Irregular Migration and Global Control Regimes
– including the implications for Denmark

The Purpose and Framework of the Project
By Ulf Hedetoft, Director, AMID

Viewed from an overall perspective, this project is based in a contradictory ‘minefield’ between individuals’ (right to) mobility on the one hand, and nation states’ (right to) defend their own borders, populations, and territories on the other hand (Andreas & Snyder, 2000; Joppke & Guiraudon, 2001).

’Human smuggling arises out of the existence of borders and because border crossing is possible only under certain defined legal conditions, while at the same time the motivation for global migration exceeds the given legal possibilities’ (Heckmann, 2003, p. 19).

It is basically the tensions between these processes/relations in the international system that both trigger the categorization of certain migration processes as ’illegal’, ’irregular’ or ’unauthorised’, (because they take place despite and across the regulating frameworks of wanted and necessary immigration of states and international institutions), but also explains the increased interest of especially western governments in efficient regional and global mechanisms of migration control.

Behind this interest lie the stark – albeit estimated – figures of the growing scope of irregular migration. The IOM has estimated that there are approximately 35 million ’illegal immigrants’ worldwide and that approximately four million people are smuggled across borders annually – of whom ca. 500,000 into and within the EU (Widgren, 1999). All estimates (including the number of apprehensions as well as death tolls due to unsuccessful smuggling attempts) indicate that the figures are steadily increasing (Düvell, 2003), not least because human trafficking is evolving into a profitable multi-billion business in line with drug trafficking (see various contributions in Kyle & Koslowski, 2001), but also because of a variety of other significant factors: growth in global economic inequality coupled with better access to information about opportunities and conditions in the west; western economic (and probably also political) actors’ not insignificant interest in benefiting from cheap ’irregular’ labour – a well-documented issue in connection with the American-Mexican maquiladora economy (see eg Andreas, 2001 and Spener, 2001) – however, this must also be presumed to be relevant in a European context (see eg Bade, 2003); finally, but not least, the phenomenon which the German migration researcher Friedrich Heckmann (2003) has referred to as the arms race of migration control processes:

’Experts agree that the process of human smuggling is under constant pressure for adaptation to change. The dynamism in the social organisation of smuggling evolves from the relation between law enforcement and smugglers’ networks. The basic pattern is an interaction process: the action of one actor provokes a reaction of the other which in turn leads to another action. Each action is influenced by the actor’s anticipation of possible reactions of the other actor’ (2001, pp. 19-20).

One may term this the contradictory dynamics of irregular migration: the attempts of state regimes to plug certain gaps in border controls lead to yet more imaginative, more technologically based and also more dangerous ways to evade reformed regimes – ways that may lead to not only increasing prices for the services rendered by smugglers but paradoxically also to a total rise in the scope of irregular migration: the field is increasingly becoming commercial, organization processes become sophisticated by way of more informal network cooperation between fragments of the total trafficking process (Vertovec, 2004), information flows to potential migrants are rendered more effective, the pull factors increase in strength and numbers, and the militarization of border controls is only to a limited extent backed – if at all – by employer sanctions in order to counter the interest of business enterprises in irregular labour.

In their edited book on global human trafficking, David Kyle og Rey Koslowski therefore conclude that an overall picture is one of a field in which state officials and smugglers are locked in an embrace without straightforward solutions, a phenomenon

’resistant to half-hearted state control efforts lacking sufficient political will to develop programs that would thwart not only the associated criminality but also the complex motivations of those smuggled, the nature and organization of the demand for their labour, and states’ own historical actions that have inadvertently created and maintained it’ (2001, pp. 20 & 21).

