Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T15:25:57.681Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - The Post-war European State and (Irregular) Migration

A Historical Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 November 2023

By
Emile Chabal
Edited by
Christina Boswell  and
Emile Chabal
Christina Boswell
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
Emile Chabal
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
Get access

Summary

This chapter offers a historical overview of the governance of irregular migration as a key element in the construction of the post-war European state. It explores four moments, each of which represents an evolution of state capacities in relation to the control of (irregular) migration. The first moment is the immediate post-war period, in which large-scale population movement and displacement led to the emergence of a set of legal frameworks that were designed to regulate these social realities at a collective level. The second moment corresponds to the end of the European colonial empires in the 1950s and 1960s, when contests over citizenship, residency and movement rights reshaped the political framework of 'irregularity'. The third moment corresponds to the 'closure' of West European borders in the mid-1970s, after which both regular and irregular migration emerged as a social problem. Finally, the fourth moment runs from the 1990s to the present-day. This period has been characterised by a radicalisation of the politics of immigration, as well as processes of Europeanisation that have sought to monitor individual migrants.

Keywords

ignorancestatehistorymigrationimmigrationEurope
Type
Chapter
Information
States of Ignorance
Governing Irregular Migrants in Western Europe
 , pp. 59 - 90
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abbey, Willam et al., eds. 1995. Between Two Languages: German-Speaking Exiles in Great Britain, 1933–45. Stuttgart: Verlag Hans-Dieter Heinz.Google Scholar
Ahonen, Pertti. 2003. After the Expulsion: West Germany and Eastern Europe, 1945–1990. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Antons, Jan-Hinnerk. 2014. ‘Displaced Persons in Postwar Germany: Parallel Societies in a Hostile Environment’. Journal of Contemporary History 49(1): 92–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ataç, Ilker, and Rosenberger, Sieglinde. 2019. ‘Social Policies as a Tool of Migration Control’. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies 17(1): 1–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Audier, Serge. 2012. Néo-libéralisme(s). Une archéologie Intellectuelle. Paris: Grasset.Google Scholar
Bade, Klaus J. 2003. Migration in European History. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bade, Klaus J. 2015. ‘Zur Karriere und Funktion abschätziger Begriffe in der deutschen Asylpolitik.’ Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 65(25): 3–8.Google Scholar
Badenhoop, Elisabeth. 2020. ‘The Fallacy of Perfect Regulatory Controls: Lessons from Database Surveillance of Migration in West Germany from the 1950s to the 1970s’. Regulation and Governance 15(3): 952–68.Google Scholar
Bailkin, Jordanna. 2008. ‘Leaving Home: The Politics of Deportation in Postwar Britain’. Journal of British Studies 47(4): 852–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ban, Cornel. 2016. Ruling Ideas: How Global Neoliberalism Goes Local. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bearman, Marietta et al. (eds.). 2008. Out of Austria: The Austrian Centre in London in World War II. London: Tauris Academic Studies.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bellamy, Christine. 2019. ‘The Paradox of National Registration in a Liberal State: The Case of Wartime National Registers in Great Britain, 1915–52’. The English Historical Review 134(570).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boltanski, Luc, and Chiapello, Ève. 1999. Le nouvel esprit du capitalisme. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Bommes, Michael, and Geddes, Andrew (eds.). 2000. Immigration and Welfare: Challenging the Borders of the Welfare State. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boswell, Christina. 2018. Manufacturing Political Trust: Targets and Performance Measurement in Public Policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brubaker, Rogers. 1992. Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caplan, Jane, and Torpey, John. 2003. Documenting Individual Identity: The Development of State Practices in the Modern World. London: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Carvalho, João, and Geddes, Andrew. 2012. ‘La politique d’immigration sous Sarkozy’. In Politiques Publiques 3: Les Politiques Publiques Sous Sarkozy, eds. de Maillard, Jacques and Surel, Yves, 279–98. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po.Google Scholar
Casella Colombeau, Sara. 2019. ‘Crisis of Schengen? The Effect of Two “Migrant Crises” (2011 and 2015) on the Free Movement of People at an Internal Schengen Border’. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 46 (11): 2258–74.Google Scholar
