From Detention to Integration: Changing Forms of European Extraterritorial Control of Forced Migration in Ukraine

• In Event: 549 - Section on International Migration Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 16. Refugees and Displaced Persons

Abstract

Countries of immigration—old and new—have developed a vast array of migration control methods such as detention and deportation, as well as those that prevent the arrival of potential refugees on their territory to begin with. Migration scholars in Europe and Australia have paid increasing attention to how countries control migration and deter asylum not only within and at their borders, but also from afar (Betts 2009; Huysmans 2006; Lavenex 2006; Pickering and Weber 2014; Weber 2013; Sterkx 2008;). Refugee studies has investigated how humanitarian aid regimes seek to contain forced migrants in camps and growing cities in sub-Saharran Africa, the Middle East, and the Asian subcontinent (Agier 2012; Verdirame and Harrell-Bond 2005; Zetter 2007). Yet, studies of immigration control and refugees rarely converge to look at the intersection of humanitarian policy and immigration controls of developed countries. Using an institutional ethnography of an international program in Ukraine, this case study seeks to fill this gap, exploring the consequences of securitization of migration in this new destination and gateway to the European Union. Using field interviews with refugees, officials, and advocates and analysis of an EU-funded UNHCR integration policy in 2008-2016, this paper points to how and when international humanitarian policy may be marshaled as part of extraterritorial migration control to contain refugees in insecure conditions in buffer countries to major receiving states.

Author

• Raphi Rechitsky, National University