The general problem of the morality of borders is to determine what kind of borders liberal democracies ought to have. This in turn raises two particular problems. First to determine the nature of states entitlement to control the administration of political and territorial borders and second, to determine what constitutes to exercise this entitlement in fair terms. This thesis is devoted to the first particular problem. I distinguish two kinds of approaches to legitimate border control: justice-based accounts and legitimacy oriented accounts. I argue that justice-based accounts are inappropriate to frame and address the legitimacy problem of borders because they typically merely assume that a set of institutions apply to those over whom coercion is exercised. But these accounts never provide an explanation about why we (and not others) have legitimate rights over territorial borders. This standard objection shows that these views fail to reach the boundary problem, but it does not say why. In this thesis I advance an explanation. I say that justice-based accounts are unfit to address problems of borders. The idea is that justice-based is a simplified account tailored to the problem of public justification, but this simplification has removed the traits relevant to reach the boundary problem. In contrast I introduced legitimacy-oriented accounts of borders. When legitimacy is not about justice and the problem of public justification of coercion, it is about integrity and the assessment of political power from the point of view of distinct political virtues such as fairness, democratic participation, due process, and justice. Legitimacy as integrity performs a division of labour between distinct conceptions of legitimacy in order to justify political power as a whole including the kind of power that borders exercise. But integrity of international basic institutions like borders point out to porous borders as the appropriate case for liberal democracies.

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Fine Arts / Master / Master of Philosophy

This thesis examines discussions within the British government held about immigration from the Commonwealth in the period between 1948 and 1964 and clarifies the role the government actors played. The introduction of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1962 is an important event in British postwar history so that the political developments leading to the Act have been well researched. However, previous works on this topic have emphasised the role played by Parliament, political parties and politicians in the policy process, while they have neglected the role of non-political actors. Recognising this bias in research, this thesis clarifies the important and indispensable role played by civil servants in the policy process on Commonwealth immigration during this period. Through intensive archival research, in particular on British government documents deposited in the Public Record Office at Kew, this thesis chronologically analyses the policy process on Commonwealth immigration and the role major actors played there. Departmental files which have not been intensively studied so far are surveyed in depth to disclose the discussions among civil servants and their impact on policy development. In the policy process from 1948 to 1964 a small circle of policy experts was formed within the government, consisting of civil servants, in particular from the Home Office, the Colonial Office, the Commonwealth Relations Office and the Ministry of Labour. This policy community worked to exclude political pressure exercised from outside of the government on the one hand and to delineate the government view of, and policy options for, Commonwealth immigration on the other hand. As a result, the social consequences of immigration were much emphasised and restrictive policy measures were consistently sought. This thesis shows that civil servants, whose positions within the government were assured by the existence of such a closed policy community, played a substantial part in the policy process on Commonwealth immigration.

This thesis examines grassroots mobilisations in France and England in support of children and families with no right to remain on the territory. It aims to provide a better understanding of the influence of 'childhood' as a social concept and 'the child' as a social actor on social mobilisations in support of 'non-status' children. It also intends to analyse the impact of national contexts on mobilisations. The study is comparative in scope and relies on the analysis of 1,272 claims made in newspapers and 65 interviews with grassroots campaigners. The thesis first maps the field of contention as it applies to 'non-status' children. It then goes on to investigate actors' pathways into campaigning and their reasons for getting involved and sustaining involvement. It finally considers actors' conscious work to attract and mobilise bystanders. This thesis shows that the presence of children considerably affected campaigning activities. First, children played an important role as key recruiting agents and influential collective actors. Second, childhood as a concept constituted a powerful mobilising factor, and campaigners strategically used the image of the child as innocent and vulnerable when making claims. Overall, mobilisations in support of 'non-status' children and families in France and England presented many similarities, including their strong emotional component and the central role of schools. However, national contexts also played a role in enabling or constraining mobilisations. I identify both structural and discursive differences between the French and English contexts which considerably affected campaigns. In particular, structural differences in the implementation of migration policies had a noticeable effect on campaigners' perceived ability to exert change. Furthermore, mobilisations in France grew into a national network able and willing to make political claims. By contrast, mobilisations in England remained isolated and rarely adopted a political stance, focusing instead on the individual child or family.

