Migration without Borders Migration without Borders Essays on the Free Movement of People Edited by Antoine Pécoud and Paul de Guchteneire UNESCO Publishing Berghahn Books PARIS New York • Oxford Published jointly in 2007 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2007 Antoine Pécoud and Paul de Guchteneire All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of Berghahn Books. The designations employed and the presentation of material throughout this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of UNESCO concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. The authors are responsible for the choice and the presentation of the facts contained in this book and for the opinions expressed therein, which are not necessarily those of UNESCO and do not commit the Organization. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Printed in the United States on acid-free paper ISBN UNESCO: 978-92-3-104024-5 ISBN Berghahn Books: 978-1-84545-346-6 Contents List of tables vii Foreword ix Pierre Sané, Assistant Director-General for Social and Human Sciences, UNESCO 1. Introduction: the migration without borders scenario 1 Antoine Pécoud and Paul de Guchteneire Part I: Theoretical issues 2. The economics and politics of the free movement of people 33 Nigel Harris 3. The frontiers of mobility 51 Catherine Wihtol de Wenden 4. The ethics, economics and governance of free movement 65 Mehmet Ugur 5. Managing migration: towards the missing regime? 97 Bimal Ghosh 6. Open borders and the welfare state 119 Han Entzinger Part II: Regional perspectives 7. Europe without borders: rhetoric, reality or Utopia? 137 Jan Kunz and Mari Leinonen 8. Creating a borderless West Africa: constraints and prospects 161 for intra-regional migration Aderanti Adepoju vi Contents 9. Histories, realities and negotiating free movement in 175 southern Africa Sally Peberdy and Jonathan Crush 10. Migration without borders: a long way to go in the Asian region 199 Graziano Battistella 11. A world without borders? Mexican immigration, new 221 boundaries and transnationalism in the United States Alejandro I. Canales and Israel Montiel Armas 12. The free circulation of skilled migrants in North America 243 Rafael Alarcón 13. Migration policies and socioeconomic boundaries in the 259 South American Cone Alicia Maguid Notes on contributors 281 Index 287 List of Tables 6.1 Forms of solidarity: mutual vs. unilateral and formal 122 vs. informal 7.1 Foreigners in the European Union 139 7.2 Three future scenarios for borders and migration in Europe 150 12.1 Distribution by sex of the Mexican population aged 25 years 247 and above with a professional or postgraduate education, 2000 12.2 Immigrants admitted to the United States by type and class 248 of admission, 2003 12.3 Immigrants admitted to the United States on employment- 249 based preferences, 2003 12.4 Distribution of skilled immigrant workers admitted to Canada 251 by top ten countries of last permanent residence, 1996–2000 12.5 Distribution of immigrants to Canada by country of origin, 252 1961–2000: selected countries 12.6 Number of TN Trade NAFTA visa holders admitted to 253 Canada, Mexico and the United States by country of citizenship, 2003 13.1 Southern Cone countries: total population and impact of 263 international migration in the 1980, 1990 and 2000 census rounds 13.2 Southern Cone countries: intra-regional immigrants by 266 country of birth: 1990 and 2000 census rounds 13.3 Southern Cone countries and Peru: economic and social 273 indicators, 1990–2002 Foreword Pierre Sané, Assistant Director-General for Social and Human Sciences, UNESCO Imagine a world without borders, where people had the right to move freely from one country to another, to settle down, live and work wherever they wished. Today, with states strictly controlling their frontiers, this sounds like Utopia. But what if the idea of migration without borders was worth considering? Is it not natural to let people decide where they wish to live? Is it not natural to give people equal rights to move more freely throughout a globalizing world? According to Article 13-2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ‘Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country’.But the right to leave is not complemented by a right to enter; one may emigrate, but not immigrate. From a human rights point of view, we are faced with an incomplete situation that sees many people being deprived of their right to emigrate by an absence of possibilities to immigrate. It is therefore worth envisaging a right to mobility: in a world of flows, mobility is a resource to which everyone should have access. It has become clear that migration is an essential element in the world economy. Sending countries benefit increasingly from remittance payments and the return of skilled migrants, receiving countries benefit from younger workforces, and migrants themselves find new opportunities through their move to a new country. Migration redistributes wealth at the world level and plays a central role in development and poverty reduction. Moreover, within the current globalization process, which favours an increasingly free circulation of goods, information and capital, it is worth considering including free movement of human beings as well. International migration is one of the major moral and political challenges of our time. Throughout the world, people claim their right to migrate by attempting to cross borders clandestinely. This generates human costs that cannot be ignored; from the deaths of undocumented migrants to the rise in x Foreword human smuggling and the social vulnerability of those living irregularly in receiving countries. It also leads to increasingly policed borders, higher walls and fences, and severe restrictive procedures affecting travelling, study abroad and even tourism. Let us also recall that there have been long periods of world history in which those who wished to migrate could do so, and that this did not lead to chaos. People were often encouraged to migrate and migration was a decisive factor in the development of many countries. What would the world look like today if, historically, people had been limited in their movements, if there had not been any migration in the past? Let us also remember that the idea of lifting all restrictions to the movement of its citizens is one of the main policies behind the creation of one of the world’s biggest regional cooperative structures – the European Union – and that other supranational organizations are currently considering free movement as part of their future cooperation agreements. Of course, migration has profound implications for both sending and receiving societies that need to be dealt with very carefully. We must come up with innovative social transformations to make human movement compatible with welfare states, citizenship rights and democratic institutions. All too often, migrants are accused of threatening social cohesion; rather than fruitlessly trying to stop migration, however, policies should make people’s right to mobility and societies’ need for solidarity compatible. Free migration would then not jeopardize receiving societies, but would foster intercultural contacts, leading to societies based on openness and tolerance. This book brings a breath of fresh air to contemporary debates. Is it not time to listen to the experts solicited by UNESCO and to rethink our approach to migration? Imagination, coupled with reason, can turn today’s Utopia into tomorrow’s options. Chapter 1 Introduction: the migration without borders scenario Antoine Pécoud and Paul de Guchteneire What would happen if border controls were suppressed and people were granted the right to move freely throughout the world? This book explores the ‘migration without borders’ (MWB) scenario and investigates the ethical, human rights, economic and social implications of the free movement of people. In a globalized world in which migratory flows seem to elude the attempts of states to regulate such movements, the MWB scenario challenges conventional views on migration and fosters a critical rethinking of current policies and practices. This book is the product of a research project launched by UNESCO to better understand the theoretical issues surrounding ‘open borders’ and the regional dynamics governing the movement of people in the Americas, Europe, Africa and the Asia Pacific region. This introductory chapter reviews the main elements of the debate on free movement and summarizes the major findings of this project. The MWB scenario is often dismissed as unrealistic. While it may indeed be an unlikely perspective for the near future, there are several arguments for going beyond a simplistic dismissal of free movement. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that ‘Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country’ (Article 13-2). Only emigration is recognized as a fundamental right, which raises the issue of the actual meaning of this right in the absence of immigration possibilities, and points to the necessity of envisaging a more comprehensive right to mobility. In today’s world, most people are free to leave their country. But only a minority of them have the right to enter another country of their choice. The 2 Antoine Pécoud and Paul de Guchteneire right to emigration remains problematic as long as major restrictions on immigration keep people from migrating, or even travelling, to other countries.