Multidimensional Lenses on Migration

Dilara Sönmez Middle East Technical University Department of International Relations, #1541077

ABSTRACT

National and international security has gained new meanings and elements in recent years, especially after Cold War. The changed concept of security has been more and more broadened with accelerated effects of globalization and shocking September 11 events. The new issues of security agenda may be listed as immigration, global terror, climate change, energy, internal violence, human security etc. This article recovers mainly how irregular migration effects national and human security in a multi dimensional framework, from theories to the cases under several sections of the paper. Firstly, the definition and types; secondly motivations of immigration are outlined with a historical and theoretical briefs. Then the general perception on migration and motivations of migration will be connected more specific sections that are, in sequence, international lenses on migration regarding state and public securities and more specifically, the lenses of the US and European Union on migration. The conclusion part put my arguments as done during article that are both agreed and disagreed with the mainstream theories and the opinions of expert that are stated in the article.

Definitions and Types of Migration

The term of migration has several definitions that give almost similar meanings. Generally, in social science literature, Migration is the movement of an individual or a group from a housing unit (village, city, country etc.) to another one in order to take up permanent or semi-permanent residence. The move can be chosen as ‘voluntary’ or be forced as ’involuntary migration’. The involuntary migration occurs when a government forces a certain ethnic or religious group of people out of a region, namely ‘population transfer’, and if the group desperately needs to leave their homeland because of unfavorable situations such as warfare, persecution, namely ‘impelled migration’

The types of migration based on direction are ‘internal migration’ within a state, country, or continent and ‘external migration (immigration)’ into a different state, country, or continent. People who migrate are defined in four categories. ‘Immigrants’ into a country, ‘emigrants’ out of a country, ‘refugees’ into a country because of persecution in homeland country.

Another distinction comes with the legality of migration; while legal immigrants moves into receiver country with the legal permission, illegal or irregular immigrants moves without it. As noted, being a refugee is recognized legally however it can be realized without record.

Motivations of Immigration and Historical Brief

Migrating people moves for a variety of reasons by considering costs and benefits of staying and moving that are factors such well-being, distance, modes of transportation, culture. Push factors of emigrating based on difficulty and pull factors of immigrating based on desirability may include several factors. They may stem from environmental factors like disaster, climate; political factors like war, genocide; economic factors like unemployment, income and lastly cultural factors like freedom of religion or education. These different motivations lead migration process and its consequences. The condition of a migrant entrance into a population may have broad implications for both parties. Therefore, migration experience contains a variety of reasoning, also it will produce a variety of outcomes observable from sociological, political, and economical perspectives. To illustrate, a casual immigration will not have the same migration process as a political refugee. Generally, refugees receive a series of special services from the receiver nation such as emergency shelter, food, and legal aid.

The modern immigration that started in 18th cc including voluntary of forced slave trade reached its peak in 19th cc. People trafficking, namely manning can be categorized in three form; labor migration, refugee migration and urbanization when million of agricultural workers left their homeland and moved into cities that led to unprecedented levels of urbanization in late 18th cc. The encouraged transnational labor migration by industrialization with eased transportation modes reached its peak with the number of three million migrants per year in the early 20th cc into especially Italy, Norway, Ireland and the Quongdong region of China. These extreme flows impacted directly the process of nation-state formation in many ways such as immigration restrictions, diaspora cultures and discourses referring to density of migration towards certain nations, like the American melting pot. According to records, between 1910 and 1970, named as Great Migration, nearly seven millions African-

Americans entered the United States from the Southern United States that blacks faced both poor economic opportunities and a serious political and social prejudice. Beside motivation of industrialization, this century was witnessed a great migratory flow because of politics, religion and war. For instance, after demise of Ottoman Empire, Muslim people migrated from Balkans into Turkey while Christians moved vice versa ,or approximately 400.000 Jews migrated to British Mandate of Palestine, current Israel, in the 1940s because of Nazi’s Holocaust. Again, in same time interval, population transfer of USSR deported 3 million anti-Soviet people while decolonization period and World War II.

