Beyond reason: the philosophy and politics of immigration

In this paper, I critically address the role of arbitrary and contingent features in philosophical debates about migration. These features play a central role, and display the importance of ‘unreason’ in the debate and the limits of rational criticism. Certain elements of political thought have to be taken as given, as essential starting points or indispensable building blocks. As such, they cannot be exposed to rational criticism. Political arrangements such as national borders, nation-states and national identities constitute these building blocks, and justify coercive borders in order to sustain them. If we are to subject these arrangements to critical examination, then we move beyond the limits of liberal political philosophy. I examine theorists who take this kind of approach to the ethics of immigration: Michael Blake, Samuel Scheffler and David Miller. I argue that such approaches ask us to balance arbitrary and contingent features of the political world against the non-contingent moral equality of the migrant. If we are to recognize the migrant as an equal reason-giver in the moral contestation of borders, then we are compelled to theorize beyond these limits, and to theorize instead about a global community of equals, a post-national world made up of transnational belonging.     

Climate change refugees

Under the UNHCR definition of a refugee, set out in the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, people fleeing their homes because of natural disasters or other environmental problems do not qualify for refugee status and the protection that come from such status. In a recent paper, I defended the essentials of the UNHCR definition on the grounds that refugee status and protection is best reserved for people who can only be helped by granting them refuge in a safe state for an indefinite period of time, and argued that this does not include most people fleeing from natural disasters. This claim is most strongly challenged by the possibility of displacement from climate change. In this paper, I will explore to what degree the logic of the refugee convention, as set out in my earlier paper, can and should be extended to those fleeing the results of climate change.     

Explaining the immigration policy mix: Countries' relative openness to asylum and labour migration

Western democracies have developed complex policies to manage migration flows. Much of the scholarly literature and political discourse assume that countries have become increasingly selective and that they prioritise economic intakes. Despite clear efforts by policymakers to distinguish between refugees and migrant workers, we know surprisingly little about how countries combine different policy dimensions and which factors shape their relative openness to different target groups. In this article, we shed light on how countries combine two of the main admission channels, asylum and labour migration, by introducing the concept of the ‘immigration policy mix’. A comparative analysis of 33 OECD countries between 1980 and 2010 examines the pattern and drivers behind their immigration policy mix: Does the policy mix follow a pattern of convergence, is it subject to political dynamics or is it path dependent? The results reveal that despite a shift in political sympathies from asylum to labour migration, countries' immigration policy mixes have strongly converged into more liberal policies overall. The immigration policy mix primarily reflects governments’ limited room to manoeuvre due to competing political pressures. These insights demonstrate that the immigration policy mix serves to enhance our understanding of countries’ complex regulation of immigration.     

IMMIGRATION AND THE RECENT VIOLENT CRIME DROP IN THE UNITED STATES: A POOLED,CROSS‐SECTIONAL TIME‐SERIES ANALYSIS OF METROPOLITAN AREAS*

A good deal of research in recent years has revisited the relationship between immigration and violent crime. Various scholars have suggested that, contrary to the claims of the classic Chicago School, large immigrant populations might be associated with lower rather than higher rates of criminal violence. A limitation of the research in this area is that it has been based largely on cross‐sectional analyses for a restricted range of geographic areas. Using time‐series techniques and annual data for metropolitan areas over the 1994–2004 period, we assess the impact of changes in immigration on changes in violent crime rates. The findings of multivariate analyses indicate that violent crime rates tended to decrease as metropolitan areas experienced gains in their concentration of immigrants. This inverse relationship is especially robust for the offense of robbery. Overall, our results support the hypothesis that the broad reductions in violent crime during recent years are partially attributable to increases in immigration.     

Is it Population or Personnel? The Effects of Diversity on Immigration Policy Implementation by Sheriff Offices

Abstract

The federal-local cooperative immigration removal program Secure Communities (S-Comm) has resulted in wide variation into how aggressively national interior immigration policy has been implemented locally. Some communities have removed thousands, but others have removed few if any. Community composition explains much of the variation, but representative bureaucracy tells us agency diversity also influences implementation. Focusing on county sheriff offices, a vital local partner in S-Comm, this study finds that agency personnel diversity (specifically, offices with larger percentages of Hispanics and African Americans) produce fewer removals and submissions to ICE for immigration background checks. Other agency-specific factors are also important. Both the agency’s total budget and whether it has a 287(g) agreement with federal immigration authorities increase removals. Despite recent efforts to blur the distinction between immigration and criminal justice policy, this study finds no relationship between local removals and local crime.     

