The Exclusionary Politics of Asylum

226 Pages·2009·1.305 MB·English

by  Vicki Squire (auth.)

Migration, Minorities and Citizenship
General Editors: Zig Layton-Henry, Professor of Politics, University of
Warwick; and Danièle Joly, Professor, Director, Centre for Research in
Ethnic Relations, University of Warwick
Titles include:
Muhammad Anwar, Patrick Roach and Ranjit Sondhi (editors)
FROM LEGISLATION TO INTEGRATION?
Race Relations in Britain
James A. Beckford, Danièle Joly and Farhad Khosrokhavar
MUSLIMS IN PRISON
Challenge and Change in Britain and France
Thomas Faist and Andreas Ette (editors)
THE EUROPEANIZATION OF NATIONAL POLICIES AND POLITICS OF
IMMIGRATION
Between Autonomy and the European Union
Thomas Faist and Peter Kivisto (editors)
DUAL CITIZENSHIP IN GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE
From Unitary to Multiple Citizenship
Adrian Favell
PHILOSOPHIES OF INTEGRATION
Immigration and the Idea of Citizenship in France and Britain
Agata Górny and Paulo Ruspini (editors)
MIGRATION IN THE NEW EUROPE
East-West Revisited
James Hampshire
CITIZENSHIP AND BELONGING
Immigration and the Politics of Democratic Governance in Postwar Britain
John R. Hinnells (editor)
RELIGIOUS RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH ASIAN DIASPORAS
From One Generation to Another
Danièle Joly
GLOBAL CHANGES IN ASYLUM REGIMES (editor)
Closing Doors
Zig Layton-Henry and Czarina Wilpert (editors)
CHALLENGING RACISM IN BRITAIN AND GERMANY
Jørgen S. Nielsen
TOWARDS A EUROPEAN ISLAM
Pontus Odmalm
MIGRATION POLICIES AND POLITICAL PARTICIPATION
Inclusion or Intrusion in Western Europe?
Aspasia Papadopoulou-Kourkoula
TRANSIT MIGRATION
The Missing Link Between Emigration and Settlement
Jan Rath (editor)
IMMIGRANT BUSINESSES
The Economic, Political and Social Environment
Carl-Ulrik Schierup (editor)
SCRAMBLE FOR THE BALKANS
Nationalism, Globalism and the Political Economy of Reconstruction
Vicki Squire
THE EXCLUSIONARY POLITICS OF ASYLUM
Maarten Vink
LIMITS OF EUROPEAN CITIZENSHIP
European Integration and Domestic Immigration Policies
Östen Wahlbeck
KURDISH DIASPORAS
A Comparative Study of Kurdish Refugee Communities
Migration, Minorities and Citizenship
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The Exclusionary Politics
of Asylum
Vicki Squire
The Open University, UK
© Vicki Squire 2009
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2009 978-0-230-21659-4
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First published 2009 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-30354-0 ISBN 978-0-230-23361-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230233614
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Squire, Vicki, 1974–
The exclusionary politics of asylum / Vicki Squire.
p. cm. — (Migration, minorities and citizenship)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-349-30354-0
1. Asylum, Right of—Great Britain. 2. Asylum, Right of—European
Union countries. 3. Refugees—Government policy—Great Britain.
4. Refugees—Government policy—European Union countries.
5. Refugees—Legal status, laws, etc.—Great Britain. 6. Refugees—
Legal status, laws, etc.—European Union countries. I. Title.
JV7682.S68 2009
323.6’31—dc22 2008053014
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09
Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Part I Introducing the Exclusionary Politics of Asylum:
The Management of Dislocation
1 A Dislocated Territorial Order? Introducing the
Asylum ‘Problem’ 03
Asylum, citizenship and sovereignty 04
The emergence of the asylum ‘problem’ 06
Exclusionary politics and the dislocation of a territorial order 10
Analysing the exclusionary politics of asylum 12
An outline of the exclusionary politics of asylum 16
2 Challenging Managerial Operations: Developing a
Discursive Theory of Securitisation 21
Challenging exclusionary politics? Liberal and critical
readings of ‘managed migration’ 22
Migration management and exclusionary politics 23
Slipping into exclusionary politics 25
A discursive theory of securitisation: From the
‘existential threat’ to the ‘threatening supplement’ 28
Securitisation as a speech act 29
A discursive theory of exclusionary politics 31
Securitisation and the threatening supplement 32
A discursive analysis of securitisation: Bridging a
methodological divide 36
From the speech act to governmental technologies 37
A discursive methodology 40
Conclusion 41
Part II The Development of the Exclusionary Politics of
Asylum: Political, Public and Popular Narratives of Control
3 Moving to Europe: Charting the Emergence of Exclusionary
Asylum Discourse 45
Exclusionary reiterations: From ‘new’ Commonwealth
immigration to asylum 47
v
vi Contents
Between liberal and exclusionary politics: The 1950s
and 1960s 47
Moving from the Commonwealth to Europe: The 1970s
and early 1980s 49
From caution to hostility: The mid-1980s to the
mid-1990s 52
Exclusionary mediations: 1997 and beyond 54
Exclusionary legitimisations: Mutually opposing asylum 57
Naturalising restriction: European Council discourse 58
Normalising exceptional measures: European Commission
