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The Un-united Kingdom

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By Christen Allen, student, Department of Political Science, University of Victoria

The Brexit debate rages on as the United Kingdom prepares to leave the EU. Theresa May’s Brexit deal is running out of time. The deal has been met with criticism by the Labour party, for May not allowing another vote to be held. While May and the Conservatives desire to escape the hold of the EU, they have become fractured through resignations like Jo Johnson. While the Labour party has proven to be united.  Johnson supported a second referendum, while May continues to shoot down the idea. Johnson has said of the agreement  that “it will leave our country economically weakened, with no say in the EU rules it must follow and years of uncertainty for business”.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/nov/14/theresa-mays-brexit-deal-everything-you-need-to-know

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/nov/09/jo-johnson-quits-as-minister-over-theresa-mays-brexit-plan-boris

How people feel about the deal?

As the opinions of the people have changed so have the opinions of the Members of Parliament, while the conservatives cling to the vote of three years ago. Parliament has been unable to decide on a deal   and now the Conservatives have lost their majority government. Even as support for remaining in the EU has grown among the people, the Conservative’s still push for leaving. Data form pollsters BMG Research gathered in December 2018, reveals that the support for staying has gained significant tractions since last summer and reached about 50% in December 2018 as the realities of what Brexit would bring become more and more apparent (Independent).

This research by BMG asked 1,500 respondents “should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union, or leave the European Union”, 52 per cent said “remain”, 40 per cent said “leave”, six per cent said they did not know and one per cent refused to say.  The research continues, about whether these people believed the withdrawal agreement proposed my Prime Minister May, 49% said it was a bad deal, one in ten (13%) said it was a good deal and 23% said they were indifferent and did not see it as good or bad, and the final 15% said they did not know.(independent)

Where we are now

The deal has led to further divides that have left no one happy. The Theresa May’s Conservative fear being trapped in a customs deal with the EU and continue and at being forced to continue accepting EU regulations to boot. While the Labour party does not believe that the deal is beneficial for jobs and the people.  Currently the deal remains in a state if arrested development. Parliament only has 12 days to decide on a new plan, they only possess two options either stay in the EU customs union or hold a second referendum on Brexit that would allow the people to reaffirm or change their minds. May has rejected both of these options but is left with few choices. Her deal has been rejected three times by Parliament and now time is running out for the United Kingdom to decide.

https://globalnews.ca/news/5116915/more-brexit-options-after-failed-deal/

Possible solution

A true solution to the problem would be to hold confirmation vote to put the power back into the people’s hand and decide from their whether or not the United Kingdom should remain in the EU. Another vote would allow the people to reaffirm or change their minds on the referendum. As Tom Watson said “ Brexit that can unite our members, voters, MPs and, yes, the leadership too. I respect the different judgments reached by some of our MPs – none of these decisions is easy – but more than 80% of Labour MPs backed Margaret Beckett motion saying that any deal to leave the EU should not be pushed through by parliament unless it has also been approved by the people.” Parliament has proven to be unable to reach a deal amicably, so the decision should go back into the hands of the people.            Since the initial vote , more information has become more readily available about what leaving the EU would actually look like and how if would affect the United Kingdom’s economy and people.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/30/labour-plan-for-peoples-vote-on-final-brexit-deal-can-unite-country

 

Picture: Christoph Scholz

 

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Unlocking borders like smartphones – Can digital identities fill a void in the global governance of mobility?

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Linda Tippkaemper, Marie Skłodowska-Curie PhD Fellow, Université Sorbonne Paris Cité

Unlocking borders like smartphones – Can digital identities fill a void in the global governance of mobility?

 

Whenever I check-in my bag at an airport and it eventually disappears, I always wonder for a moment how it is going to travel through those dark tunnels below the counter, how it will be x-rayed somewhere, barcoded and scanned. How it will travel left and right, in and out of airplanes, only to be spit back out again at the baggage carousel, sometimes at the other end of the world.

The handling of baggage, even across different airlines and borders, works thanks to the International Air Travel Association (IATA). Since 1945, the organization serves its 290 member airlines as a coordinating mechanism for security and logistical issues. Airline staff worldwide can consult IATA’s “Baggage Tracking Implementation Guide” and participate in standardized seminars. In a way, the organization ensures the successful global governance of bags.

Processing baggage owners in a comparably efficient and coordinated manner, however, is a much greater challenge. With an expected 100% increase of air travel within the next 15 years, it is essential for airlines to also “simplify and enhance the passenger process” (IATA 2018). Yet, airlines cannot just put barcode tags on their customers. They depend on state-issued travel documents to identify their passengers.

Passports vs. barcodes

Modern states invented international passports only after the First World War to enforce their “monopoly over the legitimate means of movement” (Torpey 2000). At that time, passports were only paper sheets. Nowadays, airlines can retrieve passenger data from passport booklets and match it automatically with the data stored in their booking information system. In this regard, airlines profit from states’ efforts to standardize travel documents, which are led by a specialized UN agency, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). While IATA works for its member airlines, ICAO assists 192 member states as a global governance mechanism for civil aviation standards. Under this mandate, the organization has developed a detailed guide on the state-of-the-art Machine Readable Travel Documents (MRTD).