Moreover, they note that the existing system of states, based on national and territorial sovereignty, is unfit for undertaking and addressing (on its own) the challenges that an increasingly highly mobile world, not least the irregular part of this mobility, confront them with: border controls, no matter how technologically advanced they might be, can at best only constitute a small part of the political responses to the challenges which, in line with the complexity of the problems, demand more comprehensive solutions, such as other forms of transnational cooperation:

’… the trade in humans and migrants is a topic that intersects contemporary anxieties concerning the global political economy, ethnic and gender stratification, multiculturalism, population growth, political corruption, transnational crime , the Internet, human rights abuses, and the (in)ability of states and global agencies to control any of these effectively’ (ibid., pp. 4-5).

This complexity has implications both in terms of states’ (in this connection not least the small, homogeneous welfare state’s) practical handling of irregular migration as well as for scholarly approaches, possibilities and methods for capturing these problems in a theoretical-analytical context.

The international society of states has, on the basis of previous experiences and given the weakening of traditional political instruments due to globalization, gradually reached conclusions which approach those indicated above. Most notably, the result is governance endeavours to control migration globally while taking due account of state interests, but now with the involvement of more policy areas (eg security policies, development policies and regional policies), and taking into account multilateral interests and economic flows in the relationship between sending, transit and receiving countries. This happens through the establishment/ strengthening of or cooperation with global or regional institutions, think tanks and sub- or transnational NGOs (Düvell, 2003; Düvell & Jordan, 2003; Spencer, 2003; Tamas, 2004, chapters 2 and 3). This is especially the case with the IOM (the International Organisation for Migration); the Intergovernmental Consultations on Asylum, Refugees and Migration Policies (based institutionally at the International Centre for Migration Policy Development in Vienna); the International Labour Organisation (ILO); the Council of Europe; the WTO; to a certain extent the UNHCR; a series of more or less formalized think tanks and conferences (eg Metropolis – cf Metropolis World Bulletin, vol. 4, September 2004, theme on ’Managing Migration – International Cooperation, Refugees, Trafficking’, or the Council of Europe’s conference in Athens, 3-4 October 2001, titled ’Irregular Migration and Dignity of Migrants: Cooperation in the Mediterranean Region’); and finally, new forms of regional and/or intergovernmental cooperation, eg between the EU and the ASEM countries on regulating migration flows which, to the maximum feasible extent, favours a majority of political-economic interests and is capable of coping with human trafficking on a global basis.

These institutions do not exclude but complement each other and point towards a global migration governance regime per se where the driving (and in any case the implementing) force at presents appears to be the IOM (Düvell, 2003; IOM, 2004) – both because the organization has about 100 member states, because its portfolio is very broad (based among other things on developing a global migration warning system), because it cooperates closely with regional regimes like the EU, and due to the fact that its rationale for action is economic-demographic rather than based on humanitarian considerations. Franck Düvell’s reflection on the rationality of the European migration processes is thought-provoking and could be convenient starting point for a conceptual discussion of the subject area:

’There is a worrying equilibrium between those who are deported from Europe each year, about 350,000 plus an unknown number of those leaving ”voluntarily” because of deterrent politics, and those who are recruited on some kind of a foreign labour scheme. In that light migration politics appears as a modus to run ”UK plc” or ”Deutschland AG” and represents a strategy of social engineering to rationalise and to recompose its population, similar to a workforce’ (2003).

The research-based knowledge of this regime and its forms, organization and consequences is, however, relatively modest, not least as far as welfare states such as Denmark are concerned, and the planned research at the Academy for Migration Studies in Denmark will hence focus intensely on key aspects of this relationship – both in terms of global institutional links (the PhD project on ‘Migration Management…’), the EU regional aspect (the post.doc. project on the Migration Policies of the EU), and the Danish national perspective (the PhD project on Denmark, Globalization and New Forms of Migration).

As an area of research the field is relatively new and unexplored; however, it has attracted increased attention in recent years – as reflected in articles in scientific journals, conference papers, monographs and anthologies. The reason for this increased interest is obvious (cf the account so far). On the other hand, one may ask why it is not until the last couple of years that scholars have dealt seriously with the issues. In this case there are presumably at least three relevant reasons.

