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- Convenors:
-
Usman Mahar
(University of St. Gallen)
Furrukh Khan (Lahore University of Management Sciences)
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- Discussants:
-
Roger Norum
(University of Oulu)
Melanie Griffiths (University of Birmingham)
Martin Sökefeld (LMU Munich)
- Format:
- Panel
- Location:
- Peter Froggatt Centre (PFC), 03/006A
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 26 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
People are categorised for various reasons, with the aim of transformation, control, comprehension, organisation or assistance but not only. This panel wishes to critically examine the categorisations of migrants in migration policy and management to unpack contested categories and terms.
Long Abstract:
Despite the extensive analysis of different forms of mobility as interconnected and knotty, migration management and policy largely remain within the voluntary-forced framework along with other dichotomous models. Challenging and transforming these binary migration paradigms is no easy feat. Addressing the distinctions and similarities between the different normative, discursive, legal or administrative categorisations of migrants is fraught with dilemmas and requires critical discussions rather than broad-brush solutions. Discussions, for instance, that involve morally and politically charged questions of how the lived realities and experiences of "forced" migrants overlap and intersect with or differ from "voluntary" migrants: Some scholars point to the undermining of the international refugee framework by conflating "forced" and "voluntary" migration and the ensuing practical challenges. Others argue that the distinction between the two is at best crude and leads to a Sisyphean analytical differentiation between undeserving "economic" migrants and "real" asylum-seekers. Though not easily overcome, such impasses are addressed in scholarly reflections through the ethnographic descriptions of the complex lives of migrants at odds with the binary categorisations they are subject to. However, the practical stickiness of such dichotomous models is also a top-down phenomenon influenced by policymakers and legal practitioners. In that vein, migration scholars are invited to submit critical reflections and discussions on categorisations within migration policy and management approaches. Proposed papers should be based on ethnographic research and seek to further theoretical and methodological understanding of abstractions and categorisations of im/mobile people.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 26 July, 2022, -Turid Sætermo (NTNU) Linda Dyrlid (NTNU)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines how integration policies in Norway frame settled refugees and labor migrants as differing from each other with regards to integration challenges, capacities and needs. It explores the policies' underlying ideas and the lived consequences for immigrants in the two categories.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines how integration policies in Norway frame settled refugees and EU labor migrants as different from each other with regards to integration challenges, integration capacities and integration needs, reflecting the voluntary-forced framework that typically informs migration management and policy. The aim of the paper is to examine the underlying ideas of these dual policies and to explore the lived consequences of them for immigrants in the two categories. A point of departure is the political understanding of employment as means to integration, which entails that labor migrants are expected to be ‘self-integrating’. In contrast, refugees are understood as ‘in need of integration’ and are thus obliged to attend an extensive two-year introduction program consisting of language training and work-life preparation, whereas similar training and interventions for labor immigrants are voluntary, minimal, and often payable. Labor migrants are sometimes referred to as ‘the invisible immigrants’, yet, studies have shown that they also experience marginalization, exclusion, and vulnerability in relation to work-life and everyday life in Norway. Drawing on in-depth interviews with labor migrants and settled refugees, the paper explores ways in which the groups are constructed differently with regards to ‘integration’, how this shape lived realities and experiences for individuals in the two categories of migrants, and how their experiences also intersect and overlap. We will use these empirical insights to engage critically with questions around the rationale and the consequences of the binary model of immigrant integration, as well as with migrant categorization more broadly.
Timothy Anderson (Tallinn University)
Paper short abstract:
Detention is often experienced by migrants as a contradiction: a form of punishment and incarceration in the absence of criminal charges. Drawing on fieldwork from Estonia, I show how this paradox – what I term punitive protection - is understood, experienced, and resisted by detainees.
Paper long abstract:
The detention of irregular migrants in the European Union has increased in scope and intensity in the years following the 2016 ‘refugee crisis’. Detention is usually categorised as an administrative practice, a benign routine that is necessary for the care of migrants and the enforcement of immigration laws. However, this formally ‘administrative’ process belies a unique contradiction: detention is often experienced by detainees as a form of punishment and incarceration in the absence of criminal charges. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork from Harku Detention Center in Estonia, I show how this paradox – what I term punitive protection - is understood and experienced by detainees. I give special consideration to the life projects of my informants, highlighting their agency and ability to emotionally navigate Harku’s confines. The contradiction that detention embodies also sets the stage for detainee resistance, negotiation, and self-expression.
Ulrike Schultz (Adventist University of Friedensau)
Paper short abstract:
The categorization system of policy makers does not reflect the situation of many migrants. Taking the case of a Sudanese family who left their home in Khartoum to settle in Juba but ended up in different places, I will show that categories of being a labor migrant, returnee or refugee are fluid.
Paper long abstract:
It is often argued that research on forced migration is limited because it is framed by the categorization system of policy makers and international organization. This does not only make some people invisible, as their situation does not match the official categorization system but also constraints the understanding of migration research. Taking the case of the (South) Sudanese, who left the Northern part of Sudan after the peace agreement in 2005, I will show that the categories of being a returnee, IDP or refugee are fluid. Moreover, conventional categorization of migration research in international versus internal migration or forced versus voluntary migration are twisted upside down as South Sudanese lost their citizenship and became foreigners in their home country. The paper is based on a multisided ethnography and will use the case of a family who left their home in Khartoum to settle in Juba, South Sudan but ended up in different places establishing a translocal family life. The paper will explore shifting patterns of mobility and look how they relate to new forms of belonging, which transcend common categories and discourses.
Mina Vasileva (University of Vienna) Hannah Myott (University of Vienna)
Paper short abstract:
After years of tightening borders and complicating bureaucracy for asylum seekers, in 2022 the EU set all this aside for people fleeing Ukraine. Drawing on ethnographic research in Austria, this paper challenges binary categorizations surrounding forced migrants, and especially who it leaves behind.
Paper long abstract:
Historically unprecedented, the EU has declared immediate temporary protection for the 3.4+ million people who have fled Ukraine, effectively erasing the convoluted bureaucratic processes typically involved in fleeing one’s country. At the same time, this varies greatly from the current experiences of asylum seekers from non-European countries, as well as the previous treatment of people from other regions of the world during the mid-2010s “refugee crisis”.
Adopted on 4 March 2022, the “Temporary Protection Directive” grants Ukrainians immediate, non-bureaucratic, protection within the EU at least until 3 March 2023. In Austria, this enables arriving Ukrainians to be helped “quickly and unbureaucratically,” according to Austria’s Ministry of the Interior. This temporary protection grants medical care, education, and full access to the labor market. In other words, a new category was essentially created -- a category that does not cover other forced migrants, many of whom have also fled devastating wars.
This rightful acknowledgment of Ukrainians’ abhorrent situation is important and also brings to light major discrepancies. In this paper we seek to explore and problematize the binary categorizations surrounding Ukrainian forced migrants compared to others, particularly from the Middle East. Using illustrations from our ethnographic research in Austria (2018-2020), we discuss stereotypes, challenges, and ongoing discrimination. We aim to better understand the arbitrary legal and sociopolitical categorizing of migrants by examining the narratives contributing to this categorical binary, as well as its potential for harm.