Because of 1945-Potsdam Agreement of Western Allies and the Soviet Union, one of the largest European migrations, even the largest of the 20th century led over 20 million people’s to migrate. The largest group was 16.5 million expelled Germans from Eastern Europe with the others; millions of Poles, Ukrainians, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, and some Belarusians.

Theories about Migration

Theories about migration have lack of coherence and connection with each other because the concept is related to broad spectrum of academic disciplines, from economics to sociology that develop their own examination point and process. Many migration studies do not focus on detecting structural regularities that can be valid in general terms ,yet usually bureaucratic and more importantly culture specific. To illustrate, migration is usually evaluated from a “northern” perspective since the sending populations or societies could not spend time to these studies because of existential migration concerns like food shortage or presence of war, persecution.

If mentioning briefly, theories about migration mostly have been rooted from Ravenstein’s Laws of Migration (1889) that compared census data gathered between 1871 and 1881 in the United Kingdom where rise of the industrial age during the second half of 19th cc revolutionized daily and working lives of millions of people across Europe and North America. The concepts of absorption and dispersion lay down in the mid of Ravenstein’s Laws of Migration. Countries of absorption are those that pull peoples more than they push while the countries of dispersion are those that push people more than they pull or in

Ravenstein's words, "the population [of the county] falls short of the number of [its] natives enumerated throughout the kingdom. Although Ravenstein’s theory based on only surveys and census within the United Kingdom, he set the trend of migration theories with several laws about human migration especially in the form of pull and push migration theories. For example, by reflecting from one of Ravenstein’s laws that is ‘Migrants proceeding long distances generally go by preference to one of the great centers of commerce or industry.’ Everett Lee’s reformulated it as the theory of push and pull factors (1966) with more focus on internal, that is push factors. As written above, most of theories about migration address international patterns of migration with different starting points. Firstly, neo-classical economic theory asserts that international migration is directly associated with the direct proportion of global demand-supply for labor. Nations that suffers from lack of labor supply; naturally need and demands for labor and this generates pull factor for the immigrants whose nations have a surplus of labor.

Secondly, segmented labor-market theory of Piore- 1979 defines the nations of First World economies with requirement of a certain level of immigration for compensate labor need. However, this approach evaluates the economically developed nations as dualistic in terms of wages, that is, they have a primary market of secure, well-remunerated work and a secondary market of low-wage work. The theory argues that the immigrants have to fill only the jobs of secondary market that are necessary for function of economy but not preferred by native population because of bad working conditions and low wages.

Thirdly, the currently adjusted version of World-Systems Theory of Immanuel Wallenstein for migration inherently argues that international migrations are product of global capitalism, that is, patterns of international migration have a direction from the periphery, namely nations of Third World into the core, namely nations of First World economies because of push factors of periphery regions. The development of industry in the First World generates structural economic problems in Third World because of the gap of income, wellbeing etc. while accelerating labor demand of themselves at the same time.

Lastly, for the more surrealistic approach, probably driven from Sigmund Freud, according to Idyorough, 2008, migration occurs because individuals search for food, sex and

security outside their usual habitation. In essence of human being, these reasons absolutely lay down on the core of migratory movements; however, absolutely, the concerns of states about security are very different from individuals’ concerns.

General perception on Immigration and Motivations of Immigration

As written above in abstract section and above, the focus of perception in terms of receiver nations is specified with northern perspective, that is, European countries and the United States where of the pull factors for potential immigrants are several. What is the most important firstly for the receiver countries is the legality of immigrant. There are legal migrants that have a valid immigrant visa and proper documentations and more importantly also illegal immigrants, not a recorded person but rather only a person who does an illegal entry to host country by infringing immigration laws of that country. These people, illegal aliens rather than legal and recorded migrants or refugees, are the main concern for the receiver nations. The movement of illegal aliens, namely irregular immigration refers to enter or to remain in a country of which they are not a citizen in breach of national laws.