Alphanumerical data in MRTDs can be digitally read out by states and airlines alike. However, states profit from a modern security feature that is still mostly withheld from airlines: biometrics. Airlines could use fingerprints and facial recognition just like an organic barcode tag for their passengers and thus increase efficiency in passenger handling significantly.

One digital identity – “One iD”

To foster this, IATA presented its initiative One iD in early 2018. It entails the development of a digital identity platform for travelers which can be fed with passengers’ alphanumeric and biometric passport data. IATA claims that the system could increase airport security and bring advantages for travelers, who would not have to repeatedly juggle with numerous paper documents like passports, visas and boarding passes, but could instead use their fingerprint and face as an ‘open sesame’ at each airport checkpoint (IATA 2018).

In cases where the traveler so requires, One iD could also entail digital visas, verified by governments. Currently, airlines must check visas manually and can be fined by states under the so-called carrier sanctions, if they transport an unproperly documented passenger across the border. However, with almost 200 states and territories imposing different entry regulations towards each other’s citizens, the global visa regime resembles a giant maze of opaque regulations. As a service to its member airlines, IATA already stores these complex rules in its “TIMatic database”. The automated matching of digital visas from One iD against this database could replace manual checks and reduce the amount of time and cost dedicated to the training of airline staff.

Challenging states: The “Known Traveler Digital Identity” (KTDI)

IATA however, is not the only private organization that struggles with and therefore actively challenges the current status-quo of state-governed mechanisms to manage people’s identities across borders. Last year, the World Economic Forum (WEF) presented the “Known Traveler Digital Identity” (KTDI), which also comprises the storage of relevant individual data in one “digital envelope”, just like One iD.

When it comes to the issue of visas, the KTDI concept goes even one step further. While IATA sees the acquisition of digital entry permits as a pre-requisite for the use of One iD, the WEF rightly identifies “visa application and screening” as an important “key pain point” in a traveler’s journey. The digital platform is therefore not only designed to speed up airport procedures, but it is meant to serve as a potential decision-making tool for certain countries’ pre-vetting procedures.

The global visa regime, which has only grown within the last couple of decades alongside passports, limits hassle-free movement not only for “weak passport”[i] holders, but also for citizens traveling between economically dependent states and regions like China and the EU. To put it simply, visa requirements concern many employees and potential customers of the businesses that the WEF represents. These businesses often have their own visa desks dedicated to help staff with their applications, or they even outsource this task to special visa agencies, where “international mobility managers” guide the way through the jungle of fragmented national rules.

Filling a void?

Thus far, no public global government mechanism has even dared to steer towards a standardization of these rules and requirements, because border security is considered as an issue of national sovereignty. On the one hand, ICAO’s contribution in that field was to make visas machine-readable like passports, but the organization never overstepped its mandate to events happening outside the airport. IATA, on the other hand, as a non-public organization lobbying for airlines, never had the interest, nor the mandate to influence the policies that it only stores as a reference. Then again, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) became a UN institution only in 2016, while previously serving rather as a service provider for immigration countries and not as a global governance mechanism.

With the KTDI, the WEF aims to counter the fragmentation of national procedures. As the WEF’s concept report recognizes, “beyond the immediate efficiency gains of digitization […], emerging technologies can be used to unlock changes in policy design and the mechanisms government agencies use to ensure the secure movement of people across borders” (WEF 2018).

According to the KTDI concept, the digital identity can be complemented with attestations from “trusted entities” like employers, universities or banks, thereby building a digital “known traveler” status. The “authenticated identity claims” shall then serve as the individual’s “backbone of trust and the basis of reputation”. Instead of preparing a new visa application file for each trip according to consulates’ often confusing requirements, individuals could provide them with a uniform digital file which can be updated and re-used for each trip.

In essence, the WEF wants to detach individuals from the old, national way of constructing and screening identities by introducing a global blueprint for this purpose. This may also be considered as an attempt to bridge the gap that has developed as companies are becoming increasingly international, while their employees or customers stay confined to their nation state.

Turning the paper wall of visas into a digital one?

However, even a harmonized digital tool cannot change the fact that travelers will remain subject to states’ scrutiny. In this context, the concept possibly underestimates the current complexity of documenting and screening people’s legal, social and professional identities across borders. Today’s visa requirements represent the states’ attempts to gap the borders that exist not only between countries, but also between data. Consulates rely on a multitude of actors who must testify to the individual’s identity and intention and for whom they shall offer their endorsement. And even so, the quality and reliability of information gained during these procedures is often questioned.

The reality is that no matter what blueprint countries would be given for their vetting procedure, suspicions towards certain groups of travelers will remain and the authenticity of the uploaded documentation may be questioned just as the paper documents are questioned today. Should all the countless actors involved in compiling paperwork for digital visa procedures get an official account to digitally authenticate it? Without an elaborate solution for this, the KTDI might inevitably run into the same problems and complexity characterizing the present visa procedures. That the concept is currently being tested by the Canadian and Dutch governments, not in a visa-restricted context, is hopefully not a sign of surrender to this challenge.

After all, the KTDI could be a stepping stone for the more “integrated, secure and coordinated manner” of managing extra-territorial borders, which is one of the objectives of the UN’s Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration. A solution that the public global governance mechanisms, which seem to focus mainly on what happens at the airport, have yet to come up with.

