New challenges in immigration theory: an overview

Normative political theory over recent decades has focused mainly on what ought to be done as far as migration policies are concerned. It faces a basic challenge, which stems from two competing, yet equally fundamental, ideals underpinning liberal democratic societies: a commitment to moral universalism and the exclusionary requirement of democracy. The objective of this special issue, ‘New Challenges in Immigration Theory’, is to provide a conceptual overview of (some) immigration theories and to highlight the challenges new streams of immigration pose for normative (political) theory and liberal democratic practice. The issue will consider how to reconcile state-based exclusion with a commitment to equal moral concern for all persons, by focusing on the non-standard immigration questions that have so far been ‘neglected’ by normative political theory. In line with this objective, the issue will discuss some of the inadequacies of the dominant political theories of immigration and show how such theories can be expanded to take account of new migration challenges such as brain drain, climate migration, detention of irregular migrants and asylum seekers, rights of labour migrants, transnational networks of movement, and so on.     

Is unauthorized immigration an immoral act? On David Miller’s ‘weak cosmopolitan’ defense of the right to exclude

While immigration is attracting increasing attention in political theory, there are as yet, few political theorists who adopt a restrictionist stance. With very few exceptions, the most political theorists have offered so far are pragmatic, not principled, defenses of the right to exclude. Looked at in this light, David Miller’s engagingly thoughtful book is surely a welcome and distinctive addition to the burgeoning literature on immigration. But readers who are looking for a normative counterpart to Joseph Carens’ Ethics of Immigration might be disappointed. In fact, the two books display more similarities than one would expect. Most notably, they share a common methodological ground: both reject top-down approaches, which proceed from abstract normative principles and apply these principles to immigration and integration policies. Yet, Miller’s realism reaches farther, giving greater weight to empirical evidence and focusing on institutions instead of on how individuals should act. This institutional focus is a key-defining feature of Miller’s political philosophy of immigration as distinct from an ethics of immigration. However, as I shall argue in the first part of this paper, Miller does not remain faithful to this distinction. He blames unauthorized migrants for acting ‘unfairly.’ But his criticism of irregular migration lacks a sufficient normative and empirical basis. The second part of the paper deals with the question whether legal coercion gives rise to a right to stay. My focus is in particular on the costs that irregular immigrants must bear when they are forced to go back to their countries of origin. These costs tend to be much higher than one expects.     

Migration and justice: a reply to my critics

In this response to six critics, I begin by clarifying the sense in which my approach to the issue of immigration is ‘realistic’. I also explain why a realistic approach must place immigration in a nation-state context, although without treating it as primarily reparative for historic injustice. I suggest that it is implausible to regard global equality of opportunity, as opposed to global sufficiency, as setting limits to national self-determination. I then defend my use of the distinction between refugees and economic migrants to frame the discussion of immigration against the charge that all migrants are potentially vulnerable to the decisions of admitting states, since these may determine the fate of their life-projects. And I also defend the claim that, in the case of refugees, justice requires only that each state should discharge its fair share of the burden of admitting them; doing more than this would require popular consent. Finally, I consider the case of irregular migrants, and explain in what sense they have taken unfair advantage of other potential migrants; I defend offering a conditional amnesty to people in this category.     

Silence of the Innocents: Undocumented Immigrants’ Underreporting of Crime and their Victimization

Do undocumented migrants underreport crimes to the police in order to avoid being deported? And do criminals exploit such vulnerability? We address these questions using victimization surveys and administrative data around the 1986 U.S. immigration amnesty. The amnesty allows us to solve two major identification issues that have plagued this literature: migrants’ legal status is endogenous and unobserved. The results show that the reporting rate of undocumented immigrants is 17 percent, which limits the immigrants’ ability to protect some of their fundamental human rights. However, right after the 1986 amnesty, which disproportionately legalized individuals of Hispanic origin, crime victims of Hispanic origin show enormous improvements in reporting behavior. The implied increase in the reporting rate by amnesty applicants is close to 20 percentage points.     

