Labour and Epistemic Communities: The Case of 'Managed Migration' in the UK

How do new ideas flow through networks to reframe policy questions, and what role is played by the growing world of think tanks and policy experts? This article takes the remarkable shift in UK labour migration policy since 2000 and demonstrates how policy was redesigned by networks of actors working between and within the worlds of think tanks and government, including the Prime Minister's Policy and Innovation Unit (PIU), the Treasury, the Home Office and the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR). The article shows how different kinds of ideas and knowledge flowed through different actors and networks to influence the reframing of policy, using the epistemic communities hypothesis (ECH) as a theoretical framework for the analysis.     

俄罗斯移民政策弊端解析

俄罗斯还不是真正意义上的移民国家,其接收各类外来移民(定居移民、劳务移民和留学移民等)的历史并不长。从国民性格角度看,俄罗斯社会缺乏安全感,在制定移民政策时,总是将安全考量放在第一位。俄移民领域的管理因而具有浓重的“强力”色彩,“经济”和“融合”的成分则相对不足。当前俄移民政策领域存在诸多弊端,如融合政策缺失,腐败问题严重,统计工作不到位,移民政策缺乏系统性和连贯性等。为构建具有吸引力的移民政策,俄罗斯学界提出很多建设性主张,如必须为引进和利用外国劳动力制定简单透明的规则和程序;必须使移民政策的实施由单独的联邦非强力部门主管;必须要有保障移民融合的基础设施,维护移民的权利,反对影子就业和社会隔离;公开承认移民对于国家经济的作用,对居民解释实行移民政策的各种动机,创造出移民和社会可以有效协作的氛围。这些主张能否得以落实,还有待进一步观察。     

Same but Different: Muslims and Foreigners in Public Media Discourse

This contribution analyzes the public discourse on foreigners and Muslims in Switzerland between 2000 and 2009. In Switzerland, as elsewhere in Europe, the Muslim minority has emerged as the main concern for integration in public discourse. What makes Muslims special in the debate on immigration and integration? How does the public discourse on Muslims differ from the portrayal of foreigners in general? A quantitative content analysis of four Swiss newspapers was conducted covering three direct democratic campaigns. While the demographic composition of the Muslim minority has not changed substantially, the way Muslims are perceived in public discourse did. Certain ethnic groups, which are still categorized as foreigners in 2000, are mainly assigned to the Muslim minority in 2009. The latter is seen as a relatively homogeneous group raising other issues than foreigners. These results should lead to question the current academic and political debate on integration in Switzerland.     

Till Immigration do us Part? Public Opinion and the Dilemma between Immigration Control and Bilateral Agreements

As a result of the initiative against mass immigration (MEI) Switzerland faces a dilemma between control of immigration and the continuation of bilateral agreements. This contribution raises two questions: First, have Swiss citizens' perceptions regarding the incompatibility between immigration control and bilateral agreements evolved since the vote on the MEI in February 2014? Second, what would Swiss citizens decide if they had to choose between the implementation of the MEI and the continuation of the bilateral strategy? We ground our analysis on data from the VOX surveys regarding the MEI and the more recent vote of November 2014 (Ecopop initiative). While Swiss voters still seem to be uncertain about the issue of compatibility, they nevertheless show support for the continuation of the bilateral agreements. Our analyses highlight the importance of age, trust in government and left‐right orientation for individual opinions towards the bilateral way.     

The FBI's Role in Expelling Germans from Ecuador During the 1940s

The expulsion from Latin America of immigrants from axis countries and their descendants is an important but little‐studied episode of the Second World War. The role of the US, and in particular that of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), in their removal has largely disappeared from historical memory. This article examines how the FBI advanced US commercial interests, and in the process harmed vulnerable people who were subject to these expulsions.     

The Evolution of Authoritarianism and Restrictionism in Brazilian Immigration Policy: Jair Bolsonaro in Historical Perspective

Research on immigration politics has been focused on countries of the Global North. Latin America is often discussed only as a migrant-sending region. This study offers a comparative-historical analysis of Brazilian immigration policy from national independence to the present day. Based on archival research and synthesis of multiple documentation sources, the study finds an affinity between authoritarian politics and immigration restrictionism in the country, which is consistent with theories that link liberal democracy to pro-immigrant policies. Brazilian authoritarian leaders have framed immigrants as threats to the security, order, and culture of the nation to justify tighter controls on immigration. The study concludes that immigration restrictionism can develop in the Global South with discourses strikingly similar to those circulated in the Global North. The findings also suggest that Brazil is still far from the ideal of a multiracial liberal democracy.     

