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• Xénophobie Business – A quoi servent les contrôles migratoires? [Xenophobia business – What is the point of migration controls?] ?] Claire Rodier. La Découverte, October 2012, pp. 194 (ISBN 978-2-7071-7433-8) by Marie Martin

Xénophobie Business – A quoi servent les contrôles migratoires? [Xenophobia business – What is the point of migration controls?] ?] Claire Rodier. La Découverte, October 2012, pp. 194 (ISBN 978-2-7071-7433-8) by Marie Martin

01 March 2013

The question asked by Claire Rodier in the title of her latest book (in French) may seem easy to answer. One may assume that the point of migration controls is to stop irregular migrants, although in reality migration controls are more efficient at diverting migrants from established routes. However, as this work reveals, migration controls also involve a complex logic of inter-dependent geopolitical, ideological and economic interests.

Tracking, detaining and removing migrants has become a profitable business. Using concrete examples based in the USA – the adoption of the SB 1070 law in Arizona, for instance – and the UK, Rodier dedicates an entire chapter to the rise of private security companies, their influence on politicians, and their shift from a military to a civil role after the Cold War. The author states that in 2009 security firms made a global profit of €450 billion. The impressive growth of this expanding market between 2002 and 2009 – from 10 to 12% - is likely to be maintained, encouraged by hyperbolic government narratives against “illegals” and terrorists.

Whether in Anglo-Saxon (specifically the UK and USA) countries where the management of detention centres and prisons has been totally or partly privatised, or countries like Italy where the management of detention centres is a source of profit for supposedly “charitable” organisations, depriving people of liberty is a source of employment for those who provide services and “security” to thousands of detainees. Rodier suggests that it is a policy worth more than a few votes in times of economic crisis.
Since 2002 and the appearance in public discourse of the notion of the “securitisation of external borders,” the demand for security and surveillance at the border and beyond has developed exponentially, e.g. with the establishment of SIVE (Integrated System off the Spanish coasts), EUROSUR (European Border Surveillance System), and the creation of Frontex (EU border management agency).

Maintaining fear against “invading” irregular migrants who have been increasingly associated with terrorism and organised crime since the 1980s, a tendency that has increased since 2001, is in the interest of both security companies and governments. The former are enthusiastic participants in “expert groups” on security which advise governments on what they consider to be the best way to protect citizens – e.g. investment in surveillance technologies. The latter play on the political potential of creating a scapegoat (migrant) community and stress their efforts to counter it through building walls and detention centres and deporting irregular migrants.

While mainly focused on the EU’s migration control policies and their externalisation to neighbouring countries (through readmission agreements, EU funded detention centres built in Mauritania, Libya, Ukraine, Turkey etc.), the book also draws on several non-EU related examples. 18,000 km of walls have been built worldwide to exclude undesirable migrants and detention centres are proliferating. Have these containment strategies proved useful? Rodier cites the economist Jagdish Bhagwati who described the barrier dividing India and Bangladesh as “the least disruptive way of doing nothing while appearing to do something.” Rodier adds:

“These barriers, whether legal (visa), physical (walls) or virtual (radars and sensors), are far from impassable: a non-negligible part of so-called undesirable migrants manage to pass through.”

Migration controls also play an important role in diplomatic relations between states. For example, the EU’s support to Ukraine is not purely based on immigration related interests but also on diplomatic relations with a major gas provider to Europe. However, Rodier points out that what seems to be an imbalanced power relation is not a one-way-street. The “externalisation of migration controls” supports the geopolitical interests of countries who aspire to be regional leaders. Thus, the emphasis on migration controls at the Morocco-Algeria border does not only serve the EU’s interests; it is part of long-lasting tensions between the two countries. In fact, migration controls in this part of the world are mostly symbolic since migrants removed by Morocco to Algeria often cross the border again after they have bribed border guards.

If the usefulness of migration controls is debatable, the costs incurred raise serious questions about the proportionality of the entire apparatus. Vast sums are spent by the security-industrial complex on the research and development of new technologies, cooperation funds are used to win the support of third countries to widen the belt of buffer states, and public money is spent on the tracking, detention, and forced removal/deportation of migrants.

According to the UNITED network, thousands of lives have been lost at the European Union’s border since the early 1990s, but these deaths are used by governments to distort humanitarian narratives to maintain the lucrative “xenophobic” business of migration controls. According to Rodier, “[i]t is high time to put things in perspective against the background of these dramatic consequences: this hypocritical discourse, the real motives behind migration controls, and their efficiency.”

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