(Up)Rooting Sovereignty through the Metamorphoses of Migration [600953]

(Up)Rooting Sovereignty through the Metamorphoses of Migration

Maria-Mihaela NISTOR
Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca

Abstract

This article emphasizes some key aspects of sovereignty in a brief synchronic
analysis, insisting on the dynamic denota tions the concept has in the actual global
framework. Aspects related to asymmetric inte ractions of the migrants with the host
society in a rather cosmopolitan world, where the nation-state is only one of the
omnifarious actors involved in the policy- and decision making process are underlined, primarily in constructivist terms.

Keywords: sovereignty, migration management, security, constructivism, threats,
integration, globalization

In time, the concept of post-Westphalian sovereignty has been embodied in
omnifarious Gestalts , sometimes being invoked so as to gain further territories or to
engage actors (primarily states) in conflicts against more or less imagined threats of
the “Other(s)”, especially when connected to the national interest. From the
Dolphin’s absolutist slogan L’état C’est Moi to Marshall McLuhan’s metaphor of the
global village , sovereignty has been, grosso modo , protected by realists in
Machiavellian manners and underpinned by liberalists in favour of consensus and
global peace. Its denotations have been de- and reconstructed within various contexts,
so as to fit patterns of lead ership or anarchy. Strongly root ed in the national identity,
sovereignty has become more that a key word in anti-supra-federal and anti-immigrant rhetoric, being, to some actors, a unique modus vivendi, not
complementary with, but mutually exclusive to any further debate on the integration
of images of alterity. Even the global neighbourhood of a rather borderless
cyberspace is still being confronted to cons tructed borders that aim at annihilating any
attempt at “unity in diversity”.
“At the dawn of the information age, a crisis of legitimacy is voiding of
meaning and function the institutions of the industrial era. Bypassed by global

networks of wealth, power and information, the modern nation-state has lost much of
its sovereignty.” (Castells, 2011, p. 419)
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2010) underlines that “ sovereignty,
though its meanings have varied acro ss history, also has a core meaning , supreme
authority within a territory . It is a modern notion of polit ical authority. […] The state
is the political institution in which sovere ignty is embodied. An assemblage of states
forms a sovereign states system. ” Be it de jure or de facto , sovereignty is explained in
the traditional approach in connection to st ate legitimacy and aut hority, “mostly used
as state sovereignty and refering to the idea that national states have exclusive authority within their own borders” (R obinson, 2010, p. 220). Not few were the times
when the principle of sovereignty was invoke d even so as to surpass the borders for
reasons of territorial expansion, this being st rongly related to notions such as security
and welfare.
Buzan and Little (2009, p. 280) emphasize, in a rather optimistic manner, that
“sovereingty shifted from the leaders to the people, with the development of the
modern state from the absolutist one”. The Global Age has somehow led to a
paradigmatic shift in this respect, since “s overeignty is neither inherently territorial
nor is it exclusively organized on a state- by-state basis.” (Agnew, 2005, p. 437). Still,
the hypothesis that “sovereignty is not n ecessarily predicated on and defined by the
strict and fixed territoria l boundaries of individual stat es” (Agnew, 2005, p. 438) lacks
acceptance and effective implementation. Ther efore, “the negotiation and redefinition
of political authority in geographically comp lex ways suggests the need to change the
terms of debate about sovereignty” (Agne w, 2005, p. 438). Within the framework of
such a multiplicity of state a nd non-state actors at the turn of the millenium (be they
suprafederal or intergovernmental institutions, international NGOs or multinational companies whose GDPs surpasse those of many states), sovereignty is transfered at
various levels, as Andrew Moravcik ha s underlined in many of his articles.
The rise of globalization parallels the d ecline of the state, especially of the
welfare state, with further implications: “the crisis of the welfare state means that a
fundamental component of the legitimacy and stability of the nati on-state fades away,
not only in Europe but throughout th e world” (Castells, 2010, p. 314).
In Contracting States: Sovereign Tr ansfers in International Relations,
Alexander Cooley and Hendrik Spruyt pr opose “hybrid sovereignty arrangements
involving transaction-specifi c assets” (2009, p. 23). Despit e the traditional actors’

