Who Counts in Crises? The New Geopolitics of International Migration and Refugee Governance

Abstract

Recent migration 'crises' raise important geopolitical questions. Who is 'the migrant' that contemporary politics are fixated on? How are answers to 'who counts as a migrant' changing? Who gets to do that counting, and under what circumstances? This forum responds to, as well as questions, the current saliency of migration by examining how categories of migration hold geopolitical significance-not only in how they are constructed and by whom, but also in how they are challenged and subverted. Furthermore, by examining how the very concepts of 'migrant' and 'refugee' are used in different contexts, and for a variety of purposes, it opens up critical questions about mobility, citizenship and the nation state. Collectively, these contributions aim to demonstrate how problematising migration and its categorisation can be a tool of enquiry into other phenomena and processes.

The Changing Spatiality of the “European Refugee/Migrant Crisis”

“…Among them different aspects of the Common European Asylum Policy (especially the Dublin III Regulation and readmission agreements), important differences in the implementation of the common asylum policy (despite the efforts to harmonize the asylum procedures and the rights of asylum seekers) and above all the growing trend in securitization, militarization and externalization of the EU migration and asylum policy, have to be acknowledged (see Allen et al, 2017;Beznec, Speer and Stojić Mitrović, 2016;Ibrahim, 2005;Jones and Johnson, 2016). All the above-mentioned factors indicate that the spatial dispersion of the asylum applicants is therefore the result of circumstance, not of planned actions.…”

Clean skins: Making the e-Border security assemblage

“…These perceptions held by officials reassert how the e-Border assemblage, and the governance of human mobility more generally, exists in geopolitical contexts (Allen et al, 2017;Pickering and Weber, 2006). Even the casual juxtaposition of 'nonsensical' (Gabrielatos and Baker, 2008) terms like 'economic refugee' with other groups like terrorists who embody threat is telling: everyone, regardless of stated purpose of entry, is potentially dangerous.…”

Globalizing Global Skill Partnerships and Africapitalism as a sustainable aid response to the irregular migration crisis between Cameroon and Europe.

“…Migration and aid are also determinant factors in most regional integration agreements (Arts & Dickson, 2010). Thus, there is a power relation when it has to do with international migration, thus, each category and categorization of migrant always has geopolitical undertones (Allen et al, 2017) and aid trends also follows this pattern, especially when we dwell on the fact that an increase in immigration and asylum-seeking leads to an increase in aid in the country of departure, thus constant alteration of laws and policies related to migration.…”