 

 

 

__________

WEF (World Economic Forum): The Known Traveler, Unlocking the potential of digital identity for secure and seamless travel. [Online] 2018. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_The_Known_Traveler_Digital_Identity_Concept.pdf

IATA (International Air Transport Association): One iD Concept Paper Version 1. [Online] 2018. https://www.iata.org/whatwedo/passenger/Documents/OneID-concept-paper.pdf

Torpey, John (2000). The invention of the passport. Surveillance, citizenship and the state. Cambridge University Press.

 

Linda Tippkaemper is an INSPRIE doctoral fellow at University Paris 13, Paris Sorbonne Cité and receiving funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 665850.

http://www.cofund-inspire.eu/fellow/linda-tippkaemper/

 

[i] For a global ranking of weak and powerful passports see the Henley Passport Index, a yearly publication on countries’ “visa-free scores,” which usually grabs media headlines: https://www.henleypassportindex.com/assets/2019/q2/Full%20Q2%20Ranking.pdf (accessed on March 28th 2019).

 

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Observations from Cyprus: Border Walls and the Idea of the “Other”

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By Tiana Geukdjian,  student at the University of Victoria

As a young teenager, I spent a lot of time on one side of a border wall. After growing up in Canada, my family moved to the south side of the island of Cyprus when I was nine, and I was introduced quickly to the idea of the “other” and of “us versus them”. Much like the current refugee crisis in Europe and the immigration issue in the United States, there was little discussion about the people on the other side of the wall; the focus was instead on the collective whole. The Turkish invaders. The unwelcome. The unjust. My Cypriot family members never referred to the people in the north as Cypriot. They were outsiders. They were invalid.

The border in Cyprus is not like the border in Canada – there is a palpable tenseness, of imminent action. There is a Turkish flag on a mountain, created out of painted oil barrels driven into the ground, that is visible from most of the main areas in the south. It lights up at night, to remind everyone: we are here. As a child, I would sit and watch it at night after dinner, beginning to feel somehow wronged without understanding why, without even fully comprehending the history of the war. My family would watch next to me as the flag lit up, as they shook their heads and then averted their eyes.

When we walked through the main city of Nicosia during the day, there was always a jarring moment when exploration was halted by border guards standing next to barbed wire and piles of sandbags. The wall divides the city itself in half – it is not only out in the countryside, away from everyday exposure. Each day, both sides of the wall were reminded of its presence.

What does this do for reunification? For facilitating a conversation between both parties? It has been over fifty years since the war in Cyprus, and yet the idea of a solution has never been more than a hope. A border wall is not only a physical barrier, but a conversational one. This lesson has followed me, as we look at the border walls being erected throughout the world today. Specifically, in parts of Europe that are using them as a means to deal with the migrant crisis, or in the southern United States as a means to deal with illegal immigration.

Securing the borders with walls merely reinforces the idea of the “other”, even if that “other” is not fully understood. It prevents insight and humanism, two things that are key if there is hope of a solution in the future. Instead, it merely promotes categorization into groups we can dismiss or invalidate. Shaking our heads and averting our eyes does not solve the crisis, just as it did not solve the division of Cyprus.

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A call for reforming the social contract

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By Bavneet Kaur, UVic student at the Department of Political Science

I happened to find a video on EUCA.net that showcased a panel with Dr. Oliver Schmidtke, Dr. Valerie D’Erman, and Dr. Kurt Hübner entitled “Austerity and Social Inequality: The Rise of the Populist Right and the European Budget Crisis”. The discussion mainly focused on the new Italian coalition’s economic policies that steer away from the austerity measures that they are obligated to follow under European Union Commission rules. Many interesting points were brought up during the discussion which included: the rise of populist parties and the blurring of left and right ideologies on the spectrum, and economic disparities in relation with its divisive characteristics that are resulting in spatial divides.

Both Dr. D’Erman and Dr. Schmidtke brought up an interesting point regarding the weakening of many left- wing parties. The reason that left- wing parties are losing voters to populist parties is because they have adopted numerous left- wing policies, while still retaining characteristics that align the party on the right of the political spectrum. An example of this is the populist coalition government of the Five Star Movement and Lega Nord, the former is more left leaning and the latter is described as far- right, but they have managed to form a majority government. This coalition has brought forth policies such as guaranteed income for the poor which would cost an estimated €17 bn to implement, and also go against the austerity measures that the Italy is obligated to follow, as negotiated previously with the EU Commission. However, what I see as one important point of contention that has started to change the political landscape in Italy, and potentially spreading across Europe, is that two parties from different sides of the spectrum are able to form a coalition and put forward left- wing policies. One wonders how the electorate feels about such coalitions forming, or do they no longer value the political ideologies when voting? In the past the electoral tended to support a political party which aligned themselves with a specific political ideology.

The panel discussed a very interesting point that acts as a solution towards voters who are disenchanted with democracy, and that is to recreate the social contract in respective societies where disenchantment with democracy is occurring. Both Dr. D’ Erman and Dr. Hübner interestingly brought up the social contract in the discussion with regard to effectively meeting the needs of the public. Hobbes states that the world is essentially an anarchy, in which each person lives and survives by protecting themselves. This sense of insecurity cannot last long, and at one point a ruler capable of protecting the majority is selected. A social contract is created in which the majority hands over a significant amount of power to the ruler (or Leviathan), essentially making decisions on behalf of them, and in in turn the ruler will ensure what the majority want- security and protection. The social contract will only be applicable in society if the majority feel the contract is being upheld. Today, when one sees the anger and resentment amongst people against the elite and cosmopolitans, and the uneven economic changes occurring due to globalization, the social contract needs to be reformed so the “left- behind” feel less alienated and mores secure with the new changes occurring in today’s world.

