James Hampshire

Dreaming of Seamless Borders: ICTs and the Pre-Emptive Governance of Mobility in Europe

A recent trend in migration policy in Europe is the increased use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for border control purposes. A growing academic literature explains the digitisation of border controls as an instance of the post-9/11 securitisation of migration policy. This paper re-examines why European states are digitising their border controls, and then explores how ‘pre-emptive mobility governance’ works. Although security imperatives play a role in accelerating digitisation, a securitisation framing obscures continuities with pre-9/11 practices and underplays other policy drivers. Pre-emptive mobility governance is best characterised as a digital-era version of ‘remote control’, and is shaped by other organisational and political rationales—first, instrumental beliefs about the efficiency gains of border technologies; second, their symbolic role in the context of the domestic politicisation of immigration. The paper then considers how ICTs are reshaping the tools of mobility governance, enabling three distinct modes of pre-emptive detection and effect.

New Administration, New Immigration Regime: Do Parties Matter After All? A UK Case Study

Research on the impact of parties on public policy, and on immigration policy in particular, often finds limited evidence of partisan influence. In this paper, we examine immigration policy-making in the UK coalition government. Our case provides evidence that parties in government can have more of an impact on policy than previous studies acknowledge, but this only becomes apparent when we open up the ‘black box’ between election outcomes and policy outputs. By examining how, when and why election pledges are turned into government policies, we show that partisan influence depends not only on dynamics between the coalition partners, but how these dynamics interact with interdepartmental conflicts and lobbying by organised interests. In-depth process tracing allows us to see these complex dynamics, which easily get lost in large-n comparisons of pledges and outputs, let alone outcomes.

Europe's Migration Crisis

There has been a huge increase in the numbers of migrants seeking refuge in Europe. James Hampshire examines the development of a humanitarian and a political crisis within the European Union and assesses the chances of a long-term solution.

Becoming citizens: naturalization in the liberal state

Liberal states adopt widely varying attitudes and policies towards foreign residents who apply to become citizens. Some encourage naturalization and make it relatively easy, while others set high barriers and, in some cases, make it all but impossible. This diversity of practice raises several normative questions. What can be expected of people who want to become citizens? What sort of requirements can be made? And what normative principles are relevant in determining these matters?

Ideas and agency in immigration policy: A discursive institutionalist approach

Political science literature tends to depict the role of ideas in policy in two distinct ways: ideas are seen as strategic tools mobilised by agents to achieve pre-given preferences; or as structures imposing constraints on what is considered legitimate or feasible. Discursive institutionalism seeks to combine these insights, suggesting that while actors are indeed constrained by deeply entrenched ideas, they nonetheless enjoy some autonomy in selecting and combining ideas. This article seeks to further develop this approach in two ways. First, we identify three discursive strategies through which policy actors can selectively mobilise ideas: they may foreground one level over others; exploit ambivalence in public philosophies; or link programme ideas over time by invoking ‘policy legacies’. Second, we elucidate the mechanisms through which such strategic selections can in turn modify existing public philosophies and programme ideas, thereby influencing policy change. We examine these claims by comparing discourse on immigration policy liberalisation in Germany and the UK between 2000-2008. We find evidence of all three discursive strategies. Moreover, we show how in the German case these discursive representations led to longer-term adjustments in underlying programme ideas and public philosophies on immigration.

European migration governance since the Lisbon treaty: introduction to the special issue

It is 16 years since European heads of state gathered for the 1999 summit meeting at Tampere, Finland, and agreed to create a common asylum and migration policy.1 Before Tampere, cooperation on mig...

Ideas and Agency in Immigration Policy

Political science literature tends to depict the role of ideas in policy in two distinct ways: ideas are seen as strategic tools mobilised by agents to achieve pre-given preferences; or as structures imposing constraints on what is considered legitimate or feasible. Discursive institutionalism seeks to combine these insights, suggesting that while actors are indeed constrained by deeply entrenched ideas, they nonetheless enjoy some autonomy in selecting and combining ideas. This article seeks to further develop this approach in two ways. First, we identify three discursive strategies through which policy actors can selectively mobilise ideas: they may foreground one level over others; exploit ambivalence in public philosophies; or link programme ideas over time by invoking ‘policy legacies’. Second, we elucidate the mechanisms through which such strategic selections can in turn modify existing public philosophies and programme ideas, thereby influencing policy change. We examine these claims by comparing discourse on immigration policy liberalisation in Germany and the UK between 2000-2008. We find evidence of all three discursive strategies. Moreover, we show how in the German case these discursive representations led to longer-term adjustments in underlying programme ideas and public philosophies on immigration.

Liberalism and Citizenship Acquisition: How Easy Should Naturalisation Be?

Naturalisation policies define the limits of the liberal state in the sense that they stipulate the requirements which foreigners must meet if they wish to become full members of the liberal polity. In this article I explore the normative issues surrounding such policies. I first analyse liberal arguments that support easy naturalisation after a period of residency, and then nationalist arguments that citizenship should only be granted to those who demonstrate assimilation to the national culture. The nationalist argument is rejected on both normative and empirical grounds. The liberal minimalist argument is found to be compelling, but it is argued that there are resources within liberal theories of citizenship which support more demanding naturalisation policies. The article advances a conception of liberal citizenship based on the ideas of liberal virtue and civic competence and then considers the implications of this for naturalisation.

Speaking with one voice? The European Union's global approach to migration and mobility and the limits of international migration cooperation

ABSTRACT Migration is comparatively weakly regulated at the international level. States are reluctant to cede sovereignty over international migration and negotiations between rich destination countries in the north and sending countries in the south must overcome asymmetries of interests. For this reason, issue-linkage is typically required to achieve north–south cooperation. This paper examines the European Unions (EU) Global Approach to Migration and Mobility as a framework for international migration cooperation. The paper argues that institutional complexity and political dynamics internal to the EU limit its capacity to reach agreement with third countries. Three internal factors are examined: contrasting approaches of the Commission and Council to the external dimension; diversity of member states’ interests in migration policy; and the different policy agendas of the European agencies. These factors result in an approach to external migration relations that is limited in scope and characterised by variable participation. Despite its apparent potential to leverage agreements from third countries, the EU emerges as an unpromising vehicle for international migration cooperation.

An Emigrant Nation without an Emigrant Policy: The Curious Case of Britain

During the 2010 UK general election campaign, David Cameron famously made a promise to cut net migration from ‘hundreds of thousands’ to ‘tens of thousands’ by 2015. In the context of increasingly politicized debates about immigration, the electoral logic of this commitment was not difficult to divine, but its feasibility was always in question. Leaving aside economic or moral justifications, the problem with a promise to reduce net migration is that it is calculated by taking inflows, over which the government has only partial control, and subtracting outflows, over which it has none. On the one hand, the government is unable to control the number of European Union (EU) citizens exercising their free movement rights, who make up a significant proportion of immigrants (though luckily for them this number has been decreasing during the economic crisis); on the other hand, the government is almost wholly unable to influence emigration. Short of persecuting its citizens or running its economy into the ground, no democratic government is able to regulate the number of people who choose to leave.1 Thus the focus on net migration, rather than immigration, is a curious hostage to fortune.