Immigration

IMMIGRATION IS A historical phenomenon, although it did assume some added characteristics after World War II. The simple portrayal of immigration is the movement of people who desire better life opportunities outside their place of origin. This definition comes with the stereotyping of the traditional actors involved in the process of migration, such as the sending country, the receiving country, and the socioeconomic migrant as opposed to the refugee. The catchword of globalization alerts us to some of the new conditions that were conducive for the novel shape of contemporary migration flows. In this altered context, however, one can also depict a strong undercurrent that portrays immigration at the global scale as a polarized affair: The massive movement of humans across international borders has come to be regarded as one of the most intractable problems by affluent, Western democracies, especially in the post-Berlin Wall era.

Furthermore, since the events of September 11, 2001, international migration and, in particular, immigration, assumed the status of a major security issue. This impending sense of crisis is compounded by the fact that international migration has both voluntary and forced aspects, as well as a large clandestine part to it that almost overshadows its legal and legitimate dimensions. Since the early 1990s, along with the adoption of draconian measures to protect national borders, humanitarian obligations such as those towards refugees and the displaced have gradually been pushed to the back burner as a result.

Immigration is further defined as the voluntary movement of residents of one country into another country for a long-term or permanent duration. Although some scholars wish to include internal migration in this definition, particularly movements from rural to urban areas, immigration is by and large understood as an interstate movement of peoples. It is also acknowledged that opportunities for voluntary migration for the citizens of developing and underdeveloped countries are limited, while globally, migrants leaving these countries constitute the largest category.

Immigration includes the movement of temporary workers, refugees, and clandestine and unauthorized migrants as well as permanent and legal immigrants. One explanation for this rather unwanted variety is related to the imbalances in wealth and resources that divide the north from the south in the global context. In this framework, Europe and North America emerge as the affluent “promised land” for those who have to take the flight for survival. The continents of Asia, South America, and Africa are thus painted with wide brush strokes in the image of poverty, backwardness, and anti-(Western) civilization. The language of push and pull factors traditionally used to explain migratory flows have thus become pointers that indicate the steady outpour of peoples to the West from the rest of the globe, aided further by environmental crises, civil wars, famines, and other kinds of scarcities that affect the poor masses.

In response, during the last two decades, academic literature on migration moved closer to the human/international security and sociopolitical as well as economic stability frame of analysis. The dominant conviction among Western nations is that unless effective, albeit drastic, countermeasures are adopted, immigration will substantially change the makeup of the receiving societies and turn them into “alien nations,” according to Peter Brimelow (1995). In this debate, Western nations are seen as fragile lifeboats unduly towing the economy of the entire world and producing [Page 234]the wealth for all to consume. Accordingly, if they were to shoulder the burden of underclasses arriving at their door as unwanted immigrants, their ability to produce, invent, and pioneer further progress would be severely curtailed.

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