![Sample our Global Development journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5929/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Global-Development.jpg"})
Abstract
Within international labour migration, received wisdom holds that the migration-development and migration-security couplings co-exist in discord. The migration-development-security relationship is perceived to swing like a pendulum. In this article I reject the simple pendulum formulation which suggests security stands at odds with development. I examine the ways in which migration controls occur through and reproduce racialised global capitalism. Capitalist development and security work together to undermine the resistance struggles of those designated migrant labour. Students of labour migration must refuse the game of balance and instead entrench our analytical efforts within the creative self-activities of ordinary working people.
Acknowledgements
I wish to acknowledge the supremely helpful engagements with participants in the Maynooth workshop, along with written feedback from Clíodhna Murphy, two anonymous reviewers and the special issue editors. Incisive commentary from Amar Bhatia led me to revisit the initial framing of the argument, revamp the alternative framing, and ultimately lift the article (and its author) out of the ‘pit’ of despair – for this, I am immensely grateful.
Notes
1. My discussion of temporary labour migration throughout is meant as a reference to Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Programme (TFWP). As I have noted elsewhere, Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Programme (SAWP), Live-In Caregiver Programme and Low-skilled Pilot Project (known formally as the Pilot Project for Hiring Foreign Workers in Occupations that Require Lower Levels of Formal Training) all form the core components of the early twenty-first century TFWP (see Satzewich Citation1991; Stasiulis & Bakan Citation2005; Sharma Citation2006; Choudry et al. Citation2009; Fudge & McPhail Citation2009). The TFWP turns on the deployment of unfree migrant labour whereby dull economic compulsion is sharpened through politico-legal compulsion. Although the use of migrant workers through the TFWP relies on economic compulsion generally, migratory status is the fundamental politico-legal mechanism of labour unfreedom. The pivotal instrument is the temporary work permit or authorisation which subjects non-citizens to the constant threat of repatriation (Sharma Citation2006; Goldring, Berinstein & Bernhard Citation2009; see also Walia Citation2010).
2. Eagleton, After Theory, 136.
3. Matthews et al., “The Pendulum”, 262. While I reject the metaphorical utility of the ‘simple pendulum’ here, I reserve judgment on whether we should do away with the pendulum metaphor altogether in social sciences, as complex pendulums, which convey a sense of multiple moving parts, may apprehend behaviour in more nuanced and sophisticated ways.
4. Poe, “The Pit and the Pendulum,” 747.
5. Ibid., 748.
6. Ibid., 747, 748, 753.
7. Ibid., 746, 751.
8. Sørensen, “Revisiting the Migration-Development Nexus,” 62.
9. Ibid., 62. Sørensen goes on to add: ‘security–development when concerned with complex policy problems in countries emerging from violent conflict’, which I have excluded given the focus of the current analysis on migration. That said, it is through this pairing that the security paradigm is applied to address emergent issues in the Global South. My argument below works against the logic of extending security because, as I argue, the problem rests with the security paradigm itself.
10. Ibid., 72.
11. De Haas, “Migration and Development Pendulum.”
12. Ibid., 10.
13. Ibid., 11.
14. Ibid., 12.
15. Ibid., 10.
16. Ibid., 12.
17. Sørensen, “Revisiting the Migration-Development Nexus,” 71.
18. Knox, “Strategy and Tactics”.
19. Dauvergne, “Security and Migration Law,” 540.
20. On migrant ‘insecurity’, see Castles and Miller, Age of Migration. On migrant insecurity in the Canadian context, see Faraday, “Made in Canada.”
21. Alkire, Conceptual Framework, 3–4.
22. See Edwards and Ferstman, Human Security and Non-Citizens, especially Cholewinski’s chapter; Dauvergne, Making People Illegal; Truong and Des Gasper, Transnational Migration and Human Security; Bach, “Global Mobility, Inequality and Security.”
23. Weber et al., “Migration Control and Human Security,” 334.
24. Juss,“Human Security and Migration Control,” conclusion.
25. Alkire, A Conceptual Framework, 4.
26. Ibid.
27. This understanding is partially consistent with the critique of human security levelled by David Chandler, a controversial intervention which spawned a mini-spat in the field. See Chandler, “Human Security”; Ambrosetti, Human Security as Political Resource; Owen, “Critique that Doesn't Bite”; Wibben, “Human Security: Toward an Opening”; Chandler, “Human Security II.”
