Archives - Groupe migrations et mobilités

Programme du séminaire 2014-2015

24 septembre 2015 (9h-18h, salle de conférences): Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the Middle East
Séminaire INTEGRIM

En partenariat avec MIGRINTER, Université de Poitiers

Forced migrations have usually been described as "spontaneous" migrations and analysed in terms of political and security constraints. But even refugee movements resulting from conflicts are often fashioned by previous migration flows and correlated network structures that are re-mobilised during the humanitarian crisis. Therefore, tracing a genealogy of mobilities in the Middle East will help better understand current forced migration processes and their connections with other forms of social organisation built over time in a regional area (commercial mobility, family strategies, pilgrimage, etc.) The distinction commonly made between forced migration and voluntary migration in the Middle East and elsewhere has already been criticised by a growing number of authors (Long: 2013, Richmond: 1994). In the case of “refugee” category, a huge diversity of social, legal and economic statuses and personal backgrounds coexist within such a category (Malkki: 1995, Marx: 1990). Early attempts to build a general theoretical model of refugee issues have focused mainly on push factors to explain refugee movements (Kunz, 1973). Studies have also emphasised the role of international relations in the production of refugee flows (Loescher, 1990). If push factors as well as international politics are key issues for the understanding of refugee movements, little attention has so far been paid to dynamics generated by the refugees themselves. Seteney Shami (1993) suggests that "displacement often leads to labour migration as a coping strategy". But conversely, as will also be shown, labour migration may also mould and structure forced displacement patterns of dispersion and settlement.
The questioning of the dichotomy between forced and voluntary migrations is even more interesting in the Middle East as neither Jordan, Lebanon Iraq nor Syria, are not signatories of the Geneva Convention on Refugees. The refugee category (with the exception of Palestinians who are recognised as refugees in the state where they have their permanent residency) does not exist as such. There is often a confusion in the field of forced migration between legal categories (refugees, asylum seekers, etc.) and those relating to the analysis of migration (Zetter, 2007). This project aims to re-examine the production categories of asylum in an area outside the Convention (Jordan, Lebanon) and one signatory (Turkey) from three unusual situations, the Syrians, the Iraqis and the Palestinians from Syria.
 
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17/03/2015 (CERI, salle Jean Monnet:17h00-19h00): Navigating Liberal Constraints in the EU. Two Case Studies of Migration Policy Initiatives Ten Years Apart avec Liza Schuster, City University of London. Discutante: Helene Thiollet, Sciences Po-CERI.

26/03/2015 (CERI, salle du conseil:12h30-14h30): Migration in the United States in perspective avec James Hollifield, Southern Methodist University. Discutant: James COHEN, Université Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle.

31/03/2015 (CERI, salle du conseil:12h30-14h30): The Emigration of Skilled Middle Classes in Mexico: Desires Related to Subjective Well-being avec Camelia Tigau, Université nationale autonome du Mexique (UNAM), auteur de Riesgos de la fuga de cerebros en México: construcción mediática, posturas gubernamentales y expectativas de los migrantes. CISAN – UNAM (2013),172 pgs.Discutant: Thibaut Jaulin, Sciences Po-CERI

08/04/2015 (CERI, salle Jean Monnet, 17h00-19h00): White Supremacy, Ethnic Projects and the National Imaginary avec Vilna Bashi Treitler, Professor, Baruch College, City University of New York. Discutante : Audrey Célestine, Université de Lille 3

14/04/2015 (CERI, salle Jean Monnet: 10h00-12h00): Redefining the Political Sociology of International Migration: Mechanisms of Policy Diffusion avec David Fitzgerald, Associate Professor of Sociology, Gildred Chair in U.S.-Mexican Relations, UCSD and Co-Director, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies.
 
Scholars of international migration increasingly analyze the role of states in shaping migration flows and the determinants of those state policies. However, explaining policies simply by examining processes within a particular country or comparing policies in different countries without examining their influences on each other would miss the essential role played by “policy convergence”, “transfer”, and “diffusion”. Institutionalist scholars seek to understand the mobility of policies across national and organizational units. Despite advances in understanding these processes, fundamental questions remain about the mechanisms and conditions under which they operate and the relative causal weight of diffusion as an explanation for policy variation. This paper draws on an analysis of ethnic selection in immigration and nationality laws in 22 countries in the Western Hemisphere from 1790-2010, as well as on country and international organization case studies, to make three major contributions to a political sociology of immigration policy diffusion. First, the construction of an immigration policy database of unprecedented temporal and geographic scope is combined with in-depth archival work. This methodology reveals broad patterns of policy diffusion and a fine-grained assessment of the strength of distinct mechanisms of diffusion relative to each other. Second, it show cycles of interaction between external influences on policies and processes that were internal to the nation-state, rather than privileging a priori the importance of either diffusion or internal factors. In doing so, it establishes the foreign policy conditions under which diffusion tends to be more consequential for policymaking. Third, by analyzing power asymmetries as an axis that cuts across all mechanisms of diffusion, it identifies a little-known mechanism of effective policy leverage by weaker states and establishes the conditions under which this mechanism is most likely to operate.


29/04/2015 (CERI, salle Jean Monnet: 17h00-19h00): Les discriminations par les institutions d'autorité : France, Royaume Uni, Etats-Unis avec Sophie Body-Gendrot, Université Sorbonne Paris IV, à l'occasion de la parution de Policing the Inner City in France, Britain, and the US, Palgrave, December 2014.

17/06/2015 (CERI, salle du conseil, 17h00-19h00): Dommages collatéraux aéroportuaires:la non-admission et les risques de l’après retour à l’ère du contrôle migratoire internalisé avec Maybritt Jill Alpes, Postdoctoral Researcher "Migration Law as Family Matter", VU University Amsterdam. Discutant : Thibaut Jaulin, Boursier Marie Curie, Sciences Po-CERI.

Cette présentation porte sur les flux migratoires et les subjectivités à l’ère de la globalisation, et met en évidence l'imbrication entre l'externalisation et l’internalisation du contrôle des frontières. À partir du cas du Cameroun, l’enquête montre comment ces connexions aboutissent à la criminalisation de l'émigration. Les aspirants à la migration sont poursuivis par la justice si leur projet de départ ne respecte pas les exigences des pays d’immigration. Les risques de retour créent de nouvelles subjectivités post-coloniales, tout en étant également produits par les configurations subjectives des agents de l'Etat des pays du Sud. Cette présentation est basée sur des recherches menées à Douala entre novembre 2013 et janvier 2014 : entretiens avec les agents de contrôle à l'aéroport international, enquête dans une prison, étude de la jurisprudence et des registres de police, et entrevues avec des Camerounais rapatriés. La présentation montre comment les efforts visant à lutter contre la fraude alimentent la corruption dans les réseaux sociaux des rapatriés, de sorte que, au lieu de recevoir des envois de fonds, les familles dans les pays d'émigration doivent mobiliser des ressources financières afin de libérer les rapatriés des postes de police ou de la prison.