that distinguishes them from permanent residents. This book examines the historical, institutional and social dimensions of the relationship between deportation and citizenship in liberal democracies. Contributions also include analysis of the formal and informal functions of administrative immigration detention, and the role of the European Parliament in the area of irregular immigration and borders. The book also develops an analytical framework that identifies and critically appraises grassroots and sub national responses to migration policy in liberal democratic societies, and considers how groups form after deportation and the employment of citizenship in this particular context, making it of interest to scholars and international policy makers alike. “It is commonly surmised that the increased flows of goods, ideas, finance and people are slowly leading to the dissolution of boundaries between nation-states. However, as the varied and excellent chapters in this collection demonstrate, the enforcement of state power through detention and deportation is still a real and growing feature of contemporary political life. Expulsion has always been a moral sanction (think of Adam and Eve being banished from the Garden of Eden or the ostracism directed against dissidents in ancient Athens, who were forced to leave for ten years). As the editors suggest, deportation remains a means of enforcing a normative order (‘a community of values’), while the authors and editors of this book have expanded the subject-matter to include the deportees’ perspectives and the effects of deportation on families, other potential victims and on those whose social inclusion has been affirmed by the exclusion of others. These studies will enrich and enlarge the study of the more naked forms of state power.” - Robin Cohen, Professor Emeritus of Development Studies, University of Oxford “This wide-ranging, well-researched, and highly informative work is a major contribution to the growing body of scholarship examining the harsh consequences of deportation around the world. The editors have gathered an impressive group of scholars who craft an eclectic view of how deportation has evolved, what it may signify, and how it now works in various settings. With its inclusion of historical, institutional, comparative, and finely-textured, sensitive experiential studies, this book offers an important--if frequently distressing--overview of phenomena that deserve our full attention.” - Daniel Kanstroom, Professor of Law and Director, International Human Rights Program, Boston College Law School

In recent years states across the world have boosted their legal and institutional capacity to deport noncitizens residing on their territory, including failed asylum seekers, “illegal” migrants, and convicted criminals. Scholars have analyzed this development primarily through the lens of immigration control. Deportation has been viewed as one amongst a range of measures designed to control entrance, distinguished primarily by the fact that it is exercised inside the territory of the state. But deportation also has broader social and political effects. It provides a powerful way through which the state reminds noncitizens that their presence in the polity is contingent upon acceptable behavior. Furthermore, in liberal democratic states immunity from deportation is one of the key privileges that citizens enjoy that distinguishes them from permanent residents. This book examines the historical, institutional and social dimensions of the relationship between deportation and citizenship in liberal democracies. Contributions also include analysis of the formal and informal functions of administrative immigration detention, and the role of the European Parliament in the area of irregular immigration and borders. The book also develops an analytical framework that identifies and critically appraises grassroots and sub national responses to migration policy in liberal democratic societies, and considers how groups form after deportation and the employment of citizenship in this particular context, making it of interest to scholars and international policy makers alike. “It is commonly surmised that the increased flows of goods, ideas, finance and people are slowly leading to the dissolution of boundaries between nation-states. However, as the varied and excellent chapters in this collection demonstrate, the enforcement of state power through detention and deportation is still a real and growing feature of contemporary political life. Expulsion has always been a moral sanction (think of Adam and Eve being banished from the Garden of Eden or the ostracism directed against dissidents in ancient Athens, who were forced to leave for ten years). As the editors suggest, deportation remains a means of enforcing a normative order (‘a community of values’), while the authors and editors of this book have expanded the subject-matter to include the deportees’ perspectives and the effects of deportation on families, other potential victims and on those whose social inclusion has been affirmed by the exclusion of others. These studies will enrich and enlarge the study of the more naked forms of state power.” - Robin Cohen, Professor Emeritus of Development Studies, University of Oxford “This wide-ranging, well-researched, and highly informative work is a major contribution to the growing body of scholarship examining the harsh consequences of deportation around the world. The editors have gathered an impressive group of scholars who craft an eclectic view of how deportation has evolved, what it may signify, and how it now works in various settings. With its inclusion of historical, institutional, comparative, and finely-textured, sensitive experiential studies, this book offers an important--if frequently distressing--overview of phenomena that deserve our full attention.” - Daniel Kanstroom, Professor of Law and Director, International Human Rights Program, Boston College Law School