First, we are dealing with a field which in the social practice exists in a grey area, difficult to document, and where the empirical, methodological and analytical problems hence are considerable (Heckmann, 2003; see also below as well as the three project descriptions).

Second, it is a field which cannot easily be approached without a true interdisciplinary approach and methodology: the arms race between national/regional control and the transnational migration flows (and their different actors) involve concepts and methods from eg the disciplines of international politics, regional and globalization studies (security studies, concepts of sovereignty, geo-politics, interdependence theories etc), neo-institutionalism and discourse theory (institutional modes of operation, path dependencies, regime theory, international law, multi-level governance, symbolic politics…), sociological organization theory (especially network theory and analyses of transnational organizations), behavioural psychology (the motivational structures of migration and the interaction of push/pull factors) and welfare state and labour market theories (integration and marginalization studies, analyses and theories of economic grey zones, urban economy studies). Even if not all specific studies need to draw on all these disciplines, the research communities, which traditionally have been more comfortable within well-defined disciplines, are, nonetheless, faced with a serious challenge.

Finally, third, there is no doubt that irregular migration from south to north and east to west has grown both in terms of actual scope and relative importance viewed in relation to the total transnational migration since the end of the Cold War – as an important accompanying measure of other political and economic globalization processes (see eg Sassen, 2004), but also as a bi-product of the increasingly hermetic and restrictive immigration policies that the high-tech western countries have pursued throughout the 90s and during the first few years of the new millennium. When eg European states, since the 70s, have chosen to basically seal their borders against work migrants and only have allowed for politically justified and humanitarian immigration (asylum seekers) and resulting family reunions – and at the same time have become more selective within the last-mentioned areas – it can hardly puzzle anyone that such a restrictive policy involves a rise in two forms of irregular migration: immigrants who pretend to be refugees or enter Europe in other seemingly legal ways (eg on a tourist visa or to study), and those who attempt to immigrate (or are forced to immigrate, eg prostitutes in Denmark from the Baltic countries) in a clearly illegal manner (via human smugglers or on their own initiative).

The research consequences of these very real but also complicated relationships between qualitative problems and quantitative processes, state regulation and human/organizational circumvention strategies, action and reaction, autonomy and globalization etc are to construct manageable interdisciplinary research designs which combine well-defined empirical and processual focal points linked to conceptual frameworks and methods that despite the data-related difficulties allow for reasonably testable hypotheses, and where attempts are made to integrate the socio-cultural micro level with political-institutional macro analyses. In particular, data collection and methods of analysis confront the researcher with challenges – due to the ’shady’ nature of the field (also concerning basic ethical considerations on the prevention of data/respondent misuse). However, some studies have been carried out which can be used as guidelines and models (see eg Futo & Jandl, 2003; IOM, 2000; Singer & Massey, 1998; Thunø, 2003; Zimic et al, 2003), as well as methodologically and empirically oriented accounts of the possibility for obtaining valid data within the field (eg Heckmann, 2003; Icduygu & Toktas, 2002; miscellaneous contributions in Kyle & Koslowski, 2001; Lederer, 2003). These considerations have been elaborated in the individual project descriptions in relation to the specific research themes and research designs.

The planned research at AMID within the field of Irregular Migration and Global Control Regimes cannot and will not aim at dealing with the totality of the complex fields that this brief review has outlined. The ambition is – in the form of the five sub-projects – to contribute with new and essential knowledge about the way in which the arms race between control and flow develops throughout Europe and in particular to identify both social and political-economic consequences of human trafficking and irregular forms of migration for Denmark; Denmark’s own more proactive input to and self-interest in the emerging global control regime (where eg recent proposals about refugee camps in neighbouring countries, asylum processing outside the EU and the linkage between development aid and migration policies are in line with the policies and practices which have already been/or are being implemented with the support of eg the IOM); and finally, the labour market and integration-related effects of irregular migration in Denmark and for immigrants. The empirical focus of the Danish case will hence link the five studies, which will analyze various aspects and dimensions of the overall project – but at the same time it will be treated in the perspective of the larger regional and global context.

