Crisis,Routine, Consolidation: The Politics of the Mediterranean Migration Crisis

The current ‘migration crisis’ is framed as a moment of reckoning in the EU’s dealings with its Mediterranean neighbourhood. Yet to what extent is crisis the most useful tool to account for migration and European border control practices in the current context? An exclusive focus on crisis, we argue, is misleading. To a large extent, the current crisis management builds on pre-existing practices and enables their consolidation. For us this is an invitation to discuss the relation between crisis, routine and consolidation in Euro-Mediterranean migration policies and practices. This intervention shows how ‘crises’ are spatio-temporally limited and used to further pre-existing migration control practices and techniques of governing. As such we interrogate what it means to talk of crisis versus routine in the field of Mediterranean security practices.     

Migration Crisis,Organised Crime and Domestic Politics in Italy: Unfolding the Interplay

ABSTRACT

Focusing on Italy in the years of the ‘migration crisis’ between 2013 and 2017, this article explores how migration, crime groups and the domestic politics of migration control became entangled in times of crisis. Departing from previous theoretical discussions, it builds a framework that combines crime groups’ actions with domestic political processes in host countries and explores how the crime-migration nexus shaped – and was shaped by – Italian migration policymaking. The article contends that in the context of crisis the nexus took on new forms and that Italian migration politics and policies served to foster rather than counter the phenomenon, in a continuous interplay between criminal practices and policy choices.     

Chronicle of a Survival Foretold: How Protest Behavior Against Armed Actors Influenced Violence in the Colombian Civil War, 1988–2005

This article examines the circumstances under which civilians, using protests as a mechanism, alter the strategic use of violence by armed actors (rebels and state forces). By examining the civil war in Colombia between 1988 and 2005, this study finds that combatants decrease their attacks against the population when civilians protest against the enemy. Combatants interpret such demonstrations as costly signals of loyalty. Furthermore, when insurgents are the target of the protests, insurgents increase repression against civilians as rebels get stronger. In contrast, state forces (and paramilitaries) compensate for their weakness in the area by multiplying civilian victims. Both state forces and rebels, however, are likely to decrease violence against civilians when civilians protest against both parties in contested zones. In such contexts, armed actors are likely to refrain from retaliation because any violence might drive noncombatants toward the enemy.     

The Economics and Politics of the Euro Crisis

This article addresses puzzles raised by the Euro crisis: why was EMU established with limited institutional capacities, where do the roots of the crisis lie, how can the response to the crisis be explained, and what are its implications for European integration? It explores how prevailing economic doctrines conditioned the institutional shape of the single currency and locates the roots of the crisis in an institutional asymmetry grounded in national varieties of capitalism, which saw political economies organised to operate export-led growth models joined to others accustomed to demand-led growth. The response to the crisis is reviewed and explained in terms of limitations in European institutions, divergent economic doctrines and the boundaries of European solidarity. Proposed solutions to the crisis based on deflation or reflation are assessed from a varieties of capitalism perspective and the implications for European integration reviewed.     

The New Landscape of Jordanian Politics: Social Opposition,Fiscal Crisis,and the Arab Spring

The absence of regime change in Jordan during the Arab Spring obscured two critical trends transforming political order in this authoritarian kingdom. First, new opposition forces demanding democratic reform mobilized, within not only the youth population but also East Bank tribal communities long assumed to be citadels of loyalty. Second, worsening fiscal dysfunction and budgetary pressure have amplified the state's institutional weakness, and precluded the possibility that increased foreign aid could buy off dissent. Such possibilities require a serious reassessment about the foundations of stability in this kingdom. This double bind presents a nascent opportunity with profound ramifications: in the near future, the Hashemite monarchy may be forced to initiate credible political reform, because even a diminished autocracy is superior to a collapsing regime mired in mass insurrection.     

Stones on the Road: The Politics of Participation and the Generation of Crisis in Bolivia

This paper demonstrates that recent protests in Bolivia must be linked to the failure of efforts to improve democratic participation in the country. It argues that such failures can be traced to a history of prejudices in national development and society and persistent biases and contradictions within international development policy and institutions. Despite these obstacles, the paper concludes that ideas for appropriate development and realistic alternatives for change to government and democracy are visible in recent critical development thinking and amongst the different social and cultural groupings involved in the demonstrations.     

