Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c47g7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T22:42:56.860Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Limits of Unilateral Migration Control: Deportation and Inter-state Cooperation1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Antje Ellermann
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Despite the recent proliferation of policy initiatives designed to curb illegal immigration, advanced industrialized states have made little headway towards the goal of effective migration control. Examining the case of deportation in Germany and the European Union, this article contends that one of the most fundamental reasons underlying this failure is a unilateral policy bias that fails to take into account two related conditions. First, policies of migration control directly and substantially impinge upon the interests of foreign governments. Secondly, the cooperation of foreign officials is an essential condition for policy implementation. To the extent that they disregard these basic conditions, then, migration control policies are bound to fail. By examining the implementation of deportation policy, the article illustrates the limited efficacy of control measures that are dominated by the interests of advanced industrialized states to the exclusion of the concerns of foreign governments.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , 2008 , pp. 168 - 189
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2008.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

The author gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Social Science Research Council's International Migration Programme that funded the fieldwork this article draws on. For their constructive comments on earlier drafts of this article I thank the organizers and participants of the workshop ‘The Refugee in Trans/National Politics and Society’ at the Refugee Studies Centre, Oxford University.

References

2 ‘Transitabkommen’, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 9 January 2003, p. 12.Google Scholar

3 ‘Internationale Kooperation Ist Unumgänglich’, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 5 March 2003, p. 13.Google Scholar

4 Joppke, Christian, ‘Why Liberal States Accept Unwanted Immigration’, World Politics, 50 (1988), pp. 266–93;CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 James F. Hollifield, Immigrants, Markets, and States, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1992; Yasemin Nuhoglu Soysal, Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1994.Google Scholar

6 Freeman, Gary P., ‘Can Liberal States Control Unwanted Migration’, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 534 (1994), pp. 17–30;CrossRefGoogle Scholar James G. Gimpel and James R. Edwards, The Congressional Politics of Immigration Reform, Boston, Allyn and Bacon, 1999.

7 Ellermann, Antje, ‘Coercive Capacity and the Politics of Implementation: Deportation in Germany and the United States’, Comparative Political Studies, 38: 10 (2005), pp. 1219–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Saskia Sassen, ‘The De Facto Transnationalizing of Immigration Policy’, in Christian Joppke (ed.), Challenge to the Nation-State: Immigration in Western Europe and the United States, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 49–85.Google Scholar

9 For some exceptions, see Christopher Mitchell, Western Hemisphere Immigration and United States Foreign Policy, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania University Press, 1992; Aristide R. Zolberg, ‘From Invitation to Interdiction: U.S. Foreign Policy and Immigration since 1945’, in Michael S. Teitelbaum and Myron Weiner (eds), Threatened Peoples, Threatened Borders: World Migration and U.S. Policy, New York, W.W. Norton, pp. 117–59; Sandra Lavenex and Emek Uçarer (eds), Migration and the Externalities of European Integration, Lanham: Lexington Books, 2002.Google Scholar

10 Ibid.Google Scholar

11 International Organization for Migration, ‘International Migration Law’, available at http://www.iom.int/jahia/page563.html.Google Scholar

12 Cerstin Sander, ‘Migrant Remittances to Developing Countries’, available at http://www.dai.com/pdf/Migrant_Remittances_to_Developing_Countries.pdf.Google Scholar

13 Data obtained from the Federal Ministry of the Interior, Berlin, and the Federal Border Police, Koblenz.Google Scholar

14 Answer of the Federal Ministry of the Interior to enquiry by parliamentarian Ulla Jelpke (PDS), 15 March 2002, Bundestags-Drucksache 14/8560, http://dip.bundestag.de/btd/14/085/1408560.pdf.Google Scholar

15 Thorsten Böhling, ‘Abschiebungshindernisse Heute: Bürokratie, Zuständigkeiten und Desinteresse!’, paper presented at the 10th Migrationspolitisches Forum, Berlin, 2001.Google Scholar

16 Ibid.Google Scholar

17 Personal interview, senior civil servant, interior ministry Baden-Württemberg, Stuttgart, 7 January 2002.Google Scholar

18 Gregor Noll, Rejected Asylum Seekers: The Problem of Return, Geneva, UNHCR, Center for Documentation and Research, 1999, p. 15.Google Scholar

19 Böhling, ‘Abschiebungshindernisse Heute’.Google Scholar

20 With the date at which the Act took effect: Romania (1992, 1999), Bulgaria (1994), Poland (1994), Czech Republic (1995), Vietnam (1995), Switzerland (1996), Croatia (1997), Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1997), Algeria (signed in 1997), Austria (1998), Morocco (1998), Hungary (1999), Estonia (1999), Latvia (1999), Lithuania (2000), Hong Kong (2001).Google Scholar

21 Reermann, Olaf, ‘Readmission Agreeements’, in Hiroshi Motomura (ed.), Immigration Admissions: The Search for Workable Policies in Germany and the United States, Providence, Berghahn, 1997, pp. 121–45.Google Scholar