Picture credit: Photo by Shane Rounce on Unsplash

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Borders, Security, and Migration

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By Malcolm Thompson and Alina Sobolik, University of Victoria

Introduction: the Situation

The recent EUCANET Webinar titled “Borders, Security, and Migration” raised several interesting points of discussion regarding the importance of borders on the European and American continents. Specifically regarding the recent migration crisis that struck Europe in the mid-2010s, it was stated that this crisis highlighted the ‘paradoxical effect’ of the EU’s border security, in that there has been an ‘ever closer degree of cross-border mobility within Europe, but also an increased securitization of the external EU border.’ However, statements made in the webinar also highlighted how the migration crisis has contradicted this effect, causing individual EU member states to increase securitization of their internal borders. This blog post looks to highlight this contradiction, and show the economic and non-economic impacts that it increasing internal border checks in the Schengen zone, the area of internal free movement of people in Europe, has had as a result of the migrant crisis. This blog post will also highlight the existential challenges that the migration crisis has posed to the Schengen system and what this could mean for the future of the union.

The Schengen zone is a fundamental feature of the EU’s single market, allowing for the free movement of people internally between EU member states and 4 non-EU countries. However, the recent migrant crisis has called into question the support of this cross-national freedom to continue. As both The Economist (Oct 25, 2018) and Fisher (2018) explained, the increase of immigrants wishing to come into Europe since the beginning of the decade coupled with the impacts of the Eurozone crisis has caused a significant public opposition to the idea of a free internal movement of people, with individual states undermining the Schengen agreement by instituting internal border controls. As of late 2018, these internal border controls “have become more or less permanent in six European countries” (The Economist, Oct 25, 2018). The presence of border securitization within the Schengen zone has led to friction between the functioning of the EU and the national desires of its members. Importantly, this movement away from a fully operational Schengen zone have created fears of economic and political ramifications that could significantly impact the ability of the EU to further ingrate. As the next sections will show, both a breakdown of the Schengen zone could lead to troubles for the EU both economically and politically.

Economic argument

The nature of the Schengen zone as a core feature of the EU’s single market means that increased inefficiencies in the movement of people around Europe has a direct impact on the functioning of the EU’s economy. As Fisher (2018) stated, complications to Schengen resulting from an increase in internal border securitization would affect several “of the union’s most popular perks – ease of travel for work, vacation or family – and undercut trade and labor transfers, weakening the single market economy.” Bringing back stronger borders between Schengen members would constitute a significant cost, as is established by The Economist (Oct 25, 2018), which echoed findings by the European Parliament, and stated that “reintroducing border controls in the Schengen area could cost up to €20bn in one-off expenses and €2bn in annual operating expenses”. However, the economic impacts of rolling back the freedoms of the Schengen agreement reach deeper into the functioning of the EU’s economy, posing a serious potential impact to the operation of many EU businesses.

Speaking in extremes, Zalan (2016) highlighted predictions by the European Commission, and stated that “losing Schengen altogether could cost as much as an €18 billion drop in the EU’s annual GDP”. This, as Zalan, 2016 noted, would mean that the EU’s GDP could be reduced by 0.13% should Schengen fall apart completely. However, there are still significant effects on the EU’s economy should the Schengen zone experience increased complications but still remain intact. This would be seen both in terms of increased expenses for the 1.7 million workers in the Schengen zone that commute between states daily (euobserver, 2016); should internal borders become increasingly guarded, there would be a “lower[ing] of the economic output of the 27 EU countries by 0.19 percent to 0.47 percent on a yearly basis.” (Zalan, 2016)[1]. This decrease would cost the individual European citizen upwards of €130 a year (Zalan, 2016).

Thus, even if Schengen does maintain intact, complications to its functioning would severely affect both European businesses and citizens.

Non-economic implications:

When people feel under crisis, they turn to a strong identity for protection (Fisher, 2018). The desire to belong to a solid group of insiders is a basic human survival instinct (Fisher, 2018).The architects of the European Project had hoped that they could impose a European identity on their citizens through integration but they did not account for the various crises and how they would challenge this project. The people were not made privy to the blueprints for Europe. The migration crisis showed the member state citizens the reality of what was happening behind the scenes in Europe, the fact that integration doesn’t only mean free movement of goods and people but a limitation on member state sovereignty (Fisher, 2018).

To compensate for this sacrifice of sovereignty and ease the concerns of member states regarding security, FRONTEX was created to bolster the external security of the EU. However, RPPs have managed to establish internal borders as a symbolic representation of the nation-state and therefore, the people (The Economist, 2018). Ensuring the people that the EU will do a sufficient job of keeping them safe and that they do not need internal borders is a difficult task with the presence of RPPs who are able to point to various violent and emotionally powerful incidents and claim that it is because the EU is vulnerable, and the nation state must protect itself.

