As the pervasive legacy of colonialism continues to shape global politics, this unprecedented book presents case studies of forced migration events from the 18th century to present day across 5 continents, all put in dialogue with each other to propose new theoretical and real-world agendas for the field.
This article develops a multidisciplinary analysis of the Northern European policy drive to deport unaccompanied minors (UAMs) to so-called reception facilities in Kabul, Afghanistan. These policies and practices are traced through the analytical frameworks of deportation corridors and humanitarian borders, and relying on archival material and interview data from Nordic and afghan public bureaucracies, the ERPUM project, the UNHCR and the IOM. The article conceptualizes the Afghan deportation corridors as one variant of "humanitarianized borders." It is examined how European deportation politics for unaccompanied minors from 2000 to 2018 has shifted from portraying unaccompanied minors as being "a risk" to being "at risk" within an overarching political ambition of turning them deportable. European states increasingly do this through appeals to child rights and seemingly compassionate concepts like "family tracing," "family reunification," "reintegration," and "care and education facilities" inscribed within narratives of vulnerable, irrational children and the universal family paving the way for humanitarianized care and control. This inscription re-constructs the agency and identity of both displaced children and of humanitarian practice. The article help establish a dialogue between the studies of deportation, humanitarian borders and child life in European border control.
This article examines Swedish, Danish and Norwegian governments' participation in the European Return Platform for Unaccompanied Minors (ERPUM) project and its failed attempts to deport unaccompanied minors (UAMs) to Afghanistan. It argues that ERPUM is an interesting and urgent case of a "deportation corridor" and suggests that this framework can benefit from analysis through normative and applied ethics and in particular discussions of feasibility constraints. It therefore identifies and critically assesses two nationalistic arguments for deportation common in Nordic politics, based on appeals credibility and humanitarianism. Considering the growth of nationalistic immigration policies in Nordic states, the article turns the usual discussion of feasibility on its head by showing that not only cosmopolitan, but also nationalistic ethics must face up to charges of lacking realism. More specifically, it argues that the case of ERPUM illustrates how nationalistic deportation ethics may rely on inconsistent normative and erroneous empirical assumptions, which can be criticized for their arbitrariness, ideological grounding and lack of feasibility. ; This article examines Swedish, Danish and Norwegian governments' participation in the European Return Platform for Unaccompanied Minors (ERPUM) project and its failed attempts to deport unaccompanied minors (UAMs) to Afghanistan. It argues that ERPUM is an interesting and urgent case of a "deportation corridor", and suggests that this framework can benefit from analysis through normative and applied ethics and in particular discussions of feasibility constraints. It therefore identifies and critically assesses two nationalistic arguments for deportation common in Nordic politics, based on appeals credibility and humanitarianism. Considering the growth of nationalistic immigration policies in Nordic states, the article turns the usual discussions of feasibility on its head by showing that not only cosmopolitan, but also nationalistic ethics must face up to charges of ...