need to monopolize sovereignty, “a stable hybrid sovereignt y arrangement might
emerge if joint gains are av ailable and few alternative contracting parties exist”
(Cooley, Spruyt, 2009, p. 23).
Migration might be perceived as an issue that threatens the structural stability
of the state –and, implicitly, its sovereignty and security- primarily when considering
the high social dominance theory: “High Soci al Dominance oriented individuals hold
unfavourable attitudes toward immigrants because they hold zero-sum beliefs about
the relationship between immigrants and non- immigrants (both in terms of resources
and values), because they do not see immi grants as part of their national group”
(Esses et al., 2013, p.524). In other words, the more the Other gains, the more the Self
loses. Still, it has been proven that “migra tion is not a zero-sum game” (Transatlantic
Trends, 2010) and should be rather perceive d as opportunity than as threat to the
state’s structural stability.
It must be underlined that an actor’s st ructural stability ca n be both internal
and external. To Alexander Wendt, “interna l structural stability sources refer to
factors inherent to actors that make them not wish change [or are rather reluctant to it,
I would suggest]. This tendency is rooted in the human need for ontological security
that creates a generalized preference fo r order and predictability” (Wendt, 2011, p.
331). Immigrants might be considered thr eats to the ethno-cultural and religious
structural stability of a state, but may al so be thought of as representing a danger at
the economic and political level. “External structural stability sources are factors
within the system that inhibit change even if actors want it. Institutions such as
sovereignty and balance of power are two ex amples that reward some practices and
punish others” (Wendt, 2011, p. 332). A counte r-argument in this respect would be
Moravcsik’s theory of sovereignty transfer.
The highly debated issue of migrants (especially of unwan ted ones, the ones
that would not substantially contribute to br ain gain) must be briefly presented within
the wider framework of sovereignty. A poten tial answer to why liberal states accept
unwanted immigrants is offered by Saskia Sa ssen’s argument of gl obal constraints on
states’ sovereignty, constraints such as economic globalization and the rise of a
human rights regime. To prove the insuffici ency to Sassen’s arguments, Joppke
underlines the continuity of economic trans actions that are not new and, further on,
appeals to Soysal’s idea thesis that “de void of hard legal powers, the international
human rights regime consists of the soft moral power of discourse” (Sassen, apud

Joppke, 1998, p. 268). Joppke’s thesis is that the acceptance of unwanted immigrants
should not be attributed to globally-limited sovereignty, but rather to a “self-limited
sovereignty” of the state. “T he universalistic idiom of liberalism prohibits the political
elites in liberal stat es from addressing the ethnic or racial composition of migrant
streams” (Joppke, 1998, p. 270). Still, Joppke underlines pa rticularities of liberal
states in managing immigration issues: “in a guest-worker regime such as Germany’s
the state at one point actively lured (de fact o) immigrants into the country and thus is
morally constraint not to dispose of them at will”, whereas “in a postcolonial regime such as Britain’s, immigration was never ac tively solicited but passively tolerated for
the sake of a secondary goal- th e maintenance of the empire”.
States have their own sovereignty and, implicitly , power, to decide on aspects
such as the number of immigrants adm itted per year, naturalization conditions,
integration into the host society, social policies. Still, the wider international framework can be both suppor tive of and demanding, shou ld there be the case of
highly significant number of refugees, for example.
So as to effectively manage migratio n-related issues, one should primarily
consider the resort institutions and the role they play in the sovereignty question. Even
if “advocacy for an internati onal organization dealing with labour issues began in the
nineteenth century, led by two industriali sts, Robert Owen (1771-1853) of Wales and
Daniel Legrand (1783-1859) of France” (IL O), an International Association for
Labour Legislation was founded at the turn of the twentieth centu ry in Switzerland.
Awareness concerning global migration and its management has grown after World
War I, with the founding of the International Labour Orga nization in 1919, a part of
the Treaty of Versailles.
The end of World War II led to the crea tion of another resort institution,
namely the International Organization for Migration, init ially known as the
Provisional Intergovernmental Committee for the Movement of Migrants from
Europe and created “to help European govern ments to identify resettlement countries
for the estimated 11 million people uprooted by the war” (ILO). With the actual name
since 1989, the Interna tional Organization for Migrati on is engaged, among others, in
humanitarian emergencies, counter-traffi cking, immigration and border management,
migration policy and research, Internationa l Dialogue on Migration, assisted voluntary
return and reintegration (ILO).

