International Journal of Migration and Border Studies (4 papers in press)

Regular Issues

• Rubbery ASEAN: Mediating people-movement in Southeast Asia  
  by Linda Quayle 
  Abstract: Southeast Asians on the move are caught between a fluid region and a hard state, as Malaysian historian Farish Noor puts it. This formulation begs the question of where the regions foremost intergovernmental organization, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), is positioned in relation to these flows and gates. ASEAN intersects with people-movement in at least six interconnected domains: skilled and unskilled labour; connectivity and development; and security and protection. Embedded in all these areas are tensions between the need for mobility and the fear of mobility. Drawing on mobilities theory, this article argues that ASEAN-as-organization can best be characterized as a semi-soft entity, mediating between the fluidity created by Southeast Asians multi-layered and sometimes contradictory quests for opportunity and the rigidity represented by regional states deep-seated desire for control. As a result, ASEANs goals on people-movement reflect an undeniable ambivalence that leaves it open to charges of ineffectiveness, even duplicity. Yet this incoherence might be both an inevitable and also sometimes positive element of ASEANs shock-absorber role, as it both buffers and is imprinted by the dual pressures of fluidity and fixity.
  Keywords: ASEAN; migration; skilled labour migration; unskilled labour migration; irregular migration; forced migration; internal migration; migrant protection; connectivity; development gap; securitization of people-movement; human trafficking; people smuggling; mobilities theory.
  
  
• Explaining the lack of change in Southeast Asia: the practice of migrant worker rights in the 'ASEAN migration field'  
  by Ruji Auethavornpipat 
  Abstract: ASEANs regional norms of sovereign equality, non-interference,consultation and consensus or the ASEAN way are often used as a scapegoat for explaining the failure of ASEAN and, therefore, the lack of change in Southeast Asia. This perspective, however, does not suggest much about deeper state preferences that drive decision-making, even less so the processes in which ASEAN members arrive at their decisions. In contrast, this article contributes to the practice turn in International Relations and argues that the success and failure of ASEAN regionalism very much depends on states background knowledge the habitus that predisposes state actions. By examining the deadlock in the almost decade-long negotiations of the ASEAN instrument on the protection of migrant worker rights, this article sheds light on how Malaysias past experiences with labour migration shape its current practice that is estranged from regional demands, hence creating its reluctance to compromise on the migrant worker rights agenda in ASEAN.
  Keywords: ASEAN instrument negotiation; ASEAN migration field; ASEAN regionalism; ‘ASEAN way’; capital; field; habitus; norm socialisation; Malaysia; migrant worker rights; Pierre Bourdieu; practice theory; practice turn; Southeast Asia.
  DOI: 10.1504/IJMBS.2019.10018113
   
  
• Law and Moral LIcensing in Canada: The making of illegality and illegitimacy along the border  
  by Shauna Labman, Jamie Chai Yun Liew 
  Abstract: The thousands of migrants crossing the Canadian land border irregularly are challenging the nature of law and the role the law plays at and around, the border. Likewise, the thousands of refugees who enter Canada each year through resettlement are framed within the validity of their legal arrival across the border. The article addresses the perceived notion that there is a singularity of the law along the border that informs which migrant is legal or illegal. We examine the refugee system in Canada to illustrate the various layers that influence the normative discourse on refugee protection. We reveal a tension in rendering persons rhetorically legal or illegal not by whether a person is in need of protection but by the means through which persons seek that protection. This article seeks to understand how this tension is tied to and, buoyed by, moral licensing whereby application of the illegal refugee concept, combined with the self-congratulation surrounding Canadas resettlement activities, act together to empower a moral comfort with slackened support for refugees seeking asylum.
  Keywords: refugees; illegals; resettlement; borders; migration; Canada-US; irregular-crossings; private sponsorship; IRPA; moral licensing.
  
  
• Book Review: Handbook on Migration and Security by Philippe Bourbeau
  by Didem Doğar 
  Abstract: Handbook on Migration and Security by: Philippe Bourbeau Published 2017 by Edward Elgar Publishing Cheltenham, UK; Northampton, MA, USA, 406pp ISBN 978-1-78536-048-0
  Keywords: .