Detaining immigrants and asylum seekers: a normative introduction

Detention of irregular migrants and asylum seekers takes place at the behest and convenience of virtually all liberal states. It is a harmful practice that impacts non-citizens as well as citizens, and has far-reaching ramifications for our understandings of the ethics of immigration and border control. Thus far, however, normative theorists engaged in the vibrant immigration admissions debate have remained mostly silent on the topic of detention. By unmasking and revealing the essential roles played by detention in enforcing immigration controls, this paper is intended to highlight the dangers for normative theory of maligning or underestimating detention. In particular, a study of detention refocuses scholarly attention on the temporal and spatial aspects of immigration enforcement, the undesirability of warehousing or containment proposals for addressing refugee or immigration crises, and the virtually irreconcilable ethical conflicts at the core of the immigration admissions debate. Normative theorists would be remiss in ignoring the ethical and practical consequences for an increasingly large number of people that are exacted by detention practices worldwide.     

‘How Do You Think I Feel? It's My Country’: Belonging,Entitlement and the Politics of Immigration

Current debates around immigration are informed by hierarchies of belonging, with some groups seen to belong more, and therefore deserve more, than others. This link between belonging and entitlement has been predominantly analysed in relation to struggles over access to key material benefits, such as jobs, housing, healthcare and so on. This paper will argue that these struggles also point to the continuing relevance of nationhood to many people's sense of self, community and place and the value that comes from being positioned, and recognised, as part of a group that lies at the heart of national life and culture. In other words, the ‘politics of immigration’ is about the anxieties and concerns of those who no longer feel ‘at home’ in what they consider to be ‘their’ country.     

Comparing Urban Citizenship,Sanctuary Cities,Local Bureaucratic Membership,and Regularizations

Irregular migrants tend to live in dense urban settings. Cities respond to this phenomenon with a variety of urban immigration and citizenship policies in support of irregular migrants. These urban policies produce a disparity between local inclusion and national exclusion. This article describes and compares such urban policies, namely, urban citizenship, sanctuary cities, local bureaucratic membership, and regularizations. Urban citizenship serves as the normative foundation of these policies because it claims membership for all people who inhabit a city. Regularization programs confer national residency status on irregular migrants. Pro‐immigration actors favor this policy; however, when regularizations are not possible, cities can turn to sanctuary city and local bureaucratic membership policies. It is important for practitioners to comprehend and engage with these types of urban policies since they are likely to travel to cities worldwide.     

‘Strangers in their own Country’: Epideictic Rhetoric and Communal Definition in Enoch Powell's ‘Rivers of Blood’ Speech

This article treats Enoch Powell's ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech as an example of the epideictic rhetoric of blame and exclusion. Drawing on a framework proposed by Celeste Michelle Condit, the analysis explores the functions of the address for the speaker and for the audience. Of particular concern are Powell's self‐presentation as a statesman and prophet; his account of the impact and consequences of unrestricted immigration; and his portrayal of a community where ordinary, decent English people were being displaced and victimised by Commonwealth immigrants—a process in which he claimed the authorities were complicit. For the audience, the speech gave public expression to their concerns about immigration, though Powell's predictions of a dystopian future also aroused sentiments of anger and foreboding. Despite the controversy that ensued, the impact of ‘Rivers of Blood’ was far‐reaching, and its influence is still apparent in contemporary debates over immigration.     

Unfree labour in immigration detention: exploitation and coercion of a captive immigrant workforce

This paper focuses on labour within immigration detention in the United Kingdom, offering an original national case study as well as a new conceptual framework for analysing such practices. It does so through an innovative engagement with recent literatures on forced labour, unfreedom and hyper-precarity, particularly amongst irregular migrants. We advance two key arguments in this paper. First, that the available data on labour within immigration detention indicate that detainees should legally be considered employees and granted access to labour protections, including the national minimum wage. Second, that work in immigration detention is an example of state-sanctioned exploitative, coercive and unfree labour amongst a hyper-precarious group of the population. This case has implications for other country contexts where immigration detention is used.     

