"International Migrations: a Global Issue"
Catherine de Wenden, CNRS research director: CERI - Sciences Po.
-Thanks to immigration, citizenship progressively left
the strict field of national space in which it was inserted
since citizenship and nationality have been dissociated.
We also noticed that it was possible to have broader citizenships
than that of the national space.
It is the case for European citizenship, as we saw it,
since it is possible to be a European citizen
without having the nationality of the country in which one lives.
Other regional spaces were also created all around the world,
twenty-two to be precise, with diverse citizenship forms
that are linked to mobility, particularly that of labor.
For instance, in Europe there is the Nordic labor market which includes
some European countries that are part of the Union and others
that are not part of the European Union,
such as Iceland or Norway, for example.
There is also a West African community,
the Community of West African States, ECOWAS, which includes fifteen states
that tried to create an area for the freedom of movement
for workers in this region.
There are other regional or local freedom of movement areas in Africa,
in particular near South Africa since a major part of migration
towards South Africa comes from neighboring countries.
But it does not prevent South Africa, from time to time,
to send back migrants to their home country when seasonal works are over
or when they exceeded the duration of their right of residence
granted by South Africa. There are others in the world.
Turkey of course opened its borders to 48 countries,
including the 28 countries of the European Union.
It allowed the country to develop trade, all sorts of activities
and tourism with neighboring countries, including Central Asia.
Russia opened its borders to all the states of the CIS for labor.
This is a major movement space since countries from Central Asia,
from South Caucasus, can freely work in Russia during specific periods.
There is the ASEAN which is a space of freedom of movement in Asia
between origin and hosting countries for the purpose of working.
The UNASUR in South America which was created by the MERCOSUR,
the South American common market for labor and goods,
with a freedom of movement for labor
between the countries that are a part of it.
In the United States, there is a strong movement system
between Canada and the United States.
On the other hand, for Mexico, there is a compensation,
meaning that there is no freedom of movement but a trade freedom
in order to find a solution for the outlet of Mexican productions.
Actually, a citizenship system linked to mobility and immigration
is spreading, on a global scale, in several parts of the world.
On a wider scale, there is a global reflection
regarding a global citizenship. This is no new topic.
Legal experts leaning towards Las Cases, a Spanish bishop
who condemned the way those who were called South American Indians
were treated by the Spanish, were interested in the legitimacy
of the Spanish to be interested or not
but above all to land on and colonize these territories.
It was a real reflection on the right to migrate.
Were they citizens of these countries they were going to colonize, etc.,
in the name of the king of Spain? There was a true philosophical
and legal reflection regarding that matter.
Others, who worked for major trade companies,
and who were also philosophers, such as Grotius, were interested
in the rights of Dutch traders leaving for Asia to trade
and the rights of these trade companies
when they were in these territories.
At the same time, or rather later on, during the 18th century, Kant,
in his "Perpetual Peace Project", defines universal citizenship
and clearly makes the difference
between the right to settle in a country
and the right to visit it. There is thus a movement dimension
in this definition of universal citizenship
which will inspire, closer to us, philosophers such as Zygmunt Bauman.
He defines today's world citizenship as a liquid citizenship by saying
that raising borders, walls, barriers, etc.,
goes against the evolution of a world
in which everything moves except men and women.
Etienne Balibar also talks
about a democratization of the right to mobility as a reflection
on a universal and cosmopolitical citizenship.
This is an approach to widen citizenship in a global dimension
which is also supported by legal texts,
especially the 1948 Declaration of the Rights of the Man
and of the Citizen which states that every man
has the right to leave a country, including his own.
This means that there is
a universalization of the right to leave
that will be implemented later on, especially after the Berlin Wall fell
since all the countries from the Communist bloc
granted passports to their citizens.
Many Southern countries quickly understood
that it was in their interest, in order to remain in place,
to allow their people to get out
instead of keeping them locked behind borders.
There will thus be a kind of generalization of the right to leave
during the 1990s. Furthermore, asylum right gives
the right to leave one's country if one is persecuted
or if one has the well-founded feeling of being persecuted
according to various criteria stated in the Geneva Convention.
But also rights for mobile workers via conventions 93 and 143 of the ILO,
the International Labor Organization, and the United Nations convention
regarding the rights of all workers and their family,
meaning the rights of migrant workers and their family on a global scale.
The final version of this convention was elaborated in 1990.
For now, only 48 Southern countries have signed it.
No Northern country signed this convention
because they do not want to give rights to illegal migrants.
We are on the way to defining a global citizenship
based on the right to mobility. But this right to mobility
is still one of the most unevenly shared right in the world.
If you are Finnish, British or Swedish, you can freely move
during three months without any visa in 173 countries.
If you are French, it is true in 171 countries.
If you are Russian, it is true in 92 countries.
If you are Afghan, Somali or Eritrean,
it is reduced to only 5 or 10 countries.
You can count them on the fingers of one hand.
The right to mobility is thus still greatly unequal
if we want to change it into a right of the 21st century man and citizen.