Among the reasons of irregular immigration, there are several reasons in the line of globalization, like global economics and labor market, trade liberization, structural demands of developed countries, global poverty, overpopulation or wars and asylum. The economical reasons are rooted from socio-economic levels of immigrants that are lower than receiver country. Simply by analyzing cost and benefits, people of developing countries thinks that probability of well being in developed countries overwhelms costs of living as an illegal alien. Therefore, as can be estimated, the direction of irregular immigration is from south into north and from east into west. Liberization of trade as a natural reason and consequence of globalization is another motivation for irregular immigration. The more rapid domestic markets opened, the more unemployment of agricultural and unskilled workers who have more tendency for illegal immigration increased. For example, since the North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA) impoverished agricultural workers in Mexico because of incompatible productivity of the US agriculture, those workers attempted to immigrate to the North US.

As global economics has spread up and the developed countries have developed much more while others have continuing to impoverish; the people of poorer countries accepted to fill the undesirable jobs like house-cleaning, landscaping and construction regardless of low wages and poor working conditions. However, as all demands have, the demands of developed countries had a legal limit; yet people of poorer ones preferred working under tables to working nowhere. The serious lack of resources and unfair distribution of resources may stimulate the irregular immigration when they transformed into immediate crisis. To illustrate, the Mexican economic crisis in 1994, came after establishment of NAFTA subsequently led to massive Mexican emigration. Overpopulation that probably will be resulted in excessive pollution, then water and food shortages and so poverty also stimulates illegal immigration that is higher than the capacity of receiver countries for accepting migrants.

After then economic and its related motivations, as a non- economic factor, escape from war, persecution, repression, genocide is among push factors. These political motives of refugees has a different dimension for the receiver countries, because when they are recognized, they can gain a special legal status that usually provide aid, shelter etc for the asylum- seekers; however, they may be punished or deported if not recognized.

I have preferred to explain the perception of threat and its effects by using three dimensions of security that are military, economics, and public spheres. These three dimensions provoke each other, to illustrate, when an external threat is perceived, the perception directly lead to change in material and military capacities. Vice versa, since societal interest and material capacity of state usually clash with each other when population increases because of excess migration, the societal interests faces with shortage that eventually lead to internal tension both with government and within social groups.

In general, the present literature of IR based migration theories emphasize on domestic factors. In this field, Marxist theories and liberal theories defines the immigration policies as mechanisms for controlling economy and interest groups. However, in fact, traditional IR theories had little to say about migration, instead when they accommodated migration issues to IR, they directly referred the roots of International Political Economy (IPE), and international security paradigm. However, although traditionally security paradigm has been focused on high politics with its military and material capacities, the end of Cold War added a

new dimension: societal security. Therefore what IR theory of new millennium suggest to state for immigrational issues within the trend of unavoidable transborder flows of globalization goes to again traditional security model, to material, military and newly added societal dimensions.

International Lenses on Migration regarding Security

Neo-realist theory gives importance to structural conditions as determination for states’ policy- making behaviors that is; states shape their attitudes according to their changing environment i.e. international order or policy of neighbors, according to Waltz. I would prefer to define referent objects of security concept in terms of the state and the public that interacts with each other inevitably. Such a way that because state security is almost based on economics in order to keep up both military and political strength, legitimacy on public opinion, any obstacle in keeping or developing material capacity can be considered as a threat to national security as well as to state security. Reversing the idea, great changes in societal sphere regardless consensus of the natives or majority of population can also be considered as a threat to both security concepts because such a great change in social sphere is eventually resulted in great change in national concepts.

During the Cold War, immigration has been involved both dimension of security. If we form a new security paradigm for the era as different from traditional distinction of low & high politics that focused on only two dimensions: material and military capacities, the new paradigm should be formed by three objectives that aim material, military and societal securities all together. Military objectives are defined in terms of territorial integrity and sovereignty, material objectives in terms of well- functioned economy and societal in terms of national identification and culture. Therefore the threats can be distinguished into internal as societal and external as material and military that were in interaction continuously

Lenses on Migration regarding State Security

Simply, since a sovereign state has the right of controlling its borders based on principle of territorial integration and security, irregular immigration and asylum out of

control threats sovereignty that may lead to lose of legitimacy in public opinion or potential terrorist or organized criminal attempts.

