Migration, Globalisation and Human Security

David T. Graham, Nana K. Poku

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781134668885
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencias físicas
• Subtopic: Geografía

Migration, Globalisation and Human Security looks at a range of security and human security issues related to the displacement of civilian populations and shows how the tenuous existence of migrants can lead to a myriad of human security threats. Providing major theoretical analyses of recent migration trends and in depth-case studies, this book shows that a redefinition of the notion of human security is now needed.

1

Introduction

Nana K.Poku and David T.Graham

Thomas Hobbes once described the nature of the state as a form of institution—as he put it, an ‘Artificial Man’, defined by prominence and sovereignty, the authorised representative giving life and motion to society and the body politic. There is a form of social contract between the state and citizenry. In this contract citizens confer on the state the right to control a definable territorial space and, in the process, the right to make and enforce such rules or laws as is deemed necessary in exchange for political, economic and military security. Raymond Aron (1962:750) pursues the theme further by describing the nation-state as a ‘collective personality’ which, like the individual personality, ‘is born and dies in time…asserts itself only by consciousness, being capable of [rational] thought and action’. The orderly polity resulting from the Hobbesian contract between individuals and the state cannot, however, be replicated internationally by a similar contract between states. This is so because the ‘ahistoric moment of utilitarian calculation informed by reason and fear that gave rise to social contract has no counterpart in international relations’ (Walker 1989:174). In essence, domestic order becomes the mirror image and necessary condition of international disorder, thus making anarchy the axiomatic and unalterable principle of global life.

However mythical this proposition of a mass opting into a social contract to create the state might sound, either for the imposition of minimal order or cooperative communal benefits, people have granted a central organ a monopoly of political authority and power. Reinforced by nineteenth- and twentieth-century concepts of ideology and nationalism, the state system has now become the most prominent unit of political organisation in the world; organisations to which millions of people owe allegiance and for which many are prepared to die. Indeed, the psychological high of belonging has made it particularly satisfying to belong to a particular state and to be stateless is to enter a world of unimaginable misery and insecurity. The disintegration of states like Afghanistan, Chechnya, Azerbaijan, and many countries on the African continent, have demonstrated in the most dramatic way the exposure of vast numbers of people not only to the dangers of violence from contending bands of warriors and bandits, in a manner reminiscent of medieval times, but to hunger and disease on a cataclysmic scale.

Population Movements and Human (in)Security

Since the 1960s, a number of major developments in global migration patterns have placed the phenomenon at the heart of international politics. First, the scale of movements has increased exponentially. In the 1960s, only a handful of countries, mainly the traditional immigration nations in North America and Oceania, were significantly affected by international migration, but by the 1990s more than 2 per cent of the world’s population was living outside of their country of birth (Martin and Widgren 1996), and virtually every nation was influenced in some way by immigration or emigration of various kinds. Second, there has been an enormous increase in the diversity of international population movement. Whereas in the past, the bulk of such movement involved permanent, or at least long-term, settlement at the destination, world migration is now characterised by not only increased levels of permanent settlement in foreign countries but also by a myriad of temporary, circular migrations of varying duration with a range of purposes. Third, and perhaps inevitably, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of global institutions shaping the level and pattern of international migration. Further, government involvement is increasing, not only in destination countries where attempts to limit the number and characteristics of immigrants have escalated, but also in origin countries where nations have realised the benefits of remittances to national development and actively encouraged emigration of various kinds. However, it is often overlooked that there are other institutions that have become important gatekeepers and facilitators in international migration (Goss and Lindquist 1995; Hugo 1995).

These factors have reinforced each other to change the racial mix of many countries and cities beyond all recognition. Simultaneously, the increase in international migration has also given rise to paranoia and xenophobia. Migrants everywhere live a tenuous existence—rarely gaining the same rights as non-migrants, their hosts always aloof. Blamed for a range of ills—from unemployment to crime, strained social services to lack of national unity—migrants are aware of just how easily their rights can be swept away.