In: Lemberg-Pedersen , M 2016 , Effective Protection or Effective Combat : EU border control and North Africa . in P Gaibazzi , S Dünnwald & A Bellagamba (eds) , EurAfrican Borders and Migration Management : Political Cultures, Contested Spaces and Ordinary Lives . Palgrave Macmillan , Palgrave Series in African Borderlands Studies , pp. 29-60 . https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-94972-4_2
At the outset I introduce a dominant mode of analysing border control, common in public discourses, namely the closed system perspective. This is then juxtaposed to what I claim is a more promising conceptual framework, namely that of borderscapes, which serves to highlight the dynamic, relational and multilocal character of European border control. This is then elaborated via a critical gaze at several attempts to defi ne how European states have attempted to externalize migration control to other countries in terms of supranational policy drives, ripple and mimicry effects. This then facilitates a more nuanced understanding of externalization. Since border control reterritorializes geographic spaces according to the mobility of the people through them, it follows that the EU's border control, and with it also aspects of the union's asylum policy, have both biopolitical and geopolitical implications. Accordingly, the chapter invokes the works of Foucault and Agamben in an attempt to identify the political economy underpinning the EU's mobility regime of free and forced fl ows. This perspective also allows for useful spatial interpretations of the relations between cartographic representation of the phenomenon of migration and the sovereign power involved in producing knowledge about migration and border control. By analysing the European efforts to reconstruct its borderscapes through the externalization of detention camps to Libya, I argue that focusing only on sovereign power and the production of free circulation for some, and forced fl ows of others, risk bypassing other political, technocratic and public–private dynamics. The chapter focuses in particular on the intergovernmental and supranational negotiations of a Northwestern Triade of EU states, namely the Netherlands, the UK and Denmark, alongside Germany and Italy, which facilitated the rise of Libya as a host state for preemptive European control of asylum seekers. These dynamics are crucial when seeking a comprehensive understanding of how the EurAfrican dynamics of border control are characterized by the export of control to regions like Libya or Egypt. This, in turn, has prompted two parallel developments reinforcing one another: On the one hand, it has led to the closure of legal escape routes from Africa and the Middle East, which in turn has created the unprecedented rise of a smuggling industry operating often fatal alternative routes. On the other hand, European border control and its 'combat against smugglers' has emerged as a massively lucrative market for the European arms industry, both in terms of contracts to guard the EU's external borders and in terms of the export of weapons and control systems to North African states. Finally, the chapter suggests that while many forced migration researchers have tended to view border control as a reaction to the movement of already-displaced people, externalization is in fact a cause of transnational displacement and forced migration in itself. I label this specifi c kind of forced migration brought about by EU border control 'border- induced displacement', since this allow us to appraise both the functionality of the EurAfrican border regime and the humanitarian consequences characterizing this kind of displacement. Perhaps we can then provide some tentative answers to those asking how the tragedy at Lampedusa could have happened.
In: Lemberg-Pedersen , M 2015 ' The Rise and Fall of the ERPUM pilot : Tracing the European policy drive to deport unaccompanied minors ' Refugee Studies Centre , Oxford. Department of International Development , pp. 1-42 .
This working paper traces the institutional dynamics surrounding the European Return Platform for Unaccompanied Minors (ERPUM), the first ever EU pilot attempting to organize the administrative deportation of unaccompanied minors. The first phase of ERPUM was initiated in January 2011, and its second stage began in December 2012 and was then discontinued in June 2014. Its core members were Sweden, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands, and its observers were Denmark and Belgium. The pilot illustrates how bureaucratic networks in the European landscape of asylum policy interpreted the need to find "durable solutions" for unaccompanied minors as providing justification for institutionalizing their mass deportations. This paper is a follow-up to a workshop hosted by the RSC in 2013 on 'The Deportation of Unaccompanied Minors from the EU: Family Tracing and Government Accountability in the European Return Platform for Unaccompanied Minors (ERPUM) Project'
In: Lemberg-Pedersen , M & Joel Halpern , O 2021 , Frontex and Exit Governance : Dataveillance, civil society and markets for border control . Advancing Alternative Migration Governance (AdMiGov) , vol. Deliverable 2.3 , Københavns Universitet , Centre for Advanced Migration Studies, University of Copenhagen .
Whilst exit operations are usually used to describe practices like forced returns or even voluntary or assisted ones, this report will explicate how other practices also need to be examined as exit governance. The report traces exit governance from the way in which the political institutions, and with them Frontex, are seeking to transform not just the operational understanding of exit policies, but also the very knowledge environment through which exit is understood by Member States and non-state actors. As such, it understands exit governance widely, as concerning both the seemingly discrete functioning of large-scale information systems and how they process and store data, over the different kinds of Frontex support and organization of return flights, to the highly controversial pushback practices. As the latter term indicates, this practice means that border authorities, or actors contracted by such authorities, seek to force migrants to exit EU territory. As such this connects to the various internal and external investigations which have faced the Frontex Agency since 2020. Part and parcel of this more expansive understanding of exit governance is also that it is connected to various markets for border control technologies and enforcement, as well as to forums where non-profit actors also seek to impact how people are sent out of EU territory. This report details the central and rapidly expanding role of the Frontex Agency in the institutional structure and political dynamics underpinning EU exit policies, and how the Agency interacts with a range of non-state actors, ranging from commercial for-profit companies to International Organizatons (IOs) and civil society organizations, such as NGOs.
