Frowin Rausis, Researcher, Université de Genève, and Sandra Lavenex, Professor, Université de Genève

While we have witnessed a flurry of research on the history, politics, and legality of externalization policies, conceptual work has been relatively scarce. Against this backdrop, we put forward a taxonomy of externalization policies, distinguishing the spaces in which states aim to control human movements and limit their legal obligations towards people seeking protection as well as the means by which states exercise power. Essentially, states have strived to control territorial space through physical obstacles and digital innovation; legal space through policies of inadmissibility and practices of irresponsibility; diplomatic space through bilateral and multilateral cooperation; and influence mobility aspirations by targeting the mental space of potential migrants. The evolution of these four layers of refugee externalization implies supplementing biopolitics based on external migration control measures with transnational psychopolitics based on communicative strategies aiming to disincentivize departure by internalizing control.

Introduction

Refugee externalization policies have regained traction in many liberal Western democracies. Such policies intend to control human movement as well as to evade or, at least, reduce Western states’ responsibility in refugee protection through territorial and legal externalization. Whereas territorial externalization aims to keep people seeking protection away from the territory of potential destination states, legal externalization aims to shift legal responsibility for refugees outside of the reach of the state’s jurisdiction.[1] Despite policy innovation in the field of refugee externalization in recent years, the idea of circumventing state responsibility towards people seeking protection in this way is far from new with an intensified interest since the 1980s.[2]

While we have witnessed a flurry of research on the history, politics, and legality of externalization policies, conceptual work has been relatively scarce. Against this backdrop, we put forward a taxonomy that aims to capture the different forms of refugee externalization. We identify four layers of refugee externalization, differing by the spaces in which states strive to exercise control and the means by which states employ their power. First, states have aimed to control the territorial space preventing border-crossings of unwanted migrants by physical obstacles such as walls and fences or digital innovation and biometric databases. Second, states operate in the legal space when establishing procedural barriers or using their legislative power to hinder people from accessing asylum procedures and refugee protection. Third, liberal democracies are increasingly using their international standing and asymmetric economic power in the diplomatic space to close agreements allowing them to outsource both migration control and refugee protection. Finally, states are disincentivizing the departure of people in main countries of origin and transit through media and peer campaigns, targeting mobility aspirations and the mental space of potential asylum seekers.

Rather than replacing each other, the different layers of externalization policies can be understood as overlapping dimensions of migration control that complement each other. Also in conjunction, these are not instruments leading to the full exclusion of people seeking protection but function as a series of filters inducing selection processes. Overall, we can observe an evolution from visible and direct state control measures to more sublime, indirect forms of state power that aim to establish mental barriers and manipulate mobility aspirations. This development implies supplementing biopolitics[3], seeking to primarily control the movement of people at the hard edge of national borders in the Global North, with transnational psychopolitics[4], focusing on the headspace of potential migrants in the Global South. At the same time, externalization policies have turned refugee policy from a matter of domestic affairs to a matter of foreign affairs, moving immigration control upwards to the intergovernmental sphere and outwards towards countries in closer proximity to humanitarian crises.[5] Thereby, we witness a widening of the gap between what liberal democracies practice within their own borders and what they tolerate outside of their borders.[6]

Conceptualizing the externalization of refugee protection

Zolberg has been one of the researchers paving the way for research on externalization, describing practices such as the transatlantic visa system as a form of remote control.[7] Repudiating an over-simplistic view of externalization policies as instruments that are denying access to national territory by tightening borders, Spijkerboer has developed the concept of a global mobility infrastructure.[8] According to this conceptualization, the movement of people is regulated by physical structures, travel services, and laws, which are often discriminating along categories such as nationality, race, class, and gender. FitzGerald has categorizing externalization policies by using medieval metaphors – cages, domes, buffers, and barbicans – to describe the architecture of repulsion that states have erected to control the movement of unwanted migrants.[9]

Drawing on these and other studies, we put forward a taxonomy of refugee externalization focusing on the spaces in which states aim to regulate the movement and protection of migrants/refugees and the means by which states exercise power within these spaces. Distinguishing these two analytical dimensions allows to capture the various layers of refugee externalization, recognizing the growing influence of international cooperation and migration diplomacy as well as of more subtle means of control such as social media campaigns. On a subordinate level, we can also differentiate which authority exercises control, which type of power is employed, and via which instruments control is put into practice. The following table provides an overview of the four layers that constitute the taxonomy of externalization policies.