The Transformation of Labor Party Immigration Policy, 1901–1945

ABSTRACT

The Commonwealth Labor government’s introduction of a program of mass immigration after the Second World War was a pivotal moment in the nation’s history. The program itself and the experiences of those who settled in Australia have been studied closely by historians and social scientists. Less attention has been given to the fact that the postwar policy represented a transformation of Labor’s traditional attitude to immigration. Since its foundation in the 1890s, the Australian Labor Party had been suspicious of immigration and opposed to programs of assisted immigration on the basis that migrant labour threatened the wages and conditions of Australian workers. This article traces Labor’s attitudes to migration before the Second World War and shows how economic and security exigencies compelled the party to repudiate its decades-long opposition to assisted immigration. The article suggests that the reason that the postwar immigration program does not receive greater prominence in histories of the Labor Party is because the policy and its chief architect, Arthur Calwell, are diminished by their association with the White Australia policy.     

Governing Morality Issues through Procedural Policies

Abstract: Morality issues such as the death penalty, drug consumption, gambling, and same‐sex‐marriage often constitute intractable policy controversies. Classical “morality politics” scholars predict two types of governmental responses to such public problems: either a substantive policy design if there is a broad consensus among electoral constituencies or a non‐decision if there is a fundamental clash of values. We argue that the adoption of a procedural policy design represents a third option. Providing empirical evidence on the plausibility of this hypothesis, we compare the Swiss regulation of four morality issues in the medical field: reproductive medicine and embryo‐related research; abortion; euthanasia; and organ transplant. In fact, “moral values” frames are not always dominant, as the multi‐dimensionality of each morality issue allows for concurrent policy frames promoted by various policy actors.     

Inmigrantes laborales y flujo en tránsito en la Frontera Sur de México: dos manifestaciones del proceso y una política migratoria

This text presents a characterization of Guatemalan labor immigration into Mexico, its historical perspective and processes of change in relation to new places of destination, crossings and labor insertions. It also sets out the most fundamental traits of migrants who cross Mexican territory when in transit from Central America, new crossing trajectories and social costs in terms of human rights, within a framework of greater social vulnerability. It analyzes the role that the Mexican state has played in relation to the establishment of a new migration policy set forth in the last two administrations (2001–2012) by the Partido Acción Nacional (National Action Party), institutional and legislative arrandos gements, progress and unresolved matters with respect to the proclamation of human and labor rights. It is concluded that even though unprecedented progress has been made in terms of immigration regulations, these policies still have serious shortcomings with regards to Central American immigration into Mexico, be it labor immigration or migrants in transit. This migration has taken on new forms and has registered qualitative and quantitative changes in crossing, in an environment of greater risk in Mexican territory.     

Culture,Closeness, or Commerce? Policy Diffusion and Social Spending Dynamics

In a globalized world where trans‐ and supranational networks, communication and the exchange of information gain in importance, national political decision making processes do not occur independently from each other. Policy diffusion is assumed to become more and more relevant also for welfare state development. This paper explicitly focuses on the policy diffusion among 21 OECD countries in the period between 1980 and 2007 looking at social spending dynamics. The empirical findings of the spatial regressions clearly indicate that spatial patterns in social spending dynamics are driven by policy diffusion processes. In fact, economic interdependencies define the pathways of diffusion. Trading partners move in the same direction regarding social policy behavior. Surprisingly, cultural and geographical proximity are less relevant for the diffusion processes, at least in terms of social spending dynamics.     

Constructing the homeland: Kazakhstan's discourse and policies surrounding its ethnic return-migration policy

A new political development that emerged after the disintegration of the Soviet Union was the adoption of ‘homeland stances’ by the newly independent states. Through the construction of the homeland image, the states of the region claimed responsibility not only for their own citizens, but also for a diaspora community of co-ethnics. Kazakhstan became one of these states and its leadership portrayed Kazakhstan as the homeland of the Kazakh diaspora. Furthermore, Kazakhstan's leadership developed far more active homeland rhetoric and initiated an ethnic return-migration policy as early as 1992. This paper will explore the discourse of Kazakhstan's leadership on the repatriation of its co-ethnics as well as the legal and political context that it created to achieve their smooth absorption into domestic society.     

What Actually Matters? Understanding Attitudes toward Immigration in Switzerland

On 9 February 2014, the Swiss people accepted the popular initiative “against mass immigration” launched by the national‐conservative Swiss People's Party (SVP). This voting outcome has triggered wide‐ranging debates about both the policy on immigrants as well as the future of Switzerland within the European context. Against this background, we evaluate attitudes toward immigration in Switzerland. Using hitherto unexplored survey data of MOSAiCH, our empirical analyses show that already in the year 2013, before the debate about the initiative on mass immigration was in full swing, roughly 53 percent of the 1011 interviewed Swiss citizens stated that immigration should be reduced. Moreover, our estimations indicate that the threats and fears induced by immigration and the will to maintain sovereignty and autonomy are particularly relevant for attitudes toward immigration. By contrast, education and national or personal economic conditions are only weakly related to the immigration issue.