In: Moreno-Lax , V & Lemberg-Pedersen , M 2019 , ' Border-induced displacement : The ethical and legal implications of distance-creation through externalization ' , Questions of International Law , vol. 56 , no. 1 , 1 , pp. 5-33 .
The externalization of European border control can be defined as the range of processes whereby European actors and Member States complement policies to control migration across their territorial boundaries with initiatives that realize such control extra-territorially and through other countries and organs rather than their own. The phenomenon has multiple dimensions. The spatial dimension captures the remoteness of the geographical distance that is interposed between the locus of power and the locus of surveillance. But there is also a relational dimension, regarding the multiplicity of actors engaged in the venture through bilateral and multilateral interactions, usually through coercive dynamics of conditional reward, incentive, or penalization. And there are functional and instrumental dimensions too, concerning the cost-effectiveness of distance-creation (in both ethical and legal grounds) vis-à-vis the (unwanted) migrant, who, removed from sight, is no longer considered of concern to the supervising State, and the range of externalizing policy devices at the service of externalising agents in terms of purpose, format, delivery, and ultimate control. European borders thus (re-)emerge as ubiquitous, multi-modal and translational systems of coercion – as an interconnected network of 'little Guantánamos'. This, in turn, creates a distance, both physically and ethically, that is utilized to shift away concomitant responsibilities. Distance, as the next sections will demonstrate, plays a crucial role as a mechanism not only of dispersion of legal duties, blurring the lines of causation and making attribution of wrongful conduct a difficult task, but also as an artefact of oppression and displacement in itself. It does not prevent (unwanted) migration but rather makes it unviable through legally sanctioned, safe channels, diverting it through ever more perilous routes. The immediate effect of this distance that externalization engenders is at least threefold. First, it leads to the disempowerment of migrants, who are left with no options for safe and legal escape, being instead coerced into dangerous courses operated by smugglers. Second, it legitimizes the actors enforcing externalized control on behalf, and for the benefit, of the European Union and its Member States. Repressive forces in third countries gain standing as valid interlocutors for cooperation, as a result; their democratic and human rights credentials becoming secondary, if at all relevant, as the Libyan case illustrates below. Third, legal alternatives, like the relaxation of controls or the creation of safe and regular pathways, are rejected; perceived as an illogical concession to the failure of the externalization project. The final outcome, and what constitutes the focus of this contribution, is the 'border-induced displacement' effect, resulting from the combination of the processes of extraterritorialisation and externalization taken together. Border-induced displacement is not equivalent to the original reasons forcing people into exile, but rather functions as a second-order type of (re-)displacement, produced precisely via (the violence implicated in) border control. This then leads to forms of 'engineered regionalism', that is, politics re-producing displacement in certain areas closest to the origin of flows. 'Safe third country' rules and practices are the main vehicle of this development, discernible also within the EU, where the Dublin System has 'rulified' an asymmetric allocation of responsibility for asylum claims to peripheral countries situated at the external common frontiers of the Union, like Spain, Italy and Greece. In the case of externalization, border-induced displacement is then imposed upon already-displaced persons by non-European actors implementing the EU's pre-emptive control agenda, reinforcing prevailing patterns of exploitation and existing hierarchies of exclusion and subordination. The ethical and legal consequences of 'distance-creation' are what we turn to analyse in the remainder of this article. Section 2 pays attention to the assumptions and ethical and political-economic dimensions behind this strategy, discussing exit control, coercion, and the democratic legitimization of unelected actors enforcing the EU border within third countries. Section 3 investigates the legal impact of externalization and extraterritorialization, centring on the apparent accountability gaps that it generates, contesting the legality of responsibility dispersion mechanisms. The overall conclusion we reach is that the 'rulification' of externalization at EU level does not render it ethically and legally tenable under international law. The 'lawification' at EU level of practices inconsistent with human rights is insufficient to render them compatible with international legal standards.