Despite the fact that, at global level, the existence of the International
Migration Law is acknowledged, this is rath er a legal framework under construction,
“an umbrella term covering a variety of prin ciples and rules that together regulate the
international obligations of States with regard to migrants” (IOM). In 2004, the
International Migration Law Unit was establ ished. Its main functions, as stated in
their official web site, are to:

 compile the migration related legal instruments at international, regional and
national levels and make them easily accessible,
 disseminate this information and thus enhance the understanding of IML,
 organize training seminars and capacity building activities in the field of
migration law
 promote IML as essential component of comprehensive migration management
frameworks.

With regard to this normative framew ork, The International Organization for
Migration states that this can be perceived from two complementary angles, namely
“the principles deriving from state sovereignt y (the right to protec t borders, to confer
nationality, to admit and expel foreigners, to combat trafficking and smuggling and to
safeguard national security)” and “the human rights of the persons involved in
migration” (IOM). Sometimes other levels a ppear, as well, and a relevant example in
this respect is the European Union.
At the UN High Level Dialogue on Inte rnational Migration and Development
in October 2013, an eight-point agenda for action has been set. It includes:
– protect the human rights of all migrants
– reduce the costs of labour migration
– eliminate migrant exploitation, including human trafficking
– address the plight of stranded migrants
– improve public percep tions of migrants
– integrate migration into the development agenda
– strengthen the migration evidence base
– enhance migration partne rships and cooperation

As it can be noticed from this list, much has yet to be done in terms of
managing migration. It is acknowledged such aspects are necessary for successfully
dealing with omnifarious migration issues , but, once again, these goals lack the
SMART character and nothing about their potential means of implementation is
mentioned. ‘Unhomeliness’ is perceived by notable critics in the field of spatial theories -such as
Homi Bhabha in his well-known book The Location of Culture as “the condition of
extra-territorial and cross-cultural in itiations” (Bhabha, 1994, p. 9). Since one’s
location is automatically perceived as part of one’s being, defining, to a certain extent,
one’s identity, Bhabha mentions that th ere are three conditions for the overall
comprehension of the ‘process of identification’, namely:

1. to exist in to be called into being in re lation to an otherness, its look or locus;
it is always in relation to the place of the other that co lonial desire is
articulated.
2. it is not the colonialist Self or the col onized Other, but the disturbing distance
in-between that constitutes the figure of colonial otherness.
3. the question of identification is never the affirmation of a pre-given identity,
never a self- fulfilling prophecy- it is always th e production of an image
identity and the transformation of the subject in assuming that image. The
demand of identification- that is, to be for an Other- entails the representation
of the subject in the differentiating order of otherness. Identification […] is always the return of an image of identity that bears the mark of splitting in the
Other place from which it comes. (Bhabha, 1994, pp. 44-45). Relevant to the development of identity studies, Homi Bhabha’s theory about
the third space can also be contextualized in a theory about a third individual that
belongs to neither the home nation, nor the hos t one, since ‘the two original moments’
are used as matrices out of which the thir d, unique individual emerges. In today’s
world of megacities, this indivi dual is primarily an urban one.
The multicultural mosaic of a state’s immigrants is, in most cases, a result of
intertwining patterns. Analys ing the actual migration proces ses, some vectors need to
be considered. David Held et al. (19 99, p. 283) enumerate the following variables:
– Extensity