The plight of refugees is even worse. We are all still haunted by the terrible images of children and elderly people shivering in the snows of the Kurd Mountains of northern Iraq. In the aftermath of the Gulf War in 1991, the Iraqi offensive against the Kurdish populations in the north of the country had pushed one million people towards the Turkish border, which was hermetically closed to them. Rather than admitting the refugees, as Turkey had previously done, they were prevented from crossing the border. Human rights abuses by Turkish border guards and the life-threatening winter conditions of the mountainous border regions led to an increasing death rate—between 400 and 1,000 per day—largely due to hypothermia, exposure, exhaustion, and bacteria-ridden drinking water, which led to pneumonia, diarrhoea and cholera. At the peak of the crisis, 22 per cent of the refugees were malnourished (4 per cent severely), and 70 per cent of all the hospital cases had diarrhoea. An estimated 4,500 to 6,700 Kurds died during the initial crisis. These figures do not account for those refugees who fled to the Iranian border, who at the peak were triple the numbers at the Turkish border. For these people, matters were complicated by the estimated 10 million landmines that had been planted by the government after 1975, predominantly during the Iran-Iraq War.

In the end, only a spectacular and unprecedented effort in aid coordination made it possible to avoid total disaster. At the time, the effort seemed to indicate that even the overnight appearance of some two million refugees was not an impossible task to be countered by military-civilian interaction. Then, in April 1994, the world stood by and watched a televised genocide in Rwanda. The scale and brutality of this genocide must rank as one of the most horrific periods of intense killing anywhere in the world. At the end of one hundred days of intense killing, over one million Tutsis were murdered in cold blood and some two million people were displaced.

The mass exodus of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo serves as a reminder of the relationship between state security, international security, territoriality, globalisation, ethnicity, itself a function of past migration, and current migration which in turn threatens further instability in the region. Added to this complex scenario is the myriad human security threats—social, economic, environmental, familial, health, welfare, life, among others—to the ethnic Albanian refugees and displaced persons, the Kosovo Serbs and others in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. At the time of writing, it is estimated that half of Kosovo’s 1.6 million ethnic Albanians have been forced from their homes. Of these, over 450, 000 have crossed Kosovo’s borders since the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) bombing began on 24 March 1999, 60,000 fled before the allied intervention and around 260,000 are displaced within the province. This represents Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War II. The situation inside the everexpanding refugee camps deteriorated so rapidly that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), for the first time during this conflict, urged countries not in the immediate areas to offer a ‘safe haven’ to fleeing civilians. In the words of Sadako Ogata (1999), the UNHCR, ‘Kosovo’s neighbours are swamped and they are no longer in a position to cope with the influx of people. All nations must help now to save lives.’ Certainly, the situation in Qafe Prushit, an isolated mountain area in Albania would seem to confirm the desperate nature of the problem. A confidential UNHCR field report indicates that dehydration and hypothermia have already begun to claim victims in this area.

Increasingly, the displacement of civilian populations—under the guise of ‘ethnic cleansing’ or some other pretext—is no longer the by-product of war, but a goal in its own right. The human suffering which underlies it, as well as its impact on regional peace and security, has brought into sharp focus the ways in which different categories of people are marginal to the states in which they live and the various forms of insecurity confronting them. Human rights abuses in Burma or Turkey, genocide in Rwanda or Indonesia, and a whole range of outrages against civilians on all sides in the wars of Liberia, Algeria, Angola, Sierra Leone and parts of the former Soviet Union are all cases in point. The ongoing conflicts over the remains of what was once Yugoslavia highlight the plight of a population without protection from any state—some falling prey to the remnants of the very state that was once supposed to be their protector. Like the Kurds in Iraq and the Tutsis in Rwanda, the plight of the Kosovo Albanians demonstrates in a dramatic way the catastrophic insecurity of ordinary people in circumstances where states—and the international system of states—are either unable to provide protection or are themselves the principal sources of violence.

