Migration Control and Narratives of Steering

Abstract

The dynamics of migration are incredibly complex, creating immense problems for governments attempting to steer immigration. These challenges are well elucidated in literature on societal steering, and especially Luhmann's analysis of the impediments to steering by the political and legal systems. Politics and the law develop highly simplifying models of the dynamics they are seeking to steer, resulting in various problems of distortion and counterproductive effects. We can see examples of this in the case of migration control, where attempts to prevent irregular labour or stay have led to numerous unintended effects. However, it is far from evident how such problems of steering can be addressed. A number of cognitive, social and political factors place pressure on policy-makers to adopt highly simplifying models of these processes. The implication is that policy interventions have a structural tendency to 'short-circuit' the complexity of the migratory processes they are attempting to steer.Migration policy-makers tend to develop relatively simple and intuitively plausible narratives about the impacts of their policies. Officials need to be able to understand and communicate the logic behind their interventions, and to justify this logic to critics, target groups or those involved in implementation. This justificatory requirement is even greater in the case of politicians, who need to persuade the public about the appropriateness and effectiveness of policy, usually via the mass media. The pressure to produce simple and compelling narratives is certainly characteristic of policies on migration control, understood as measures adopted to exclude irregular migrations or other unwanted foreign nationals through entry restrictions, border control, detention and deportation. Given the complexity of migration dynamics, however, the need to develop straightforward stories of cause and effect is bound to result in a high degree of simplification. Indeed, for reasons I shall discuss later, there is likely to be a significant disconnect between policy narratives and the phenomena they seek to depict. This can result in unrealistic expectations about the state's capacity to steer migratory dynamics, with often clumsy policy interventions failing to capture the complexity of the objects they are seeking to influence. 1 This article will explore the nature and sources of this gap between policy narratives and state capacity to control migration, drawing on literature on societal steering. By steering, I mean attempts by the state or legal system to direct the behaviour of members of a society or the social systems to which they belong. Much of the literature on societal steering is profoundly pessimistic about the possibilities for such forms of guidance. The systems theory of Niklas Luhmann in particular points

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“…The Aid for Familial and Social Reinsertion is thus a clear example of 'societal steering', that is to say action taken by political or legal institutions to influence the behaviour of individuals in society. The capacity of such institutions to do so has been debated and theorised at length by sociologists, notably Habermas (1984) and Luhmann (1990), and this literature is generally very sceptical that the legal and political systems can directly and causally steer individual action (Boswell 2011). What then are the prospects for this policy and the men in the hostels which it targets?…”

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“…Evidence so far suggests that policies can alter migration patterns albeit not always -and some might say never -in the intended ways (Boswell 2011;Castles 2004;Czaika and Haas 2013). One pertinent aspect in this area of research is the composition of migrant populations and patterns of migrants coming and going (Czaika and Haas 2014).…”

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