Italian Migration Policies in Times of Crisis: The Policy Gap Reconsidered

Abstract

Numerous studies have shown that there is a structural gap between restrictive migration policies and expansive inflows in democratic countries; yet scholars have not sufficiently reflected on how this gap is shaped in times of crisis. Focusing on the case of Italy in the decade between 2007 and 2017, this article assesses the extent to which the different challenges triggered by the economic and humanitarian crises have affected the structural gap, and which actors have mostly contributed to shape it. Our analysis of the Italian case shows how in the decade of the economic crisis the migration policy gap has not been the result of pressure by actors in the economic and liberal norm spheres, but rather reflects conflictual relationships within the political-institutional sphere between Italian governments and EU institutions.     

Migration and Healthcare Reforms in Spain: Symbolic Politics,Converging Outputs,Oppositions from the Field

ABSTRACT

Migrants’ healthcare entitlement represents a conflictive issue in the political battlefield, with research pointing towards the determinant role of party politics in determining policy outputs. Addressing the 2012 healthcare reform and 2018 counter-reform adopted in Spain by a right-wing and left-wing government respectively and drawing on qualitative analysis of parties’ discourses and policy measures, we argue that ideological differences along the healthcare-migration nexus were overemphasised to play symbolic politics. Partisan competition had less impact on actual outputs, while clashes between the central and regional governments, path-dependent practices and opposition from multiple venues played a central role in the policymaking process.     

The Duty to Assist and Its Disincentives: The Shipping Industry and the Mediterranean Migration Crisis

The role of commercial ships in the Mediterranean migration crisis is little-noticed in the media and by the general public, and largely disregarded in the EU’s political responses to the crisis. Whereas large-scale national and regional actions such as the Italian-administered Mare Nostrum and the EU’s Frontex-administered Triton operations have become part of the vocabulary surrounding the crisis, the rescue of 42,000 migrants by commercial vessels in 2014 – and the implications thereof – is rarely commented upon. More importantly, the commercial shipping industry is rendered invisible in the EU policy responses to the Mediterranean migration crisis, which disregards both the efforts and challenges experienced by the industry. For this reason, this profile zooms in on the migration crisis from the point of view of commercial shipping, and argues that it is of fundamental importance that European policy responses to the crisis tackle the multiple disincentives experienced by the commercial shipping industry towards upholding the duty to render assistance to vessels in distress at sea. The concrete policy actions suggested here answer to the challenges experienced by the commercial shipping industry; aid the industry in its efforts to undertake its legal and moral duty to render assistance; and, in effect, save more lives at sea.     

在华的印尼新娘:商品化婚姻、人口贩卖与骗婚

印尼在华的合约新娘问题引起了中国、印尼政府与社会的广泛关注。中印尼经济发展的差距、非法中介谋求暴利和印尼新娘对富裕生活的向往,成为在华印尼新娘群体日益扩大的动因。在华的印尼新娘问题并不是单一的社会问题,其中杂糅了商品化婚姻、人口贩卖和婚姻诈骗等问题,处理起来千头万绪,十分棘手。稍有不慎,极有可能成为第二个"印尼的中国劳工问题"。因此,在解决在华的印尼新娘问题时,中国应完善涉外婚姻法,加强与印尼的合作,严厉打击从事非法涉外婚姻介绍的个人或组织,严厉惩治人口贩卖,及时解救被贩人员,建立健全跨国婚姻纠纷应对机制,尽快形成两国婚姻信息的互通机制及查询制度,共同扩建自由婚姻领域,促进跨国婚姻的和谐稳定。     

Migration and Distributive Politics: The Political Economy of Mexico's 3 × 1 Program

Mexico's 3 × 1 Program for Migrants is a matching grant scheme that seeks to direct the money sent by migrant organizations abroad to the provision of public and social infrastructure and to productive projects in migrants’ communities of origin. To this end, the municipal, state, and federal administrations match the amount sent by hometown associations by 3 to 1. This article explores the impact on the operation of the 3 × 1 of a particular facet of Mexican political life: its recent democratization and the increasing political fragmentation at the municipal level. The study finds a lower provision of public projects in jurisdictions where a high number of political parties compete. This finding casts doubt on the claim that policy interventions such as the 3 × 1 Program actually improve local public goods provision at the local level under increasing political competition.