In: Lemberg-Pedersen , M & Haioty , E H M 2020 , ' Reassembling the surveillable refugee body in the era of data-craving ' , Citizenship Studies , vol. 24 , no. 5 . https://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2020.1784641
This article traces the travel of biometric data of Syrian refugees in Jordan through a hastily evolving political economy characterized by a pervasive craving for the extraction, storage and brokering of displacement data. It analyzes iris-enrollment as problematic acts of quasi-citizenship for the displaced requiring the performance of social and economic docility in order to attain identity, cash and service provision. Quasi-objects in the form of digital footprints are fashioned through infrastructures that simultaneously seek to model, yet fail to capture, socioeconomic existence in displacement contexts. Discourses of anti-fraud, donor dictates, upward accountability and strategies of financial inclusion of 'the unbanked', facilitate the marketization of the creation of data-doubles in laboratories of displacement and loopholes for externalization. Driven by increasingly blurred lines between technological, humanitarian and financial interests, this development has transformative effects on both those displaced, and on a humanitarian sector tasked with safeguarding their rights.
In: Lemberg-Pedersen , M , Hansen , J R & Joel Halpern , O 2020 , The Political Economy of Entry Governance : ADMIGOV Deliverable 1.3 . Institut for Politik og Samfund, Aalborg Universitet , Copenhagen .
This report details how private and commercial actors also yield a crucial influence on the development, adoption and implementation of EU measures related to immigration. It is based on the assumption that in order to provide the general public and policy-makers with tools to pursue a sustainable and forward-looking policy on migration, the supply-chain of border technologies, functions and infrastructures must be acknowledged. The same is the case for the way in which it features in the processes of multileveled EU border governance, and how commercial actors are positioned and positioning themselves on a profitable market for EU border control that is worth billions of euro. This perspective on border control challenges standard assumptions which privilege the territorial unit of the nation-state, or the stated self-image of the EU as a supranational area of freedom, security and justice. In order to fulfill this goal, this deliverable provides, first, a mapping of the political economy of EU entry governance, realized through a database developed for the purpose, and analysis of the data generated by it. This enables to identify and discuss some of the key actors, processes and networks of this political economy at the level of the EU through key illustrations provided by two central policy drives which have evolved in European border control during the last decades, namely: Interoperability and space surveillance for border control purposes. While a focus on these two themes is not exhaustive, it is argued to be able to demonstrate dynamics, silences and criticism, which needs to be addressed in EU entry governance ; This report details how private and commercial actors also yield a crucial influence on the development, adoption and implementation of EU measures related to immigration. It is based on the assumption that in order to provide the general public and policy-makers with tools to pursue a sustainable and forward-looking policy on migration, the supply-chain of border technologies, functions and infrastructures must be acknowledged. The same is the case for the way in which it features in the processes of multileveled EU border governance, and how commercial actors are positioned and positioning themselves on a profitable market for EU border control that is worth billions of euro. This perspective on border control challenges standard assumptions which privilege the territorial unit of the nation-state, or the stated self-image of the EU as a supranational area of freedom, security and justice. In order to fulfill this goal, this deliverable provides, first, a mapping of the political economy of EU entry governance, realized through a database developed for the purpose, and analysis of the data generated by it. This enables to identify and discuss some of the key actors, processes and networks of this political economy at the level of the EU through key illustrations provided by two central policy drives which have evolved in European border control during the last decades, namely: Interoperability and space surveillance for border control purposes. While a focus on these two themes is not exhaustive, it is argued to be able to demonstrate dynamics, silences and criticism, which needs to be addressed in EU entry governance
In: Political geography: an interdisciplinary journal for all students of political studies with an interest in the geographical and spatial aspects, Band 105, S. 102911