Within this general framework and with the aim of improving the research efforts within this quite sigficifant but up to now underexposured field, AMID will launch the following three research projects in the autumn of 2005:

Post.doc. Projects

• Illegal Immigrants from Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe, Human Trafficking, Transnational Networks and Social Strategies in Denmark (Kirsten Hviid)
• Migration and Life Processes – the relationships between external conditions and cultural shaping for two ethnic groups (Trine Lund Thomsen)
• The EU Migration Policies and their Significance for Denmark (Lærke Klitgaard Holm)

In addition to these three projects two PhD projects will be be initiated as part of this research program (in cooperation with the doctoral school SPIRIT at Aalborg University).

Bibliography

Andreas, Peter, 2001. ‘The Transformation of Migrant Smuggling across the US-Mexican Border’, in Kyle & Koslowski, op. cit.

Andreas, Peter & Timothy Snyder, eds, 2000. The Wall around the West. State Borders and Immigration Control in North America and Europe. Lanham: Rowman and Littefield.

Bade, Klaus, J., 2003. Legal and Illegal Immigration into Europe: Experiences and Challenges. Wassenaar: Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study.

Düvell, Franck, 2003. ”The Globalisation of Migration Control”. www.openDemocracy.net, June 12. Extended version in noborder network:
http://www.noborder.org, May 19.

Düvell, Franck & Bill Jordan, 2003. Irregular Migration: The Dilemmas of Transnational Mobility. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Futo, Peter & Michael Jandl, eds, 2004. 2003 Year Book on Illegal Migration, Human Smuggling and Trafficking in Central and Eastern Europe. Vienna: International Centre for Migration Policy Development.

Heckmann, Friedrich, 2003. ”Methodological Problems in the Study of Illegal Migration”. The Center for Migration and Development Working Paper Series, # 03-09e, Princeton University.

Icduygu, A. & S. Toktas, 2002. ‘How Do Smuggling and Trafficking Operate via Irregular Border Crossings in the Middle East? Evidence from Field Work in Turkey’. International Migration 40:6.

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IOM, 2004. Migration, December Issue. Theme on ‘Managing Migration’. http://www.iom.int

Joppke, C. & V. Guiraudon, eds, 2001. Controlling a New Immigration World. London: Routledge.

Kyle, David & Rey Koslowski, eds, 2001. Global Human Smuggling: Comparative Perspectives. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Lederer, H.W., 2003. Indikatoren der Migration. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Universität Bamberg.

Sassen, Saskia, 2004. Economic Globalization and World Migration as Factors in the Mapping of Today’s Advanced Urban Economy. Unpublished manuscript, January.

Singer, A. & D.S. Massey, 1998. ’The Social Process of Undocumented Border Crossing among Mexican Migrants’. International Migration Review 32.

Spencer, Sarah, ed., 2003. ‘The Politics of Migration: Managing Opportunity, Conflict and Change’. Special issue of The Political Quarterly. London: Blackwell.

Spener, David, 2001. ‘Smuggling Migrants through South Texas: Challenges Posed by Operation Rio Grande’, in Kyle & Koslowski, op.cit.

Tamas, Kristof, 2004. Mapping Study on International Migration. Stockholm: Institute for Futures Studies.

Thunø, Mette, 2003. ”Channels of Entry and Preferred Destinations: The Circumvention of Denmark by Chinese Immigrants”. International Migration, vol. 41, 3.

Vertovec, Steven, 2004. Multiple and Multiplex Migration Networks. Plenumforelæsning ved 13th Nordic Migration Conference, AMID/Aalborg
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Widgren, Jonas, 1999. ‘Europe’s Smuggled Masses’. The Economist, February 20.

Zimic, Simona et al, 2003. Where in the Puzzle: Trafficking from, to and through Slovenia. Ljubljana: IOM.