From Arming the Borders to Recruitment of Labour

Kiev 1998:

A team of IOM specialists met with high-ranking government officials. An extensive 'Migration Management Programme' is set up with the unvarnished priority to 'control illegal migration'. Unlike its neighbouring states in the west the Ukraine is no EU candidate and therefore not bound by the Schengen agreements. However, the 'fortress Europe' in the interest of West European countries should start here at that 'important transit station of the eastern people smuggler route'. Thus the IOM programme is directed against transit migration on several levels: registration and documentation of refugees and migrants, setting-up a first deportation camp, training of Ukrainian border police at the US/Mexican border, equipment of a pilot project with radio and infra-red technique in Kharkiv at the Russian border... During their work the IOM specialists were confronted with a problem surprising to them. They found that more than 70% of the transit migrants entered the Ukraine legally! As a consequence the government was trained in working out new laws and above all new visa regulations. With instructions from the IOM, migration to the Ukraine was first criminalized to fight it afterwards with all means at hand which were also made available by the IOM.

Change of scenery

Quito, October 2002: IOM employees accompany a first group of young Ecuadorian workers on their flight to Madrid. They have passed a thorough selection procedure and are supposed to leave the country after one year. In March 2002, the IOM office in the Ecuadorian capitol established a databank, where young men and women could apply for work in Spain. In 2001 the Spanish and Ecuadorian government concluded a contract and instructed the IOM with its implementation. The Spanish employers needed cheap labour for the farms, the building industry as well as the nursing sector. With this pilot project they should not be recruited as usual from illegalised and thus uncontrolled migration. Moreover parallel to this legal recruitment project, the Spanish government had started a country-wide raid for 'illegals from Ecuador' and deported hundreds of people.

Two sides of the same medal

Whether in the Ukraine or in Spain/Ecuador, whether to destroy flight routes and engage governments of important transit countries in the migration control, or to recruit cheap labour corresponding to the economic requirements of the countries of destination - it is no coincidence that the IOM projects go in both directions. It is definitely this combination of exclusion and exploitation, their parallelism of fortress mentality and control which characterises the so-called migration management of the IOM. And that these projects serve mainly the interests of the West European governments is unquestionable - not only as in the two examples described.

Global Migration Management

This text is taken from a new brochure about the International Organization for Migration, IOM. It was edited by Antiracism Office in Bremen, Germany.

The IOM, founded in 1951, an organisation operating between states covers a far-reaching spectre of tasks. On one hand it perceives itself as a global service agency for migration, on the other hand it has become a think tank, developing new concepts designed to control and direct migration movements more effectively. It thereby operates as a junction between science and practical application, praising itself for interfering with the lives of 12 Mio. people through its program of further migration, return and resettlement - All of this most likely not in the best interest of the people, but always to the advantage of the Western states.

The significance of the IOM has increased since the end of East-West confrontation. By now 102 States are members of the IOM; from 1988 alone, 40 new members joined. Furthermore, 29 states and more that 50 international organisation possess observer-status. The head-office is located in Geneva, from where the practical work of the 19 coordinating centres is being regulated. In addition there exist 150 field offices which keep the contact to government and NGO's within the specific countries and which carry through the particular projects.

The IOM is neither a member of the United Nations nor has it signed any fundamental international conventions, like the Geneva Refugee Convention. Therefore, it is not bound to any standards of international law. As an organisation with an own body of rights, it avoids international control mechanisms. It is accountable to the member states only, justifying the objectives of its actions with the slogan: "Managing migration for the benefit of all."

The infrastructure of the organisation is being financed by membership fees. The means for the actual projects, the greatest share of the IOM budget, are supplied by the particular task-masters. This leads to a situation where above all those countries call on the services of the IOM which are financially better off. That is because, particularly in a case of constituting border and visa systems, the contributing countries serve primarily their expediency. Therefore, projects in Eastern Europe for example are frequently financed by funds of Western European states.

The work of the IOM is divided into 7 separate fields of activity: Labour Migration, Counter-Trafficking, Mass Information and Integration, Migration Health Service, Assisted Voluntary Returns, Technical Cooperation on Migration and Movements. Some of these so called 'service areas' will find further explanation in the following articles.

Besides working on concrete projects, the IOM is expediting the development of frameworks of migration policy. For instance, it is coordinating the proposals of the Bern Initiative (S.2). The strong influence the IOM has on the orientation of the annual Metropolis Project and its more than 20 countries as participants cannot be overlooked, either. This conference aims primarily at bringing together scientists, NGO' s and governments. A principal objective is to solve the problems of regulated migration by applying practical research and to recognise and utilise the chances resulting from this process. The determination of central issues by the IOM and the close collaboration with the SFM and ICMPD emphasizes the importance of the IOM even further. It is a think tank effectively coordinating other think tanks. Particularly the connection of scientific and theoretical approaches with practical application in a local setting helps to explain the special role of the IOM. The IOM is thereby able to test the practicability political concepts and effect them being carried through, also due to it not being bound to standards of international law. (As for example the probing of an extraterritorial camp system within the frame of the ,pacific solution' or the implementation of border policies in Ukraine).