Integrativeness (Gardner, 2001) and acculturation (Schumann, 1986) have been influential concepts in the field of second language acquisition (SLA), which propose that second language (L2) learners’ social-psychological identification with the target language (TL) community is essential for successful SLA. The present study ventures to incorporate theories from two separate fields: SLA which has expanded its research scope from cognitive dimensions to social dimensions since the 1990s, and intercultural communication which provides abundant insights into the social integration and identity formation of newcomers in intercultural settings. I explored and co-constructed the hermeneutical meanings which two Japanese women in Britain attached to integration and identity formation, and how such meanings changed over two years. Semi-structured interviews, participant observations, participant diaries, and other supplementary methods (research diaries, e-mails and recordings) were used to collect qualitative data. I played an active role in co-constructing their hermeneutical meanings of interacting with other people in the UK which is presented as a narrative case study. Positioned in a holistic sociocultural perspective, the current research poses questions on fragmentarily defined cognitive constructs, integrativeness and acculturation, and proposes that identification is nurtured and developed through interaction in which one can identify commonalities with one’s interlocutors as individuals, but not solely because of their cultural, ethnic or linguistic affiliations. The participants’ cultural-ethnic identity was often ‘betwixt and between’ in that they felt different from both British and Japanese people who lacked intercultural experience. Such vulnerability of their cultural-ethnic identity was offset by developing a sense of belonging through other social identities (e.g. family, religion) in which mutual acceptance with other members of a community was established. Participants’ cultural-ethnic identity seemed dormant when it was unharmed, but it emerged in the forefront and became the core identity when it was threatened. The participants’ experience of alienation or foreignness triggered them to seek empathetic relationships with other people. This study confirms the importance of the networks formed among foreign nationals who speak English as a lingua franca (ELF), since their sense of comradeship is underpinned by empathy as ‘co-foreigners’ which provided emotional, social and practical support in their daily lives. This study seeks to benefit people who have crossed linguistic, cultural or ethnic boundaries, or people engaged in sending or accepting newcomers who have crossed such boundaries.

This thesis brings together three independent empirical essays which focus on the determinants of individual attitudes towards immigration and the determinants of migrant flows from developing countries to developed countries. The first essay looks at what happens to migrant flows from poor countries as they experience economic development. It examines the relationship between economic development in poor migrant-sending countries and migrant flows from those countries to developed countries, using the UK as a case study. The analysis in this essay relies on UK immigration data from 1973-2005 for 48 developing countries in Africa, Asia and Central and South America. The conclusion from this essay is that there is an inverse If-shape relationship between economic development and the migrant flows from developing countries to the UK, though this relationship is sensitive to aggregation of countries The second essay undertakes a comparative empirical analysis of the relative importance of the impact of economic and cultural concerns on individual attitudes towards immigration. Using data from the fourth round of the European Social Survey the study shows that there is no robust evidence to support the widely held view that economic concerns are more important than cultural concerns in shaping individual attitudes towards immigration. In the third essay a series of analyses are undertaken: first, to examine the extent to which attitudes towards immigration are determined by individual concerns about how immigration affects the welfare state; and second, to evaluate the individual characteristics that shape their subjective views regarding the effects of immigrants on the welfare state. With evidence based on the European Social Survey, the study finds that welfare state concerns are positive and robust determinants of individual attitudes towards predominantly unskilled immigration. It also finds that, older retired individuals are more likely than young or middle-aged individuals to have pessimistic views regarding the effects of immigrants on the welfare state. Hence they are also more likely to oppose immigration. By contrast, skilled individuals are more likely to have optimistic views and hence more likely to have pro-immigration attitudes than unskilled individuals.