Because the EU does not have a prominent mouthpiece in domestic politics, it is necessary for member state politicians to defend the government’s decision to participate in integration if the project is to remain alive. However, what we’ve seen as a reaction to the various crises is that Politicians lack the “political will to bolster and support the Schengen system in crisis” (Traynor, 2016). Rather than articulating the wealth of benefits that member states receive as a result of the Schengen system, or highlighting the very real challenges to everyday life that a disintegration of the system would result in, politicians have acted to protect their vote, appealing to nationalist sentiments where it serves their electoral purpose (Traynor, 2016). This is not without consequence.

Perhaps the most dangerous impact of RPPs on Europe is not their direct effects on the migration crisis or the temporary closure of borders, but the residual sentiments of nationalism that have no decreased with the slowing of migration. As shown previously, member states benefit exponentially from the Schengen system, but ‘limit Schengen’ sentiments have continued past the immediate demands for control over the migration crisis (Fisher, 2018). The EU is experiencing a “crisis of trust” amongst the member states that fosters a divide between Northern European and Southern European states (The Economist, 2018). This divide, nationalist sentiments, and a desire for the return of member state sovereignty are all incompatible with the project of integration.

Going forward:

It is difficult to predict what will happen to the Schengen system going forward, given the facts that RPPs have established themselves in the political institutions of the member states and that the ideals they broadcast: sovereignty of member states and nationalism, are not compatible with integration.

Three possible outcomes that we have identified are a complete transfer of control over external borders to the EU, a regression of the system into various smaller free movement zones, or the end of the Schengen system (The Economist, 2018; Fisher, 2018; Traynor, 2016).

It is unlikely that, in this current political climate, member states would be willing to surrender control over the external borders to the EU, as shown in the negative reactions to the European Commission’s proposal to establish an EU border guard with authority over national border guards (Fisher, 2018). As well, strengthening external borders helps only to address the migration crisis (Fisher, 2018). What we’ve seen is that challenges to the Schengen system have evolved beyond a response to the migration crisis and established nationalist sentiments that are far more powerful. Supporters of RPPs would not likely support a measure such as this even if it could guarantee the security of external borders because of the implications to national sovereignty and identity.

The creation of smaller areas of passport-free travel opens possibilities to accommodate the ‘cultural’ argument made by RPPs, and allows ‘culturally similar’ member states to enjoy freedom of movement amongst themselves, while erecting borders along lines of variation. This could be a way in which the EU adapts to the presence of and leadership by nationalist RPPs.

https://www.economist.com/europe/2018/06/23/europes-passport-free-zone-faces-a-grim-future

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/06/world/europe/europe-borders-nationalism-identity.html

https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/borders-and-visas/schengen/reintroduction-border-control_en

https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/borders-and-visas/schengen_en

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/05/is-the-schengen-dream-of-europe-without-borders-becoming-a-thing-of-the-past

https://www.economist.com/europe/2018/10/25/border-checks-are-undermining-schengen

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/legislative-train/theme-towards-a-new-policy-on-migration/file-temporary-reintroduction-of-border-control-at-internal-borders

https://euobserver.com/business/133253

[1] Croatia is excluded in this count.

Picture: Quim Gil

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Separation Anxiety

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By Robert Gould

On March 14th while living in Seville I listened to and watched the online EUCanet seminar Borders, Security and Migration.  Thinking about some of the questions and exchanges, including the conceptualisations alluded to, I was considering writing a blog post about the anxiety surrounding a possible new border appearing in north-east Spain.  However, the following headlines in the press on the same day persuaded me to write about a different situation, one arising from irregular migration across the Mediterranean and the EU’s land borders with Africa in the Spanish exclaves of Ceuta and Melilla.

First it should be explained that Spain is in an election year.  In 2017 Germany had what was called a Superwahljahr, a super election year, when four of the states elected new parliaments, followed by the Bundestag elections.  In 2019 Spain is now having a GIGANTIC election year: on April 28th there are elections for the Cortes Generales, i.e. the national parliament, and also for Les Corts Valencianes, the parliament of the autonomous community (think ‘province’ in Canadian terms, or Bundesland in Austrian or German terms) of Valencia.  On May 26 there will be elections for every municipality in the country, the parliaments of 12 of the 16 autonomous communities, and the Spanish members of the European Parliament.  The basically two-party system of Partido Popular (PP: conservative and catholic) and the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE: centre-left) has broken down.  In addition to some regional parties, nationally there are now three new parties: Podemos (far left), Ciudadanos (centre-right but without the Catholic background and in competition with the PP), and the new and far-right Vox (see the earlier blog post on this site and the commentary Vox Expaña, an alternative Identity for Spain[1]).  The party landscape is crowded, the competition is fierce, the situation is  hyper politicised, and although the campaigns have not officially started, of course they have in reality.

In addition, what is also at stake is the control of the Senate, composed partly of elected members and partly of members designated by the parliaments of the autonomous communities.  At this stage in Spanish political life this control is of particular importance because of Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution.  This article is modelled exactly on Article 37 of the German Grundgesetz.  With the approval of the Bundesrat, and only the Bundesrat, it gives the federal cabinet the power to suspend the government of a Bundesland if it is failing to fulfil its constitutional obligations.  Similarly, with the approval of the Senate of Spain, and only the Senate, the national cabinet may suspend the powers of the government of an autonomous community and impose its own authority.  It did so following the illegal independence referendum of 1 October 2017 in Catalonia.  The PP and Ciudadanos take a particularly hard line on Catalan separation and are already speaking of using the power again, but they can only do so if they control the Senate.

