Post-9/11 migration
Sunday, 11 September 2011 16:33
September 11, 2001 can be considered the turning point for security policies Western world. Security became an everyday matter, not only for those who travelled constantly and had to be subject to unending lines and body scans. It also changed the way populations perceived each other, making the whole discourse on ‘the clash of civilisations’ a reality for those who had never been aware that such a thing existed. In sum, 9/11 changed societies. In the United States, for example, Arab and Muslim communities became, very suddenly, ‘the other’. In Europe, this conception of security has made it possible for Denmark to re-impose controls on its frontiers, thus limiting its Schengen agreement obligations. This shows that 9/11 and its repercussions affected the trend towards free movement across borders in many important ways. To begin with, crossing borders is, 10 years later, one of the most securitized acts that an individual can perform; that is to say that it has entered the political debate as a security issue. Politicians, particularly those on the right side of the spectrum, have taken this issue and turned it into an “us versus them” issue which in some cases underestimates the capacities of societies to absorb the waves of migrants, or adapt to the changes brought by other cultures and ways of understanding the world.
The Mexico-US border
While before 9/11 in the United States Mexican illegal migration was considered a threat from an economic perspective, now the idea behind “securing the border” revolves around preventing the entry of unwanted individuals. The law enforcement reaction in the aftermath of 9/11 was geared towards far-reaching laws which centred on suspected terrorists, but also had large implications for foreign residents and others who wanted to enter the country. Perhaps the best known law is the Patriot Act, which allowed for the detention of foreign nationals for up to seven days without the government having to file criminal or immigration charges. Further, the procedures for obtaining visas, even study ones, became harder to navigate and the reasons for denial less transparent. Citizens some countries which had previously enjoyed Visa Waiver Programmes, such as Argentina and Uruguay became non eligible for these benefits, without a clear argument as to why. Clearly then, these measures cast a much wider net than just terrorists. In particular, the discourse on security around the Mexico-US border deals with unauthorised migrants more than with possible terror suspects. There was the (recently scraped) plan for an electronic fence, and groups such as the minutemen began taking to appear and gain the support of the majority of the population. Whether these measures help keep Al Q’aeda and other terrorist networks out of US territory is much less clear. If this were the case, and heightened security does deter or help stop terrorist networks at the border, why are the same measures not being taken along the US-Canada border?
European developments
In Europe, while securitisation has not been as patent as in the United States, migration has certainly been used with political and populist aims. The subsequent attacks in Madrid and London encouraged tough stances on immigrants, especially because, unlike the attackers in the US, in the European cases there was proof that the perpetrators were home-grown, born and raised within the societies that they wanted to destroy. In the same vein as policy makers from the US, politicians from countries all over the European Union have been calling for more and better protection of their borders. The case of Denmark, which has recently decided to tighten its border in spite of its Schengen status, is indicative of this, but so are the reactions of Italy, France and the Netherlands after the Arab Spring. Once more, these new border measures go beyond the main idea of protecting the borders of a country from attack. There is no clear link between migrants, even illegal ones, and terrorism, yet the discourse put forth by politicians in some countries establishes that migration is, primordially, an issue of security. The integration of migrants into the respective societies has become paramount; many politicians have established a discourse in which those who seek entrance to Europe are foreign, alien and unable to follow the rules of receiving societies. The problem then arises that the main sources of unrest are not newly arrived migrants, but rather second and third generation youth, already born in the country.
What has changed?
The issue of migration towards the United States and the Schengen area stopped being an economic one and turned into a security issue. Migration and border laws have been adjusted accordingly, making it much more difficult for migrants to gain entry into their desired countries; asylum seekers are in an even weaker position since the human-rights aspects has been superseded by the all encompassing security aspect. Even more, security has been construed differently as relates to different migrants, and the country of origin of an individual has become more important in terms of how the law is applied. his tendency to secure the borders was, perhaps, nothing new, but it presents an interesting contrast to the trend towards integration that took place in Europe before the terrorist attacks of New York, London and Madrid. Because immigration used to be seen as a primarily economic activity, the emphasis used to lay on productivity. Now the criteria for allowing an immigrant to stay in his or her country of choice has become much more strict due to ‘security concerns’, whatever those may be. Migrants find themselves in an even more precarious position, where their rights oftentimes become second to government security policies.There is a large difference between the US and Europe in terms of how strictly they apply the law; in the former the issue is securitised, in the latter this is less so the case. Yet the discourse on migration has shifted towards a policy of clash of civilisations. Integration has become the new buzzword that applies to migrants, and foreign characteristics that 10 years ago were celebrated as multiculturalism are now seen as the inability of a group to conform to the rules of a given society. This phenomenon covers migrants from all areas of the world, which means that the debate has ceased to be related to terrorism itself, and has begun to be about an “us versus them”. This is not to say that 9/11 caused a clash of civilisations, but it did bring to the surface underlying questions about integration and immigration policies. The policies that governments decide to implement to react to migrants is also a measure of how safe a society feels when there are differences that seem to be difficult to bridge. The question that not many want to answer is whether those differences were there already, or whether 9/11 was, indeed the turning point for this clash.