Table: Overview taxonomy of refugee externalization

In the following sections, the different forms of refugee externalization are discussed in detail.

Controlling access to national territory

The first layer of externalization is reflected by the aim of states to control their territorial space using both physical and digital infrastructure to hinder unwanted migrants from accessing national territory. Rather than replacing physical border infrastructure the “digitalization of border control” has complemented it with extensive digital archives and transnational biometrical databases.[10] Border control measures exercise compulsory power as they are based on states’ direct application of coercive means.[11]

Physical barriers, such as walls or fences, are seemingly medieval means but also the most visible representation of national borders. There are many examples of the continuous importance of such physical border infrastructure: the fences built around the Spanish enclaves Ceuta and Melilla after Spain joined the Schengen Agreement in 1991,[12] attempts by Poland to build a wall to secure the border against Belarus in 2022,[13] or the fragmented yet growing border infrastructure at the US-Mexican border.[14] Such border infrastructure is sometimes complemented with the use of physical force and the application of push-backs on land or with maritime interception. Such practices undermine the non-refoulement principle – the cornerstone of the international refugee regime. Meanwhile, reporting on the use of such practices has become notorious in Europe[15] and overseas[16].

Physical barriers go along with paper walls.[17] The introduction of passports as well as entry and visa requirements that must be presented in departure countries is arguably the most common tool used by states to this end.[18] While visa requirements have been lifted in many Global North states over the past few decades, they are still a popular instrument to filter South-North movements, leading to a “global mobility divide”.[19] In a similar way, states have introduced carrier sanctions on transportation companies should they not provide details about travelers and implement migration control measures.[20] What is more, states have also operated via a network of extraterritorial liaison officers that are translating mobility restrictions and operating as additional filters.[21]

Technological change has advanced digital infrastructures, turning physical obstacles into “smart borders”.[22] Border patrols have been equipped with technical devices allowing them to scan fingerprints, irises, and facial characteristics.[23] These feed into extensive transnational biometric databases such as Eurodac and the Schengen Information System, storing information about the prior locations and asylum applications of people in EU and associated states. AI accelerates digital innovation and perpetuates control via robot dogs equipped with video cameras and sensors, operating alongside groups of automated ground vehicles[24] or networks of drones and automated surveillance towers.[25] While early accounts of digitization in border control and migration management have predicted that the border would likely lose some of its significance as a physical site,[26] the physical border infrastructure is not expected to lose importance any time soon.

Controlling access to asylum law

Besides controlling the access to national territory, states have also used different means to control the access to asylum law. By introducing unilateral policies of inadmissibility and using their discretionary power when interpreting laws, states control the legal space to evade protection responsibilities. Power unfolding via the (non-)use of laws and administrative discretion can be described as institutional power – it draws on formal and informal rules affecting individuals directly.[27]

Most states worldwide have not only ratified international protection frameworks such as the 1951 Refugee Convention or the 1967 Protocol but also established national asylum frameworks.[28] They thereby formally recognize legal responsibility towards people seeking protection. From the 1980s onwards, states have subsequentially limited this responsibility by introducing (safe) third country policies.[29] These policies allow states to deny access to refugee status determination and refugee protection based on a connection of an asylum applicant with another country.

