The non-securitisation of immigration in China?

Abstract

The correlation between migration and security remains fashionable even more than a decade after 9/11. This is hardly surprising, given that migration regulation is a key policy task for all governments around the world, regardless of their political ideological leaning. Indeed, a fundamental regulatory function of a sovereign state is determining who enters, moves within, and leaves its geographical territory. For both the European Union (EU) and China, migration is a highly important and conten-tious issue area. Yet, to understand their respective (and distinct) concerns, it is essential to first distinguish between internal migration (mobility) and external migration (immigration). For the European countries, having a strong and credible external border is crucial for the smooth function-ing of the integration project (see Koff’s policy paper in this series). This focus is rooted in the per-ception and social security concern that ‘benefit tourism’ could occur once internal borders are lift-ed. Hence, EU migration practice has been, in the main, focussed on keeping most migrants out. In-ternational cooperation with neighbouring countries (through the European Neighbourhood Policy) and key transit and source countries (through EU Mobility Partnerships) have been crucial for the European partners as it provides them with the leverage to patrol and monitor its external borders (Lavenex 2006).