‘Transit’ and ‘Suspension’: Migration Management or the Metamorphosis of Asylum-Seekers into ‘Illegal’ Immigrants

摘要

This article explores the historical construction of the ‘transit country’ as one answer to the perceived loss of control over migration that governments of the developed North have increasingly felt. A frenzy of re-conceptualisations has taken place over the past 20 years, leading to a discourse—unquestioned and accepted by policy-makers and many academics—of Migration Management. A consequence of the evolution of Migration Management is captured by the notion of ‘suspension’, which often refers to either the physical or the metaphorical death of a certain minority of illegal migrants. However, I argue that such ‘suspended’ illegal migrants have the capacity to reinvent themselves precisely because they are outside the realm of juridico-political categorisation and enumeration.View full textDownload full textKeywordsMigration Management, Asylum-Seekers, Illegal Migrants, Transit Country, European Union, ‘Suspension’Related var addthis_config = { ui_cobrand: "Taylor & Francis Online", services_compact: "citeulike,netvibes,twitter,technorati,delicious,linkedin,facebook,stumbleupon,digg,google,more", pubid: "ra-4dff56cd6bb1830b" }; Add to shortlist Link Permalink http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2011.526782