discourse 60
Exclusionary relations of equivalence: The discourse
of a UK within the EU 63
Conclusion 66
4 Restricting Contestations: Exclusionary Narratives and the
Dominance of Restriction 68
Exceptional politics: The proliferation and limitation
of contestations 70
Proliferating contestations 70
Executive control 71
Limited contestations 74
Exclusionary politics: Narratives
of legitimisation 77
Converging towards restriction 77
Exclusionary narratives of asylum 82
Conclusion 89
Part III The Extension and Diffusion of the Exclusionary
Politics of Asylum: Deterrent Technologies of ‘Internal’
and ‘External’ Control
5 Interception as Criminalisation: The Extension of
Interdictive ‘external’ Controls 93
From interception to interdiction: Introducing Project
IMMpact 96
Project IMMpact and the extension
of restrictive controls 96
Project IMMpact as an interdictive technology 101
Producing illegality: The exclusionary
effects of interdiction 104
Exclusionary narrations of interdiction 105
Contents vii
Constituting asylum seekers as ‘culpable’ subjects 107
The exclusionary politics of preemptive refoulement 110
Conclusion 113
6 Dispersal as Abjectification: The Diffusion of Punitive ‘Internal’
Controls 116
From dilution to punishment: Everyday productions of
culpability 118
Introducing dispersal to Birmingham 119
Managerial dilution and exclusionary politics 122
Dispersal as a punitive technology 123
From asylum support to asylum police 129
Producing abject subjects? The exclusionary effects of
punishment 132
Aggravating service strain, generating hostility 133
From culpability to abjectification (and back again) 136
Conclusion 139
Part IV Contesting the Exclusionary Politics of
Asylum: From Deterrence to Engagement
7 Sovereign Power, Abject Spaces and Resistance: Contending
Accounts of Asylum 145
The exclusionary production of abject spaces: Resisting
sovereign-bio-power 147
Sovereign-bio-power as an exclusionary politics 148
Resisting the exclusionary production
of abject spaces 152
Critically inhabiting abject spaces: Proliferating
contestations of the exclusionary politics of asylum 156
Contesting the exclusionary politics of asylum 157
Contending conceptions of political community,
governance and belonging 159
Conclusion 164
8 Rethinking Asylum, Rethinking Citizenship: Moving Beyond
Exclusionary Politics 167
Challenging the exclusionary politics of asylum 169
Challenging the exclusionary politics of a territorial order 170
Challenging the differential inclusions of a
(de)territorialising order 173
Effectively challenging the exclusionary politics of
differential inclusion 176
viii Contents
Mutually engaging post-territorial citizenship 178
Critically interceding open borders and human rights 178
Creating mobile solidaristic relations 181
Conclusion 185
Appendices 187
Notes 190
Bibliography 199
Index 214
Acknowledgements
There are many people that I need to thank, for I have been lucky to
have had a lot of support along the way.
First, I would like to thank those people whose invaluable com-
ments have been central to the development of this book. In particular,
I would like to thank Engin Isin, Aletta Norval and David Owen for
their encouragement and insightful comments. Claudia Aradau, Barry
Hindess, David Howarth, Jef Huysmans, Jason Glynos and John Bartle
have all commented on various chapters, for which I am grateful.
Thanks to Danièle Joly for her support and encouragement, as well
as to Thomas Diez, Steve Peers and Yasemine Soysal who have all com-
mented on chapter drafts. The constructive comments of my reviewers
are also much appreciated.
Particular thanks are extended to my former colleagues at the
University of Birmingham, in particular to Anca Pusca, Laura Shepard
and Nicki Smith, whose encouragement has been invaluable. Thanks
also to the inspiration of my fellow PhD students at the University of
Essex, especially Mette Marie Roslyng, Mercedes Barros, Mike Strange,
Emilia Palonen, Jansev Jemal, Tim Appleton and David Payne.
I would like to give special thanks to Dave Stamp, whose abiding sup-
port and encouragement is not always as openly appreciated as it is
inwardly appreciated. Special thanks also to my ever-inspiring children,
Jamila Squire and Jake Squire, who have moved over very generously
while I have nursed this book. I am most grateful for the continuing
support of my Mum, Penny Squire, as well as of my sisters, Louise
Squire and Charlotte Squire. Thanks also to all of my friends who have
helped me through both the challenging and rewarding times – most
notably Rachel Clements, Lynette Canervaro and Kara Powell.
This book is clearly not mine alone. I’d like to extend thanks to all
those people that I interviewed, especially those who helped me to
begin to think and act beyond an exclusionary politics.
This research was generously funded by the Economic and Social
Research Council, for which I am most grateful (PTA-030-2002-00452,
PTA-026-27-1294).
This book is dedicated to two people who were sadly lost along the way: David
Squire and Pat Stamp.
ix