Resisting Migration Injustice Across Borders

• In Event: The Poor's Privilege

Abstract

Migrants and their allies resist the increasing securitization of immigration policy and the criminalization of immigrants. Prominent recent examples include the Stansted 15, convicted in the UK of blocking a deportation flight, Cédrik Herrou, who defied French law to assist refugees, activists prosecuted by the Greek authorities for rescuing migrants at sea, and faith-based leaders arrested in Portland, Oregon for occupying ICE. Though their actions are often not perceived as resistance, millions of migrants register their protest by evading state border controls every year.
Political theorists have begun to explore the grounds for resistance to unjust immigration policies, but have devoted little attention to the appropriate site of resistance. Most resistance is focused on local events (e.g., by offering sanctuary or by disrupting deportations) or national (e.g., by protesting state policies and practices or by illicitly crossing borders). But resistance to unjust national or local immigration policies cannot achieve migration justice on its own. It leaves untouched the many ways in which migration policies are externalized (for example, when Europe offshores the interception and detention of migrants to Libya). Migration is necessarily transnational and international. Moreover, migration injustice is grounded in legal and social categories that transcend borders.
Along with the practical challenges of transnational resistance, moral questions arise about the responsibility for migration injustice and the legitimacy of intervening abroad. Nonetheless, the duties to resist unjust migration policies are stronger and broader than commonly recognized. Many of us are implicated in upholding migration institutions that systematically harm millions of people. With this comes a duty to participate in cross-border activism and to resist international institutions that contribute to migration injustice.

Author

• Alexander Sager, Portland State University