The International Organization for Migration and the International Government of Borders

Abstract

Early debates often read globalization as a powerful tendency destined to make state borders less pertinent. Recent research has challenged this view by suggesting that globalization and (re-)bordering frequently advance hand in hand, culminating in a condition that might be described as 'gated globalism'. But somewhat neglected in this recent wave of research is the role that particular international agencies are playing in shaping the norms and forms that pertain to emergent regimes of border control -what we call the international government of borders. Focusing on the International Organization for Migration and its involvement in the promotion of what it calls better 'border management', this paper aims to partially redress this oversight. The IOM is interesting because it illustrates how the control of borders has become constituted as an object of technical expertise and intervention within programmes and schemes of international authority. Two themes are pursued. First, recent work on neoliberal governmentality is useful for illuminating the forms of power and subtle mechanisms of influence which chracterize the IOM's attempt to managerialize border policies in countries as different as Ethiopia, Serbia and Armenia. Second, the international government of borders comprises diverse and heterogeneous practices, ranging from the hosting of training seminars for local security and migration officials, to the promotion of schemes to purchase and install cutting-edge surveillance equipment. In such different ways one can observe in very material terms how the project of making borders into a problem of 'management' conflicts with a perception of borders as a site of social struggle and politics.

Médecins Avec Frontières and the making of a humanitarian borderscape

“…Building on this and focusing on the policing of the US and the EU borders respectively, Williams (2015) and I (2015a) have shown the ways humanitarian logics concerned with those at risk have become intertwined with border policing practices more traditionally focused on migrants as a risk, resulting in complementary practices of care and control that expand possibilities for and types of practices at the border. Others have focused on the presence of humanitarian logics in technocratic migration management efforts (Andrijasevic and Walters, 2010) and countersmuggling campaigns (see Garelli and Tazzioli, 2017;McNevin et al, 2016), while the growth of SAR efforts-in the Mediterranean especially-have led to an increasing focus on the work of both state (see Cuttitta, 2017;Little and Vaughan-Williams, 2016;Tazzioli, 2016) and non-state actors (see Stierl, 2016Stierl, , 2017). Garelli and Tazzioli have shown how the enactment of categories of vulnerability and ethics of protection in migration control has come to produce particular types of border spaces in Italy (2017).…”

¿Para quién y para qué son buenas las buenas prácticas? Unión Europea, integración de (in)migrantes y despolitización/tecnificación de las políticas hegemónicas: un estudio de caso

“…resultados del trabajo de campo realizado entre 2011 y 2012 para la escritura de mi tesis doctoral y seleccionando, de entre los materiales disponibles, el caso específico de las "buenas prácticas" que, al tener una importancia central dentro de las políticas blandas de integración comunitarias, serán tomadas como ejemplo paradigmático de una tendencia más general. Además, aunque otras investigaciones sobre las políticas contemporáneas de inmigración, integración y control fronterizo hayan subrayado ya la existencia de importantes elementos de despolitización en ellas (véanse Guiraudon 2003;Andrijasevic y Walters 2010;Bigo y Carrera 2007;Wacquant 2009;Mitsilegas 2012;De Genova 2016), no me consta que se hayan realizado estudios específicos sobre las buenas prácticas dentro del marco europeo de la integración. La estructura del trabajo es la siguiente: primero formularé un breve apartado teórico y otro metodológico, aclarando los procedimientos y conceptos adoptados para la producción y análisis de datos; a continuación aportaré un resumen de las medidas más importante impulsadas por la UE en el ámbito político de estudio, para posteriormente centrarme en las buenas prácticas para desmenuzar algunos aspectos del citado proceso de "despolitización/tecnificación" 5 .…”

Refugee Protection Meets Migration Management: UNHCR as a Global Police of Populations

“…However, the study of UNHCR and other international agencies has only received little attention so far (Andrijašević and Walters 2010;Geiger and Pécoud 2010). In the case of UNHCR, Jerôme Valluy (2007) has noted that the agency's monopoly over knowledge production on asylum, refugees and forced migration sharply contrasts with the fact that the agency has seldom been the object of study itself.…”