How international migration redefined citizenship: Human rights & human trafficking in perspective

1. How international migration redefined citizenship: Human rights & human trafficking in perspective Prof. A.B. Shamsul Deputy Chair The National Council of Professors Malaysia Presentation at UNESCO Paris, 5-6 May 2011

2. Of theories and tools • Theorization on international migration is empirically rooted in empirical experience of North America and Europe • It is based on the assumption that ‘legal citizenship’ in North America & Europe is transparent & certain, well-documented & recorded • Prosecution, Protection & Prevention are conducted in relatively simple manner, in both regions

3. Complex & Uncertain • In countries in Asia & Africa, “legal citizenship”- is far more complex & uncertain than commonly recognized, • It poses major challenges for how political governance, economic welfare, and national security should be pursued, domestically & internationally • Therefore, international migration from developing & under-developed countries to developing ones, needs new theories, concepts & analytical tools to make sense what it is and in formulating appropriate policies and actions to seek solutions

4. Conflict & Confusion • Unthinking adoption of analytical categories that dominate explanation & research on international migration in the West has resulted in conflict & confusion, in the form of: • Public policies dilemmas • Continuous gripping stories of human tragedies • Conceptual confusion

5. The Asian experience as a mirror • When one moves the lens to Asia, we begin to understand the need for a far broader range of categories. • Even more surprising is that the Asia’s experience illuminates features of the West that have not been recognized sufficiently by the West itself

6. Fake papers, real citizens • The subterranean processes by which millions have acquired citizenship. • States don’t have comprehensive territorial sovereignty • Collusion of weak & erratic bureaucracies and the organized syndicates/crimes • how illegal immigrants acquire false papers & the consequences on global security & expansion international black economy

7. Documentary citizenship • Most world's illegal immigrants not migrating directly to the West, but to countries in the vast developing world. • When they arrive in countries like Pakistan, India and Malaysia--which are often governed by weak and erratic bureaucracies--they are able to obtain citizenship papers fairly easily. • Creation of "documentary citizenship" : how paperwork--often falsely obtained--confers citizenship on illegal immigrants.

8. Documentary citizenship prospers • Once immigrants obtain documents, it is a relatively simple matter for, say, an Indian or Bangladeshi with Malaysian papers to pass himself off as an Indian-Malaysian citizens, both in Malaysia and abroad. • Across the globe, there are literally tens of millions of such illegal immigrants who have assumed the guise of "citizens“ based on fake documents

9. What happens to human rights & human trafficking? • “Documentary citizenship” becomes the legal canopy within which illegal human trafficking occurred in developing countries • by implication, their human rights are being violated, too, at the same time. • because respecting human rights for the legal citizens is not on the top agenda in these countries anyway, illegal migrants without documents are suffers the most

10. Whereto from here? • The old framework of Prosecution, Protection & Prevention, relating to human rights & human trafficking, based on Western migration analytical tools, policy guide, & experienced has clearly shown to be not working • Figuring out what may work? • How to start?

11. Never too late… • The need to launch a new set of research on international migration and the formation of ‘documentary citizenship’ in developed, developing and developed countries • The challenge for the researchers (i) to measure the unmeasurable & (ii) to make the invisible world more visible

12. Re-booting • Sociology, political science & economics are the traditional disciplinary tools in international migration studies • The importance of anthropology & its inclusion to make the invisible visible, to provide ethnographies on the unmeasurable • Important reference: Kamal Sadiq, Paper Citizens (OUP, 2008)