Following a referendum in 2016, the British electorate decided to leave the European
Union with a vote of 52% to 48%. The withdrawal of the same was finally successful in 2020. While the move to exit the EU began with a focus on economic sovereignty, the issue of immigration eventually became an important issue for the pro-Brexit campaign. Since 1994, the number of people migrating to the UK has constantly increased in proportion to the number of people emigrating (Somai & Biederman, 2016). The slogan “Take back control” played out powerfully in public debates as the desire to control the UK borders and limit immigration was felt. Since Brexit, the UK has undertaken new laws that limit or stop certain migrations into the country. This blog aims to analyze the UK’s attempts to securitize immigration and how it creates both security and insecurity for certain groups of people both within and outside the country. To do so, three different analytical frameworks are used: Securitization Theory by Ole Waever, the Feminist Critique of Securitization Theory by Lene Hansen, and Biopower and the PARIS school approach.
Securitization Theory
The Securitization theory, as proposed by Ole Waever highlights how issues are taken
out of everyday politics and put in the realm of high politics through securitizing the same. To do so, he considers ‘speech acts’ to be of paramount importance. According to Waever, power holders or the elites consider something to be a security problem by declaring it as one using a speech act and hence, they attempt to gain control over the same. He argues that security is not an independent reality beyond language. Simply by uttering ‘security’, a state representative can move an issue into the realm of high politics and thereby claim a special right to use whatever means necessary to block it (Waever, 1995). He also considers the expansion of security beyond the state and military realm as problematic as securitizing our everyday lives also means militarizing our everyday lives. His theory focuses on language discourse and how an everyday issue is turned into a security threat by elite groups or the state, and further draws connections to the material impact it has on reality. The speech act requires the state to convince the majority of the society (audience) that measures need to be taken to resolve said security threat.
In the case of Brexit, the Vote Leave campaign used speech acts to securitize the realm of immigration and turned it into a security threat that had to be resolved by leaving the EU. Phrases like “British jobs for British workers” were used by the then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown in 2009. The popular phrase ‘Take back control’ also alluded to the idea of the immigrants having taken over what is rightfully theirs. A document published by the British government titled ‘EU Exit: Taking back control of our borders, money and laws while protecting our economy, security and Union’ in 2018 also suggests this idea of making moves to take back what has been taken from the British citizens. These speech acts were used to create a clear binary between Us/British citizens and Them/Immigrants and to convince the general public that relevant measures that would not be taken otherwise need to be taken in this regard. It allows the state to have influence over the discourse on immigration and implement harsh measures to control the same.
Feminist Critique of Securitization Theory
Lene Hansen talks about situations where insecurity itself cannot be voiced. What
happens if the referent object cannot be constituted as an independent, self-contained collective to voice its insecurity? In various cases, voicing security concerns exaggerates the threat itself, leading to silence as a form of self-preservation.
Following Brexit, there had been changes in policy to limit migration specifically from
the EU. As a result, since 2020, while non-EU migration has increased considerably, EU net
migration has fallen and has even become negative. In 2020, the UK government introduced a Points-Based System, under which they allow most migrants to apply to switch from one immigration route to another without having to leave the country. This is meant to help employers retain their staff they have previously invested in. This system, however, gives precedence to occupations in which women are underrepresented and hence, exacerbates gender inequality. This new Points-Based System prescribes a minimal salary threshold for skilled worker visas– doing so has differential impacts on people on the basis of their gender as women would find it disproportionately more difficult to meet said threshold than men. This creates a very uneven playing field for women looking to work in the UK. The impact of this new system on part-time workers needs to be considered as well, considering there is not any clear mention of any general salary threshold in that regard. The Office of National Statistics in the UK estimated that 37% of women are likely to work part-time as opposed to a much smaller 12% of men. This implies that women who work part time would most likely be excluded from this points-based system. This focus on the labour skill-set of migrant workers ignores the identity of said migrant workers, hence, also ignoring the gender inequalities and discrimination within the labour market based on the gender-segregated skills and wages that prevent female migrants from having the same entry-rights as male migrants.
