Abstract
In this study, Vollmer investigates the changing constructions of irregular migration in and through policy-making, as well as the political reactions to the phenomenon. Irregular migration includes what is otherwise called illegal or illegalised migration, but ‘may refer to more complex processes than can be deemed “illegal”, depending on judicial interpretation’ and hence ‘points to the changing modalities or the legal hybridism of actions or processes and the possible changing status of migratory legality’ (p. 9; italics in the original). The book traces the changes and specifics of the conceptualisation of irregular migration in a comparative as well as a diachronic dimension. With regard to the former, discursive constructions of and responses to irregular migration are analysed in the two cases of Germany and the United Kingdom. With regard to the latter, the study starts in 1973, when approaches to immigration began to change in both countries, introducing the politicisation of immigration and, later, the criminalisation of irregular migration. The case for comparing the UK and Germany is well made: both have very different immigration histories, different conceptualisations of citizenship/nationality as well as different migrant communities. However, as Vollmer’s analyses reveal, both ended up with very similar discourses of irregular migration, resulting in similar policy-making responses.
The focus of the study lies on policy-making processes, which are seen as contributing to the construction of the phenomenon of irregular migration, and at the same time as reflective of wider debates about immigration and broader ideological frameworks concerning, for example, the role of the state. The author approaches the topic from a social scientific disciplinary framework and seeks to add a discourse dimension to existing research on policy-making, the majority of which tends to focus on actors and decision-making processes (p. 15). For both the countries under research, major legislative and regulative initiatives addressing irregular migration are investigated through analyses of key policy texts, such as the minutes of relevant committees and parliamentary debates (although the one-page-long description of the sources in p. 51 provides little detail).
The first chapter outlines the aims of the study, situating it mainly in the disciplinary environment of policy-making studies. Chapter 2 deals with the methodology, which draws on research on policy frames as ‘interpretative schemes and/or symbolic constructs’ (p. 43). Unfortunately, the status of frames does not become very clear. On the one hand, they are supposed to be ‘schemata of interpretation making […] providing patterns of interpretation’ (p. 44) with an apparent cognitive and epistemic dimension. On the other hand, they are also seen ‘as a particular expression of social representations’ (p. 45) with apparent symbolic and textual dimensions. Frames are seen as cognitive concepts and their symbolic manifestations at the same time, the latter making the former accessible for analysis. Since frames are more commonly used with regard to the cognitive realm of conceptualisation – and this would have been apt for this study since it is later linked to broader ideologies – such a twofold dimension should have been better argued rather than just assumed. It emerges in the following analysis that what are here called ‘frames’ could just as well be themes in terms of content analysis, or topoi in terms of argumentation analysis.
Chapter 3 is devoted to analysing framing in policy-making debates in the UK, while Chapter 4 deals with the case of Germany. In both of these, the author outlines how the use of frame components – such as discrimination and equality, culture, national identity, unknown numbers, control, bogusness, crime, necessity and urgency – shifts over time. The analysis reveals an increasing concern in both countries about (unknown) numbers of irregular immigrants and the insecurity arising from this, as well as an increasing emphasis on the necessity of control, supported by the urgency to act because of the insecurity or supposed threat by increasingly criminalised irregular immigration. For each of the regulative initiatives considered, the author outlines dominant as well as opposing frame formations. Dominant frames turn out to be successful in shaping the resulting policy – which sometimes, owing to the focus of the analysis, seem to suggest rather deterministically that a policy was successfully adopted mainly because of the mobilisation of certain frame formations. Oppositional framings in the increasing drive toward making irregular immigration a criminal offense and an issue of control and security were based, for example, on human rights and criticising discriminatory effects of the intended policies.
Building on this first layer of analysis follows a second in Chapter 5, which discusses the investigated hegemonic shifts in the policy-making discourses of both countries within broader political and ideological contexts, which the author sees as meta-frames underpinning the frame elements analysed in more detail before. While the discussion of the meta-frames further illuminates and adds depth to the results of the previous analyses, it remains unclear how they were arrived at. Nevertheless, the discussion of these meta-frames proves helpful in offering an explanation for the convergence of discourses of irregular migration in the UK and Germany with their otherwise rather different immigration histories. Within the meta-frame ‘politics of ideologies’, Vollmer discusses conservative and liberal conceptualisations of man, as well as understandings of the state which underline, for example, the perceived necessity to control borders and population movement. The meta-frame ‘politics of the nation’ entails the exclusion of migrant populations by founding myths and national(ised) memory, Malthusian paranoia of overburdening the ‘indigenous’ population, as well as sovereignty of the state which is seen to be undermined by deceptive irregular immigrants. The third meta-frame, ‘politics of security’, is outlined in terms not of its aspects, but of three phases within the investigated time span (1973–1999) which are described as ‘emerging threat’, ‘threat reinforced’ and ‘from threat to securitisation – preferred logics of acting’ (p. 203). Here, the author discusses how migratory movements get increasingly illegalised and criminalised and become an issue mainly addressed by security politics, which he captures as a process of securitisation.
In the concluding chapter, Vollmer summarizes and characterizes three main hegemonic shifts that took place in both UK and German policy-making discourses, even if not at the same time: first, the ‘conceptual shift introducing the notion of the “irregular migrant”’, which ‘re-categorised “the irregular migrant” from “invisible stranger” to “the enemy”’ (p. 235); second, the constitution of a threat posed by irregular migration; and third, the normalization of security politics responses through the logics of securitisation.
The value of Vollmer’s study rests on the results of the empirical investigation rather than on developing conceptual and methodological tools for analysis. The study of policy development is certainly of interest with regard to immigration, and Vollmer’s study adds to the study of migration discourses an insightful empirical analysis that benefits particularly from its comparative and diachronic aspects. It should help to convince those working in the field of policy-making to take a closer look at texts documenting the process, and it is of interest to all those working on post-war immigration politics and discourses in Europe or European countries.