Freedom of movement and global control

These are cut-ups from a longer text from Frank Duevell: Globalisation of Migration Control

Worldwide, migration has become a major topic (...)It is acknowledged that globalisation corresponds with an increase in mobility and migration. Irregular migration in particular, though sometimes appreciated as cheap labour but generally a term used to defame the unwanted, is perceived a number one threat to the world order and to nation states integrity.[7] The IOM (International Organisation for Migration) and other sources estimates up to 33 million 'illegal immigrants' worldwide, four times the population of Sweden.[8]

Frequently, warnings are issued that half the Moroccan youth or 50 million Russians wish to move north, respectively west; some simply equalise global population growth with future migration pressure.[9] Migration has also often been related to some kind of resistance[10], a 'revolution of expectations' (Jungfer), to 'the revolution of the barefoot' (Club of Rome) and to 'an action against poverty' (Galbraith). Any study in migration typically highlights the wishes, dreams, expectations and demands of immigrants. Therefore migration is also some kind of a 'social movement towards global social justice'.[11] Exclusively victimising migrants or simply downplaying does not help to understand the phenomenon and the deeper meaning of the antagonism; distinguishing between refuge, internal or border crossing migration and mobility does not help either. Sivanandan is right arguing that the situation of refugees, displaced persons, guestworkers or those internally moving from poor villages to a shining metropolis are related to the same socio-political-economical context, they are in one way or another uprooted by the same politics and its many facets: globalisation.[12]

In fact, 'the world is on the move'[13] and the full extend is rather somewhere near half a billion to one billion people worldwide.[14] Beyond that, an Italian leaflet for the protest against the G8 summit, arguing that migration is the new ghost haunting the world, expresses some truth as well.[15] Indeed, at the core of migration lies the social question, it represents part of a globally mobile world proletariat. In response, national governments and international organisations agree that migration needs to be regulated and 'orderly managed' (IOM). It is often international conferences, such as 'Managing Migration in the 21. Century' (Hamburg 1998) or the 'International Symposium on Migration: Towards Regional Cooperation on Irregular Migration' (Bangkok 1999) that identify and analyse perceived problems and prepare the ground for what has been to come. Meanwhile, there are rarely international agreements, stability pacts, bilateral action plans or contracts that do not also refer to migration and the necessity to jointly contain it. And since neoliberalism, and along with it utilitarian principles, are accepted as the dominant ideology within the industrialised world it is no surprise that both now also inform migration policy.

Migration control has never been aimed at 'zero migration', although for a short period of time between 1973 and 2000 that could have been assumed. Instead, migration has often been analysed as vital to economic growth such as for the US-American history and the Mexican-US maquiladora industry, the German Ruhr region, during the post-war boom, the Gulf States industrialisation, the economic success of global cities or the South Asian growth triangle.[16] Migration policy is closely related to population policy, labour market policy, but also foreign policy and wars. It has many facets such as containing the movement of the poor to the centres of wealth, or in opposite the recruitment of migrant labour to accumulation centres, it can be the expulsion of 'surplus people' from their soil or the blocking of escape moves from war or ecological disaster. Migration has been analysed as a potential of being a precondition to economic growth as well as a threat to capitalism and accumulation; therefore recruitment and containment are so closely related. History is not at least about a continuous wrestling over access to territories and resources.[17]

In 1999, the European Union and its member states at their summit in Tampere decided to modernise their immigration policy along three lines, (a) containing asylum migration, (b) fighting irregular migration, and (c) opening up new migration channels to migrant workers. Its 2002 summit in Seville confirmed another point, (d) the extension of European migration policy onto any other country of origin or transit. Suggesting an integrated approach, the EU aims to respond to combine solutions for internal problems such as 'ageing societies, a lack of certain professionals, and a lack of internal labour market mobility, a slow-down of economy, with attempting to get its hands on what is perceived migration pressure, the business of trafficking, and the positive elements in immigration.[18] Since the Tampere summit, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK did begin modernising their immigration policy by introducing Green Cards, increasing quotas for foreign workers, signing contracts over guest workers or allowing the number of work permits to rise. Economic migration, until recently a term to discredit asylum seekers, rapidly got a positive connotation. However, these governments did not only selectively opened up its borders to some kind of migration but also strengthened a major rational for exclusion: economic considerations.

To that extend to which market laws become a dominant motive in migration politics those people are rejected for whom there is no demand on the labour market. Schemes such as the point system of the US or German Green Card to assess the 'human capital of an applicant or the Daily Telegraph's call for a 'quality control' of future immigrants clearly make this point.[19] The 'unwanted' and the 'surplus people' will and already do suffer from the whole brutality of economic laws. In continuity of notoriously racist patterns it is the populations of the Black, Asian or Slavic world that are perceived a threat to world order, the fabric of social hierarchies and economics. For many of them there is no place in the world of investments and profits. Stuck in poor, exploited or robbed parts of the world, for them it can become a matter of life and death as the worldwide 2.1 billion poor or those 800.000 suffering from starvation shows.[20] (...)