Next to policies of inadmissibility, states have circumscribed their legal responsibility by interpreting existing laws in evasive ways. A particularly inventive move has been the exclusion of border or transit zones – such as airports, harbors, or coastlines – from state territory. [30] In doing so, states seek to avoid accountability and aim to evade fulfilling their obligations under human rights and refugee law. These zones enable states “to roll back human rights while leaving police powers in place” – or substantially increase them.[31]

Such policies allowing Western liberal states to exploit legal gaps whilst at the same time formally adhering to the principles of protection obligations have been coined as hyper-legalism and obfuscation.[32] Hyper-legalism describes an overly formalistic bad-faith approach used by state officials when interpreting legal obligations towards people seeking protection. While states are formally complying with the letter of international law, they are creating legal fiction and a level of formalistic sophistry that effectively undermines the spirit of international legal obligations. Obfuscation, in contrast, is based on secrecy about the actions that states are taking and the purported legal justifications. Using legal silence strategically, states strive to prevent legal accountability and reputational damage as they seeking minimizing their responsibility in refugee protection.

Indirect control through migration diplomacy

Besides direct and unilateral measures frustrating access to their territory and asylum systems, states use also indirect means. Capitalizing on their economic power and international standing, Western states have increasingly engaged in what has been dubbed migration diplomacy.[33] This focuses on bilateral agreements with countries of transit and origin of migrants deflecting and deterring the latter and shifting legal obligations upon the former. In addition, informal inter-state consultation networks have proliferated in which states share “best practices” on asylum governance. Given that power is exercised indirectly and on the basis of economic predominance, these agreements can be interpreted as an example of structural power.[34]

The evolution of readmission agreements is arguably the clearest expression of intensifying migration diplomacy. Facing a “deportation gap”[35] states have increasingly sought to close bilateral agreements with main states of origin and transit to return irregular migrants. From 2004 onwards, also the EU has negotiated a series of multilateral readmission agreements.[36] In return, target states have often been offered visa facilitation agreements.[37] However, the conclusion of formal agreements often faces opposition in the target states and even once concluded agreements have proved ineffective.[38] In result, states have turned towards informal cooperation on return and readmission.[39] Western states have also tried to capitalize on issue-linkages, connecting demands for readmission with incentives in trade, security, human rights, and development cooperation.[40]

Particularly informal bilateral cooperation such as migration partnerships or memoranda of understanding focuses not only on the return of third-country nationals but also seeks to prevent the arrival of unwanted migrants. While the informalization may have motivated some transit and origin states to enter in such arrangements, destination states can also use informalization as a means for “breaking the legal link” with their own jurisdiction.[41] In response, human rights lawyers have increasingly filed complaints to international courts such as the International Criminal Court to “break the cycle of impunity”.[42]

Another form of migration diplomacy consists in agreements that shift responsibility for asylum processing and, in some cases, refugee protection to another country. Such (safe) fourth country policies date back to the 1980s and have, until the time of writing, been put into practice by Australia, Israel, and the United States.[43] Despite their continuous failure in the face of legal and practical challenges as well as human rights violations, they have an enduring appeal for politicians of Western states.[44] While Denmark was the first European state to introduce a legislative amendment allowing for such international agreements, it is the United Kingdom that has concluded the first such agreement with Rwanda in 2022, followed by Italy with Albania in 2024. This externalization follows the example of Australia’s “Pacific Solution”, which itself took inspiration from the offshoring of asylum processing by the United States in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.[45] But while these agreements essentially aim at deterring asylum seekers from seeking asylum in the West, they often been framed as humanitarian projects by their defenders.[46]

Controlling mobility aspirations

The fourth layer of externalization consists neither in territorial nor in legal or in diplomatic means to preclude access to Western states asylum systems. In contrast, it targets the ambition to migrate in the first place. Addressing the narratives of migration, this more subtle form of externalization refrains from the open use of force and instead operates via concealed and indirect ideational mechanisms masked as neutral “information campaigns”. Such influence conforms with the notion of productive power.[47] It mirrors the attempt to overcome the biopolitics that characterizes other forms of refugee externalization aiming to control the body and movement of potential migrants.[48] Due to its sublime and permissive nature and because it targets the mental space of people rather than their body it can best be described as a form of transnational psychopolitics.[49]

