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Irregular migration, EU policies and the migration-development nexus: The Case of Assisted Voluntary Return in Malta
Abstract
The background of this thesis is the context of irregular migration from Africa to Europe,
which is especially affecting Malta because of its geographical location and its small size.
The thesis focuses on the push factors of migration which are related to development, and on exploring whether the concept of Assisted Voluntary Return is an effective tool in the
integrated European Union policy approach to migration and development. A policy
analysis is conducted through a literature and document review, together with a research
analysis on the experience and perception of Ghanaian migrants, experts and returnees on the effectiveness of Assisted Voluntary Return programmes. Interviews conducted with migration experts and service providers from key organizations in Malta are used to
explore factors determining the success and sustainability of return, and the effectiveness of Assisted Voluntary Return programmes.
The relationship between migration and development is a topic of growing interest among international organizations. To varying degrees, those organizations see remittances as an essential tool in the development of migrant-sending, underdeveloped countries. We argue that this view, on which most pertinent public policies are based, misrepresents the notion of development and obscures the root causes of current labor migration. This limited and distorted perspective should be discarded, and the phenomenon should be analyzed in a comprehensive manner that includes strategic/structural, multi-dimensional, and multi-spatial approaches based on the political economy of development. This type of analysis should take into account the following interrelated dimensions: social agents, global context, regional integration, national environment, and local levels.
Thomas Pogge has been teaching moral and political philosophy at Columbia University since receiving his Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard University. His recent publications include the edited volume, Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right (2005); Real WorldJustice (co-edited with Andreas Follesdal, 2005); World Poverty and Human Rights (2002); “Can the Capability Approach be Justified?” (Philosophical Topics, 2002); and, with Sanjay Reddy, “How Not to Count the Poor” (www.socialanalysis.org). He is editor for social and political philosophy for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science. His work was supported, most recently, by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, All Souls College, Oxford, and the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda. He is currently Professorial Research Fellow at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, Australian National University (an Australian Research Council-funded Special Research Centre).
The debate on migration and development has swung back and forth like a pendulum, from developmentalist optimism in the 1950s and 1960s, to neo-Marxist pessimism over the 1970s and 1980s, towards more optimistic views in the 1990s and 2000s. This paper argues how such discursive shifts in the migration and development debate should be primarily seen as part of more general paradigm shifts in social and development theory. However, the classical opposition between pessimistic and optimistic views is challenged by empirical evidence pointing to the heterogeneity of migration impacts. By integrating and amending insights from the new economics of labor migration, livelihood perspectives in development studies and transnational perspectives in migration studies – which share several though as yet unobserved conceptual parallels – this paper elaborates the contours of a conceptual framework that simultaneously integrates agency and structure perspectives and is therefore able to account for the heterogeneous nature of migration-development interactions. The resulting perspective reveals the naivety of recent views celebrating migration as self-help development “from below”. These views are largely ideologically driven and shift the attention away from structural constraints and the vital role of states in shaping favorable conditions for positive development impacts of migration to occur.
As migration increases around the world, international organisations as well as states seek ever tighter mechanisms of regulatio n and control over workers, asylum-seekers, and refugees. These forceful, transnational attempts to manage free movement in the interests of economic growth and social engineering inspire in response a radical defence of global social justice and equality – and an end to all restrictions on migration. An Italian call to action against the G8 summit, arguing that migration is the new ghost haunting the world, contained an important truth. For at the core of People Flow today is the underlying social challenge of no less an event than the birth of a globally -mobile world proletariat. In its most extreme form, the tension between the right to free movement and the nation states' c laim to defend their borders and control access to their territory is quite simply a matter of life and death. Moreover, what happens on the ground is no coincidence, but a mirror-reflection of the discussion over migration taking place on the international stage, and now represented in the People Flow debate initiated by Demos / openDemocracy. In that discussion, American policy advisors have been coming to appreciate the approach of a conservative French thinker and Le Figaro essayist who has helped them prepare the ground for a 'militarisation of migration control'.
This article introduces a concept of `cultural violence', and can be seen as a follow-up of the author's introduction of the concept of `structural violence' over 20 years ago (Galtung, 1969). `Cultural violence' is defined here as any aspect of a culture that can be used to legitimize violence in its direct or structural form. Symbolic violence built into a culture does not kill or maim like direct violence or the violence built into the structure. However, it is used to legitimize either or both, as for instance in the theory of a Herrenvolk, or a superior race. The relations between direct, structural and cultural violence are explored, using a violence triangle and a violence strata image, with various types of casual flows. Examples of cultural violence are indicated, using a division of culture into religion and ideology, art and language, and empirical and formal science. The theory of cultural violence is then related to two basic points in Gandhism, the doctrines of unity of life and of unity of means and ends. Finally, the inclusion of culture as a major focus of peace research is seen not only as deepening the quest for peace, but also as a possible contribution to the as yet non-existent general discipline of `culturology'.
This article focuses on the assumed relation between return migration, sustainability and development, in particular the role of NGO assistance and government policy herein. It is argued that a different approach to the relation between migration and development is needed both theoretically and policywise. Theoretically the need for a transnational approach based on the everyday epistemologies of refugees and their need for a sense of belonging is highlighted. Building on this, the article emphasises the importance of defining sustainability of return through the use of the concept of mixed embeddedness, and the different factors that influence this embeddedness. Policywise the current convenient application of the Siamese twins, Migration and Development, to involuntarily return is strongly criticised. In doing so the inconsistencies in governmental policy are emphasised. Lastly, the article calls for a more cautious way of linking migration and development, both by NGOs and governments.