Strategic (Non)Enforcement: State Responses to Migration

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Over the past three decades, global immigration has increased substantially. In 2017, there were 258 million migrants, marking a nearly 70% increase from the same figure in 1990. People’s increasing mobility has raised new issues concerning how states treat noncitizens living within their borders as well as their citizens living abroad. These policy decisions are not determined in a vacuum. International organizations (IOs) often pressure states to enact more inclusive policies toward migrant groups, while domestic political parties and movements have risen to counter these liberal pressures. In line with the 2019 APSA theme, “Populism and Privilege,” many of these domestic groups have centered their platforms on anti-immigration agendas. This panel focuses on these opposing pressures and asks: How do states treat their migrant groups? What is the logic behind the policies states adopt, implement, and enforce toward different migrant groups?

Much of the existing literature focuses on these questions in advanced industrial democracies. However, this panel innovates by examining migration and citizenship both in and beyond these states. The papers bring work on advanced industrial democracies into dialogue with the politics surrounding these issues in less developed and less democratic contexts, like those in Africa and the Middle East, which consistently host the largest share of forcibly displaced peoples. These papers contribute to the emerging literature on the political dynamics surrounding migration beyond wealthy democracies and enrich existing work with new insights and hypotheses.

First, Elizabeth Iams Wellman’s paper analyzes the role of IOs in the enforcement and facilitation of non-resident citizens exercising their right to vote in home-country elections. Unlike other policies associated with democratization and inclusion, IOs have been relatively silent on whether and how states should extend voting to their citizens living abroad. However, behind the scenes, IOs are increasingly involved in the implementation of external voting, particularly in transitional electoral contexts. Wellman combines qualitative case studies on recent elections in Mali and Libya, as well as quantitative analysis of an original dataset of all African national executive and legislative elections from 1990–2015, to explore when and how IOs assist diaspora voting.

Next, Kimberly Morgan’s paper examines the long period of immigration law non-enforcement in Western Europe in the post-World War II decades. This period witnessed large-scale migration to Europe from current or former colonies as well as other less developed countries, and most migrants came in without authorization to work and reside. Yet, politicians in most countries were largely silent about the undocumented immigrants in their societies, and the issue remained off the political agenda. Morgan engages a qualitative historical analysis of Western Europe’s (non)enforcement of immigration law and finds that toleration of irregular migration hinged on tacit elite agreements not to exploit the issue for political gain.

Lillian Frost follows this focus on policy enforcement by examining variations in the rights states grant to different protracted refugee groups over time. She engages process tracing on Jordan’s policies toward different Palestinian refugee groups since 1950. Using these cases, she focuses on when and why these policies’ legal content has often contradicted their enforcement in practice. She argues that opposing pressures from a state’s largest single-country foreign donor and most influential domestic security force leaders explain when a policy’s enforcement will contradict its content—a strategy she describes as intentional ambiguity.

Similarly, Kelsey Norman analyzes state policies toward migrants in transit-turned-host countries in the Mediterranean, where de facto local integration has become widespread for refugees and irregular migrants in these states—despite apparent host government opposition and de jure restrictions. She uses qualitative case studies of Egypt, Morocco, Turkey, and Lebanon to assess how migrants and refugees contextualize practices of informality in terms of what is permissible and forbidden in rapidly changing and securitized host state environments. Norman finds that migrants and refugees often secure access to livelihoods, healthcare, education, and even political activities through state-sanctioned practices of informality, regardless of de jure restrictions.

These papers take creative approaches to theorizing state migration policymaking and to examining policy implementation and enforcement. They study state treatment of and engagement with emigrants, irregular migrants, refugees, and economic migrants in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. In addition, they engage different methodological approaches and timelines to assess the relationship between populism, privilege, migration, and citizenship in diverse contexts.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 52: Migration and Citizenship

Individual Presentations

• International Organizations and the Globalization of National Elections - Elizabeth Iams Wellman, Princeton University

• Tolerating Irregular Migration: Immigration Non-Enforcement in Western Europe - Kimberly J. Morgan, George Washington University

• Intentional Ambiguity: State (Non)Enforcement of Citizenship Policies - Lillian Frost, George Washington University

• The Consequences of Indifference for Migrant and Refugee Populations - Kelsey P. Norman, Rice University

Chair

• Katrina Burgess Tufts University

Discussants

• Jeannette Money University of California, Davis

• Yang-Yang Zhou Princeton University