{"id":10358,"date":"2020-11-16T11:15:28","date_gmt":"2020-11-16T09:15:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sciencespo.fr\/research\/cogito\/home\/?p=10358"},"modified":"2020-11-25T11:01:27","modified_gmt":"2020-11-25T09:01:27","slug":"migrant-labor-policies-serving-production-systems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sciencespo.fr\/research\/cogito\/home\/migrant-labor-policies-serving-production-systems\/?lang=en","title":{"rendered":"Migrant Labor: Policies Serving Production Systems"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Lucas Puygrenier<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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Malta, Hal Far: tent village, open centre for refugees (mostly boatpeople from Africa), octobre 2009. \u00a9 Myriam Thyes, CC BY-SA 3.0<\/p><\/div>\n

Few studies on asylum seekers have explored their place in the production and labor systems of host countries. Migration management certainly gives short shrift to the local labor market, and the success of an asylum application hinges on the candidate’s ability to convincingly claim that s\/he is not an “economic migrant”, but rather motivated by factors of a different nature.<\/p>\n

However, to consider asylum seekers to be in a unique relationship with the State is to consider them as an exception: a population existing outside the economic and social world. In other words, such a perspective disregards the “invisible threads” (Karl Marx) that bind individuals and place migrants within the “host” society and its production system.<\/p>\n

Migrant Labor: a Maltese Perspective<\/h4>\n

The island of Malta \u2013 a member state of the European Union that is close to the Libyan coast from which many asylum seekers depart when attempting to cross the Mediterranean \u2013 provides a prime case study for reflecting on how governments address migration and economic accumulation. Based on a qualitative survey that started in 2019 and mainly consists of interviews with various Maltese authorities, local employers, employer organizations, and migrants present on the island, Lucas Puygrenier’s doctoral research explores the interplay between the security and economic dynamics that shape migration and labor policies, turning asylum seekers into a separate workforce on the island.<\/p>\n

Between \u201cBurden\u201d\u2026<\/h4>\n

Malta portrays asylum seekers and refugees as an unbearable “burden” for the microstate, and has a particularly repressive policy towards them. The Maltese military seeks to ensure that the Libyan Coast Guard intercepts migrant boats under a policy of questionable legality(1)<\/sup><\/a>Interview with a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Malta on 25 August. It is also worth mentioning the Amnesty International report, Malta: waves of impunity. Malta\u2019s human rights violations and Europe\u2019s responsibilities in the Central Mediterranean<\/i><\/a>, 7 September 2020.<\/span><\/span>