"The Paradox of Migration: Reconciling Economic Competition and 'Common Values' in Britain"

[From the introduction] This paper looks at Great Britain as an important case for explaining the inherent paradox of migration policy in Western Europe. Where immigration is an opportunity to jump-start latent industrial or struggling service economies, it is also a dominant political challenge in maintaining national identity and cohesion. This is particularly the case for Britain, where national identity is an inchoate, regularly re-defined concept (see Cesarani 1997; Hampshire 2006). Britain has seen positive economic growth and production in opening up their labor market to over half a million A-8 Accession workers, mainly from Poland and Lithuania. And under the banner of “controlled migration,” the Labor government has introduced a five-tiered, point-based entry system to bring highly skilled and need-based non-European migrants to Britain. However, where there is a desire to meet economic needs through migration, immigration has never been more of a contested, salient political issue. The promotion of citizenship requirements emphasizing integration (in English language and UK knowledge assessment) for non-EEA migrants, is an important innovation for defining British national identity, articulating for the first time a set of ‘common values’ to underscore the British national community. Britain’s migration calculus, maximizing the economic and social benefits of immigration against the efforts to isolate potential costs of immigration through the first, real definition of “Britishness” exemplifies the inherent paradox of migration for Western European states where more formed or consolidation visions of nation-state pre-dated large-scale migration. Following a review of context in which migration and citizenship laws were changed, discussing Britain’s strategic use of European Enlargement as being able to maintain selective admission alongside economic openness, the second part looks at British policy in detail by examining the most recent development of immigration and citizenship policy, beginning with the 2002 White Paper “Secure Borders, Safe Haven,” and manifesting in the 2005 Five-year strategy, “Controlling Our Borders.” Finally, I conclude with preliminary comparisons between Britain and other Western European countries, who are only now coming to terms with the realization that they are ‘countries of immigration,’ taking on all the benefits and responsibilities that come with it

The Citizenship of Others

The liberal notion of citizenship provides equality to all citizens, without regard to ascriptive or other differentiating characteristics. In this sense, citizenship promises to be dispositive of the treatment of all individuals who enjoy it; citizenship is uniform, unalloyed, and indivisible. These are the attributes of citizenship within a liberal national system, governing the relationships between citizens and the state, and among citizens within the state. But must these characteristics extend into the international realm, or may states choose to look beyond the mantle of citizenship when evaluating the citizens of others? And if states do choose to differentiate, and thereby discriminate, among the citizens of others, what obligations do those citizens\u27 states bear? This Article considers two instances in which the formal equality of citizenship is jeopardized by discrimination on the basis of national origin (the place of one\u27s birth) and ancestry (the place of one\u27s ancestors\u27 birth)

Equality in the War on Terror

Today, much public attention and litigation in the wake of the government\u27s response to the September 11, 2001 attacks centers on one or another claims about the government\u27s substantive illegality (such as claims based on the Due Process Clause). This is a mistake. Instead of focusing on the ultimate individual liberty questions, challenges should first focus on equality. Since the terrorist attacks, the government has repeatedly singled out aliens for special disfavor. For example, the Military Commissions Act blatantly discriminates against aliens - shunting the 20 million green-card holders and 5 billion people across the planet into a different, and far inferior, trial procedure than what American citizens face. Since at least the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment\u27s equality guarantee, such legislation has never been placed in the United States Code. The equality challenges are the next big thing in the war on terror. While discrimination by the federal government against aliens might be justified when it is handing out government benefits, it is not appropriate when deciding whether someone can be put before a tribunal with the power to dispense the most awesome powers of government, such as life imprisonment and the death penalty. When legislation singles out only powerless aliens, moreover, the standard checks on government abuse, such as political accountability, fail to operate. The result is not only that the legislation runs afoul of the Constitution\u27s guarantee of equal protection, it also eliminates the legislation from the zone of deference traditionally due to the political branches

Divisiveness, National Narratives, and the Establishment Clause

The Supreme Court habitually justifies the Establishment Clause as a means to prevent political division, protect the civil peace, and forestall citizen alienation. In spite of this popularity among the judiciary, legal scholars have emphatically rejected the political division theory. They state that religion is not especially divisive, and that even if it was, there is no reason to think non-establishment will prevent such political harm. This rejection relies on the misconception that the validity of the political division theory requires that all forms of religion must foment civil strife. This is a mistake. Often, laws apply to a wider category than to the core of what they seek to address. If this is the case, then even if non-establishment comes to merely prevent an especially erosive type of state and religion involvement, it may still be a valid and useful theory. In this Article, I argue that the political division theory is compelling when it is applied to a religion which seeks to collapse the distinction between politics and religion. To achieve this, I portray one such form of establishment of religion: American Christian Nationality, an ideology which sees the United States as having deep religious meaning and promotes Christianity as the central attribute of American identity. This Article will show that the combination between nationality and religion is uniquely divisive because it promotes a religious-based exclusionary understanding of who is a “real” American citizen. Many of the canonical Establishment Clause doctrines seem tailored to protect against government involvement in such religious movements

Neocolonialism and the Global Prison in National Geographic\u27s \u3ci\u3eLocked Up Abroad\u3c/i\u3e

This essay examines the reformulation of colonial ideologies in National Geographic Channel\u27s Locked Up Abroad, a documentary program that chronicles the narratives of Westerner travelers incarcerated in foreign nations. An analysis of Locked Up Abroad evinces neocolonialism in contemporary media culture, including: the historic association between dark-skin and savagery, the backwardness of the non-Western world, and the Western imperative to civilize it. The program\u27s documentary techniques and framing devises sustain an Otherizing gaze toward non-Western societies, and its portrayals elide a critical analysis of colonialism in its present forms. I advocate for neocolonial criticism to trace how NatGeo remains haunted by its own history in support of America\u27s civilizing mission