Canada,the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) and the flexibility of terror identities

ABSTRACT

Security governance practices are contingent on the imagination of future threats. The “war on terror” has produced a very narrow imagination of threats, almost singularly focused on suspect communities that are Arab, Muslim, or perceived to be Middle Eastern. Discussing how immigration practices in Canada have been influenced by counter-terrorism trends, we argue that “terror identities” are mutable and highly racialised imaginaries that cast indelible marks of suspicion on subjects who are deemed as security threats. Examining the case of a journalist deemed inadmissible to Canada because of her “membership” in the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), we argue that terror identities impose authoritative control over the status and lived experiences of individuals who are cast through these racialised labelling practices. Focussing on the shifting characterisation of the PLO by Canadian officials as both political interlocutor and terrorist organisation, our purpose is to highlight how racialised imaginations of terror identities enact punitive and discriminatory practices.     

非法移民：困扰俄罗斯的一道难题

近年来俄罗斯主要边境地段非法移民情况严重 ,给俄罗斯的边境乃至国家安全带来了隐患。非法移民的途径是选定与俄相邻的边界地段 ,利用俄驻外领事馆正式颁发的身份证和护照、利用民族血缘关系相近国家的假护照、利用带有前苏联标志的证件等手段以合法或非法的方式进入俄罗斯。俄政府已采取了一些整治措施 ,但要彻底解决非法移民问题 ,尚需时日     

Crime Trends in Western Europe from 1990 to 2000

This paper analyses the evolution of police recorded crime rates for nine offences (intentional homicide, assault, rape, robbery, theft, vehicle theft, burglary, domestic burglary, and drug offences) over the period 1990–2000 in 16 Western European Countries. The analysis shows that there was an increase in drug and violent offences, while property offences reached a peak at the beginning of the 1990s and started decreasing afterwards. The evolution of property offences can be related to the emergence of a large black market for stolen goods in Central and Eastern Europe at the beginning of the time series, while by the end of it that market was saturated and there had also been a reinforcement of police measures in the frontiers and of security measures in Western European households. The increase in drug offences is correlated to the rise of drug use in Europe shown by other indicators, and can be related to an increased availability of drugs in European markets. Finally, the upward trend in violent offences can be explained partially by gang struggles over the control of illegal markets and by the consolidation of problematic neighbourhoods, but seems also due to a large extent of increase in the reporting of violent offences by their victims and the recording of such offences by the police. The analysis shows that opportunity-based theories provide a satisfactory explanation of the trends in recorded crime, and that the crime opportunities are heavily influenced by socio-economical factors.Versions of this paper were presented at the 3rd Annual Conference of the European Society of Criminology (Helsinki, August 27–30, 2003) and at the Societies of Criminology 1st Key Issues Conference (Paris, May 13–15, 2004). The paper was written during a stay at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law (Freiburg imBreisgau, Germany) made possible through the support of Swiss National Science Foundation     

Opting for Openness: Capital Mobility and Monetary Sterilisation in Malaysia

Malaysia gained attention for its use of capital controls in 1998, but since the early 2000s it has emphasised its commitment to an open capital account, despite experiencing volatile capital flows. As well as opting for financial openness, Malaysia chose to manage the value of its exchange rate after de-pegging from the US dollar in 2005. In a bid to escape the macroeconomic constraints that arise from capital mobility, Malaysia also chose to sterilise a large portion of capital inflows. It then made a further choice to use market-based sterilisation instruments more than regulatory sterilisation measures. These choices have carried costs and led to a build-up of economic risk. Three interrelated factors explain these choices: Malaysia’s strategy to manage the stigma arising from its imposition of controls in 1998, the increased level of financial integration that followed from this strategy, and the politically privileged position of groups that have benefitted from Malaysia’s commitment to capital openness.