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Unauthorised migration beyond structure/agency? Acts, interventions, effects
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Squire, Vicki (2017) Unauthorised migration beyond structure/agency? Acts, interventions, effects. Politics, 37 (3). pp. 254-272. doi:10.1177/0263395716679674 ISSN 0263-3957.
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395716679674
Abstract
What are the most appropriate conceptual tools by which to develop an analysis of ‘unauthorised migration’? Is ‘migrant agency’ an effective critical concept in the context of a so-called European migration ‘crisis’? This article reflects on these questions through a detailed exploration of the ‘structure/agency debate’. It suggests the need for caution in engaging such a conceptual frame in analysing the politics of unauthorised migration. Despite the sophistication of many relational accounts of structure-agency, the grounding of this framework in questions of intentionality risk reproducing assumptions about subjects whose decision to migrate is more or less free from constraint. The article argues that such assumptions are analytically problematic, because they involve a simplification of processes of subjectivity formation. Moreover, it also argues that they are they normatively and politically problematic in the context of debates around unauthorised migration, because discussions of structure/agency can easily slip into the legitimisation of wider assumptions about the culpability and/or victimhood of people on the move. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s theorisation of subjectification, the article proposes an alternative analytics of acts, interventions and effects by which to address the politics of unauthorised migration in the midst of a so-called ‘migration crisis’.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subjects: | J Political Science > JV Colonies and colonization. Emigration and immigration. International migration | ||||||||
| Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Politics and International Studies | ||||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Emigration and immigration -- European Union countries, Illegal aliens -- European Union countries | ||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Politics | ||||||||
| Publisher: | Sage Publications Ltd. | ||||||||
| ISSN: | 0263-3957 | ||||||||
| Official Date: | 1 August 2017 | ||||||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | 37 | ||||||||
| Number: | 3 | ||||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 254-272 | ||||||||
| DOI: | 10.1177/0263395716679674 | ||||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||||
| Date of first compliant deposit: | 7 November 2016 | ||||||||
| Date of first compliant Open Access: | 6 September 2017 | ||||||||
| Funder: | Leverhulme Trust (LT). Research Fellowship, Economic and Social Research Council (Great Britain) (ESRC) | ||||||||
| Grant number: | RF-2015-545 (LT), ES/N013646/1 | ||||||||
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