Youthscapes: the politics of belonging for ‘Makwerekwere’ youth in South African schools

This article is framed within the global context of immigration and the resultant debates around citizenship, belonging, inclusion and exclusion. The task of schools as social institutions is to ‘integrate’ and ‘educate’ immigrant youth and as such they can be seen as the primary sites where the politics of belonging and struggles over belonging and citizenship are waged. Drawing on the conceptual framework of ‘youthscapes’ and the theoretical framework of critical race theory, this article engages with the contradictions inherent in schools and the manner in which the South African education system is implicated in constructing different ‘kinds’ of citizens and reproducing hierarchies of belonging, even in its efforts at inclusivity.     

‘Strangers in their own land’: Powellism’s policy impact

ABSTRACT

In this paper, Solomos provides an account of the impact of Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech on policy agendas about race relations and immigration. He argues that Powell’s intervention helped to shape policy frames around race and immigration in its immediate aftermath and beyond. By exploring the impact of the speech on the policy climate, his paper argues that perhaps the most important aspect of the speech is the way it helped to shape the policy agendas of both the Conservative and Labour parties, even as Powell himself was marginalized from mainstream politics. He concludes by suggesting that Powell’s intervention links up with contemporary debates and preoccupations about race and immigration.     

Science studies,climate change and the prospects for constructivist critique

Abstract

Starting from the debates over the ‘reality’ of global warming and the politics of science studies, I seek to clarify what is at stake politically in constructivist understandings of science and nature. These two separate but related debates point to the centrality of modern science in political discussions of the environment and to the difficulties, simultaneously technical and political, in warranting political action in the face of inevitably partial and uncertain scientific knowledge. The case of climate change then provides an experimental test case with which to explore the various responses to these challenges offered by Ulrich Beck's reflexive modernization, the normative theory of expertise advanced by Harry Collins and Robert Evans, and Bruno Latour's utopian vision for decision-making by the ‘collective’ in which traditional epistemic and institutional distinctions between science and politics are entirely superseded.     

Resources, Group Conflict and Symbols: Explaining Anti-Immigration Hostility in Britain

This article analyses the causes of variation in attitudes to immigration policy in the UK. The key theoretical approaches emphasised are: the role of self-interest; group conflict over resources; and group conflict over important symbols of Britishness. The connection between perceptions of immigration and crime is also investigated. Based on the 2003 British Social Attitudes Survey, the findings indicate that self-interest has very little bearing on opposition to immigration and that British citizens instead appear to be most concerned with threats to ingroup resources posed by immigration, threats to the shared customs and traditions of British society (particularly those posed by Muslims) and – to a lesser extent – the potential for increased crime that may result from immigration.     

(Re)Making a politics of protection in immigration policy: the “criminal alien,” gendered vulnerability,and the management of risk

The two most recent Department of Homeland Security interior immigration enforcement programs, Secure Communities and the Priority Enforcement Program, have directed deportation efforts toward noncitizens convicted of crimes. One of their targets, the ‘criminal alien,’ has been (re)fashioned in political and legal discourses since the 1980s. Through critical discourse analysis of the 2013 immigration reform debates and their incorporation of the Violence Against Women Act (2013), this article examines the ways in which contemporary immigration policy renders the racialized ‘criminal alien’ (sexually) threatening to the ‘vulnerable’ woman. Dichotomous constructions of deserving and undeserving immigrants, in turn, bolster an array of strategies to manage the ‘risk’ of noncitizens, including border control and financial self-regulation.     

Immigration,asylum and citizenship in Germany: The impact of unification and the Berlin republic

In recent years, there has been much debate over whether post‐unification Germany, often termed the ‘Berlin Republic’, represents a substantive change from the ‘Bonn Republic ‘, that is, West Germany. This article analyses Germany's immigration and citizenship policy against this background by examining various dimensions of immigration before and after unification. The article argues that both unification itself and Germany's changed international environment have resulted in far‐reaching changes in policy, which have forced a reappraisal of Germany's traditional self‐image as a ‘non‐immigration country’.     