Casella Colombeau, Sara. 2020. ‘Les régularisations, composantes des politiques Migratoires’. Plein Droit 126: 3–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chabal, Emile. 2014. ‘Managing the Postcolony: Minority Politics in Montpellier, c.1960–c.2010’. Contemporary European History 23(2): 237–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chabal, Emile. 2015. A Divided Republic: Nation, State and Citizenship in Contemporary France. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chapman, Herrick. 2018. France’s Long Reconstruction: In Search of the Modern Republic. London: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Conklin, Alice. 2013. In the Museum of Man: Race, Anthropology, and Empire in France, 1850–1950. London: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooper, Fred. 2014. Citizenship between Empire and Nation: Remaking France and French Africa, 1945–1960. London: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Craig-Norton, Jennifer. 2017. ‘Contesting the Kindertransport as a “Model” Refugee Response’. European Judaism 50(2): 24–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Düvell, Frederik. 2006. Illegal Immigration in Europe: Beyond Control? Basingstoke: Palgrave.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Escafré-Dublet, Angéline. 2014. Culture et Immigration: De la question sociale à l’enjeu politique, 1958–2007. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 165–210.Google Scholar
Favell, Adrian. 2001. Philosophies of Integration: Immigration and the Idea of Citizenship in France and Britain. Basingstoke: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frank, Matthew, and Jessica, Reinisch. 2014. ‘Refugees and the Nation-State in Europe, 1919–59’. Journal of Contemporary History 49(3): 477–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fysh, Peter, and Wolfreys, Jim. 2003. The Politics of Racism in France. Basingstoke: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Gastaut, Yvan. 2004. ‘Français et immigrés à l’épreuve de la crise (1973–1995)’. Vingtième Siècle. Revue d’histoire 84(4): 108–10.Google Scholar
Gattrell, Peter. 2019. The Unsettling of Europe: The Great Migration, 1945–Present. London: Allen Lane.Google Scholar
Geddes, Andrew, and Boswell, Christina. 2011. Migration and Mobility in the European Union. Basingstoke: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Geddes, Andrew, and Scholten, Peter. 2016. The Politics of Migration and Immigration in Europe. London: Sage.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Getachew, Adom. 2020 Worldmaking after Empire. London: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Gordon, Daniel. 2012. Immigrants and Intellectuals: May ’68 and the Rise of Anti-Racism in France. Pontypool: Merlin Press.Google Scholar
Green, Simon. 2013. ‘Germany: A Changing Country of Immigration’. German Politics 22(3): 333–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guiraudon, Virginie. 2003. ‘The Constitution of a European Immigration Policy Domain: A Political Sociology Approach’. Journal of European Public Policy 10(2): 267–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hampshire, James. 2005. Citizenship and Belonging: Immigration and the Politics of Demographic Governance in Postwar Britain. Basingstoke: Palgrave.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hansen, Randall. 1999. ‘The Kenyan Asians, British Politics, and the Commonwealth Immigrants Act, 1968’. The Historical Journal 42(3): 809–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hansen, Randall. 2000. Citizenship and Immigration in Post-war Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holian, Anna. 2010. ‘Anticommunism in the Streets: Refugee Politics in Cold War Germany’. Journal of Contemporary History 45(1): 134–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hollifield, James. 2004. ‘The Emerging Migration State’. International Migration Review 38(3): 885–912.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Janco, Andrew Paul. 2014. ‘“Unwilling”: The One-Word Revolution in Refugee Status, 1940–51’. Contemporary European History 23(3): 429–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Joppke, Christian. 1999. Immigration and the Nation State. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Joppke, Christian. 2021. Neoliberal Nationalism: Immigration and the Rise of the Populist Right. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jordi, Jean-Jacques. 1993. De l’exode à l’exil: rapatriés et pieds-noirs en France. Paris: L’Harmattan.Google Scholar
Judt, Tony. 2005. Postwar. London: Pimlico.Google Scholar
Laurens, Sylvain. 2008. ‘“1974” et la fermeture des frontières: analyse critique d’une décision érigée en turning-point’. Politix 82(2): 69–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laurens, Sylvain. 2009. Une politisation feutrée. Les hauts fonctionnaires et l’immigration en France (1962–1981). Paris: Belin.Google Scholar
Lewis, Mary Dewhurst. 2007. The Boundaries of the Republic: Migrant Rights and the Limits of Universalism in France, 1918–1940. London: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lochak, Danièle. 2020. ‘Les circulaires Marcellin-Fontanet’. Hommes & Migrations 1330(3).Google Scholar
