Illegality, exploitability, and precarity : repressive migration policies, carceral borders and their impact on migrant lives

Abstract

Borders in the Global North are becoming increasingly militarized, monetized, and deadly, disproportionately prohibiting the freedom of movement of migrants travelling from the Global South. The deployment of neoliberal migration policy, which prioritizes market benefits and economic contribution, enforces the temporality of migrants in the host country and the exploitability of migrant labour for economic gain. Movement from state to state is readily accessible for some, and criminalized for others, showcasing how priority is placed on white, wealthy, and Global North travellers while criminalizing, exploiting, and endangering racialized migrants and migrants from the Global South or from places that are severally impacted by global economic restructuring, Structural Adjustment loans, global trading policies, political crises and environmental destruction. Closed-border practices and policies garner public support through fear-mongering and anti-migrant rhetoric found prevalent in media from the Global North (Butcher, Neidhardt, 2022). Normalized xenophobic rhetoric, such as the use of terms like ‘aliens’ or ‘illegals’ fosters a tolerance for migration policies that endanger migrant lives (Robinson, Su, 2023). Popular discourse that labels migrants as security threats provide nations with the power to manage migrants and militarize borders, playing into the hands of security corporations who profit off of the proliferation of closed border practices. Huysmans (2006:50) states that securitization institutes political solidarity for border protection. In the field of EU politics, there is a latent political will to constitute European unity that ties the EU perception of 9/11 as a terrorist attack and migrants associated to terrorism with a need to harden borders. The EU and Frontex (EU border and coastal guard agency) are problematic as far as securitization and militarization operations are concerned because they legitimize violent and dehumanizing policies that are otherwise contentious. Current migrant contract worker programs such as Temporary Foreign Worker program and Live-in Caregiver program in Canada disproportionately impact racialized migrants and contribute to cheapening their labor. Short term contract works, chances of being illegal if the workers stay back after the contract expires, exploitation at work, coupled with securitization and militarization of borders and repressive immigration policies, manifest and maintain the state of illegality that shapes certain migrants’ everyday life. Moreover, migrants, regardless of citizenship status, are made especially vulnerable to abuse, exploitation, and in many cases death due to policies that prioritize border control over humanitarian concerns. In this context, migration policy regimes shaped by neoliberal market-driven policies refer to an overarching system of laws, regulations, and institutional practices that govern and manage current-day migrants while prioritizing economic efficiency. Following these practices and policies around migrants and immigration, my Honors thesis objectives are to analyze: 1) how the border industrial complex links to the migration industrial complex through looking into the privatization of prisons, immigrant enforcement and labour market regulations 2) Can border and immigration policies force periods of waiting for jobs, stable living conditions, access to healthcare and food, and conditions of illegalized movement through the change and temporality of permits, visas, or immigration status, thereby endangering migrant lives in myriad ways. 3) Do strict border controls and repressive immigrant policies contribute to the precarity and vulnerability of migrant women to Gender Based Violence (GBV).