While this points-based system creates a community of women who are unable to
access a level playing field when attempting to migrate to the UK for work, the situation
becomes even more convoluted when one takes race into account as well. Over the past decade, it has been noted that UK-born black and Asian workers earn less than their white peers. In this case, the intersectionality between the multiple identities of migrant workers as women of a minority race all work in tandem to silence the population against the insecurity created for them through such immigration policies. In a way, the female migrant population is being interpellated through silence, through their non-addressal.
Biopower and the PARIS School
Michel Foucault talks about Biopower– the ways in which modern states control and
regulate populations through various techniques and institutions, both directly and indirectly. He argues that indirect state control and surveillance is carried out by shaping behaviours, norms and ideologies in order to govern populations more subtly. The Political Anthropological Research for International Sociology (PARIS) school is based on this Foucauldian understanding of biopower– focusing on how states exercise control over its populations through its political and social structures.
Biopower itself is divided into disciplinary power and governmentality. Disciplinary
power allows the state to have control over individual bodies to make them docile and utilize their potential. In this case study, it is done through the speech acts as a consensus against immigration. This adherence to the state policies against immigration is a way of giving the state excess control over securitizing their everyday lives– by treating the existence of non-citizens as threats that require measures that go over and beyond the previously existing laws. This compliance is also reflected in the UK state’s recent law– Illegal Migration Act 2023, which allows the state to remove asylum seekers from its borders and deport them to a ‘safe third country’ (Rwanda). The state is able to exercise such control over all populations that enter its boundaries because there was some form of consent created within the British population during Brexit – one that suggests that all immigrants are a threat in one form or the other, and hence need to be controlled.
Governmentality, also called the power over life, is a way of administering entire
populations in order to make sure certain types of populations/communities are being protected. Through the usage of the Points-Based System to allow migrant entry into the country, the UK is selecting the “fittest” populations to work within their boundaries so they do not become a burden on the state's resources. There is a clear distinction created between the bios (politically valuable) and bare lives (mere existence). The heavy selection of migrants into the country allows the state to decide which lives are politically and economically valuable for them, while simultaneously the deportation of asylum seekers to Rwanda implies the consideration of such immigrants as politically invaluable, and hence they are considered bare lives for the state.
In conclusion, looking at the evolution of immigration policy in the UK starting from
its exit from the EU to recent policies on immigrants and asylum seekers allow us to look at
the issue of securitization from multiple angles. In securing and ‘taking back’ its borders, the UK has created insecurity not only for women migrant workers (both white and non-white) but also for the asylum seekers that are being sent to Rwanda instead. This idea of security, therefore, is not one-sided. It has multiple dimensions as it creates security and insecurity simultaneously.
References:
Ole, Wæver. 1995. “Securitization and Desecuritization.” In On Security, edited by Ronnie
Lipschutz. New York: Columbia University Press.
Hansen, Lene. 2000. ‘The Little Mermaid’s Silent Security Dilemma and the Absence of
Gender in the Copenhagen School’. Millennium 29 (2): 285–306.
Foucault, Michel. The history of sexuality: An introduction. Trans. Robert Hurley. New
York: Vintage 95 (1990). (Selection: Part Five: Right of Death and Power over Life)
Mbembe, Achille. 'Necropolitics.' Public culture 15, no. 1 (2003): 11-40.
Somai, M., & Biedermann, Z. (2016). Brexit: Reasons and challenges. Acta Oeconomica, 66,
137–156. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26574649
Gietel-Basten, S. (2016). Why Brexit? The Toxic Mix of Immigration and
Austerity. Population and Development Review, 42(4), 673–680.
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Interesting work Shivanshi! Do you think immigration policies in the UK tend to support the immigration of blue-collar workers who could be employed in labour-intensive jobs which MNCs could profit off by underpaying them? Or are they equally discriminatory to even gold-collar professionals?
Thank you, Shivanshi, for this insightful analysis of the UK's immigration policies! Considering the intersectionality of gender, race, and state power, how do you perceive the role of public discourse in shaping perceptions of security and insecurity among different migrant groups?