The headlines in question are the following, first from the centre-left El País, which is also the newspaper of record in Spain (and also has a small online English-language edition); then in the conservative, Catholic and monarchist newspaper ABC, (close to the Partido Popular).

El País: “El PP propone retrasar la expulsión de mujeres inmigrantes que den a su hijo en adopción”:  https://elpais.com/politica/2019/03/13/actualidad/1552506632_424707.html

English edition: “PP proposes delaying deportation of pregnant migrants who opt for adoption”: https://elpais.com/elpais/2019/03/14/inenglish/1552551266_621264.html

ABC: “El PP propone que las mujeres inmigrantes que den a un hijo en adopción no sean expulsadas mientras dure el proceso”: https://www.abc.es/sociedad/abci-pp-propone-mujeres-inmigrantes-hijo-adopcion-no-sean-expulsadas-mientras-dure-proceso-201903141235_noticia.html

“The PP proposes that women migrants who give up a child for adoption should not be deported during the [adoption] process”.

The headlines emerged in the context of the announcement by Pablo Casado, National President of the PP, of a proposal to create an “Act for the Support of Motherhood” (Ley en Apoyo a la Maternidad), designed, among other things, to “promote a culture of life”, to reduce the rate of abortions, increase the birth-rate, and confront what he and others call “the demographic winter” (Spain has the second-lowest birth-rate in the EU, below even that of Germany).

In other words, the headlines suggested that the migrant woman is not wanted, but her child is.  The child will be brought up Spanish, but the mother will still have to leave, having severed all legal ties to the child.  This system, the press related, already existed in the autonomous community of Madrid.  Presumably the mother who stays in the country until the adoption formalities are completed after the birth of the child will benefit from the pre-natal, childbirth and post-natal care provided by the Spanish health service, rather than taking her chances in transit to where she came from.  This could be a significant inducement to agree to the adoption.  Another inducement would be that even if she could not achieve her dream of living and prospering in the security of Europe, at least her child could.

Elisabeth Vallet spoke of the high level of sexual violence suffered by women making the trek northwards to try to enter the United States via its southern border.  One can reasonably assume that the same thing is happening on the way north to Europe.  Undesired pregnancies accompany the migration of desperation.

In the present hyper politicized atmosphere news of the announcement led to the spread of an interpretation that the PP was promising residence papers to migrant women who gave up their newborns for adoption.  This was hotly denied as “fake news”, as it no doubt was.  Later, the PP clarified that all that was being proposed was that there would be absolute confidentially concerning the personal details of an irregular migrant given in the adoption process, and thus they could not be used against her and lead to her immediate expulsion.

Thus in this one brief episode of headlines and corrections we have a number of the conceptualisations relating to borders, migration and migrants mentioned in the seminar.  (1) The performance of a degree of compassion for women migrants and their (unborn) children (particularly following the massive demonstrations, which no politician can ignore, all over Spain on Friday 8 March in support of female equality), (2) questions of inclusion and exclusion, (3) migrants as pawns in an election campaign in which more than usual is at stake: In the face of the continuing separation movement in Catalonia and the desire to create a new border, it is being asserted on the political right (PP, Ciudadanos, and Vox) that nothing less than (4) the very existence and identity of the Spanish nation are endangered.

Sadly, one is also reminded of an earlier episode of family separations in the course of expulsions to North Africa.  When people of North-African background were expelled from the territory of what is now Spain at the beginning of the seventeenth century, in some circumstances young children were separated from their parents and had to remain behind.  This was because of the view that they could be raised as completely Spanish, thus contributing to the population numbers and in no way endangering national identity.

Seville, 15 March 2019

[1] URL:  https://carleton.ca/ces/wp-content/uploads/Commentary-Vox-An-Alternative-Identity-for-Spain-by-Robert-Gould-February-2019.pdf

Photo credits to CJ 1000

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From Illegal to irregular: Changing the public image of refugees

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By Jennifer Lorentz,  Departments of Political Science and Slavic Studies, University of Victoria (undergraduate student )

Illegal to irregular: how the Canadian government has attempted to change the discourse of the immigrant image in the media through tone

 Media and the Canadian Government

The media has undoubtedly played a large role in the portrayal of asylum-seekers in North America, particularly since the mass increase in immigration toward Europe around 2013. The emergence of new political parties driven by the anti-immigration discourse and new political platforms built on immigrant policy have continued to fuel the debate of migration policy. The ability to access media relatively quickly and easily has allowed people to not only shape their opinions on the matter, but contribute their thoughts back through social media. How the media approaches topics and the words they use create a tone, whether intentional or not.

The government and the media are closely linked. Television is still one of the most important mediums between the government and the people (D’Erman, 2019). Actions that the government takes are broadcasted to the public. Not all countries are like Canada, where there is more separation between media and government. The country I will be making a link to, Hungary, is narrowing that separation, especially after recent developments of hundreds of media outlets donated to a foundation run by the Hungarian Prime Minister.

