Report of the Symposium : Security and Migration: challenges to the liberal state

Security and Migration: challenges to the liberal state

University of Edinburgh, 27th August 2007

Symposium co-organised by the CHALLENGE Project and the Migration and Citizenship Research Group, University of Edinburgh; co-funded by the Radboud University of Nijmegen and the Europa Institute, University of Edinburgh.

Report by Oana Ciobanu (University of Osnabrück) and Alistair Hunter (University of Edinburgh)

Introduction

The symposium had two parts: a morning session entitled ‘The Uneasy Relationship between Liberty and Security’; and an afternoon session with the title ‘Rethinking the Migration / Security Nexus’. Each session contained two presentations. The morning session was chaired by Charles Raab (Edinburgh) and hosted the presentations of Didier Bigo (IEP, Paris) «The Uneasy Relationship: Illiberal Practices of Liberal States», and Elspeth Guild (Nijmegen) «The European Arena: The Effects of Suspicion and Exception on Liberty and Security». The afternoon panel was chaired by Roland Dannreuther (Edinburgh) and contained the presentations of Georgios Karyotis and Stratos Patrikios (Strathclyde University) «Religion, Securitisation and Anti-Immigration Attitudes: The Case of Greece», and Christina Boswell (University of Edinburgh) «Securitising Migration: A Risk for Liberal States».

MORNING SESSION

Didier Bigo (IEP, Paris) «The Uneasy Relationship: illiberal practices of liberal states»

Didier Bigo began the symposium with a summary of the CHALLENGE team’s main themes and findings at this mid-term point in the project. While the violence of 9/11 can be seen as a foundational moment, ongoing trends of ’capillarisation’ and miniaturisation of violence since the mid-1970s have reversed conventional conflict models predicated on state formation. Thus, the problem for governments has become less a military one requiring the accumulation of sufficient forces and capacity to destroy the adversary, and more a detective one of locating the ’stealth’ enemy that is small enough to hide easily. Conventional war-making is increasingly derided as a response, and a new global common sense prioritising surveillance is emerging. In Europe there has been greater attention given to policing, although US emphasis on technologies of surveillance and transnational exchange of data has also been adopted by European policy makers. Certainly, a tendency to associate security with the ’self’ rather than the unknowable enemy has been common to policies adopted both in the US and in the EU concerning critical infrastructure vulnerability. National security is increasingly conflated with personal security and internal security is increasingly conflated with external security. The integration of internal and external security discourses and practices in the name of a fight against global danger is destabilising the boundaries between the institutions of police, intelligence services, military forces, as well as frontier and immigration agencies.

The difficulty of knowing where and against whom to fight back has led to a logic of suspicion concerning the identity and the location of the enemy, with citizens and resident 3rd country nationals who are Muslims subject to particular doubt. In this way, the individual who used to be seen as ’included’ is now likely to be treated and qualified as ’the enemy’. This has generated practices of exception such as group profiling, centralisation of data-bases, and data-mining, in addition to overtly coercive bodily practices such as detention without charge, extraordinary rendition, and torture, often in collaboration with non-democratic states. Disputing the technologically-driven logic of suspicion promoted by transnational alliances of security professionals, it is argued that the use of specific technologies and the need for collaboration must be proportionate with the scale of the actual danger, based on accumulated knowledge. It must not be usurped by worst-case scenarios that have no limit other than the political imagination of experts who can presume to be acting beyond the limits of political responsibility. Attention is drawn to tensions between professionals of politics and professionals of security management over how threat is to be framed and who is responsible for past failures. Important questions follow from the impossibility of resolving the crisis through a sovereign decision concentrated on one authority. It is a matter of assessing who is responsible for the derogation of law in case of emergency and large scale danger as well as for identifying the procedures deemed to be appropriate, under which precise conditions and under what sorts of control.

Elspeth Guild (Nijmegen) «The European Arena: the effects of suspicion and exception on liberty and security»

Elspeth Guild continued the morning session by focussing on impacts in the European Union and its neighbourhood in light of the aforementioned practices of suspicion and exception. A clear contrast is apparent between the founding principles of the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ) as defined at the Tampere Council of 1999, and the new priorities for the AFSJ as set out in the 2004 Hague Programme. The Tampere Milestones aimed at securing fundamental rights, freedoms and the rule of law, whereas under the Hague Programme freedom and security are now presented as antithetical values requiring a balanced approach. It is argued that the latter approach undermines the AFSJ since security is not a public good in itself and should only ever be a tool in support of freedom. The development of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) indicate a merging of the internal and external dimensions of security in the European Union, which has widespread implications for what sovereignty, liberty and equality mean in Europe and its neighbourhood. One issue is whether breaches of the European Convention on Human Rights by member state military personnel abroad constitute violations of that member state’s duties under the convention.

