Between Europe and Africa: Morocco as a country of immigration

Norman, Kelsey P.

doi:10.1080/21520844.2016.1237258

Cited by 26 publications

(10 citation statements)

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“…The Malaysian government has therefore cycled relatively quickly through divergent policy choices, sometimes pursuing all of them at the same time (as in the 6P programme programme). While the ability of less-democratic regimes to make sudden policy shifts is well documented (see for example Natter 2018;Norman 2016), what is striking about the Malaysian case is not just having an abrupt change, but having almost constant abrupt changes. Here, looking simply at the case of undocumented foreign workers, there have been eleven major policies in a space of just eight years.…”

Section: Undocumented Foreign Workers and Malaysian Migration Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

Managing labour migration in Malaysia: foreign workers and the challenges of ‘control’ beyond liberal democracies

Anderson

2020

Third World Quarterly

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This paper examines the issue of migration control in Malaysia. Despite the fact that the majority of the world's migratory movements are between countries in the Global South, the dominant focus of research on migration control has tended to be liberal democracies of the Global North. Here, focussing on a country which is a major destination for migrants in Southeast Asia, this paper examines the varied policies enacted by the Malaysian government in an effort to decrease the number of undocumented foreign workers. As Malaysia is known for its frequent migration policy shifts, this paper traces the many twists and turns in Malaysian policy in the period from 2011 to 2019. In doing so, the paper seeks to help build a better understanding of the complex and sometimes contradictory tools states use in attempting to manage migration. Here I find that some patterns emerge from Malaysia's use of a wide variety of policy instruments to reduce its population of undocumented foreign workers, but that ultimately these must be placed in the context of the overall economic reliance of Malaysia on foreign labour and its turbulent policies.

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Section: Undocumented Foreign Workers and Malaysian Migration Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

Managing labour migration in Malaysia: foreign workers and the challenges of ‘control’ beyond liberal democracies

Anderson

2020

Third World Quarterly

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“…Interviewees, however, highlighted that the main challenge is to integrate ad-hoc policy decisions into national legislation in order to protect the new policy from future backlashes. As long as the laws on immigration and asylum, finalized but stuck at the political level, are not enacted, Morocco’s immigration policy will thus remain ambivalent and arbitrary (Norman, 2016a ).…”

Section: Immigration Policy and Political Transformations In Morocco mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Acosta Arcarazo and Freier ( 2015 ), in turn, questioned Hollifield’s liberal paradox hypothesis by analyzing the ‘populist liberalism’ in several Latin America democracies, where political discourses on immigration have overall been more liberal than implemented policies. Working on the Gulf countries, Thiollet ( 2016 ) investigated the existence of an ‘illiberal transnationalism’ on immigration in the region; and Norman ( 2016a , 2016b ) hypothesized that countries such as Morocco, Turkey, and Egypt are consciously pursuing a ‘policy of ambivalence’ towards migrants, preferring to grant migrants rights through ad-hoc policy decisions rather than through legal changes, herewith leaving open the option of future, rapid backlashes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rethinking immigration policy theory beyond ‘Western liberal democracies’

Natter

2018

CMS

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How do political systems shape immigration policy-making? Explicitly or implicitly, comparative politics and migration policy theories suggest a ‘regime effect’ that links specific dynamics of immigration policy to liberal democracy. The literature’s dominant focus on so-called ‘Western liberal democracies’, however, has left the ‘regime effect’ largely untested and research on variations and similarities in immigration policymaking across political systems strikingly undertheorized. This paper challenges the theoretical usefulness of essentialist, dichotomous categories such as Western/non-Western or democratic/autocratic and calls for a more nuanced theorizing of immigration policy-making. It proposes a two-dimensional classification of immigration policy theories, distinguishing between ‘issue-specific’ theories that capture immigration policy processes regardless of the political system in place and ‘regime-specific’ theories whose insights are tied to the characteristics of a political system. The paper also advances the ‘illiberal paradox’ hypothesis to explain why illiberal, autocratic states may enact liberal immigration policies. This theoretical expansion beyond the ‘Western’ and ‘liberal’ bubble is illustrated by an analysis of immigration policy-making in 21st century Morocco and Tunisia. Showing how domestic and international institutions, interests, and ideas shape immigration policy-making in Morocco’s monarchy and Tunisia’s democratic transition, the paper investigates the broader role of political systems in immigration politics and herewith seeks to contribute to a more general and global theorization of immigration policies.

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“…In the Mediterranean region specifically, European governments began pressuring neighboring Balkan and North African countries to bolster border security in order to curb irregular migration in the early 2000s (Boubakari, 2013; Lavenex, 2007; Norman, 2016; Qadim, 2019). As Geddes (2005) observes: “The language of EU policy development.…”

Section: Policy Conversion Led By States and Iosmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transforming refugees into migrants: institutional change and the politics of international protection

Mourad

Norman

2019

European Journal of International Relations

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Since the 2015 refugee “crisis,” much has been made of the distinction between the legal category of refugee and migrant. While migration scholars have accounted for the increased blurring of these two categories through explanations of institutional drift and policy layering, we argue that the intentional policies utilized by states and international organizations to minimize legal avenues for refugees to seek protection should also be considered. We identify four practices of policy “conversion” that have also led to the increasingly problematic distinction between migrants and refugees: (1) limiting access to territory through burden-shifting and other practices of extraterritorialization; (2) limiting access to asylum and local integration through procedural and administrative hindrances; (3) the use of group-based criteria as a basis of exclusion; (4) the inclusion of non-Convention criteria within resettlement schemes. Drawing upon a historical institutionalist approach and a wide array of empirical sources—including 3 years of combined primary field research conducted in Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, and Turkey between 2013 and 2016—we demonstrate that states are actively pursuing a greater degree of control over the selection of refugees, in practice making refugee resettlement closer to another immigration track rather than a unique status that compels state responsibility.

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Between Europe and Africa: Morocco as a country of immigration

Cited by 26 publications

References 0 publications

Managing labour migration in Malaysia: foreign workers and the challenges of ‘control’ beyond liberal democracies

Managing labour migration in Malaysia: foreign workers and the challenges of ‘control’ beyond liberal democracies

Rethinking immigration policy theory beyond ‘Western liberal democracies’

Transforming refugees into migrants: institutional change and the politics of international protection

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