If international debate over 'irregular migration' is to move beyond entrenched human rights and national security positions, government policies need to be better informed about the complex causes of human displacement and the impact of border control.
In October 2001, 146 children, 142 women and 65 men – mostly Iraqi and Afghan asylum seekers – drowned when a decrepit Indonesian fishing boat, known as SIEV X, sank while motoring to perceived sanctuary in Australia.
Mystery and suspicion still cloaks that fatal journey: from the rumoured activities of Australian agents operating among people smugglers, to the alleged presence, in the dark, of unresponsive Australian naval craft.
The truth remains buried by the same political machinations that have successfully hardened Australian and international responses to ‘irregular migrants’ – of whom an increasing number, as the SIEV X tragedy highlighted, are women. (SIEV is an acronym, standing for Suspected Illegal Entry Vessel.)
According to one leading international researcher probing this complex issue, the gender element is critical to understanding what is driving the massive global rise in irregular migration.
Professor Sharon Pickering, a criminologist with Monash University’s Department of Political and Social Inquiry, says that understanding the factors behind the increasing number of women moving ‘illegally’ is central to any sustainable future policy responses. This is particularly so along the three main migration fault lines – Europe, North America and, to a lesser degree, Australia.
She believes the issue is so readily politicised, and the policy responses so blunt, because of a historical absence of ‘big picture’ research on the push, transit and pull factors that underpin human displacement.
Societal changes contribute to a tangled mix of constantly evolving causes and effects. It is not only war and conflict, but less obvious stimuli such as the pervasive influences of communications and media technologies, changing patterns of global consumption and production, and the rise of service industries. But research attention also needs to be directed to the impact of border-control responses and how they may contribute to the nature and scale of irregular migration and, importantly, its deadly consequences.
Professor Pickering notes that the near absence of high-quality empirical research in policy is thwarting any sustainable response. “Basically, we’ve got 21st-century migration and 19th-century migration controls … and therein lies the root of the issue,” she says.
“Irregular migration raises complex human rights and security questions. These need rigorous research that addresses both the local and global manifestations of the migration–security nexus that we are consequently seeing.”
Professor Pickering founded the Border Crossing Observatory (www.borderobservatory.org) and leads a network of researchers in a collaborative global effort to gather and analyse evidence-based data that governments can use to shift to a more nuanced, human rights-informed regulation of migration, without compromising security.
The Observatory brings together independent research on border crossings from around the world. It focuses on better understanding of the complex issues that contribute to this movement of people and the subsequent crossover into crime and justice.
“The need for high-quality, empirical research is crucial for this debate. And it can’t occur in any one place, which is why the Observatory is important. Collectively we can produce much more robust research and much more creative responses for governments to consider,” Professor Pickering says.
She argues that a criminological analysis is important because traditional resources of crime control are now being directed at irregular migrants with unsatisfactory migration status.
“So criminologists need to be at the table to help identify the research questions and to be a part of the research needed to come up with alternative paradigms,” she says.
Professor Pickering’s primary interest within this is the increasing number of women moving around the world, in itself an evolving and complex conjuncture of culture, economics, opportunity and desperation. Whether people do so legally or illegally is secondary to the need to move.
“The underlying change occurring is that women are becoming the preferred international labourers because of the rise of service industries and the demise of traditional manufacturing that used to drive male migration,” she says.
“So we are seeing a rapidly increasing proportion of women going abroad to work and send remittances home, especially in South America, Latin America, South-East Asia and the Gulf countries. This is then compounded by an increase in the number of women undertaking irregular migration journeys, sometimes for economic gains but often for safety and protection … for some kind of respite from state or other gender-based violence.
“Most women crossing borders have experienced some form of violence and conflict, either in their country or in private spaces. What we are seeing is a great desire for their lives to change. Some researchers have described it as the ‘feminisation of survival’.”
Professor Pickering says the question for researchers is how societies and their governments should respond to these increasingly mobile women who simply may not fit into established migration categories.
She points to serious consequences for those workers and migrants who are deemed lawful or unlawful. That stark designation affects their level of victimisation, the extent to which they can seek assistance, and basic social and cultural acceptance in their new environment.
While this helps to explain why criminology, as a science, needs to feed into policymaking, Professor Pickering says this requires more than just the technical response. She suggests that one of the key understandings missing from social responses to irregular migration is that migration has been, and still is, part of the human condition.
“The desire to move is innate. So in terms of seeking an answer, the first step needs to be a recognition that irregular mobility is not an anomaly or crisis. We need instead to normalise these movements of people, in line with human rights standards, and in ways that also satisfy some desires for regulation and control.”
For researchers, a major flaw in government responses has been policy setting in the absence of rigorous research and a lack of understanding of the issue’s global dynamics.
This broader scenario is one reason Professor Pickering is trying to drag the focus away from a local, insular perspective. Her work embraces most of the border pressure points – the island of Lampedusa off Italy, the Greece–Turkey and Mexico–US borders, as well as boat arrivals in Australian waters.
She is particularly keen to disabuse Australians of the notion that theirs is the only country to attract people who hope to begin a better life. She says the numbers of asylum seekers who have sought refuge in Australia hardly compare to the millions trying to resettle in Europe and North America – and often dying in the attempt.
As part of her efforts to stimulate informed debate, in 2012 Professor Pickering led an expert panel for the online opinion website The Conversation, presenting a series on asylum seekers. Its significance was acknowledged in December by a Human Rights Media Award from the Australian Human Rights Commission.
The task facing Professor Pickering and her international colleagues, particularly those working through the Border Crossing Observatory, is to compile hard, research-based evidence that ends the demonisation of people, particularly women, who are simply seeking work or safety, and brings recognition of the deleterious consequences of abrogating human rights in the short-term interests of political election cycles.
Of course their success depends on whether governments listen – but Professor Pickering is confident. “Governments do shift … not quickly, but they do. It requires sustained evidence and a community that can only witness so much abuse for so long before saying, ‘enough – no more in our name’.”