22 Noll, Rejected Asylum Seekers.Google Scholar

23 Personal interview, senior civil servant, federal ministry of the interior, Berlin, 13 November 2001.Google Scholar

24 Reermann, ‘Readmission Agreements’.Google Scholar

25 ‘Die Ungewissheit Beginnt von Neuem’, Die Tageszeitung, 30 March 1995, p. 5.Google Scholar

26 This account draws on monthly news abstracts published by the Europäisches Forum for Migrationsstudien (EMFS) at the University of Bamberg, available at http://web.uni-bamberg.de/~ba6ef3/serpre_e.htm.Google Scholar

27 ‘Vietnam Verzögert Rückführung’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 13 October 1998, p. 5.Google Scholar

28 Vietnam agreed to match this amount.Google Scholar

29 Noll, Rejected Asylum Seekers.Google Scholar

30 Personal interview, senior civil servant, interior ministry Baden-Württemberg, Stuttgart, 7 January 2002.Google Scholar

31 Jürgen König, ‘Rückkehr und Verbleib von Asylbewerbern und Flüchtlingen in Deutschland’, unpublished thesis, Bonn, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, 2000.Google Scholar

32 Reermann, Readmission Agreements.Google Scholar

33 Personal interview, director, regional immigration authority Eisenhüttenstadt, Brandenburg, 24 September 2001.Google Scholar

34 Ibid.Google Scholar

35 For a detailed account of human rights concerns, see Forschungsgesellschaft Flucht und Migration, Heft 2: Rumänien: Vor den Toren der Festung Europas, Berlin, Verlag der Buchläden, 1996, available at http://www.ffm-berlin.de/rumaenien.pdf.Google Scholar

36 ‘Romanian Gypsies Are Sceptical About Germany's Financial Help’, New York Times, 26 September 1992, p. 3.Google Scholar

37 Guiraudon, Virginie, ‘European Integration and Migration Policy: Vertical Policy-Making as Venue Shopping’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 38: 2 (2000), pp. 251–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 ‘Commission Recommends Exempting Romanian Citizens from Visa Requirements as from 2002’, EUROPA press releases rapid, 29 June 2001, reference IP/01/925, available at http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/01/925&format=HTML&aged=1&language=EN&guiLanguage=en.Google Scholar

39 Personal interview, regional immigration authority, Bielefeld, North-Rhine Westphalia, 1 February 2002.Google Scholar

40 Deportation officer, municipal foreigner authority, district Ostprignitz-Ruppin, Brandenburg, 27 November 2001.Google Scholar

41 Senior federal civil servant, Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, Nuremberg, 18 January 2002.Google Scholar

42 Personal interview, senior civil servant working on issues of European cooperation, Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, Nuremberg, 18 January 2002.Google Scholar

43 Commission of the European Communities, ‘Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament on a Community Return Policy on Illegal Residents’, COM(2002) 564 final.Google Scholar

44 van Selm, Joanne, ‘Immigration and Asylum or Foreign Policy: The EU's Approach to Migrants and their Countries of Origin’, in Emek Uçarer (ed.), Migration and the Externalities of European Integration, New York, Lexington Books, 2002, pp. 143–60.Google Scholar

45 Council of the European Union, ‘High-Level Working Group on Asylum and Migration: Report to the European Council in Nice’, 13993/00.Google Scholar

46 Sandra Lavenex, ‘EU Trade Policy and Immigration Control’, in Uçarer, Migration and Externalities of European Integration, pp. 161–78.Google Scholar

47 Council of the European Union, ‘Proposal for a Return Action Programme’, 14673/02, pp. 10, 14.Google Scholar

48 Ibid., p. 27. Moreover, specific reference is made to the negotiation of agreements with Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, Macao, Morocco, Pakistan, Russia, Ukraine, Albania, Algeria and Turkey.Google Scholar

49 Council of the European Union, ‘Draft Council Conclusions: Co-operation with Third Countries of Origin and Transit to Jointly Combat Illegal Immigration’, 9917/3/02 REV 3.Google Scholar

50 ‘Austrian, Portuguese Leaders Differ on EU Immigration Proposal’, Agence France Presse, 20 June 2002.Google Scholar

51 Commission of the European Communities, ‘Green Paper on a Community Return Policy on Illegal Residents’, 2002, 4.1.1.Google Scholar

52 Commission of the European Communities, ‘Commission Staff Working Paper: Intensified Cooperation on the Management of Migration Flows with Third Countries. Report by the Commission's Services on the Implementation of the Council Conclusions on Intensified Co-operation on the Management of Migration Flows with Third Countries of 18 November 2002’, SEC(2003) 815, 2.7.Google Scholar

53 Boswell, Christina, ‘The External Dimension of EU Immigration and Asylum Policy’, International Affairs, 79: 3 (2003), pp. 619–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

54 Van Selm, ‘Immigration and Asylum or Foreign Policy’.Google Scholar

55 Commission of the European Communities, ‘Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament: Integrating Migration Issues in the European Union's Relations with Third Countries’, COM(2002) 703 final.Google Scholar