Migration Citizenship And The Challenge For Security

This study focuses on the field of security studies through the prism of migration. Using ethnographic methods to illustrate an experiential theory of security taken from the perspective of migrants and asylum seekers in Europe, it effectively offers a means of moving beyond state-based and state-centric theories in International Relations.

Every day newspapers in the Western world carry articles about illegal immigrants, asylum seekers and other migrants. The focus of these articles varies greatly from migrants as a threat to one or another important social or societal interest, to migrants as an important asset to those same interests. The tone is most often emotional - whichever way the focus goes. The overall impact is to confuse: is migration good or bad? In this book Guild and van Selm seek to investigate these value assessments regarding migrants in Europe, the USA, Canada and Australia. While looking at issues such as security, human rights, legal systems, identity, racism, welfare, health and labour, the authors also respond to critics of immigration.

The concept of security has traditionally referred to the status of sovereign states in a closed international system. In this system the state is assumed to be both the object of security and the primary provider of security. Threats to the state's security are understood as threats to its political autonomy in the system. The major international institutions that emerged after the Second World War were built around this idea. When the founders of the United Nations spoke of collective security, they were referring primarily to state security and to the coordinated system that would be necessary in order to avoid the 'scourge of war'. But today, a wide range of security threats, both new and traditional, confront Europe, or at least as some would say.

Migration is an inescapable issue in the public debates and political agendas of Western countries, with refugees and migrants increasingly viewed through the lens of security. This book analyses recent shifts in governing global mobility from the perspective of the politics of citizenship, utilising an interdisciplinary approach that employs politics, sociology, anthropology, and history. Featuring an international group of leading and emerging researchers working on the intersection of migrant politics and citizenship studies, this book investigates how restrictions on mobility are not only generating new forms of inequality and social exclusion, but also new forms of political activism and citizenship identities. The chapters present and discuss the perspectives, experiences, knowledge and voices of migrants and migrant rights activists in order to better understand the specific strategies, tactics, and knowledge that politicized non-citizen migrant groups produce in their encounters with border controls and security technologies. The book focuses the debate of migration, security, and mobility rights onto grassroots politics and social movements, making an important intervention into the fields of migration studies and critical citizenship studies. Citizenship, Migrant Activism and the Politics of Movement will be of interest to students and scholars of migration and security politics, globalisation and citizenship studies.

Migration and Insecurity addressess an important but rarely considered aspect of migration: how are migrants and refugees received in their new homes? What defines inclusion and exclusion for migrants, and how does this affect the concept of 'belonging' in a transnational society? In these essays, the distinguished contributors discuss the places in which migrants and refugees construct and experience their belonging, and situate this discussion in the context of the international system and government policy. Chapters interrogate the notion of ...

Migration is an inescapable issue in the public debates and political agendas of Western countries, with refugees and migrants increasingly viewed through the lens of security. This book analyses recent shifts in governing global mobility from the perspective of the politics of citizenship, utilising an interdisciplinary approach that employs politics, sociology, anthropology, and history. Featuring an international group of leading and emerging researchers working on the intersection of migrant politics and citizenship studies, this book investigates how restrictions on mobility are not only generating new forms of inequality and social exclusion, but also new forms of political activism and citizenship identities. The chapters present and discuss the perspectives, experiences, knowledge and voices of migrants and migrant rights activists in order to better understand the specific strategies, tactics, and knowledge that politicized non-citizen migrant groups produce in their encounters with border controls and security technologies. The book focuses the debate of migration, security, and mobility rights onto grassroots politics and social movements, making an important intervention into the fields of migration studies and critical citizenship studies. Citizenship, Migrant Activism and the Politics of Movement will be of interest to students and scholars of migration and security politics, globalisation and citizenship studies.

Liberating Temporariness? explores the complex ways in which temporariness is being institutionalized as a condition of life for a growing number of people worldwide. The collection emphasizes contemporary developments, but also provides historical context on nation-state membership as the fundamental means for accessing rights in an era of expanding temporariness - in recognition of why pathways to permanence remain so compelling. Through empirical and theoretical analysis, contributors explore various dimensions of temporariness, especially as it relates to the legal status of migrants and refugees, to the spread of precarious employment, and to limitations on social rights. While the focus is on Canada, a number of chapters investigate and contrast developments in Canada with those in Europe as well as Australia and the United States. Together, these essays reveal changing and enduring temporariness at local, regional, national, transnational, and global levels, and in different domains, such as health care, language programs, and security. The question at the heart of this collection is whether temporariness can be liberated from current constraints. While not denying the desirability of permanence for migrants and labourers, Liberating Temporariness? presents alternative possibilities of security and liberation.

This book engages the intense relationship between citizenship and security in modern politics. It focuses on questions of citizenship in security analysis in order to critically evaluate how political being is and can be constituted in relation to securitising practices. In light of contemporary issues and events such as human rights regimes, terrorism, identity control, commercialisation of security, diaspora, and border policies, this book addresses a citizenship deficit in security studies. The chapters introduce several key political themes that characterise the interplays between citizenship and security: changes in citizenship regimes, the renewed insecurity of citizenship-state relations, the emerging ways by which the political and national communities are crafted, and the ways democratic societies and regimes react in times of insecurity. Approaching citizenship as both a governmental practice and a resource of political contestation, the book aims to highlight what political challenges and contestations are created in situations where security intensely meets citizenship today. This book will be of interest to scholars of security studies and security politics, citizenship studies, and international relations.