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Trump policy may entrench securitisation of immigration
Writer: Robert Okot. PHOTO/FILE
What you need to know:
- If the most powerful of states do not respect international law, who will?
On day one of his second term of office, President Donald Trump issued 10 executive orders and proclamations to change the face of US immigration law and policy, touching nearly all features of a complex system. His administration has followed up the record of its first term, and the promises of its presidential campaign, with an effort to redefine the US to exclude everyone from border-crossers seeking refuge to children born next month to parents who are in the US on temporary visas.
Woven through these executive orders are legal arguments that fully task the US military with repelling asylum-seekers; threaten aggressive use of criminal penalties to ensure compliance; and open the door to future invocations of the centuries-old Insurrection Act and Alien Enemies Act. Other than economics, no concern has facilitated recent electoral victories of populist politicians in Europe and North America as much as the subject of migration. Common to all populist engagements with migration is the ‘securitisation’ of the phenomenon, its discursive framing as a threat to nation, society or culture.
By securitising immigration, the basic way of understanding, evaluating, and handling the phenomenon is subjected to a specific logic of survival, which prioritises and justifies policy measures aimed at neutralising the perceived security threat.The UK has not been left out on this as its political environment has been characterised by an increasing securitisation that conceives asylum and migration movements as security threats. The UK has implemented a series of reforms to curb migration, restrict the rights of non-British nationals, and limit the rights of asylum seekers.
The immigration and counterterrorism policies implemented after 9/11 have had severe consequences for specific groups identified as “security threats” by the general public. These policies have collectively produced what has become known as the securitisation of immigration governance. It is a process through which Western political elites (such as governments, leading political parties, and associated policy networks), public opinion, and the media construct immigration as a security threat. Typical aspects of securitisation measures include the introduction of restrictive border controls intended to fight terrorism, accompanied by those intended to curb illegal migration flows and to police minorities.
The security-immigration nexus is, therefore, apparent and visible in the ways in which politicians and bureaucrats view policies on the integration of migrants and of ethnic minorities as a means to counter threats. This nexus is further consolidated by negative stereotypes propagated by the mass media and official public discourse that, in turn, fuels concerns about the willingness of immigrants to integrate into their host societies.
The 1951 Geneva Convention defined a refugee as someone who has a ‘fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country’. The same agreement defined asylum seekers as people who ‘left their country of origin, have sought international protection, have applied to be recognised as refugees and are awaiting a decision from the host government.
If the most powerful of states do not respect international law, who will?To understand how the issue of immigration has become a security issue, one should look at how refugee or immigrant flows have continuously been presented as posing an existential threat to the receiving nations’ societies and thus require immediate and extraordinary measures by those states to address them.
Securitisation of immigration can unleash the emotive power of nationalism in very counterproductive ways because this always finds governments treating such population movements as suspicious activities that must be controlled, monitored, and registered. In the aftermath of the First World War, millions of people fled their homeland in search of refuge. Their numbers increased dramatically during and after the Second World War, as millions more were forcibly displaced. States, therefore, recognised that protecting refugees and asylum seekers and safeguarding their human rights required international cooperation.
It is, therefore, disturbing to see that the biggest economies in the world like the US, the UK and their sisters in the Global North continuously close borders even to the most deserving of international protection.
Robert Okot is a Human Rights and Non-Profit Law Attorney analyst.