Image of the Immigrant Through Canadian Policy

Steven Vertovec’s “The Culture Politics of Nation and Migration” is an interesting and very applicable view in Canadian immigration policy today and how Canadian citizens may view mass immigration. Canada, a country that celebrates legally-mandated multicultural policy, has had many political figures step forward to announce immigration as a national threat to Canadian culture.

Vertovec’s point is interesting, he says that the representation of immigrant culture constituted in “policies, state institutions, the media, and everyday perception surrounding key categories such as borders, legality and the law.” Canada has created its own idea of what an immigrant looks like through policies and laws. For example, Quebec’s proposed policy of banning niqabs. Using the niqab as representation of an immigrant, and then attempting to make the covering illegal might cause a false connection between the niqab and illegal immigrants, or niqab and illegal activity.

How Canadian Policy and Media Affect the Population

Like the media mentioned earlier, the voice of the government is an influence on the Canadian population. The kinds of policies and laws the government passes, also instead, have an effect on how the people approach immigrants. In what tone the government publishes official documents has an effect on how people receive the information. Although the change of a single word seems small, it can be snatched up by the media and broadcasted to the population. As shown in the example later of “illegal” to “irregular” even something a seemingly as simple as changing a word is broadcasted to the public to make news over changing something seemingly so small.

“Illegal” to “Irregular” in Canada

More recently, in July 2018 the Canadian immigration department run by the Liberal federal government and the Progressive-Conservatives of Ontario debated the use of particular words in a government-based informative page concerning asylum seekers in Canada, arguing that the words were used to create a negative tone. This came after the federal government edited a document published by the Progressive-Conservative provincial party in Ontario to remove the use of the words ‘illegal’ and ‘illegally’ to ‘irregular’ and ‘irregularly’. The idea of the Canadian government was to “minimize mischaracterization of asylum seekers as being in Canada illegally”. This change garnered support and criticism of all types through various political parties.

In relation to Vertovec’s point, the Liberal federal government and the Conservative provincial government are arguing over the use of certain words. How the asylum seekers in this article are portrayed can change people’s perception on the issue when the media brings attention to it. This brings me to some questions.

Should there be a standardization of terms concerning immigrant policy, and who might be held accountable to follow this? Does standardization help push one political agenda over another? How can a person ensure they are reading objective government material or is there even such a thing?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/asylum-seekers-immigration-illegal-irregular-federal-government-1.4847571

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/illegal-or-irregular-what-s-the-proper-term-for-canada-s-border-crossers-1.4071533

https://globalnews.ca/news/4355394/illegal-or-irregular-asylum-seekers-crossing-canadas-border/

Issue of Standardization

Enforcing standardization in the government could be considered a political tactic. The use of certain terms helps drive different platforms. A party with a platform built on anti-immigration may use the terms “illegal” and “illegally” to appeal to a particular population, while a party that is pro-migration into Canada may use other terms. Standardization may favour a certain opinion over another. While both terms could be technically correct depending on context, they carry different tones in writing that could sway a citizen’s opinion on the matter.

Connection to Hungarian Media

Hungary is experiencing a problem with media outlets having a suspiciously strong anti-immigrant theme after being donated to a foundation with ties to the Hungarian Prime Minister. This is quite an extreme case to compare to, but it helps show what the media is capable of. Any move the Prime Minister makes is turned into a story and broadcasted to the Hungarian population.

While not to the extreme of Hungary, is Canada using the same tactic to influence the public’s perception of asylum-seekers as well? Was the use of the term “illegal” by the Conservative government an example of the Conservative government attempting to drive a certain idea for the media to broadcast to the people? Was its change to “irregular” by the Liberal government also an example? As mentioned earlier, most Canadians rely on the media to learn about politics. It is not likely that the population is combing through government documents online to learn about current politics.

This argument has already made many headlines. Were these examples of the different forms of government attempting to use the media to reinforce their party idea? Which term should the immigration department be using to describe asylum-seekers? Should government documents be objective?

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DEMOCRACY and its FUTURES: Moving away from jargon and excessive theoretical baggage

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Photo by Kévin Langlais on Unsplash

Graduate students in Victoria, Canada, debate the approach to readings on “democracy from below”

by Ryan Beaton, Trudeau Scholar, Faculty of Law at the University of Victoria

While the preparations for a gathering of a scholarly discussion on the Futures of Democracy in Victoria BC take place, a pre-seminar organized by graduate students discusses a series of readings by Fonna Forman and Teddy Cruz, Robin Celikates, Antje Wiener, and Peyman Vahabzadeh, gathered loosely under the heading of “democracy from below”. While we took a dive into the substantive content of those pieces, particularly by Celikates, I won’t rehearse that aspect of our conversation here. What stuck with me from our group discussion is a commitment to two rather “procedural” points, using that term loosely and with the understanding of course that this is simply my subjective recollection of our discussion, always subject to revision and clarification by other members of our group.

First, a number of us expressed a desire to move away from jargon, esoteric references, orother specialist language, to the extent we can manage it. It’s important to move away from jargon both to ease the discussion across disciplines and also (here I may speak only for myself) because jargon is our distinctive mode of defensiveness as academics, signaling an expertise that is often hard-earned but that too often also distances us from the phenomena we are meant to be illuminating and from non-specialist discussions of them.

