Embedded Files
Exclusionary Policies Taken Against Migrant Populations
Exclusionary Policies Taken Against Migrant Populations
Concertina wire on the US side of US-Mexico border in Nogales, AZ. Photo by Max Herman.
As discussed in the tab “Western States and Migrant Populations”, western nations use their financial and political power to control migration in a way that best suits their own needs as a state. A state’s goal is to protect the economic and political stability of their nation. This is a goal that migration (and particularly an influx of migration) appears to threaten. In the eyes of the state, it is in their best interest to limit migration through the practice of exclusionary practices and policies. These practices and policies can take many different forms including but not limited to: implementation of visas, modifications of state territories and their legal definitions, carrier sanctions, pre-inspection agreements, and interdiction methods (Gibney, 2006, pp. 142-151). These measures in particular aim to prevent migrants from even having the opportunity to reach the destination country’s borders in order to skate their duties to refugees outlined in the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (Gibney, 2006, p. 140).
An exclusionary practice that falls outside of legal bindings, is that of outsourcing death to the hostile conditions along borders. In Jason De León’s piece, “The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail”, De León discusses the inhospitable terrain of the United States and Mexico border, and how the US uses this hostile terrain to its advantage. In order to address immigration through the US/Mexico border, the US adopted a policy of Prevention Through Deterrence. This policy, PTD, is one that has “deliberately funneled people into the desert” as a result of increasing border patrol agents in areas of frequent border crossings (De León, 2015, 29). This extensive increase in law enforcement in these areas, then knowingly pushed migrants to attempt to cross the border in hostile and less surveilled areas. Though the US government would deny it, they knowingly use the desert to mitigate the amount of migrants reaching the border. The implementation of PTD is one of brutality that is a masked non-arrival measure.
Photograph by Michael Wells for The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail by Jason De León.
In the case of Greece during the European Refugee Crisis, exclusionary practices took the form of: increasing border walls, strengthening of Frontex, and negotiations with third-party countries to “mitigate irregular migration” (Morrice, 2022, p. 251). Additionally, the EU focused on measures of relocation and resettlement, policies of externalization (the EU-Turkey Statement), and funds dedicated to countries of origin in order to stop migration from taking place (Niemann & Zaun, 2018, p. 7).
The exclusionary policies and practices discussed both in the coursework and through the example of Greece during the crisis only emphasizes the harsh movements in place to mitigate migration and keep vulnerable populations either in situations of oppression and danger, or put these populations in precarious situations to be trafficked in order to reach the destination country.
The EU-Turkey Agreement as an Exclusionary Policy
The EU-Turkey Agreement as an Exclusionary Policy
"Turkey (a non-EU member state) was the primary migration funnel into Greece, with over 860,000 refugees traveling from Turkey by sea into Greece in 2015. This was a monumental increase from approximately 41,000 asylum-seekers in 2014 (Moschopoulos, 2023, p. 123). In order to help prevent the increased migration through Turkey and into Greece, the EU drafted the EU-Turkey Statement in March of 2016. This statement ensured that new immigrants (who have not applied for asylum) entering Greece through Turkey would be promptly returned in exchange for various incentives. In exchange for receiving Syrian refugees and for taking measures to prevent additional migration into Greece, Turkey would receive: Visa liberalization, 3 billion euros towards the fund “Facility of Refugees in Turkey”, 3 billion euros towards projects aiming to help Syrian refugees, negotiations of upgrading Customs Union (more favorable trade agreements), and the “resumption and extension of Turkey’s accession negotiations to the EU (Niemann and Zaun, 2018, p. 8). As Turkey has been seeking EU membership for quite some time, the EU decided to “dangle the carrot” of membership in order to suppress migration into other EU member states. This statement substantially decreased the pressure put on Greece with the reduction of refugees from Turkey into Greece dropping 98% between 2015 and 2016 (Neimann and Zaun, 2018, p.8)."
From page 8 of "An Examination of the European Refugee Crisis in Greece: Humanitarian Response or an Erosion of Sovereignty?" by Kristen Monroe, for JHR 540: Critical Humanitarianism. Read the full piece here.
Exclusionary Policies at the U.S. and Mexico Border
Exclusionary Policies at the U.S. and Mexico Border
“Though the description of the hostile environment alone is compelling, De León also ties the hostile environment to government implemented violence. Though the program is about deterrence, there is nothing deterring about it. The quantity of migrants attempting to cross the border has not significantly decreased under PTD (De León, 2015, p. 35), and the program (as in accordance with its goal of deterrence), has failed. The program has been successful though in line with the perspective of killing civilians before they reach border control.”
From page 1 of "Mod 1 Reading Response" by Kristen Monroe, for JHR 505: Migration, Asylum & Refugees.
“Though the United States government wouldn’t soon admit it verbally or written in policy or plan, the government uses the desert to accomplish its goal of having less migrants reach the border. This process of “deterrence” utilizes the exceptionally brutal environment in order to enact violence on migrants while deflecting any blame away from the government (De León, 2015, p. 43).The government uses nature to reactively “take care of the problem” instead of proactively finding solutions to illegal immigration. Frankly, if the United States government cared about the lives of people and not just “deterrence”, border control policies would shift drastically from a system of violence to a system of service.”
From page 2 of "Mod 1 Reading Response" by Kristen Monroe, for JHR 505: Migration, Asylum & Refugees.
“The response to refugees from the global south was one that was not focused on humanitarian efforts, but was focused on exclusion. EU efforts did not make long-term redistribution of refugees, or the root causes of migration a priority, but instead took a reactionary approach to stop refugees from seeking asylum in the EU. Aptly said by authors Niemann and Zaun, “Security-oriented measures have dominated over measures to ensure the protection of human and civil rights of asylum seekers” (2018, p. 13).”
From page 15 of "Examination of the Syrian and Ukrainian Refugee Crises: What Makes a “Worthy” Refugee?" by Kristen Monroe, for JHR 505: Migration, Asylum & Refugees. Read the full piece here.
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