In recent time efforts are observed in re-evaluating the linkage between economic development and international migration. The thesis can be considered as an attempt to add something to those efforts. In this thesis we mainly analyse the effects of competition among the countries in international labour market and effects of migration on the research activities of firms. As appeared, these two issues so far have not received much attention of economic literature. We analyse the above mentioned two issues in chapters 4, 5 and 6 of the thesis. Before conducting the main analysis of the thesis, we have explored available data and literature on international migration in chapter 2 and 3. The two chapters were designed to give a global overview of international migration. In chapter 2 we have discussed about international migration using available statistics obtained from secondary sources. The data shows a steady but relatively slow growth rate of world migration since the World War Two. It has however been observed that migration of educated people has increased in recent times. We also have observed that remittances as a percentage of GDP and export are very high in many countries which confirm the importance of remittances. The data also shows that proximity of a wealthy country is an important determinant of international migration destination. In chapter 3 we have reviewed some issues of international migration. The discussion has covered the issues like the determinants of international migration, performance of migrants and consequences of migration in host country, ‘Brain Drain’ or ‘Brain Gain’, migration, remittances and economic development, initiatives of international bodies in international migration. Temporary migration has received special attention in the discussion. Many insights of the research conducted in the thesis have come directly from the reviews conducted in chapter 3. Chapter 4 and 5 set up models where two countries are engaged in competition with each other in sending people aboard. The competition in international labour market is immensely important in many developing countries. Many countries are highly dependent on the remittances thus competing with other countries in sending people to work abroad. These competitions play an active role in intergovernmental negotiations as the countries require to balance between ‘promotion’ of overseas employment and ‘protection’ of migrants. Within economic literature we have not seen efforts to model this competition of labour exporting countries. Chapter 4 has modelled a situation where two exporting countries send labour to a third country. This chapter assumes unskilled migration as such labour migration is entirely controlled by the respective governments. The governments want to send labour to get remittances in return thus engage in a Cournot-type competition with the other labour exporting country. The importing country on the other hand acts as a Stackelberg leader as it sets up its immigration tax policies by moving first. We have observed that the labour importer uses discriminatory tax policies for the different labour exporting countries to fulfil its national objective. The tax rate is higher for the country with higher labour endowment. Chapter 5 has adopted a similar model as chapter 4. However the assumption of unskilled migration has been replaced by the assumption of skilled migration. It is thus assumed that migrants do not need governments’ assistance to migrate or governments are not in a position to control migration. Thus they use taxes to control migration and maximise national income. In this regard the exporting countries engage in Bertrand type competition with each other in setting emigration tax rate. We have found that skilled migrants should be taxed by the exporting countries to maximise national income. The importing country again resorts to the discriminatory tax policy as obtained in chapter 4. The tax rate is as before higher for the country with higher labour endowment The analysis of chapter 6 can be linked with the recent literature of ‘Brain Drain’. We have assumed a model where two countries are engaged in strategic trade with each other. We have then analysed effects of labour market openness and migration on research and development of countries. It is assumed that the wage rates of one country is higher than the other country’s which gives the rationale for migration. With the opening up of labour market and threat of possible migration, wage rates of both skilled people who conduct research and unskilled people who conduct production fall. We have analysed mainly three cases – (1) only labour-importing country conducts R&D, (2) only labour exporting country conducts R&D and (3) both countries conduct R&D simultaneously. The analysis shows that the possibility of migration of only skilled people always increases R&D. It also increases welfare by reducing the price of output. However the migration of unskilled people may not always increase welfare. We expect that the analysis done in the thesis will be able to provide some guidelines in migration policy making. Firstly we observe no strong coalition among the labour sending countries to manage and control international migration, though labour importing countries are to some extent managing migration jointly. This thesis along with any possible future work may provide guidance in joint management of international migration by the exporting countries. Secondly, many exporting countries are subsidising skilled migration by providing training and other supports. The thesis is suggesting that labour exporting countries should tax the skilled migrants. In this regard the issue of skilled migration may need re-evaluation. Thirdly, the thesis is pointing towards some possible gains from skilled migration through increased research and development. This position is to some extent at a par with the literature of ‘Brain Drain’ that pointed towards the beneficial effects of skilled migration. In summary it appears that we have obtained some interesting results in the analysis done in the thesis. We hope that they will be proved useful in migration policies and will contribute in future progress of both developed and developing countries.

Globalisation can no longer be thought of as a term that merely describes the practical, political and procedural networking of capital, commodities and consumers. Working reflexively it networks people, who use the physical, electronic and psychological networks set up to serve the interests of global commerce to travel from one locale to another. Like the cheap frocks, fridges or foodstuffs globalisation has weaned society to expect, these people are a ubiquitous source of labour, prepared to work in our factories and in our fields, servicing our hotel rooms, cleaning our homes and teaching our children. Yet despite this little is known about the lives of international migrants in the UK from their own perspectives, and there is relatively little social research (educational) with which to contextualise the migration statistics or evaluate the claims of the British press. This thesis starts by discussing the impacts of rising international migration on a place, Nottingham. It moves forward to discuss the relationship between UK society, globalisation and international migration to explore the idea that globalisation is reflexive, and that people are able to use what Appadurai (1996) terms the scapes of globalisation to network themselves from poorer regions of the world toward regions where they will experience higher levels of safety, structure and reward for their labours. Investigating the range of statistical, policy, evaluative and scholarly research relating to international migrants in the UK, this thesis focuses in on the need to ‘get beneath’ the statistics, the reports and the evaluations, to understand international migrants, their lives in Britain and their relationships with UK society and its social structures from their own perspectives. The study, which drew on material from a series of interviews held with 20 international migrants over the course of a year, succeeded in giving ‘voice’ to a set of deeply personal narratives about circumstances, motives, dreams and aspirations that belonged to a group of people who are often spoken of, but rarely heard; those living the ‘silenced lives’ (LeCompte, 1993) of the ‘hard to reach’. The study found that reflexive globalisation is not a fair and equal process; migrants enter and travel through ‘zones of migration’, which they navigate and negotiate via the differing amounts of agency apportioned to them by the UK State on the basis of their legitimacy within and in relation to a tiered policy of immigration and asylum. Framed by this relationship with the UK State, migrants become agents of this legitimacy, which serves to empower or restrict their abilities to act. Further agency is found in securing paid employment and by ‘diasporic clustering’ rather than integration. The thesis argues that the concept of reflexive globalisation adds to the literature around ‘glocalisation’ and the ‘geography of power’ and that the study itself (in its development of substantive and lasting relationships with a ‘hard to reach sample’) offers practical insights from which other researchers may benefit.

