2016
info:eu-repo/semantics/OpenAccess
Roberto Zaugg, « 'We need immigrants'. Citizenships, utilitarian discourses and migration policies from the late middle ages to nowadays », Archive ouverte de Sciences Po (SPIRE), ID : 10670/1.w7en69
In recent years, the idea that national states should actively chose the persons to whom they confer legal access to their territories and labour markets has lead various European governments to adopt new point-based selection systems, inspired by older North-American models. These policies have been implemented – or are currently discussed – in the context of broader contemporary debates on migration which are strongly informed by utilitarian arguments and by a discursive contraposition of allegedly “useful” migrants, characterised by high levels of human capital, to poor migrants, who tend to be seen as economically “burdensome”. Such dichotomous images have a long tradition in Europe, as is shown by a vast array of historical examples, stretching from late-medieval anti-vagrant laws to mercantilist policies aiming at attracting skilled craftsmen. However, these examples equally highlight that the central assumption of these policies – that is the belief that is possible to obtain a growth-enhancing regulation of migratory flows through a system of legal privileges – has mostly proven illusory, as it does not take into account the autonomous agency of migrant actors. Finally, the essay argues that granting different rights to migrants according to the perceived “usefulness” of the latter for the “nation” tends to degrade persons to means and to fuel a gradual erosion of the concept of equality.