– Intensity
– Velocity of migration
– Impact on home and host societies
– Infrstructure of transpor tation and communications
– Institutions involved in the ma nagement of migratory flows
To these, the (in)existence of socio-economic networks, sometimes at
transnational level, can be added, acting as promoter or, the other way around, as
antagonist of migration and, further on, of in tegration and (in)secu rity. The theory of
social networks shall be analysed later on and its application is indubitable, since
“networks produce the institutionalization and expansion of migration” (Horváth and
Anghel, 2009, p. 36), contributing to the in tegration or, on the contrary, to the
segregation of immigrants.
István Horváth and Remus Gabriel Anghel (2009, p. 18) propose a nuanced
reinterpretation of traditional migration t ypologies according to the following criteria:
– the nature of the borders that have been crossed (i nternal versus external
migration)
– the temporal framework of migration (t emporary versus permanent migration)
– the degree of freedom the migrants have (voluntary versus forced migration)
– the legal status of the migrants (legal versus illegal migration)
– the degree to which migration is organi zed (spontaneous versus contractual
migration) With regard to the first criter ion, beside borders’ permeability and
penetrability, acknowledged as key elemen ts in structuring and organizing
international migration, it should be stated th at the very idea of “border” is, in some
cases, subject to interpretation, it being appl ied not only to states. For instance, is
migration from Romania to Germany intern al or external? The answer is double-
folded and depends on the pe rspective this question is answered from: the border is
external when perceived from a state pers pective but internal at the level of the
European Union. Further mentions derive from the development of the migration
process in itself. An initiall y spontaneous act of migration can turn into a contractual
one, temporary migration can become permanent. Analyzing the post-Cold War context of the migration-secu rity nexus, Thomas
Faist (2004) states that “[i]nternational migr ation has served as a convenient reference
point for unspecific fears” and “securitizing migration reinforces the very stereotypes

about cultural fears and clashes that politicians publicly deny and abstain”.
Furthermore, some unintended consequen ces of this securitization “may lead
governments to continue presenting transnat ional movements as grave security risks.
In the end, this may create incentives for polit ical actors to engage in symbolic meta-
politics”. This way, a whole scenario is cr eated and re-created, so as to augment a
rather imagined struggle of ‘them’ agains t ‘us’, of protecting ‘our values’ against
‘their threats’. As argued in previous articles, as well, an optimal integration of immigrants
into the host societies would considerably diminish potential enmities and cleveages. Still, should this be only limited in pract ice, one could further consider Alexander
Wendt’s hypothesis that “what offers a stat e sovereignty under conditions of internal
division is an organized structure of non-rival, unified authority that allows all parts to
work together as a unity or team” (Wendt, 2011, p.216).
Despite the positive theoretical fram ework of interaction among various
groups of immigrants and the host society, there is still room for improvement in terms of managing migration and, further on, integration of immigr ants. With regard
to migration, a more liberalist approach of the human beings as citizens of the world is recommended. Furthermore, in case of im previsible waves of irregular migration
from conflict areas, collaboration among a ll actors involved and rejection of any
extremist approach are required.
I argue that integration management can be efficiently done within the wider
framework of multi-level governance in a rather decentralized contex t. “At the centre,
the permutation or the transformation of elements is forbidden. […] Thus it has
always been thought that the centre, which is by definition unique, constituted that very thing within a structure which governs the structure, while escaping structurality.
[…] the centre is not the centre.” (Derrida, 1970, p. 1)
In this wider framework of globaliz ation, sovereignty remains a concept
acknowledged as such, but not mutually exclusive to tolera nce, intercultural
awareness or responsibility. Therefor e, without neglecting the traditional raison
d’État , one should the consider the existence of what Philip G. Cerny (2010) calls
raison du Monde , the two terms requiring positioning in no divergent, but in a rather
complementary approach.

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