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Reclaiming Migration critically assesses the EU’s migration policy agenda by directly engaging the voices of Europe’s so-called migrant crisis that otherwise remain unheard: those of people on the move. It undertakes an extensive analysis of a counter-archive of testimonies co-produced with people migrating across the Mediterranean during 2015 and 2016, to document the ways in which EU policy developments both produce and perpetuate the precarity of those migrating under perilous conditions. The book shows how testimonies based on lived experiences of travelling to – and arriving in – the EU draw attention to the flawed assumptions embedded in the deterrence paradigm and policies of anti-smuggling; in protection mechanisms and asylum procedures that rely on simplistic understandings of the migratory journey; and in the EU’s self-projection as a place of human rights and humanitarianism. Yet, it also goes further to reveal how experiences of precarity, which such policies give rise to, are inseparable from claims for justice that are advanced by people on the move, who collectively provide a damning critique of the EU policy agenda. Reclaiming Migration develops a distinctive ‘anti-crisis’ approach to the analysis of migratory politics and shows how migration forms part of a broader movement that challenges the injustices of Europe’s ‘postcolonial present’. Written collectively by a team of esteemed scholars from across multiple disciplines, the book serves as an important contribution to debates in migration, border and refugee studies, as well as more widely to debates about postcolonialism and the politics of knowledge production.
2 Researching migration: a Qualitative Panel Study and workplace studies In this chapter, we outline the research methodology of our study. The core of the research was a Qualitative Panel Study (QPS) with a group of twenty-two Polish migrants in Ireland. We first discuss the rationale for choosing a QPS to study Polish migrants in the Irish labour market. We argue that such a study represents an innovative methodological tool to examine the worklife pathways of migrants in a dynamic manner and to illuminate the new mobility patterns of East–West migration. We
Labour migration has become one of the hot topics in Europe, especially since 2000 with the shift from restriction to managed migration. This book provides an account of policy change over labour migration in Europe during this new era of governance. It has implications for debates about the contemporary governance of labour migration in Europe, and questions about the impact of an emergent EU migration regime in the context of a globalising labour market. The key findings offer a deeper understanding of the linkages between those engaged in policymaking and the kinds of communities that produce usable knowledge.
how much of a shock the referendum result was. People who did not usually talk about politics were engaged, excited or scared. The referendum followed years of high levels of migration from Eastern Europe into the city. There were Polish and Russian neighbourhoods and Polish shops. There were some native-born who resented it. However, there were others who welcomed it. Employer Alan stressed what he perceived as the greater desirability of migrants as employees. He was pleased that migration from Eastern Europe had brought in ‘lively, educated people’. The three
13 The EU–Africa migration partnership: the limits of the EU’s external dimension of migration in Africa Tine Van Criekinge The intensification of migratory movement between Africa and Europe since the early 2000s has encouraged renewed political engagement from the EU towards the continent. This engagement has mainly taken the form of migration dialogue between the European Union (EU) and migrant-sending countries in Africa, aiming to create channels for communication and cooperation between Europe and its southern neighbours. Dialogue with migration
9 All aboard the migration nation Gavan Titley Introduction Across the eras of boom and bust, public culture in Ireland has consistently had something of the airport bookshop about it. If it’s not quite true that there is no I in Ireland, highly publicised, motivational books and media events unflaggingly invited us Irish to recognise ourselves in the fairground mirror of popular typologies, and, once snugly interpellated, to be resilient, forward-looking and flourishing. In 2013, New Thinking = New Ireland1 set out to top up the national reserves of confidence
favour of private sector capital accumulation and a narrowing network of business elites. 15 As a result, impoverishment in the rural peripheries increased substantially, and labour migration to Lebanon began to shift from an “opportunity” for building a better future back home, to a basic survivalist strategy. The remainder of this chapter will examine those former Ba
7 Managing migration in the UK and Spain: ideas, knowledge and policy change This book is, in part, a response to the demand that in order to understand contemporary European policy-making we should look at ‘ideas, knowledge and expertise, rather than pure interest’ (Richardson 2005: 6). By choosing to compare two of the EU’s major labour importers in the twenty-first century it tells us about the contemporary governance of migration in Europe, and seeks to overcome the methodological nationalism often associated with migration research (Wimmer and Schiller
Allwood 02 24/2/10 2 10:27 Page 49 Migration contexts, demographic and social characteristics: refugee women in Britain and France This chapter introduces the reader to the landscape of international migration within which female refugee migrants are positioned. Its aim is twofold. First, it gives an overview of inward migration flows into Britain and France while bearing in mind both the general European context and processes of feminisation which have occurred over the last 50 years. Second, it presents, as fully as available data allows, the demographic
How does migration feature in states’ diplomatic agendas across the Middle East? Until recently, popular wisdom often held that migration is an important socio-economic, rather than political, phenomenon. Migration diplomacy in the Middle East counters this expectation by providing the first systematic examination of the foreign policy importance of migrants, refugees, and diasporas in the Global South. Gerasimos Tsourapas examines how emigration-related processes become embedded in governmental practices of establishing and maintaining power; how states engage with migrant and diasporic communities residing in the West; how oil-rich Arab monarchies have extended their support for a number of sending states’ ruling regimes via cooperation on labour migration; and, finally, how labour and forced migrants may serve as instruments of political leverage. Drawing on multi-sited fieldwork and data collection and employing a range of case studies across the Middle East and North Africa, Tsourapas enhances existing understandings of regional migration governance in the Global South. The book identifies how the management of cross-border mobility in the Middle East is not primarily dictated by legal, moral, or human rights considerations but driven by states’ actors key concern – political power. Offering key insights into the history and current migration policy dilemmas, the book will provide both novices and specialists with fresh insights on migration into, out of, and across the modern Middle East.