Transnational migration control agencies

'Strategies for an international migration regime' and global migration management, are key words in present international politics.[27] What is known from the regulation of finance and goods, in particular the role of IMF or WTO will serve as a blueprint to global migration politics too. In fact, a General Agreement on the Movement of People, equally to those on Transport and Trade (GATT) has already been proposed.[28] It has been frequently acknowledged that the old system of migration control has failed and also that the politics of globalisation requires a new concept.[29] Nation states are crumbling, global traffic increases constantly, borders have become porous and relying on control of external borders does not work anymore, in a flexible world inflexible systems of control such as a nation state's border have become increasingly inadequate. Therefore, the move is towards a comprehensive regime that covers the whole process of migration from the countries of origin, along the pathways and through any country of transit to its final destination. Any such approach lies well beyond the scope of the nation states, which instead have identified the need for supranational and transnational organisations. These are the Intergovernmental Consultations on Asylum, Refugees and Migration Policies (IGC), the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), to some extend the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and some think tanks and regular conferences. (...)

The myth of a borderless world

European history tough that economic integration, and mobility and migration can lead to some convergence of wages.[43] Some scholars therefore expect globalisation to lead to nation states and borders fading away resulting in the miraculous appearance of a borderless world.[44] Others assume that the neoliberal politics of deregulation will finally influence migration and allow unregulated flows of people.[45] And neoclassical economic theory try to make us believe that globalisation plus migration will cease inequality and leads to more distributive justice.[46] However, that is far from being realistic. Instead, neoliberal think tanks such as the OECD or the Multilateral Commission insist in the parallel politics of deregulating finance and trade whilst keeping strong systems to regularise the movement of people and labour.[47] That coincides with a tendency to create new states, processes of devolution such as in the UK and Italy, the European concept to introduce Euro-regions replacing nation states, and with new pioneering schemes to police, and if necessary restrict, the movement of hooligans, criminals, asylum seekers and globalisation protesters. These apparent discrepancies need to be explained. Imperialism is based on the exploitation of wage and reproduction differentials between regions and countries, races and gender, and legal and social groups.[48] It has a strategic interest in keeping social or geographical divisions by genderising, racialising or territorialising the humanity. Imagined, socially constructed or physical borders are essential to the world economic order. Migration politics aims to keep the system of borders and territories whilst in the same time exploits the wage and reproduction cost differential between countries. The political economy of the wage ratio between Singapore and Indonesia (1: 289), Mexico and the US (1:50), or Germany and Poland (1:10) are well documented.[49] The enforcement of borders, the control over migration movements and mobility in general, the introduction of new borders (as on the Balkan or the former Soviet Union) or even movement control technology such as CCTV and biometric scanning are aspects of the same concept. There is already a 'hierarchy of mobility'[50] as global elites are allowed to move freely, whilst workers' movements are heavily regulated, but those not having the funds to subside themselves (such as tourists) or not primarily economically active, even more so in case they could become a financial burden to public funds (such as refugees) are prevented from moving at all. The unequal treatment of the highly skilled, asylum seekers, illegal immigrants and displaced people clearly shows the economic rational behind the neoliberalism twin-strategy of deregulation and regulation.

Conclusion: Global migration management is no contribution to global social justice

The 18th and 19th century pattern of final immigration to otherwise unpopulated continents or where it was accepted to simply terminate the indigenous people has long gone. Post second-world-war concepts of guest or migrants workers who have been anticipated to return once the economic boom was over failed and forced countries such as France, the UK or Germany to accept its role as multi-ethnic societies. However, the new German immigration law in its introduction did make clear that this mistake should not be repeated.[51] IOM and EU now accept global migration as matter of fact but insist in its 'orderly management'. Recent schemes in Germany, the UK, Italy or Spain reveal a preference of just-in-time migration that respond to short term economic demands over long-term settlement. Current trends in immigration management rather reflect a hire-and-fire policy, the result will be the flexibilisation of populations rather than an immigration policy. This trend also awakes some reminiscences of strategies known from Keynesianism, namely those elements, which aimed to domesticate and thereby control social conflict by integrating the working class and its demand for better wages and living standards into capitalist growth. Such a strategy, adapted to migration policy aims to distinguish between the productive and the unproductive elements of migration movements and turn the former into a driving force of economic growth. (...) And finally, to keep the unwanted out, and that is the majority of the world's population, a cruel global system of deportations and removals, UN-controlled 'safe havens', refugee and internment camps, Pacific prison islands like Nauru, and armed border guards has been established. These are characteristic 21. century symbols of inequality, injustice and the politics of exclusion. On the other hand calls to close down detention centres, stop deportations, no one is illegal, an amnesty for sans papiers, abolish all immigration controls, open borders, as a growing number of activists and scholars alike argue[56] mark the only true way to global social justice and equality.