The Structure of the Book

Chapter 2 explores in some detail the central issues and identifies some of the conceptual problems of a state-centred notion of international security which is bound to overlook the interests and needs of large categories of people, particularly those already external in other ways within states or the system of states. In a significant way, this chapter provides the theoretical framework for the book as a whole.

Following on from this theoretical debate, Chapter 3 looks at one of the more obvious links between migration and security—the diaspora. The chapter examines the significance of diasporas and the types of threats they pose to the security of a range of actors, primarily their host states, homelands and certain third parties. Davies argues that the definition of diaspora should be opened out to encompass a broad range of groups from a variety of origins. He further argues that diasporas have an increasing relevance and impact on actors as a result of processes transforming global systems. Several ongoing processes, including advances in transportation and communications technology, increasing migratory flows, and increasing levels of pluralism and tolerance in host countries, have provided diasporas with greater autonomy, power and opportunities for the assertion of their identities and interests. He concludes by looking at the impact of diasporic activities on the security of others. Throughout, he argues that traditional conceptions of security need to be revised to incorporate threats and perceptions of threats arising from fears for the survival of collective identities and values, in addition to those relating to military threats. He applies a revised conception of security in order to discuss the enhanced potential of diasporas to threaten the political, economic and cultural security of their homelands, host countries and third parties enmeshed in diasporic networks.

In Chapter 4, Peter Marden explores the relationship between territoriality, citizenship and sovereignty. These are traditionally aligned with nationstates and their seeming autonomy in the international system of states. He argues that forces of fragmentation are closely associated with globalisation in the 1990s. The shifting boundaries of authority are diminishing the administrative capacity of states to deal with forces that seem to defy containment. Hence, as borders become more porous and less meaningful the very basis of democratic governance may erode. Increased human migration is seen as another threat to the nation-state. It is reasonable to argue that in a world of shifting boundaries and mobile populations, the institutions of liberal democracy have revealed a peculiar fragility. Rather than close borders and become more exclusionary, states should open up their borders to immigrants. Whatever the case, the moral obligations of states within the current phase of globalisation are no longer based on an uncomplicated relation between state and citizen, as this relation is now bound up with contested sovereignties.

Elisabeth Abiri explores the securitisation of cross-border migration from the perspective of refugees in Chapter 5. She uses two contrasting cases to explore some of the issues involved—Sweden and Malawi. She shows how these seemingly dissimilar countries increasingly came to view migration as a security issue. These two countries which, up until relatively recently, had a generous disposition towards refugees began to change perspectives and policies. The chapter focuses on the inflow and stay of Mozambican refugees in Malawi and the inflow and stay of Bosnian refugees in Sweden. She suggests that since the securitisation of migration appears to be part of globalisation, taking place in the South as well as in the North, it is reasonable to assume that some of the dynamics behind the securitisation of migration may be common for a number of cases. She concludes that migration discourse and policy have been securitised in Malawi and Sweden at approximately the same time but for different reasons. In both cases, the securitisation of cross-border migration is used as the channel for the frustration of both the ruling elite and the citizens. In Malawi, the securitisation is carried out as a way to consolidate democratic rule, while in Sweden it is used as a way to recapture faith in politics.

In Chapter 6, Mark J.Miller argues that international migration is increasingly viewed as an important regional and geostrategic dynamic with potentially crucial effects upon states, societies and their security. International migration weaves together states, societies and entire regions in complex, frequently inextricable and often strategically important ways. In order to understand international security at the twilight of the twentieth century, one must first understand international migration. Of particular significance is the nature of the relationship between liberal democracies and, what he terms, the Islamic periphery. This refers to the predominantly Islamic states and societies stretching from Morocco to Indonesia. But he focuses on two cases—the Algerian insurgency and its spillover to Western Europe and the Kurdish insurgency in Turkey and its extension to neighbouring Kurdish areas and to Western Europe. They are illustrative of broader processes affecting international security worldwide.