Global terrorism is directly about migration including migration and border policies, national security, multiethnic and cultural affairs, and citizenship. Because threating state security, global terrorism substantially shapes developments of policy-making in the borderless order of the new world. The people are increasingly in flow like good and services, and capitals cross borders. This complex net has brought terrorism beyond national dynamics, even if law enforcement defined terrorists as matter, this supranational framework required national governments not only to revise their laws and policies about migration with international lenses but also to cooperate. The end of Cold War and collapse of Berlin Wall forced specifically the European national governments to take measurements seriously. However, the events of September 11 pushed the all national governments especially Europe and the US to take more and more serious ones day by day. As a result, although there are the flow of information among states has developed.

Traditionally security means the territorial integrity and sovereignty of a state. With September 11 events, states noticed the importance of sharing data in spite of traditional challenges like distrust or misuse. They had been already in control across the borders, however, after 9/11; pre-entry controls like biometric measures, facial or finger records, iris scans, hand geometry have been added to entry control. Preventive measures were not defined only in terms of a potential terrorist attack, but also for potential health risks that are directly related with societal security, like HIV viruses. Therefore, the Event enabled the governments to notice worth of sharing information across the borders and they have concluded some agreements, enforcements, such as Schengen Information System of the European Union in order to control visas among member states or The Smart Border Declaration between Canada and the United States. Even if the preferred policy approach is directly refers to how to prevent the irregular/illegal people flow; some interior enforcement mechanism were also adopted in order to defuse or integrate the people who pose potential threat. In addition to preentry controls and information systems, restricted border policies in order to prevent illegal movements especially with the aid of smugglers and improved sphere of jurisdiction for the migratory issues started to be adopted. In conclusion, in general, the core of immigration measurement policies is based on three principles: prevention, protection and jurisdiction.

However, while governments try to find more and more strict policies and securitize the issues, even peoples like Arabs, they face with allegations about violating liberties of citizens like privacy. Especially after 9/11, there is a problem of stereotyping,

Securitizing or profiling some groups and issues with too general characteristics, i.e. Muslim or Arab, seem to be unfair for liberal views. Moreover, social constructivists see the situation as provocative for the future attacks. Addition to prevention, protection, and jurisdiction mechanisms for post- 9/11 era, detention mechanism has been added to immigration policies that vary state by state. For example, while in the US and Australia, the detention enforcement may be used with extended periods for some aliens; in the EU, based on European Convention on Human Rights, cannot apply extended time for detention unless a concrete insecurity feeling like bombing etc. As can be predicted, the mechanism of detention also receives criticism from liberal and constructivist approaches.

Lenses on Migration regarding Public Security Despite of improved domestic enforcements for irregular movements, the legal foreign citizens are also an element of public insecurity that is difficult to stereotype. Although there are measurements like registration and check of identity cards, they developed some programmes in order to deal with compability between entrance and exit. To illustrate, USVISIT (United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology) that records the data of arrivals and departures like name, date, type of passport and biometric information. Peculiarly, in the environment of post- September 11, hot public tension made governments consider about repatriate the foreigners, especially minorities, although they seemed to debate liberization of immigration laws, the debates were concluded with more restricted borders, more intrusion the civil rights of natives or recorded aliens with multilateral and unilateral struggles of government. However, another dimension is related to public more directly than the bureaucratic applications. The generated sense of ‘we&they’ by both conventional media and politics increased the hostility among people. While the sense oppresses the foreigners, according to some scholars, it also stimulates them to cooperate against the government that will be resulted in insecurity of both public and state. Even though the illegal immigrants are not

defined in terms of citizenship, their insecurity also cannot be deniable when their modes of transportation, living and working conditions are taken into account. However impossibility to measure number of illegal immigrants makes the social outcomes like social exclusion or grouping ambiguous. In conclusion, outcomes are also seen as failure of statecraft, so they were remained as hidden, and according to some scholars, more effective integration policies should be applied because to achieve full effective immigration policies or to measure the outcomes have certain difficulties. That is, Instead of securitization movement towards foreigners, governments should imply more synthesizer approaches.

The United States’s Perception on Immigration

The migration policies of the United States should be analyzed within two-time interval: pre 9/11 and post 9/11.