The ENP does not resolve the basic dilemma of how large the EU should become, but requires much of the neighbours while offering only vague incentives in return. In the area of irregular migration, the emphasis seems to be centred on imposing obligations on neighbours to act as a buffer between the EU and other third countries, without offering corresponding incentives for participation in the free movement of goods, people and services. The consequences of this approach are likely to harm the neighbours’ relations with their respective neighbourhoods beyond the EU as they will be required to take coercive action against these nationals. In this way, freedom of movement is limited in the neighbourhood for the sake of security in the EU, as has happened for example in West Africa. The lifting of the internal border controls in the Schengen area has implied reinvigoration of the territorial control of the common external border, in the form of the EU’s external border management agency FRONTEX. Legal protection and the scope of judicial review for third country nationals seeking to cross EU external borders is found to be weak, and therefore the actions carried out by FRONTEX need to be subject to greater democratic and judicial accountability. A marked contrast operates between the management of the EU’s eastern and southern frontiers. Whereas mobility has been liberalised and normalised in the east, controls at the southern border are having cataclysmic results as regards movement of persons and the respect for human rights. Tightening entry requirements and relocating border controls and asylum procedures to the southern shore of the Mediterranean only serves to lengthen migration routes, which become more dangerous and more criminalised.

Across the member states, there is a trend towards civic integration programmes with a mandatory character, such that acquisition of secure legal status and freedom of movement depend on successful completion of tests. Integration, particularly of Muslims, is constrained by the fight against ’Islamist terrorism’, and discourses of anti-Muslim sentiment which have intensified since 9/11. Confronted with these trends, it is argued that the traditional EU approach to integration as the right of the immigrant to equal treatment is the only legitimate approach to adopt, and this should not be subordinated to an obligation for immigrants to abandon their identity. More generally as regards EU governance and law making, there is a growing need to find an alternative constitutional mechanism which guarantees the accountability of the legal measures adopted and their full compliance with the rule of law and the fundamental rights on which the EU is based.

Discussant: Jo Shaw (Edinburgh)

Referring to Didier Bigo’s paper, Jo Shaw acknowledged that normatively there is an argument/critique to be made, but wondered how far we can go with the normative angle before confronting the material and discursive aspects which seek to justify these abhorrent practices. From a more legal point of view, she is dissatisfied with much of the current academic work on the development of EU law, partly because the legal framework changes so quickly and is so vast. She also noted a clear prioritisation of executives over legislatures in terms of law- and policy- making, but argued that there is still a feeble understanding of how this has happened. This aspect needs more work. On the Area of Freedom Security and Justice she urged caution regarding an essentialisation of the Tampere Milestones. Study of the AFSJ is better served by taking a more holistic approach.

Chair: Charles Raab (Edinburgh)

Before inviting questions from the floor, Charles Raab traced some of the trajectories of liberty and security in relation to migration studies during the last decade. He noted four developments. (i) changing perceptions of terrorism and immigration in the public sphere; (ii) the central place of information systems, the expansion of databases and the blurring of the purposes of this information; (iii) the time lag between constantly-evolving state imperatives vis-a-vis security and the somewhat slower pace of technological development; and (iv) the potential for limiting state intrusions into private lives through a rights-based justification, for example in terms of data protection and privacy of information. He agrees that the issue of «balance» is crucial, noting that a similar argumentation concerns the balance of privacy and security. Is the surveillance imperative too strong for traditional liberal safeguards? This is a central question.

Questions from the Floor

The first question concerned the notion of liberty. Is there a historical baseline for liberty? Has there historically been a balance between security and freedom, and should we take this historical angle into more consideration, by comparing freedom and security in the past and in the present? Perhaps we continue to enjoy considerable freedom compared with past times.

Didier Bigo responded by asking whether the principles – liberty and security – are equivalent; doesn’t liberty trump security? If the formulation is inversed then this only justifies and aids exceptionalism.

Following on from this, the notion of the ’liberal state’ was interrogated. What counts as a liberal state is not so cut and dried as perhaps presented in these papers. The policy of liberal state x will be influenced according to its founding conceptualisations of liberty and security and how these founding principles have evolved. The questioner pointed to recent work by liberal theorists which has interrogated the primacy of rights over obligations and which has suggested that obligations are more important.

Similarly, another questioner asked why the liberal state is privileged, when many EU states do not share in a purely ’liberal’ tradition, for example states with more ethnically-based founding principles.

