Books review: Munck et al Quayson Antonela eds MIgration books20200220 66185 143cfad (original) (raw)
Related papers
Global Labour and the Migrant Premium. The Cost of Working Abroad , 2018
The criminalisation of irregular migrants – in relation to irregular entry, residence, and work – is considered against the 1975 and 1990 ILO Migrant Workers Conventions (MWC); the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 1966 (ICCPR); the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights 1966 (ICESCR); the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG); and the Convention against Transnational Organized Crime 2000, including its Protocols to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (‘the Trafficking Protocol’) and against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air (‘the Smuggling Protocol’). The creation of laws, which are generally applied only to foreigners – concerning irregular entry, residence, and work – increases costs and exposure to adverse labour conditions and social vulnerabilities, and also impedes access to justice. The possibilities of criminal conviction, resulting in fines, imprisonment and expulsion contribute to a precarious class of low-skilled migrant. The chapter argues that the criminalisation of migration exacerbates the migrant premium because it decreases income while increasing dependency on employers, smugglers and traffickers and complicates access to human rights protection. The chapter suggests that one of the policy propositions for the Global Compact should be an understanding of how the emphasis internationally, regionally and nationally on smuggling and trafficking and border control has resulted in the criminalisation of irregular migrants – both potential and actual - for the ways in which they enter, leave, reside and work in a country; and that migrants need to be able to manage their working needs in a flexible manner.
Migration, sovereignty and agency in an anxious age: trafficking as a case study
In the contemporary literature and public discourse on migration states are often presented as increasingly challenged by global migratory flows. One of the key texts on migration, for example, suggests that a defining feature of the contemporary world, particularly since the 1980s, has been ‘the challenge posed by international migration to the sovereignty of states, specifically to their ability to regulate the movement of people across their borders’ (Castles & Miller, 2009: 3). A contrary view suggests that migrants do not undermine state sovereignty, and in fact ‘controlling who enters the state and who does not is one of the few remaining powerful attributes of national sovereignty’ (Munck, 2008: 1238). While these different viewpoints diverge on their assessment of the relationship between sovereignty and migration, they concur in their focus on sovereignty as the power of the state to determine policy outcomes and in their counterpoising of state sovereignty and migrant agency. This article aims to promote new thinking on contemporary migration politics through questioning the idea that migration and sovereignty necessarily stand in direct opposition to each other.