Managing Migration and Mobility Between national sovereignty, European integration and global governanceKatrine Borg Albertsen Making cases of Great Britain and Denmark, this PhD project explores how the national control based migration and integration policies of recent years combine with Europeanization and internationalisation of migration control and produce criteria for selection and legalization of certain types of migration and mobility. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s migration became a strongly securitised and politicised field in the European countries. From the late 1990s onwards, the extension and integration of the European Union have pushed migration control to the external borders of the EU, the neighbouring safe third countries and the migrants’ countries of origin. Combining ideas of development, global governance and security, migration management, a so called soft control policy, complements the physical migration control. Despite this scenario, a strongly securitised perception of migration still founds national and supra-national legislation and the popular discourse on immigration and integration, connecting migration control to international crime and terror. The national and EU-based control policies have resulted in a non-favourable damming of wanted migration and transnational movement. An aging population, negative population growth, and increasing labour shortages in the European countries have caused an acute and long term need of immigration. This situation means that the countries are placed in a legislative field of tension. By different means, the European states guard their national sovereignty and autonomy, both politically and in a national-cultural manner. Simultaneously, the countries are increasingly depending on immigration in order to sustain functions in the systems of the existing societies and promote economic growth. This means that to a certain degree divergence has arisen between laws which prescribe closed borders from a perspective of national security and special arrangements that open the doors to the wanted migrants. Rather than upholding a physical boundary for all non-western migrants, highly selective schemes are now developing both nationally and at the supra-national level of the European Union, to distinguish between wanted and unwanted types of migration and mobility. The criteria for selection balance the in some ways contradicting ideas of national societal security and the internationalisation and beginning globalisation of migration management. The development produces attempts to avoid questions of citizenship and incorporation related to long term settlement, by managing migration into circular movement and treating migrants as a labour commodity. The PhD is carried out in cooperation with the Danish Institute for International Studies and Copenhagen University, the SAXO Institute, and is funded by the Danish Institute for International Studies, Copenhagen University and the Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation. Prospected finalisation: December 2011 Supervisor: Professor Dr.phil. Ulf Hedetoft |
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