This thesis seeks to conceptualise and mobilise migration resistances as forces of animation through which contemporary forms of EUropean border governance can be productively explored. By following different migration struggles ethnographically, it inquires into their emergence and asks what practices of government and control they reveal. Situated within the academic fields of ‘critical border and migration studies’ and Michel Foucault’s conceptualisations of power, resistance and the art of government, resistance is understood as method. As a set of analytics and catalysts that sets sociopolitical processes and phenomena into frictional motion, resistance is developed as a mode of critical investigation. It is argued that, while always specific and situated, migration struggles form transversal resistances that bring to light particular aspects of the ‘EUropean border dispositif’ which seeks to monitor, regulate and deter certain human mobilities. In a multi-sited ethnography, conducted in diverse borderscapes, heterogeneous struggles are explored. The first study follows the Non-Citizen movement that emerged in Germany and interprets their confrontational and provocative struggle as dissent. The second ethnographic study explores the Boats4People campaign that took place in Italy and Tunisia to protest migrant deaths in the Mediterranean Sea and focuses on their embodied practices of solidarity. The third study follows different individuals and groups in transit into three Greek borderscapes and conceives their attempts of border-subversion and escape as excessive practices. Dissent, solidarity and excess are mobilised and interpreted as three specific but interrelated facets of resistance that collide with and contest manifold diffused border practices and materialisations throughout and beyond EUropean space. Furthermore, it is argued that migration struggles question the community in whose name unbelonging and exclusions are performed. The thesis suggests that these resistances not only expose certain dominant discursive frames through which EUrope becomes continuously reproduced and recognised as united, peaceful and humanitarian, but also draw attention to questions of colonialism and race as well as to the various registers of violence that must always underpin EUrope’s division-creating practices. Through migration struggles, EUrope’s dominant frames and self-conceptions are decentered so that other imaginaries of politics, solidarity and community come to the fore.

From the 1830s to 1917, despair in India drove a small minority into indentureship overseas. These were probably men and women of considerable initiative and extraordinary courage. Their achievements in British Guiana suggest this. Men, women, and children toiled relentlessly on the sugar plantations, while exploiting every conceivable niche to supplement meagre wages. They built a stable family life. They adapted rice and cattle to the plantation environment, thus adumbrating the character of future Indian villages; but they also resisted the injustices of the system. Indians founded villages throughout coastal Guiana, from the late nineteenth-century. In spite of endemic malaria, a hazardous environment requiring elaborate drainage and irrigation, poor sanitation, an undercurrent of Black envy, and the remorseless hostility of the plantocracy and the State to Indian enterpise in rice and cattle, they progressed. Indians adapted their rich material and religious culture, recreating aspects of their ancestral villages. At the hub of their tradition was the family: although most migrated alone, a modified joint-family structure evolved. Their thrift, industry, judicious delegation of family labour, and an exemplary commitment to their families, sustained them in activities which others considered unremunerative. The practice of Hinduism and Islam was costly; it encouraged saving. Cultural security strengthened their self-confidence and sustained effort; it bred a sense of purpose. By the 1920s, rice, cattle, commerce, etc., had spawned an Indian middle class. These set standards for the community: they established an entrepreneurial tradition; their professional achievements undermined Indian indifference to education; some promoted intellectual curiosity; and facilitated Indian participation in organised cricket, the most eloquent manifestation of arrival. The middle class expanded conceptions of attainable goals. But Indian adaptation was shaped profoundly by a resurgence of pride in the achievements of ancient India and the rise of Gandhi. A separate Indian community, differing significantly in their basic assumptions from those of the Blacks, developed in British Guiana. The implications for race relations were already ominous in the 1920s.