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Predicaments of Territorial Democracy and Statecraft in Europe: How European Democracies Regiment Migratory Movements

1997; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 22; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/030437549702200303

2163-3150

Nevzat Soguk,

Political Systems and Governance

Once viewed as minor irritants, asylum seekers, refugees, and immigrants in the broadest sense are increasingly seen as sources of change and transformation for the places they affect.2 Scholars and policymakers alike seem to concur on this point, though arriving at different interpretive conclusions as to the nature of changes spurred by refugees and immigrants. Most governmental commentaries on the issue see adverse or deleterious consequences in human movements. The Political Committee of the North Atlantic Assembly, for example, calls immigration and asylum shortand medium-term security risk requiring both prompt policy responses and long-term developmental solutions. Rudolf Seiters, the German interior minister in 1993, speaks of population movements as representing a threat to political stability in the whole of Western Europe. Echoing the same theme, Kenneth Clarke, then the British home secretary, intimates that good race relations and a healthy sense of community depend on an effective system of strict immigration control. Illegal immigration and asylum threaten the nation-state as a source of identity and cohesion, says Charles Pasqua, the former French interior minister.3 In the academic realm, an increasing number of scholars4 agree on the significance of international migration in its varying forms for