28. Edwards and Ferstman, Human Security and Non-Citizens, 46; United Nations, Rights of Non-Citizens; Lillich, Human Rights of Aliens.
29. The securitisation approach is attributed to the Copenhagen school of international relations and its constructivist framework of analysis; see Buzan et al., “Security: A New Framework for Analysis”; Wæver, “Securitization and Desecuritization”; Krause and Williams, “Broadening the Agenda of Security Studies?” See also Huysmans, “Migrants as a Security Problem”; “The Securitization of Asylum” ; Bourbeau, Securitization of Migration; Ibrahim, Securitization of Migration; Russo, “Security, Securitization and Human Capital.”
30. Canadian Association for Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, “Securitization of Migration”; Themistocleous, “Securitizing Migration: Aspects and Critiques.”
31. Munck, 1231.
32. For a discussion of securitisation of migration in the Canadian context, see Crépeau and Nakache, “Controlling Irregular Migration in Canada.”
33. Neocleous and Rigakos, Anti-Security; Neocleous, “The Problem with Normality.”
34. Neocleous and Rigakos, Anti-Security, 19.
35. Ibid., 16.
36. Neocleous, Contemporary Political Theory, 134.
37. For an elaboration, see Neocleous, “Against security”; Neocleous, Critique of Security.
38. Neocleous, Contemporary Political Theory, 142 (emphasis removed).
39. The historical alignment of liberalism with limited government is ‘an idea which seems to presuppose that the state is always already likely to trample on civil society in general and liberty in particular. But the suspicion that there is always a risk of too much governing is always tied to the question: why is it necessary to govern at all? And with this question liberalism not only finds itself unable to escape the politics of security, but actually reasserts security as the fundamental aim of government’; Neocleous, Contemporary Political Theory, 142.
40. Neocleous, Contemporary Political Theory, 131–2.
41. Ibid., 134. Derived from Marx’s intervention in On the Jewish Question, ‘To Marx’s comment that security is the supreme concept of bourgeois society, we might add that this is so because security is the supreme concept of liberal ideology’ (142). For Neocleous, the provocative call is to ‘eschew the language of security altogether’ – including, quite pivotally, in its contemporary incarnation as ‘state of emergency’ – and deem the concept of security ‘part of the problem’ (134). The task, therefore, is to build ‘real alternatives to the authoritarian tendencies in contemporary politics’ (147).
42. Ibid., 146.
43. Neocleous, Fabrication of Social Order; Neocleous, Critique of Security.
44. Accumulation by dispossession is a concept developed by geographer David Harvey. For a slightly different take on accumulation by dispossession see Phillips, “Migration as Development Strategy?"
45. Pacification proved the handmaiden of European colonialism, standing for confrontation with the ‘recalcitrant and rebellious’; Captain Bernardo de Vargas Machuca cited in Özcan & Rigakos, “Pacification” 1.
46. Neocleous and Rigakos, Anti-Security; Özcan and Rigakos, “Pacification.”
47. Van Hear, “Reconsidering Migration and Class”; Milanovic, “Global Inequality.”
48. Beginning with the early work of cartographer Ernst Ravenstein, one of the forebears of migration studies, a positive correlation has been identified between migration and development. Ravenstein identified the growth of industry, commerce and transportation as a central driving force behind the movement of people. Ravenstein, “Laws of Migration.” Working in the classical tradition of political economy in the 1950s, and contesting emergent neoclassical and Keynesian economic formulations, Saint Lucian economist Arthur Lewis provided the clearest articulation of the classical economic coupling of migration and development understood as economic growth. Lewis posited that colonial locales experiencing labour surpluses due to the lack of productivity within the subsistence agricultural or traditional sector enjoyed ‘unlimited supplies of [cheap] labour’ which, through migration, could be put to productive use in the industrial sector. See e.g. Lewis, Economic Development. Lewis’s colonial ‘dual economy’ model, a body of ideas for which he shared the Nobel Prize, and which was later revised by the likes of Michael Todaro and John Harris, provided an economic rationale for harnessing international migration for economic development. Harris and Todaro, Migration, Unemployment and Development; Todaro, Model of Labour Migration.