The North–South Myth Revised: A Comparison of the Italian and German Migration Regimes

Since the beginning of the migration crisis in the 1990s, Italy and Germany have been considered to be the two showpieces of different migration control systems in Europe, where an ‘inefficient’ South is contrasted with an ‘effective’ North in terms of immigration control and humanitarian protection. Italy is often considered to have a lax immigration regime with weak border controls and few guarantees for asylum seekers and refugees, whereas Germany, in contrast, is shown as having an ideal asylum machinery with lower irregular immigration and no need for regularisation processes. This article challenges such a bipolar vision of the European immigration and shows that the ‘North–South axis’ dividing European control systems is not based on empirical evidence but on a myth which fails to take into account the logic of controls and the socio-economic contexts in which they are enforced.     

THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF MEXICAN AND CUBAN IMMIGRANTS BY POLITICIANS

Schneider and Ingram (1993) propose that the amount and quality of service that target groups receive from their government is related to two factors: political power (strong or weak); and the target groups’ image in the public eye (positive or negative), also known as “social constructions.” This research examines political candidates’ social constructions of Mexican and Cuban immigrants in major newspapers. Using newspaper articles from Lexis/Nexus (an electronic newspaper database), we content analyzed 495 major US newspapers over a six‐year period. Our results indicate that Latin American immigration, particularly Mexican immigration, is championed as a political platform in ways consistent with Schneider and Ingram's model.     

INDIVIDUALISM, COLLECTIVISM AND THE MARKETIZATION OF SOCIAL SECURITY: Chile and China Compared

Ideological beliefs are of central importance in current debates about the marketization of social security. However, developments in Chile and China suggest that the conventional individualist‐collectivist dichotomy, which has framed ideological debates on social security, fails to capture the complexities of ideological differences as well as the imperative of economic development which appears to be driving social security policy in both countries. Examining events in these countries, it is suggested that the individualist‐collectivist dichotomy needs to be reconsidered. It is also argued at a normative level that these ideologies no longer provide a viable basis for social security policy, and that the “developmentalist” approach emerging in China merits further scrutiny.     

Fair trade: global problems and individual responsibilities

The topic of global trade has become central to debates on global justice and on duties to the global poor, two important concerns of contemporary political theory. However, the leading approaches fail to directly address the participants in trade and provide them with normative guidance for making choices in non-ideal circumstances. This paper contributes an account of individuals’ responsibilities for global problems in general, an account of individuals’ responsibilities as market actors, and an explanation of how these responsibilities coexist. The argument is developed through an extended case study of a consumer’s choice between conventional and fair trade coffee. My argument is that the coffee consumer’s choice requires consideration of two distinct responsibilities. First, she has responsibilities to help meet foreigners’ claims for assistance. Second, she has moral responsibilities to ensure that trades, such as between herself and a coffee farmer, are fair rather than exploitative.     

Immigration and the sociocultural divide in Central and Eastern Europe: Stasis or evolution?

Immigration has historically been of low salience in Central and Eastern Europe. Yet, the region has consistently higher levels of ethnocentrism than the rest of Europe. Scholars argue that the East's limited politicization of immigration is due to its status as a region of emigration and the presence of ethnic minority ‘others’. I argue that this is changing. The politicization of the European refugee crisis by domestic elites has begun to refocus the sociocultural dimension on the immigration issue. Using structural equation models, I compare European Values Study data from 2008 and 2017 across 10 East European EU member states. I find evidence that traditionalist attitudes are more strongly related to anti-immigration attitudes since the crisis, particularly for those who are interested in politics. Further, immigration attitudes are polarizing across the GAL-TAN dimension and by education. Hence, immigration is bolstering a pre-existing, socially structured divide around both nationalist and traditionalist values.