This study looks at Switzerland as an example of Western-European nation states` strategic efforts to create migrant `integration` agendas, which attempt the convergence of different, largely statist economic interests. According to the Swiss Federal Government`s overarching agenda, education is a key arena for advancement of the `integration` of migrants in Swiss systems and society. I explore whether this statist strategy conceals and contains pre-existing power relations in relation to definitions of the ‘political membership’ of migrants. This study understands public policy as a carrier of shared ideas and ideologies transgressing national borders. It attempts to map the socio-political dimensions of policy discourses. ‘Dominant` discourses of neo-liberalism and New Public Management in education policy reform in Switzerland in 2008 are examined. The examination connects arguments related to `soft` governance in processes of Europeanisation and the emergence of a European shared space of education - in which Switzerland positions itself in particular ways - as policy through governance. It explores how this policy is referenced in a national normative context. I investigate the use of education standards drawn from comparative studies, such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), and how these are related to the migrant `integration` mandate of the Swiss Federal government and the Canton of Zurich education authorities specifically for education agenda-setting. The study engages with the `problematisation` of migrants in Swiss education discourses, (re-) triggering a national response which constructs, diffuses and institutionalises shared ideas of European policies within the logic of pre-existing normative ideologies about `migrants`, nation-building, `national identity`, `culture` and norms of political membership. I examine discourses in policy texts, media texts and policy actors` narratives, in order to map the framing of a structural migrant `integration` policy reform and a loose policy `network` of `integration`. Moreover, I approach this discursive evidence in its relation to the historical and economic developments of migration within Europe in the last few decades; an account of Switzerland`s developing relationship to the EU; the integration and citizenship conceptions issuing from these developments and `political membership` as understood in this study. Methodologically, I use eclectically a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) approach to researching Europe through the social bases, which are to be found in the national sociopolitical policy contexts: in other words the `translation` of deterritorialised politics into national policy `solutions`. These deterritorialised policies frame and address socialdemocratic ideas such as `equality of opportunity`/`equity`/`inclusion` through standards introduced in education in what is termed an `integration` framework. Integration however is directly related to issues of `political membership`. This study deals with how the use of social-democratic education standards as ‘flags of convenience’ may serve the liberal state in maintaining power relations. Lastly, it highlights the potentially cosmetic instrumentalisation and misapplication of education and its role in perpetuating pre-existing normative exclusionary principles of political membership.

How, if at all, should we remember the histories of injustice and atrocity that haunt most modern states? Since World War II, it has become commonplace to suggest that properly responding to injustices requires societies to remember them, and to remember the experiences of those they touched. But what specific value might memory in this sense constitute in or contribute to the lives and societies of those coping with troubled history? This question raises two issues. The first is ontological: what does it mean to say that a society should remember in the first place? Is it to say that the individuals who make up society should each privately remember, or is to say that the society as a whole should somehow create or maintain a collective memory that is not reducible to the sum of individual cognitive processes? The second issue is normative: what exactly can memory so conceived do to ameliorate the undesirable legacies that historical injustices leaves on the world? How might remembering help us to move forward, or help us to lessen the pains we can’t leave behind? This study takes on both of these issues. On the first, I suggest that when we speak of societies remembering, we’re speaking of irreducibly social processes, by which individual memories are translated into publicly available traces of the past, which can then inform recollection by others, perhaps at some distance from the original event. On the second, I suggest that this sort of remembering can be valuable in the wake of injustice as a way of combating the legacies of persistent harm and exclusion that sometimes follow victims long after an injustice is over, and challenge their abilities to stand, participate, and identify as full members of the political community. Memory in this sense is crucial for re-negotiating the boundaries of membership, and for rebuilding a more inclusive public world.

This dissertation examines two different perspectives on refugee status and state sovereignty respectively, and their bearings on refugee protection regimes. It reveals how dominant views of refugee status and state sovereignty have contributed to establishing restrictive refugee law and policy associated with various forms of external migration controls in the 21st century, and provides alternative views that may contribute to creating more “just” refugee protection regimes.   When refugees came to be regarded as those who fled from various push factors, such as persecution, distress and wars etc. (the persecution perspective), refugee policies were developed to provide “push factors-free” environments. These have not necessarily included surrogate political membership in the country of asylum (particularly, in developed countries).  Instead, developed countries have endorsed humanitarian assistance schemes that aim to provide aid to refugees in regions of their origin rather than providing settlement in their own territories. Moreover, in refugee law, the fear of “persecution”, as a push factor, has become a critical factor in determining refugee status. As a parallel, governments have developed various forms of deterrence policies based on a traditional concept of state sovereignty that allows states to implement migration polices at their own discretion.  Under these circumstances, refugees find it difficult to reach developed countries, and many of them end up being “contained” in refugee camps or other facilities in regions of their origin for a long time.   This dissertation calls into question these views of refugee status and state sovereignty, by providing alternative views: the protection perspective and an account of sovereignty that requires “responsible” border control. The protection perspective regards the ruptured protection relationship between a state and a citizen (thus, the lack of state protection) as the core element of refugee status. According to this view, refugee status is inextricably associated with systemic failure of the nation-states system (not merely with push factors) that is designed to secure political membership for each individual in the international state system. Therefore, as a matter of justice, the ultimate remedy for refugeehood is to provide surrogate political membership in the country of asylum or to restore original political membership in the home country. This project also proposes a concept of “responsible” border control, according to which, a state should exercise state sovereignty in relation to border control within institutional frameworks in which multiple authorities, including human rights norms, have been institutionalized. In this way, the dissertation aims to provide a more “just” framework in which to propose, adopt and implement refugee law and policy. From this alternative perspective, refugees are perceived as those who have right to political membership in the country of asylum rather than mere humanitarian assistance in refugee camps or somewhere else. / Graduate