A final question concerned the integration tests, whether they are a means to citizenship or a means to security. More clarity was also sought on security as a public good.

Didier Bigo, responding to questions on the notion of the liberal state, made clear that a principal aim of this project is to move towards a common understanding of such a state, to unpack the concepts of the liberal state, and to move towards genealogies of concepts such as freedom and security.

Elspeth Guild, regarding the question on rights and responsibilities, argued that it is not always useful to make a sharp distinction between rights and responsibilities, as the enjoyment of every right requires responsibility and a fulfilment of obligations. As to the point about the integration tests, she asked what it is exactly that immigrants are expected to integrate into. More careful consideration of these tests reveals that the aim is not so much to integrate immigrants. Rather the integration tests are being used as a tool by which to restructure national identity, as a means to find out who we are, and to change how we identify ourselves. This restructuring has been directed by those in policy-making positions who reject the outcomes of the identity politics debates of the 1970s.

AFTERNOON SESSION

Georgios Karyotis and Stratos Patrikios (Strathclyde) «Religion, Securitisation and Anti-Immigration Attitudes: The Case of Greece»

The overarching question of this paper is what explains anti-immigration attitudes over the last two decades or so, and in particular since 9/11. The authors observed a theoretical downgrading of religious elites in the literature, which instead focuses on political elites and socioeconomic predictors of anti-immigration attitudes. The aim of the paper is to amend this by exploring the role of religious elites in the securitisation of migration. Greece was chosen as a case study for this attempt because of its dual characteristic as the most religiously and ethnically homogenous country, with also the most negative attitudes towards immigrants in the EU.

The paper utilises and extends securitisation theory, as developed by the Copenhagen School. The methodprescribed by the Copenhagen School for this type of research is the analysis of political discourse. Karyotis and Patrikios supplement this with the inclusion of religious discourse analysis, as well as by offering a quantitative extension to typically qualitative assessments of the theory. To this effect, they analyse data from the European Social Survey (ESS, 2002 and 2004) to determine the predictors of anti-immigration attitudes in Greece. The paper hypothesises a dual process: that the discourse of religious actors on immigration plays a major role in mass attitudes, and that this takes place at the expense of political discourses.

The findings of the research support the hypothesised process. Political elites were identified as the main securitising actors of migration during the 1990s, when Greece suddenly, as well as unexpectedly, became host to a large number of immigrants. However, political discourse, which had previously focussed on the threats posed by migrants, gradually became more moderated and started to deconstruct some of the myths surrounding immigration. A new focus on human rights, the improvement of bilateral relations with neighbouring sending countries and an increased concern with promoting the international image of Greece as a modern, democratic county at the eve of hosting the 2004 Olympics resulted to a softening of the political message on migration. This moderation of political discourse found unlikely opposition from the Orthodox Church, which is historically the guardian of national identity in Greece. Karyotis and Patrikios analyse the discourse of religious elites, demonstrating their continuing representation of immigrants as a threat to society and the state. For example, the divergence of political and religious discourse on migration becomes evident when examining the debate concerning the construction of a mosque in Athens, which the political elites supported but the Church opposed to. In turn, this divergence offered the authors the opportunity to gauge the relative impact of each discourse.

The evidence from the quantitative analysis of public threat perceptions in the final part of the paper reveals that religiosity is one of the strongest predictors of anti-immigration attitudes in Greece. More importantly, the analysis of the ESS data suggests that frequent church-goers, who are more exposed to the discourse of religious elites, are found to be more hostile towards immigrants and also more immune to the softening of the political message, compared to infrequent attenders. Karyotis and Patrikios conclude that the revival of nationalism in the discourse of the Orthodox Church appears to be detrimental to the dominance of more moderate interpretations of migration, even when political elites support such alternative discourses. Findings also suggest that the discourse of religious elites on migration, usually ignored in the literature, prevails over political discourse in the hearts and minds of the faithful.

Christina Boswell (Edinburgh) «Securitising Migration: A Risk for Liberal States»

This paper, based partially on a recent article published in the Journal of Common Market Studies, looks at the way migration policy at the EU and national levels changed after 9/11 and the other terrorist events in London and Madrid. She begins with an anecdote attributed to a former employee in the Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND), an agency of the UK Home Office. It emphasised the lack of knowledge, and by extension lack of social control, concerning the number of illegal immigrants in the UK. The IND can only control what it knows; and the Home Office is much more chaotic than one might expect, calling into question the securitisation approach to migration control as a heuristic device. The research was based on interviews with officials from the Home Office and Border and Immigration Agency. Christina Boswell notes in particular a disjunction between the policy branch of the IND based in Westminster which works very closely with ministers, and the operations branch based out in Croydon.

