I’m very pleased that the project book from the “Seeing ‘Illegal’ Immigrants” project has now been published by Cambridge University Press: States of Ignorance: Governing Irregular Migrants in Western Europe. I’m proud to have two chapters in it, one coauthored with Christina Boswell.
I have a new article out in Ethnic and Racial Studies emerging from our “Seeing ‘Illegal’ Immigrants” research: “The Windrush Scandal and the Individualization of Postcolonial Immigration Control in Britain”. This is open access on the journal website — free for everyone to read! Abstract:
This article argues a previously little-discussed policy shift, the individualization of UK immigration control, is key to understanding the Windrush Scandal and the wider governance of racialized immigrants in Britain. Drawing on official records from 1963 to 1973, this article identifies how the UK shifted from an initial aggregate model of governing postcolonial immigrants, deemphasizing individual policing, to a model centred on scrutinizing individual compliance. Through interviews with 1980s–2010s UK policy actors, it identifies three policy legacies of this shift. First, it naturalized increasing individual scrutiny as the mechanism for reducing immigration, making immanent the “hostile environment” logic. Second, it gradually increased expectations of individual immigrant documentation, after many Windrush victims arrived under document-light control systems. Third, centring immigrants’ individuality accorded with declining policy deliberation about immigration control’s potential impacts on already-settled minorities. Even absent formal changes to their status, this shift eroded the rights of long-settled immigrants in Britain.
I’ve published an article in Journal of Global Security Studies from my Arizona research: “Populism and Securitization: The Corrosion of Elite Security Authority in a US-Mexico Border State.” (This is paywalled, so email me if you need access — mslaven (at) lincoln.ac.uk.) Abstract:
Populists have often seemed influential in the securitization of migration, in great part through pressuring non-populist governing elites into “mainstreaming” more hardline immigration positions. This article asks why, given the presumption in securitization literatures that elite insiders possess strong authority in defining security, non-populist governing elites often in fact cede ground to populist challengers who paint immigration as a threat. Securitization and political science literatures paint very different pictures of elite–challenger dynamics, but populist and securitization claims possess key ideational similarities, in relation to the holism and autonomy of the political community, and the apoliticism of pursuing purportedly self-evident goals. However, populism articulates securitarian concepts through a moralized anti-elitism that impugns elite authority, portraying governing elites as corruptly inert toward threats facing “the people.” This article explores how this ideational relationship may affect securitization processes through a process-tracing study of the populist radical right's successful pressuring of governing elites to securitize migration in the US state of Arizona. There, populists’ moralized accusations of corrupt elite inaction toward urgent security threats moved governing elites to adopt positions intended to demonstrate responsiveness to public border-security anxieties, thereby inscribing securitization. Taking an “ideational” view of both concepts shows how they can form a politically influential account of “common sense.” By undermining elite security authority—thus inverting the typically theorized power dynamics of securitization—populism may open new pathways for securitized policies to emerge.
With Sara Casella Colombeau and Elisabeth Badenhoop, I’ve published an open-access article in Comparative Political Studies: “What Drives the Immigration-Welfare Policy Link? Comparing Germany, France and the United Kingdom.” We are very pleased that this article won the Best Paper Award (2019) from the Immigration Research Network of the Council for European Studies. Abstract:
Western European states have increasingly linked immigration and welfare policy. This trend has important implications for European welfare-state trajectories, but accounts of the policy reasoning behind it have diverged. Are policymakers attempting to delimit social citizenship to secure welfare-state legitimacy? Pursuing new, market-oriented welfare-state goals? Symbolically communicating immigration control intentions to voters? Or attempting to instrumentally steer immigration flows? These accounts have rarely been tested empirically against each other. Redressing this, we employ 83 elite interviews in a comparative process-tracing study of policies linking welfare provision and immigration status in Germany, France, and the UK during the 1990s. We find little evidence suggesting welfare-guided policy reasonings. Rather, this policy linkage appears “immigration-guided:” meant to control “unwanted” immigration or resonate symbolically in immigration politics. Differences in exclusions from welfare support for migrants grew from existing national differences in welfare-state design and politicizations of immigration, not from policy intentions, which were largely shared.
James Heydon and I have published a short piece in Critical Studies on Security, about developments in and around the Extinction Rebellion movement which challenge some key presumptions about the politics of security or emergency. We want to encourage security scholars to think about how the meanings associated with crisis might be shifting amidst the social transitions of climate change. Here is the piece, “Crisis, Deliberation, and Extinction Rebellion” — email me (mslaven (at) lincoln.ac.uk) if you need access.
Christina Boswell and I have published an article in Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, entitled: "Why Symbolise Control? Irregular Migration to the UK and Symbolic Policy-making in the 1960s." Here's the abstract:
It has frequently been observed that irregular migration is a common object of symbolic policy-making: the use of cosmetic adjustments to signal action, rather than substantive measures that achieve stated goals. Yet there is little research analysing the considerations driving policy actors to adopt such approaches. Drawing on existing literature, we distinguish three theoretical accounts of symbolic policy-making: manipulation, compensation, and adaptation. We explore these accounts through examining the emergence of symbolic policies in UK immigration control in the 1960s. Through detailed archival research, we reconstruct the deliberations leading to a series of Home Office decisions to crack down on irregular entry – decisions which officials felt were not operationally sensible, but which were based on popular political narratives of the problem. We conclude that the UK’s adoption of symbolic policy was a clear case of adaptation: a series of concessions to simplistic notions of control that did not chime with official views of what would work, and which were reluctantly embraced for reasons of political expediency. In conclusion, we suggest the need for more fine-grained analysis of the deliberations underpinning decision-making in bureaucracies, in order to produce more nuanced accounts of political rationalities in the area of immigration policy.
I have written on a variety of policy issues related to borders and immigration in the United States. These policy papers include:
"Defining Border Security in Immigration Reform" (2013), a report published by the Morrison Institute for Public Policy at Arizona State University, examining ways that border security goals in immigration reform legislation might be designed, and the political reasoning behind various proposals. You can watch me discuss the report on Arizona Horizon.
"Citizenship or Something Less? Economic Implications for Arizona" (2013), another report authored for the Morrison Institute, which examines the economic impact of a broad path to citizenship for people without legal status in the United States, versus a narrower legalization. Here you can listen to an NPR Marketplace segment based on the report.
As a speechwriter for former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, I was the primary person handling the speechwriting portfolio for immigration and border security, and for Congressional testimony on all topics, from 2009 to 2011. (You can see some of those testimonies by clicking here.)
As an aide in the Arizona governor's office, I was the main writer for the 2008 and 2009 State of the State Addresses, among many other speeches.