Commencing in the 1970s, the classical and neoclassical perspectives faced intense scrutiny from Marxist-inspired critiques of development and appeared to drop out of favour by the 1980s, especially with respect to the migration-development coupling – but not in terms of the primacy of economic growth. Castles and Miller, Age of Migration, 75. However, nearing the end of the twentieth century, and continuing on into the early twenty-first, a proliferation of scholarly and policy interest re-emerged on the international migration-development nexus.
49. Lindley, “Remittances”; Kapur, “Remittances”; Mundaca, “Remittances, Financial Market Development”; Taylor, “New Economics of Labour Migration”; De Haas, “International Migration, Remittances and Development.”
50. De Haas, “Migration and Development”; Taylor, “New Economics of Labour Migration”; Kunz, “‘Remittances are Beautiful’?”
51. Nurse, “Diaspora, Migration and Development.”
52. Skeldon, “Migration Policies,” 2. The inclusion of migration and human mobility in four of 17 Sustainable Development Goals is said to correct their absence from the MDGs. International Organisation For Migration, “Inclusion of Migration in UN Sustainable Development Goals, a Milestone,” (25 September 2015), https://www.iom.int/news/inclusion-migration-un-sustainable-development-goals-milestone.
53. Sørensen, “Revisiting the Migration-Development Nexus,” 65.
54. Gamlen, “New Migration and Development Optimism.”
55. Munck, 1238. Chamie and Dall’Oglio, “Overview”; Newland, “Governance of International Migration”.
56. Munck, 1238.
57. Wickramasekara, “Globalisation, International Labour Migration.”
58. Martin, International Labour Migration, 201.
59. Koslowski, Global Mobility, 9.
60. Phillips, “Migration as Development Strategy?”, 246.
61. Basok, “Counter-hegemonic Human Rights Discourses.”
62. Thomas, “Convergences and Divergences”; Fudge, “Precarious Migrant Status.”
63. Commission on Human Security, Human Security Now, 10–1.
64. Castles and Miller, Age of Migration, 41.
65. Martin, International Labour Migration, 204–5.
66. Munck, 1231.
67. Rodriguez, Migrants For Export.
68. Wilson, Race, Racism and Development.
69. Ibid., 3.
70. Rigakos, 64.
71. Smith, “Pacifying.”
72. Wilson, Race, Racism and Development, 3.
73. Gagnon and Khoudour-Castéras, Tackling the Policy Challenges.
74. See Smith, “Bunk House Rules.” For the roots of this argument see McNally, Bodies of Meaning. See also materialist feminist accounts, e.g. Hennessey and Ingraham, Materialist Feminism.
75. See e.g. Smith, “Troubling ‘Project Canada.’” This appears to sideline analytical interventions on migrant incorporation or treatment, including ongoing practices of constructing migrant illegality/legality.
76. Ibrahim, “Securitization of Migration.”
77. Wilson, Race, Racism and Development, 2; see also White, Thinking Race, Thinking Development.
78. Wilson, Race, Racism and Development, 11.
79. Smith, “Pacifying”; Smith “Troubling ‘Project Canada’”; Smith, “Bunk House Rules.”
80. e.g. Smith, “Bunk House Rules.”
81. Wood, Empire of Capital.
82. Kiely, Spatial Hierarchy.
83. Wilson, Race, Racism and Development, 69.
84. Smith, “Troubling ‘Project Canada.’”
85. Rodriguez, Migrants For Export.
86. Smith, “Troubling ‘Project Canada.’”
87. Rodriguez, Migrants For Export.
88. See the discussion in Wilson, Race, Racism and Development, chapter 3.
89. Ibid., 76.
90. Amin, Three Essays on Marx’s Value, 13. While I find Amin’s formulation here quite instructive in framing my core interjection I am attempting to pose to TWAIL, I do not necessarily share all of his presuppositions.
91. See Wood, Democracy Against Capitalism.
92. Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty.
93. e.g. Chimni, “Marxism and International Law.”
94. Knox, “Critical Examination”; Bhatia, “South of the North.”
95. Amin, Three Essays on Marx’s Value, 14
96. Wright, “Challenging States of Illegality,” 198.
97. Ibid., 4.
98. Veltmeyer, Bringing History Back In, 13.
99. See Juss, “Human Security and Migration Control.”