Second, picking up where the above point left off, we also seemed to share a common desire to ground our discussions squarely in the phenomena under discussion (for instance, the illegal crossing of borders as an act of civil disobedience, or the contestation of fisheries regulations and related international law). One of our key aims, as I understand it, is to avoid placing excessive theoretical baggage between ourselves and the phenomena we are discussing, so as to avoid also falling into the trap of cherry-picking the phenomena for confirmation of our preferred theoretical angles.

By a happy coincidence, a friend just yesterday forwarded me a lecture by Edward Said in which he captures the above points most eloquently. Below is an extract, followed by a link to the full lecture for those who are interested:

[In the academy,] there’s always the danger of specialization, and of what has come to be called professionalization. That is to say, I think that the tendency in the academy to focus upon membership in a guild tends, therefore, to constrict and limit the critical awareness of the scholar. And this kind of restriction is manifest in a number of things. For example, the use of jargon, specialized language that nobody else can understand. One of my early works — well, perhaps not that early; but it was written, or published seventeen or eighteen years ago — was a book called Orientalism, which took its main subject from the way in which a field, as all fields are, is constituted by its language; but that the language itself becomes further and further removed from the experiences and the realities of the subject, in this case the orient, about which the language was supposed to turn.

http://archives.acls.org/op/op31said.htm#said

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Negotiating identities and histories through monuments and memorial landscapes

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By Julianna Nielsen, undergraduate student in the departments of history and political science at the University of Victoria, Canada.

Border walls and fences—as physical and discursive boundaries between ‘here’ and ‘there,’ ‘us’ and ‘them’—construct and communicate sharp differences between communities imagined to be historically, culturally, and territorially bound. Although these physical boundaries impose and express a clear distinction between ‘inside(rs)’ and ‘outside(rs),’ the negotiation and assertion of ‘our’ communal identity is also managed through the creation and transformation of memorial landscapes. The act of dismantling or erecting monuments, which publicly mark and symbolize the memories, identities, and ambitions of the communities for which, and by whom, they were constructed, may be interpreted as an answer to the uncertainties, new horizons, and anxieties engendered by a community’s dramatic social and demographic change.

Rather than approaching and understanding a monument as an object with meaning in itself, I propose an examination of the ways in which monuments and memorial landscapes are made meaningful by the communities co-existing and co-evolving with those edifices and spaces. A statue, in other words, is nothing more than what we come to make of it; the act which removes or erects it, then, is meaningful and political insofar as we make it so. To move towards more concrete examples, I briefly consider the following two ways in which memorial landscapes and monuments of ‘national importance,’ in Canadian and European contexts, have been transformed and challenged within the last few year, each corresponding with movements to (un)settle questions around ‘our’ communal/national identity.

In Canada…

In the summer of 2018, a statue of Canada’s first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, was removed from Victoria City Hall and placed in storage with the intent to relocate and re-contextualize the figure at a later time. Although many Victorians interpreted the act to remove the statue as a reconciliatory gesture towards acknowledging the historic and continuing injustices of settler-colonialism, many groups opposed  the decision to remove the figure of Macdonald characterized the act as an ‘attack on our history’ and an ‘assault on Canadian identity.’ I would argue that the either-or nature of the debate to remove or keep the statue unfortunately polarized important conversations around who ‘we’ are and where ‘we’ are going—the symbolic move to ‘unsettle’ Canada’s past and present inadvertently re-entrenching exclusionary, colonial identities and visions based on limited, unexamined readings of history.

In Europe…

In late December, 2018, the statue of Imre Nagy—the 44th Prime Minister of Hungary executed for his prominent role in the Hungarian Uprising of 1956—was removed from where it stood between Szabadság tér (Liberty Square) and the Parliament Building. This instance of ‘de-statueing’ might be understood as part of a longer series of controversial acts, spearheaded by nationalist movements and populist parties, to transform Budapest’s memorial landscape and re-narrativize Hungarian history. While controversies have enveloped the House of Terror—a state museum memorializing victims of National Socialism and Soviet Communism while overlooking Hungarian involvement and complicity in those regimes and crimes—so too have the latest monuments added to Szabadság tér been criticized as rehabilitating some of the aggressive and exclusionary politics of the Horthy-Era (with a bust of the Admiral set behind glass near the square) and presenting the idea that Hungary was an ‘innocent victim’ during the Second World War (with the memorial for the victims of German occupation, wherein Hungary is depicted as an angel).

In Victoria and in Budapest, the debates around taking down monuments, and transforming memorial landscapes, go far beyond advocating for or against the presence of bronze, marble, or concrete. How a community decides to remember and to communicate its past is not something that should be taken lightly, nor should decisions to memorialize the past in a particular way be understood as the end of the conversation to address historical injustice, trauma, and the legacies thereof. In the end, the act of dismantling or erecting a memorial can only do so much; it is the duty of a community to discuss and remember the past, and enact change in the present.

I leave readers to consider the counter-memorial at Szabadság tér, where citizens have constructed and maintained an informal memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust in Hungary, consisting of personal stories of trauma, memorial candles, and calls to action. But, most importantly, this counter-memorial is a space for open dialogue, represented by the centrally positioned pair of empty chairs. Perhaps, moving forward, the focus of debates around memorial landscapes ought not to be on whether or not a monument is absent or present, but how it is we might create and preserve a space to voice and negotiate memories as a way to acknowledge past wrongs and forge new bonds.