The ‘recent’ Polynesian diaspora from the smaller islands of Oceania to New Zealand, Australia and the United States forms the basis of Chapter 7. Here, Richard Bedford uses literature and more conventional academic sources to explore a number of issues, including social, identity and economic security. No matter where Polynesian peoples live, there is always an acknowledgement of a homeland in the islands. Unlike most diasporas of recent times, that from Oceania is largely voluntary and has resulted in an unusual, if not unique, creation of transnational social and economic relationships at family level which in some respects transcend the state as the primary socioeconomic grouping for whole peoples. The chapter reviews two aspects of the transnational linkages that are so critical for contemporary human security in Polynesia. The first is the meaning of the process of ‘world enlargement’ which some commentators have recognised as being the basis for new meta-societies in Oceania. The second concerns the remittance transfers which ‘lubricate’ the linkages in these metasocieties, and give meaning to the notion of transnational economies and societies of Polynesians.

Michael Parnwell explores the impact of tourism within the context of political, societal and environmental security in Chapter 8. The chapter identifies the victims of certain forms of tourism development, and why they are such. Burma and Thailand form the basis of analysis which links globalisation in the form of the largest mass migration of all time—tourism—with human security and development issues. The forces that might serve to protect citizens’ interests in the face of tourist globalisation appear relatively powerless in the face of the prevailing political economy. However, Parnwell presents evidence that the situation is beginning to change with the emergence of advocacy groups, non-governmental organisations and, in Thailand at least, a gradual tendency towards greater democratisation. These have increased awareness of the negative externalities of tourism development. But the industry has sought to extend its realms of activity and influence to include countries on Thailand’s periphery, where awareness of, and the means to control, the harmful effects of tourism are much less advanced and where, by contrast, the incentive to facilitate the relatively soft form of development that tourism represents is substantial.

The issues of emigration and immigration in post-Soviet Russia provide the basis for Igor Ushkalov’s contribution in Chapter 9. The economic and democratic forces that helped cause the downfall of the Soviet Union and the communist state have helped unleash a demand for freedom of movement both internally and externally. Ushkalov shows how migration is an important component in Russia’s demography. He explores some of the population movements consequent on democratisation. He demonstrates how major and complex internal movements pose threats to regional security, including ecological security. International migration is also a threat to security. Most of the emigrants are those with skills and qualifications. Many of the immigrants are from the Far East, particularly China, and this poses a threat to human and conventional security. Throughout the chapter the ethnic dimension to the security-migration nexus is never far from the surface.

Irina Malakha takes one aspect of Ushkaolov’s chapter—the brain drain—further in Chapter 10 where she discusses the emigration of highly skilled and highly qualified personnel from Russia. The last few years have seen a large increase in both internal and external movements in what had been, for security reasons, a very immobile society. The lifting of strict restrictions on emigration and the opening of its borders has presented Russia with a number of problems not least of which is the exodus of some of its best people. This has serious economic and social security implications for Russia. With the educational level of these emigrants ten times higher than the average for Russia as a whole this flight of talent has already had an effect on the ‘qu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• List of contributors
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Human security in a globalising world
• 3. ‘Neither here nor there?’ The implications of global diasporas for (inter)national security
• 4. Mapping territoriality: the geopolitics of sovereignty, governance and the citizen
• 5. Migration and security from a North-South perspective: Sweden and Malawi
• 6. A durable international migration and security nexus: the problem of the Islamic periphery in transatlantic ties
• 7. Meta-societies, remittance economies and Internet addresses: dimensions of contemporary human security in Polynesia
• 8. Tourism, globalisation and critical security in Burma and Thailand
• 9. Emigration and immigration: the case of Russia
• 10. The brain drain in Russia: scale, direction and structure
• 11. The people paradox: human movements and human security in a globalising world
• Index