Thanks to the tripled trade flow between the United States and Mexico after 1990s, the legal restrictions on migration had so much tolerance that they did not deteriorate legal flow. The border settlement the United States and Mexico was mostly motivated by prevention of drugs and illegal immigration however the series of settlements can characterized as both failure and success. They were failed because of several reasons. Firstly and mainly, they could not achieve to prevent or at least to reduce the amount of illegal flows of people and drugs, even if they were launched as ‘war on drugs’. Secondly, the policies produced unintended consequences. To illustrate, the drug smuggling or human trafficking transformed into more organized crimes that could achieve to deceive the ‘gatekeepers’. Even they attempted to use legitimate cargo companies. As time passed, to control this illegal flow became more difficult and required new legislations and control mechanisms. However, again tragically, these more restricted and controls borders impelled more dangerous mode of transportations and entrance that led to hundreds of migrant deaths every year, in those days, averagely, two migrants died per day while attempting to cross the border.

On the other hand, the applications of pre 9/11 may be characterized as successful both politically and economically despite the mode of policy was a failure. The policy cherished

the bureaucratic interaction. Their cooperation to put illegal flow out of media and public opinion enabled the politicians to appear as effective in policy implementation that helped consolidate their legitimation in front of public opinion and pull votes. Nominately, sum of the immigration policies in the US during 1900s was a tool of politics to prove their high visibility and efforts for border deterrence.

When coming to 9/11 attacks, what changed is mainly new and expanding counterterrorism efforts with zero tolerance and compensation, even this time, the deterrence level was expected to be an impossible 100 percent. However, absolutely this task was much more complex and difficult than preventing drug smuggling and unauthorized migrants. Moreover it was so more complex that the border enforces could not use the old precautions and applications. While they were adopting them to new frame, the government founded Department of Homeland Security that picked other existing agencies like Coast Guard under.

In addition to new perception, a newly added issue, known as ‘the world’s longest undefended border’, the US and Canada border, have involved in debate of the US government about source of insecurity. The existing worries about the southern borders have been spread to northward. By removing the words of drug smuggling or unauthorized migrant and by putting in the words of terrorism, the new discourse have been adopted with Canada, known as Mexicanization of Canada border politics. How the longest undefended border became a source of threat, in fact,did not base on paranoia of the US about terrorism because there is no document showing that the hijackers of 9/11 events entered to the US from this border since they had authorized visas of the US.

Nevertheless, the new securitized barrier between these two countries was also a new trade barrier that the US put himself. However, the rapid decrease in border exchange was an estimated consequence of implementing two contradicted objectives within one policy at the same time: facilitating border exchange and extended and new border control. Therefore, they adopted new cargo strategies and technologic systems in order to provide both security and continuity of exchange. Yet, the expectation from border enforces is to give absolute priority on security that were clearly determined by the 30- point of Smart Declaration signed by Canada and the US in December 2001.

European Perception on Immigration

Throughout history, Continent of Europe has been witnessed several types and waves of migration process, from labor migration to brain drain or involuntary/ voluntary within the Continent and across the borders. In the late 1950s, after World War II, the rapid economic development in Europe thanks to Marshall Aids generated many job vacancies that could not be fulfilled by the native people. As a result, European Countries adopted solution, Buffer Theory, the idea of import workers from the southern Mediterranean including North Africa, most notably West Germany and France because of cheap labor force of those regions. These economic imported migrants flow, in general unskilled males, continued until Oil Crisis in 1970s.

The German Government decided to repatriate these peoples back however migrants thought that their economic would be better in Germany under any circumstance, they insisted on staying and led to increase in tension between migrants and natives who believe that migrants took their job from their hands. This increased tension led to internal violence that taught the Germans how migrants could break the internal peace with higher population, cultural differences and their clashes, economic competition. Then, with collapse of Berlin Wall, the Government had to recognize the flow of various ethnicities as political refugees.

Therefore, the end of Cold War transformed the migration debate in Europe from being merely an economic debate into political and public ones. Therefore this new era of migration made European governments adopt special policies that had enforcement both migration process and migrants itself. In the late 20th cc, the surveys, projects for migration became a part of determination for migration policies while the increasing sense of openness toward Single market gave a rise in undesirable immigration to Europe.

