Migration Processes in Central and Eastern Europe - Multiple Choices

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Normative and Methodological Discussion of Migration and Integration
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•• Externalisation
While the 'comprehensive approach' towards
asylum and migration is officially defined as the combination
of an internal policy towards third country nationals with an
external strategy to tackle the root causes of migration
(European Council, 15-16/10/1999), real policies turn out to
be the opposite. Indeed, despite its official reference to
development, human rights and foreign relations, the external
dimension mainly comes down to imposing on third
countries the restrictive internal Common EU- asylum and
immigration policy, developed within the Ministries of Justice
and Home Affairs (Weiner, 1993; Teitelbaum & Weiner,
1995). As a consequence, foreign policy, which is ideally
expected to aim at long-term development, political dialogue
and diplomacy, is instrumentalised for interior policy goals
aiming at preventing and restricting access and ensuring
internal security. 5 Through this externalisation strategy,
the EU transfers at least part of the migration and refugee
burden to other (neighbouring) states (Chimni, 2000).
In my view, the aforementioned developments
within current EU-migration policies have deteriorated the
officially claimed comprehensive approach into a preventative
non-arrival and containment policy, or in short: a strict
migration control policy. Enforced border controls, discouraging
and refusing entry, limiting the numbers of admitted
refugees and deporting undesired and illegal foreigners
have become the central tools of the common policy. The
only winners of this control paradigm seem to exclusively
be the old EU-15 (Bigo, 2002; Jordan, 2003; Koslowski,
2001). In the following paragraphs, I argue that the reason
why former liberal migration and human asylum policies
have drastically changed during the last three decades,
is to be found in the influence of two normative approaches,
both inspiring the discussion on how to develop morally
acceptable migration and refugee policies.
NORMATIVE ORIGINS OF THE MIGRATION
CONTROL PARADIGM
One's duty towards strangers is a very old theme
within ethics (cf. reflections on hospitality and asylum in
a range of treatises on war, friendship or charity). In modern
times, emphasis has been put on the question whether
a political community is justified to decide on admission
or exclusion of foreign people. A central issue in this justification
question concerns the tension between the right of
a collective community (with its own particularities) and the
right of individuals (as equal to any other individual). During
the 1980s, this question has been taken up within the liberals
versus communitarians debate, reflecting two conflicting
moral conceptions: impartiality and partiality. 6 The above
described paradigm shift towards a migration control policy
can be explained by referring to these two conceptions.
•• Impartiality as the normative foundation for the
human rights discourse
The human rights or humanitarian discourse has
been one of the building blocks of the European integration
project. It has its origins in the post-war era, when
European integration was launched in order to secure a
lasting peace. This integration project was based on a
common set of shared values, guaranteeing the respect for
diversity and alterity and up till now functioning as the
normative foundation of the EU (Davies, 1997). It is this
normative foundation, recently incorporated in the European
Constitution 7 that supports the human rights discourse
in the field of asylum and migration.
The starting point of this discourse is the fact that
human beings qua human beings are entitled to certain
fundamental rights. When those fundamental rights are
not guaranteed by the state in which they live, people have
the right to seek protection outside their country of origin.
In this discourse, asylum and migration are not always
defined as a matter of high politics: the question of illegal
migration or bogus asylum applicants is not under discussion.
Rather a generous harmonised asylum system, paying
attention to the root causes of refugee flows, is defended
(Lavenex, 2001; Van der Klauw, 2001).
The normative origins of the human rights discourse
go back to impartiality. Impartiality, in moral theory
described as requiring equal consideration of the interests
of all persons (loved ones, fellow citizens and strangers
alike), goes back to the two dominant theoretical traditions
of modern moral philosophy: utilitarian consequentialism
and Kantian deontology. Applied to the question of asylum
and immigration, impartialists start from a rights-based
framework to which they attach the right for every human
being to free movement. Their demand for more open
borders is based on different argumentative lines. Liberals
basically oppose to restrictions on entrance and residence,
because it violates the right to individual liberty and the
freedom of movement. Utilitarians base themselves on the
equal consideration principle and the utilitarian calculus. 8
Impartialist claims have a very strong ethical
force, insofar they illustrate convincingly why states have no
absolute right to prioritise citizen's interests to the interests
of non-citizens. During the post-war period, European
nation-states strongly emphasised this humanitarian
discourse in their attitudes towards refugees. 9 However,
this discourse has strongly been challenged since the
1970s, when asylum and migration became much politicised
issues, leading to a new migration paradigm that I described
as the migration control paradigm.
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Migration Processes in Central and Eastern Europe: Unpacking the Diversity