Regimes of Insecurity: Women and Immigration Detention in France and Britain

Abstract

Various political commentators and scholars accept that an accelerated progression of ‘securitisation’ of migration has taken place since the events of 9/11 and subsequent terror attacks by Islamic groups in Europe. As we have learned from preceding chapters in this volume, scholars within both critical security studies (for example, Bigo 1998; Ceyhan and Tsoukala 2002; Huysmans 2006) and migration studies (for instance, Faist 2004; Fauser 2006) recognise that international migration has been increasingly associated with various forms of insecurity (terrorism, riots and social unrest, criminality) experienced by nation-states and their respective general publics. Thus, migrants have been presented as threatening and/or guilty subjects: a standpoint which has gained popular support, particularly in the western world. However, one of the consequences, intended or not, of constituting migration as a security threat in an age of significant global movements of people, is the creation of greater insecurity among migrant populations. As a process, migration is fraught with insecurity from the moment of the decision to migrate, through to departure from the country of origin, entry into the destination country, and settlement or refusal of entry or settlement. Such insecurity is intensified in the case of forced migration, and particularly in contexts where migrants are stigmatised as potential terrorists, criminals and social troublemakers, and where economic crises have led to severe cuts in public services, rising unemployment and an attendant rise in racism and xenophobia.