However, after the events in September 11 in New York City and subsequent attacks in March 9, 2004 in Madrid, 7 July 2005 in London, European countries also had to take new measures because their concerns became almost same with the US: terrorism ,beside the existing concerns’ for immigration that were about both political and social integration. After 9/11, they also started to take global terrorism into account in high and low policy making. However, what main difference of European immigration policies counter-terrorism is that there is no securitization of issues as well as the US.

This table shows that foreign resident population in Western European States between 1950- 2000 (1) Up until 1990 only West Germany, since 1991 all of Germany; (2) foreign population and foreign-born, but meanwhile naturalized population; (3) without seasonal laborers and employees of international organizations

Conclusion

Precisely, illegal or legal, voluntary or forced, not matters, migration movements impact several dimension of both receiving and sending populations, from economics to foreign policy. The incremental flows of people and, good and services are only a part of unprecedented effects of globalization. However, from state security perspective and from my point, there is no reason for not securitizing the illegal flow into countries because the impact of immigration to global terrorism is clear as well as being a direct threat to state and public security. A humanist or pluralist approach may contradict with this paper by considering poor conditions of immigrants in their homeland or their migrated lands or defending a pluralist form of life. They may be true from perspective of human dignity. However, I am proponent of considering state security as vital and over public security because of that public security cannot be maintained without state security. There is no suspect about the right of living in good conditions of people, however if I were a statesman, I would not set my legitimacy and sovereignty of my state aside in order to provide quality life for migrants while violating privacy or individual liberties of my people or risking security of state and people.

By agreeing with Mearsheimer, the heterogeneous nations have a strong tendency to reduce the nation into homogenous forms as seen in 1938 in Czechoslovakia that was the most heterogeneous state of the Continent. According to Mearsheimar’s predictions in his article, ‘The World in 2020’ (2008); there are ‘immigrant cultures’ like Canada, Australia or the United States and ‘bloodline countries’ like France, Germany and Japan that are less voluntary to integrate or accept these peoples into their borders. They will feel less insecurity than immigrant cultures. However, the inevitable migratory movements challenge with the

traditions of those bloodline countries because of their hard- mindedness in terms of overcoming the problems of diversities in culture end ethnicity. Therefore, I have concluded that there is a situation of paradoxical insecurity in both types: both in immigrant cultures and bloodline countries. While the former ones have to deal with concrete existence of diversity and to improve measurements by taking the possible problems given by migrants into account, the second one will face with more embedded problems by ignoring or not accepting/ noticing. Strong commitments for national, religional, or traditional elements make the problems more serious that come from bottom and lead ‘otherization’ of both society and government. Both are dangerous for survival of security and legitimacy as written in Clash of Civilizations by Huntington (1996). To sum up, on the issues about ‘aliens’, being a ‘melting pot’ like the United States may be preferred to having a society under sense of multiculturalism like Turkey.

On the other hand, there is another contradicted issue in terms of liberties of citizens. Some argue that the excessively expanded control measures limit the individual liberties of citizens that are violation of both law and human dignity. Many passengers complain about being treated suspensefully on airports. However, I am not opponent about these applications, surely, they should not be annoying, insulting, or fearing, but they are necessary in the age of global terrorism. Probably, my view will be considered as crude, yet I do not criticize the states that intervene into ‘failed states’ with pretexts of global peace and security, surely not for really unfair or unnecessary ones. However, even if there is one percent possibility of converting into threat, it should be something done. Because the world is too ‘globalized’, as stated in the Domino Theory, even if it does not effect directly, it will effect at least directly. Therefore, not only taking measures against the powerful as Mearsheimer said in his argument of offensive neo-realism, taking measures against failed and weak should be another dimension of high politics in order to be sure about being secure. Moreover, the securitization movements are also required in order to make public aware of that what they may face with, so securitization movement should be in black box of high politics for the other, but in at least grey box for the public who support and vote you. However, the act of securitization is a type of art and ability; it should not transform into otherization, rather being calculated, and planned carefully both for black and grey boxes.