Title:	Disciplining the Transnational Mobility of People
Authors:	Martin Geiger Antoine Pécoud
Keywords:	Mobility of People
Issue Date:	2013
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan
Description:	Until recently, one of the most popular catchwords in migration debates was “Fortress Europe”. Borrowed from World War II military history, the term referred to European governments’ aspiration to fully control their borders. The European continent was, in this respect, at the forefront of the “global migration crisis” (Weiner, 1995): Since the 1990s, the developed world in general has been characterized by increasing fears over the consequences of human mobility; the reaction has been the erection of “walls around the west” (Andreas and Snyder, 2000) and, more generally, a dramatic intensification and diversification of control strategies. While much has been said about the desirability and feasibility of such a political project 1, this book 2 attempts to shed light on the ways in which the objective of controlling migration has unfolded in a broader endeavour to discipline the cross-border movements of people. What this volume proposes to call the “disciplining of transnational human mobility” has, at first sight, little in common with the militarization of borders or the surveillance of foreigners. This is not to say that the fixation with control has disappeared, or that immigration and border policies have fundamentally changed. Rather, it is to recognize that the objective of defending receiving states from unwanted migrants is both embedded in, and complemented by, the larger goal to organize human mobility and discipline people’s movements and behaviours. “Managed migration” (or “migration management”) is perhaps the new catchword here. It reflects the growing recognition that the risks linked to uncontrollable and destabilizing migration flows can be addressed by a deep reorganization of the patterns that govern human mobility; it also embodies the aspiration to both strictly control human mobility and organize it in a way that makes it compatible with a number of objectives pursued by both state and non-state actors. These include the recruitment of foreign workers and, more generally, the realization of the potential benefits that labour mobility entails (e.g. on the economic development of sending regions). To a lesser extent, they also include the avoidance of some of the abuses and sufferings that affect vulnerable groups of mobile people (Geiger and Pécoud, 2010, 2012; Kalm, 2010). One of the core arguments of this volume is that such a political objective implies much more than the mere control of people on the move. It implies the disciplining of human mobility and the establishment of an ideal mobility regime in which control remains fundamental. The emerging new mobility regime unfolds and transforms itself in a range of practices which seem to disconnect from control and are commonly (and misleadingly) opposed to control.
URI:	http://10.6.20.12:80/handle/123456789/51352
ISBN:	978-1-137-26307-0
Appears in Collections:	Population Studies

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