The past decades have witnessed a proliferation of so-called “information campaigns” that essentially aim to disincentivize potential asylum seekers from moving by disseminating reports about risks on the journey and in destination countries. The Australian government, for example, has built up an extensive social media campaign disseminating the message to people without valid visa: “You will never set foot in Australia”.[50] While other states have chosen different channels of communication and more subtle ways of communication they are often built upon the principle of “negative nation branding”.[51] Despite that research gives little support to the deterrent effects of such campaigns, their popularity is growing.[52] Part of destination states’ strategy is to send such messages indirectly via seemingly “neutral” international organizations like IOM, which are using, among other means, via peer-to-peer messaging such as the “migrants as messengers” project based on which returnees shall disincentivize the departure of their fellow citizens.[53]

Next to deterrent information campaigns, Western states also make use of symbolic or performative cruelty to discourage people from moving. While the emergence of illiberal policies and practices is often attributed to right-wing parties, also mainstream parties play their role using accommodative strategies.[54] At the same time as they establish hostile environments wealthy destination states collaborate to set up safe zones in the region of main refugee countries.[55] Yet both the hostile environments in destination states and presumably safe zones in the region of origin ultimately aim to keep people seeking protection away from potential destination states in the Global North, simultaneously using and strengthening regimes of (im)mobility[56].

Conclusion

This contribution has put forward a novel taxonomy of refugee externalization policies. It shows that refugee externalization has many layers and that states are using their influence in territorial, legal, diplomatic, and mental space to limit human mobility and their protection obligations.

The focus on illiberal externalization policies by Western democracies does not imply that states in the Global South have refrained from adopting similar strategies to imitate irresponsibility in refugee protection. For example, states in the Global South are also limiting the movement of South-South migration using visa policies.[57] Likewise, (safe) third country policies have increasingly become popular beyond the Global North.[58] However, states in the Global South are also using different means such as strategic non-regulation to avoid recognizing legal responsibility toward refugees.[59] Finally, they have also used instruments such as diaspora and emigration politics to yield influence in Western destination states.[60] What is more, refugee externalization is not only driven by states but can also be advanced by non-state actors such as international organizations.

Hitherto, liberal democracies have been cautious not to openly refrain from their commitment under the 1951 Refugee Convention. They may do so not only to prevent reputational damage but also because reducing their responsibility toward people seeking protection only works if the latter find protection elsewhere. However, extending responsibility to other countries and actors cannot work without maintaining responsibility in liberal democracies. When Western states undermine liberal protection norms within and beyond their borders, they erode the very substance of the international refugee regime. Doing so by exploring legal grey zones or even openly announcing to pull out from international courts, not only affects people seeking protection but also the very foundations on which the liberal international order rests.[61]

Footnotes

[1] Sandra Lavenex, ‘The Cat and Mouse Game of Refugee Externalisation Policies’, in Refugee Externalisation Policies, by Azadeh Dastyari, Amy Nethery, and Asher Hirsch, 1st ed. (London: Routledge, 2022), 27–44.

[2] David FitzGerald, Refuge beyond Reach: How Rich Democracies Repel Asylum Seekers (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2019).

[3] Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978 – 79, ed. Michel Senellart, 1st pbk ed., [Repr.], Lectures at the Collège de France (New York: Picador, 2010).

[4] Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitik: Neoliberalismus und die neuen Machttechniken, 4. Auflage (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 2014).

[5] Sandra Lavenex, ‘Shifting up and out: The Foreign Policy of European Immigration Control’, West European Politics 29, no. 2 (2006): 329–50.

[6] Lighthouse Reports, ‘Desert Dumps’, Borders, 21 May 2024, https://www.lighthousereports.com/investigation/desert-dumps/.