Lyons, Amelia. 2013. The Civilizing Mission in the Metropole: Algerian Families and the French Welfare State during Decolonization. London: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Macmaster, Neil. 1997. Colonial Migrants and Racism: Algerians in France, 1900–1962. Basingstoke: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mamdani, Mahmoud. 2011. From Citizen to Refugee: Uganda Asians Come to Britain. Oxford: Pambazuka Press.Google Scholar
Mann, Gregory. 2014. From Empires to NGOs in the West African Sahel: The Road to Nongovernmentality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 120–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McDougall, James. 2017. ‘The Impossible Republic: The Reconquest of Algeria and the Decolonization of France, 1945–1962’. The Journal of Modern History 89(4): 772–811.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nasaw, David. 2020. The Last Million: Europe’s Displaced Persons from World War to Cold War. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Noiriel, Gérard. 1988. Le creuset français: Histoire de l’immigration, XIXe-XXe siècles. Paris: Seuil.Google Scholar
Priestland, David. 2012. Merchant, Soldier, Sage: A New History of Power. London: Allen Lane.Google Scholar
Reinisch, Jessica. 2008. ‘Introduction: Relief in the Aftermath of War’. Journal of Contemporary History 43(3): 371–404.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosello, Mireille. 1998. ‘Representing Illegal Immigrants in France: From clandestins to l’affaire des sans-papiers de Saint-Bernard’. Journal of European Studies 28(1): 137–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwartz, Michael. 2016. ‘Assimilation versus Incorporation: Expellee Integration Policies in East and West Germany after 1945’. In Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar Germany and France: Comparative Perspectives, eds. Borutta, Manuel & Jansen, Jan C.. Basingstoke: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Scioldo-Zürcher, Yann. 2010. Devenir métropolitain: politique d’intégration et parcours de rapatriés d’Algérie en métropole (1954–2005). Paris: Editions de l’EHESS.Google Scholar
Shepard, Todd. 2008. The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France. London: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Shields, James. 2007. The Extreme-Right in France: From Pétain to Le Pen. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shields, James. 2011. ‘Radical or Not So Radical? Tactical Variation in Core Policy Formation by the Front National’. French Politics, Culture & Society 29(3): 78–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Siegelberg, Mira. 2020. Statelessness: A Modern History. London: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slaven, Mike, Casella Colombeau, Sara, and Badenhoop, Elisabeth. 2021. ‘What Drives the Immigration-Welfare Policy Link? Comparing Germany, France and the United Kingdom’. Comparative Political Studies 54(5): 855–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slobodian, Quinn. 2018. Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Andrea. 2006. Colonial Memory and Postcolonial Europe: Maltese Settlers in Algeria and France. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Evan, and Marmo, Marinella. 2014. ‘The Myth of Sovereignty: British Immigration Control in Policy and Practice in the Nineteen-Seventies’. Historical Research 87(236): 344–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spencer, Ian R. G. 1997. British Immigration Policy Since 1939: The Making of Multi-Racial Britain. London: Routledge, 15–17.Google Scholar
Spire, Alexis. 2005. Les étrangers à la carte. L’administration de l’immigration en France (1945–75). Paris: Grasset.Google Scholar
Stokes, Lauren. 2019. ‘The Permanent Refugee Crisis in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1949’. Central European History 52(1): 19–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Becky. 2016. ‘“Their Only Words of English Were ‘Thank You’”: Rights, Gratitude and “Deserving” Hungarian Refugees to Britain in 1956’. Journal of British Studies 55: 120–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thénault, Sylvie. 2005. ‘Personnel et internés dans les camps français de la guerre d’Algérie: Entre stéréotypes coloniaux et combat pour l’indépendance’. Politix 69(1): 63–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Théofilakis, Fabien. 2014. Les prisonniers de guerre allemands: France 1944–1949 Paris: Fayard.Google Scholar
Vogel, Dita. 2001. ‘Identifying Unauthorised Foreign Workers in the German Labor Market’. In Documenting Individual Identity: The Development of State Practices in the Modern World, eds. Jane Caplan and John Torpey, 328–44. London: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Weil, Patrick. 2005. Qu’est-ce qu’un français ? Histoire de la nationalité française depuis la Révolution. Paris: Folio.Google Scholar
Wilder, Gary. 2015. Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization and the Future of the World. London: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Williams, Callum. 2015. ‘Patriality, Work Permits and the European Economic Community: The Introduction of the 1971 Immigration Act’. Contemporary British History 29( 4): 508–38.Google Scholar
Zancarini-Fournel, Michelle. 2002. ‘La question immigrée après 68’. Plein Droit 53(4): 3–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×