From a theoretical point of view the article covered two gaps, namely a lack of an appropriate theory of organizationsand a not well specified theory of functional differentiation, both of which are bridged with the help of new-institutionalism and system theory. From an empirical standpoint, the article shows that there is little evidence in Europe that terrorist events have triggered harsher migration control, with the only pressure around securitisation coming from the media. It is the media that legitimises an issue as a problem. As a consequence, performance and delivery are key watchwords in the Home Office, especially since 1997 when Blair came to power. Targets to reduce the number of asylum seekers, which appear to be more important than illegal entries, constitute a particular aspect of this performance and delivery perspective. The activity of the Home Office does not have a political agenda, rather it is structured around delivery, which distorts the idea of governmentality.

The Home Office has established however the Immigration Research Statistical Service (IRSS). A further question of the paper was how the Home Office used the knowledge produced by researchers. The results showed a preference for received wisdom over the knowledge produced by researchers. To exemplify, a study about refugees showed that their choice of asylum destination is based on the existing networks and not so much on the legislation of the country. This knowledge produced by research conflicted with the received wisdom, and therefore the research results were marginalized. The author argues that the Home Office is not a rational organisation, and does not function to maximise social control as the securitisation literature would suggest. The conclusions were that organizations are not Weberian or Foucauldian (enhancing governmentality). They consolidate social roles, reduce environmental pressure, and enhance norms.

Discussant: Nick Rengger (St Andrews)

Refering to Georgios Karyotis and Stratos Patrikios’s paper, Nick Rengger highlighted several points for consideration, including the methodology of the Copenhagen School; the fact that elites are not the only parties to the securitisation process; and the utility of comparative research with other Orthodox countries such as Serbia and Russia, as well as with countries of different religious traditions. He had some hesitations concerning the language of causality deployed, and queried the distinction between religious discourse, religiosity and ideology, contending that religiosity is just another aspect of politics, with church leaders acting in a more overtly political role; for example Archbishop Christodoulos, whose discourse lacks any religious character.

With regard to Christina Boswell’s paper, Nick Rengger agreed that it is useful to question the Foucauldian governmentality thesis which is at the heart of the securitisation literature. For Rengger, 9/11 did not represent a particularly significant marker of change, rather it signalled a change of rhetoric, because the current practices were already trends in development before 9/11. Rather, the change is in the perceptions of the important actors and in how the debate has taken place; i.e. in the balance between security and liberty. Another aspect which has changed is the role of the epistemic community and the purpose of evidence within it. Again, the central question that reoccurs from the morning panel is what is a liberal state? Furthermore, the notion of security needs to be interrogated. Only after World War II did security become a keyword. Security sounded less aggressive and more defensive, and more tolerable for European ears following two calamitous wars in the first-half of the century.

Questions from the floor

As regards the paper by Karyotis and Patrikios,one questioner suggested that not differentiating clearly enough between religiosity and nationalism may be a problem, as it confuses ideology and religiosity as marked in Karyotis’s quantitative work and tables.

Another question asked for information about the proportion of regular church goers in the Greek population, which was reported as 80%.

The response of Karyotis to the comments on methodology was that there will be a paper coming out soon on this by the author. As for the mixing of religiosity and ideology, the author acknowledges that the discourse is political, indeed this is even acknowledged by the Archbishops.

As regards Christina Boswell’s presentation, one of the questions addressed the organisational roles ofthe people from the Home Office that Christina Boswell interviewed.

Another question addressed the idea of construction; how does an issue become an issue and moreover how is the idea of legality / illegality constructed, given that there are about 40 documents one could present to verify one’s legality? Another questioner remarked that in the UK, anti-immigration attitudes have not hardened since 9/11, according to the UK Social Survey. Why might this be?

A final suggestion was to further probe the way research findings on immigration are received at the Home Office.

The discussion between Christina Boswell and Didier Bigo was very interesting, moreover because Christina Boswell’s paper was in opposition to the latter. She explained that the intention of her paper was to juxtapose the logic of social control maximising with the logic of appropriateness and functional imperatives. As for the argument that migration and terrorism are closely linked she argued that terrorism agencies do trespass into the migration policy formulation, but not vice versa; migration policy agencies are still heavily rooted in a more economic- and employment-focused worldview. Didier’s comments referred mainly to the way a subject becomes an event and for this made reference to Pierre Bourdieu and to the functioning of institutions quoting Mary Douglas. To the regret of everyone involved in such a stimulating day of exchanges, further discussion of the various points raised here was not possible in the time allocated.