This book introduces the concept of 'act of citizenship' and in doing so, re-orients the study of what it means to be a citizen. Isin and Nielsen show that an 'act of citizenship' is the event through which subjects constitute themselves as citizens. They claim that such an act involves both responsibility and answerability, but is ultimately irreducible to either. This study of citizenship is truly interdisciplinary, drawing not only on new developments in politics, sociology, geography and anthropology, but also on psychoanalysis, philosophy and history. Ranging from Antigone and Socrates in the ancient world to checkpoints, euthanasia and flash mobs in the modern one, the 'acts' and chapters here build up a dynamic and wide-ranging picture. Acts of Citizenship provides important new insights for all those concerned with the relationship between individuals, groups and polities.

Anna Pratt takes a close look at the laws, policies, and practices of detention and deportation in Canada since the Second World War. She demonstrates that although the desire to fortify the border against risky outsiders has long been prominent in Canadian immigration penality, the degree to which concerns about security, crime, and fraud have come to govern the process is unprecedented. Securing Borders traces the connections between seemingly disparate concerns - detention, deportation, liberalism, law, discretion, welfare, criminal justice, refugees, security, and risk - to consider them in relation to the changing modes of Canadian governance.

This thorough analysis of immigration governance in Spain explores the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion at play at one of Europe’s southern borders. Drawing on interviews with policymakers and from parliamentary debates, laws, and policy documents, David Moffette reveals the complicated legal obstacles facing migrants with precarious immigration status. He shows how issues of culture, labour, and security intersect to create a regime of migration governance that is at once progressive and repressive. This book contributes to debates in socio-legal, border, and citizenship studies.

Within and Beyond Citizenship brings together cutting-edge research in sociology and social anthropology on the relationship between immigration status, rights and belonging in contemporary societies of immigration. It offers new insights into the ways in which political membership is experienced, spatially and bureaucratically constructed, and actively negotiated and contested in the everyday lives of citizens and non-citizens. Themes, concepts and ideas covered include: The shifting position of the non-citizen in contemporary immigration societies; The intersection of human mobility, immigration control and articulations of citizenship; Activism and everyday practices of membership and belonging; Tension in policy and practice between coexisting traditions and regimes of rights; Mixed status families, belonging and citizenship; The ways in which immigration status (or its absence) intersects with social cleavages such as age, class, gender and ‘race’ to shape social relations. This book will appeal to academics and practitioners working in the disciplines of Social and Political Anthropology, Sociology, Social Policy, Human Geography, Political Sciences, Citizenship Studies and Migration Studies.

In The Ethics of Immigration, Joseph Carens synthesizes a lifetime of work to explore and illuminate one of the most pressing issues of our time. Immigration poses practical problems for western democracies and also challenges the ways in which people in democracies think about citizenship and belonging, about rights and responsibilities, and about freedom and equality. Carens begins by focusing on current immigration controversies in North America and Europe about access to citizenship, the integration of immigrants, temporary workers, irregular migrants and the admission of family members and refugees. Working within the moral framework provided by liberal democratic values, he argues that some of the practices of democratic states in these areas are morally defensible, while others need to be reformed. In the last part of the book he moves beyond the currently feasible to ask questions about immigration from a more fundamental perspective. He argues that democratic values of freedom and equality ultimately entail a commitment to open borders. Only in a world of open borders, he contends, will we live up to our most basic principles. Many will not agree with some of Carens' claims, especially his controversial conclusion, but none will be able to dismiss his views lightly. Powerfully argued by one of the world's leading political philosophers on the issue, The Ethics of Immigration is a landmark work on one of the most important global social trends of our era.