The postcolonial migration state

Abstract

The evolution of migration policymaking across the Global South is of growing interest to International Relations. Yet, the impact of colonial and imperial legacies on states’ migration management regimes outside Europe and North America remains under-theorised. How does postcolonial state formation shape policies of cross-border mobility management in the Global South? By bringing James F. Hollifield’s framework of the contemporary ‘migration state’ in conversation with critical scholarship on postcolonialism, we identify the existence of a ‘postcolonial paradox,’ namely two sets of tensions faced by newly independent states of the Global South: first, the need to construct a modern sovereign nation-state with a well-defined national identity contrasts with weak institutional capacity to do so; second, territorial realities of sovereignty conflict with the imperatives of nation-building seeking to establish exclusive citizenship norms towards populations residing both inside and outside the boundaries of the postcolonial state. We argue that the use of cross-border mobility control policies to reconcile such tensions transforms the ‘postcolonial state’ into the ‘postcolonial migration state,’ which shows distinct continuities with pre-independence practices. In fact, postcolonial migration states reproduce colonial-era tropes via the surveillance and control of segmented migration streams that redistribute labour for the global economy. We demonstrate this via a comparative study of post-independence migration management in India and Egypt, which also aims to merge a problematic regional divide between scholarship on the Middle East and South Asia. We urge further critical interventions on the international politics of migration that prioritise interregional perspectives from the broader Global South.

The crisis of the postcolonial nation‐state and the emergence of alternative forms of statehood in the Horn of Africa

“…These questions remain unanswered, yet they provide us with critical conceptual frameworks with which to analyse and understand state formation in the Horn. They highlight the 'postcolonial paradox' that afflicts most postcolonial societies in the Global South, as noted by Sadiq and Tsourapas (2021).…”

“…Much of the Global South is in many ways engaged in these processes. We see this in what Sadiq and Tsourapas (2021) call a ‘postcolonial paradox’—the constraints and tensions found in postcolonial states with regards to creating modern nation‐states and the limited capacity to do so; and securing territorial sovereignty while establishing citizenship norms towards co‐ethnic populations living inside and outside the state. This is an apt description of what has underlined the political upheaval in the Horn of Africa.…”

Refugee commodification: the diffusion of refugee rent-seeking in the Global South

“…There is a pressing need for interregional comparative research to better understand migration and refugee politics across the Global South (Sadiq and Tsourapas 2021). This article offers an exploratory analysis of how refugee rent-seeking is diffused across three regions -the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and South America.…”

Geographies of migration II: Decolonising migration studies

“…Introducing a more explicit postcolonial analytic to this work has involved exploring the continuity of Western colonialism in migration regimes outside the West. Writing about India and Egypt, for example, Sadiq and Tsourapas (2021) identify a ‘postcolonial migration state’ that draws on colonial-era tropes of segmentation and engages in forms of surveillance and control that manage labour nationally and internationally in a way that strongly echoes colonial systems. Koh (2017) explores colonial legacies in links between race, education, migration and citizenship in Malaysia, while Brankamp and Daley (2020) demonstrate how postcolonial migration regimes in Kenya and Tanzania deploy colonial notions of ‘un/profitable African bodies’ to differentially govern categories of labourers, migrants and refugees.…”