[7] Aristide R. Zolberg, ‘The Great Wall against China: Responses to the First Immigration Crisis, 1885–1925’, in Migration, Migration History, History: Old Paradigms and New Perspectives, ed. Jan Lucassen and Leo Lucassen (Berne: Peter Lang, 1997), 291–315; Aristide R. Zolberg, ‘The Archeology of “Remote Control”’, in Migration Control in the North Atlantic World. The Evolution of State Practices in Europe and the United States from the French Revolution to the Inter-War Period, ed. Andreas Fahrmeir, Oliver Faron, and Patrick Weil (New York, 2003), 195–222.

[8] Thomas Spijkerboer, ‘The Global Mobility Infrastructure: Reconceptualising the Externalisation of Migration Control’, European Journal of Migration and Law 20, no. 4 (2018): 452–69.

[9] David Scott FitzGerald, ‘Remote Control of Migration: Theorising Territoriality, Shared Coercion, and Deterrence’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 46, no. 1 (2020): 4–22.

[10] Matthias Leese, Simon Noori, and Stephan Scheel, ‘Data Matters: The Politics and Practices of Digital Border and Migration Management’, Geopolitics 27, no. 1 (2022): 5–25.

[11] Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall, ‘Power in International Politics’, International Organization 59, no. 1 (2005): 39–75.

[12] Xavier Ferrer-Gallardo and Lorenzo Gabrielli, ‘The Fenced Off Cities of Ceuta and Melilla: Mediterranean Nodes of Migrant (Im)Mobility’, in Migrations in the Mediterranean: IMISCOE Regional Reader, ed. Ricard Zapata-Barrero and Ibrahim Awad (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2024), 289–308.

[13] Euronews, ‘Poland Completes 186-Kilometre Border Wall with Belarus’, 30 June 2022, https://www.euronews.com/2022/06/30/poland-completes-186-kilometre-border-wall-with-belarus-after-migration-dispute.

[14] Eileen Sullivan and Colbi Edmonds, ‘Biden, the Border, and Why a New Wall Is Going Up’, The New York Times, 6 October 2023, sec. U.S., https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/06/us/border-wall-biden.html.

[15] Border Violence Monitoring Network, ‘Monthly Reports’, BVMN, n.d., https://borderviolence.eu/databases/monthly-reports/.

[16] Daniel Ghezelbash, ‘Australia’s Boat Push-Back Policy: Hyper-Legalism and Obfuscation in Action’, in Refugee Externalisation Policies, by Azadeh Dastyari, Amy Nethery, and Asher Hirsch, 1st ed. (London: Routledge, 2022), 69–83

[17] David S. Wyman, ‎Paper Walls: America and the Refugee Crisis, 1938-1941 (New York: Plunkett Lake Press, 2019).

[18] John Torpey, The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship and the State, Cambridge Studies in Law and Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

[19] Steffen Mau et al., ‘The Global Mobility Divide: How Visa Policies Have Evolved over Time’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 41, no. 8 (2015): 1192–1213.

[20] Virginie Guiradon and Gallya Lahav, ‘A Reappraisal of the State Sovereignty Debate: The Case of Migration Control’, Comparative Political Studies 33, no. 2 (2000): 163–95.

[21] Nicole Ostrand and Paul Statham, ‘“Street-Level” Agents Operating beyond “Remote Control”: How Overseas Liaison Officers and Foreign State Officials Shape UK Extraterritorial Migration Management’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 47, no. 1 (2021): 25–45.

[22] Leese, Noori, and Scheel, ‘Data Matters’.

[23] Simon Sontowski, ‘Speed, Timing and Duration: Contested Temporalities, Techno-Political Controversies and the Emergence of the EU’s Smart Border’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 44, no. 16 (2018): 2730–46.

[24] U.S. Department of Homeland Security, ‘Feature Article: Robot Dogs Take Another Step Towards Deployment | Homeland Security’, Homeland Security, 1 February 2022, https://www.dhs.gov/science-and-technology/news/2022/02/01/feature-article-robot-dogs-take-another-step-towards-deployment.

[25] Petra Molnar, The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (New York: The New Press, 2024); Petra Molnar, ‘Deadly Border Technologies Are Increasingly Employed to Violently Deter Migration’, The Conversation, 16 June 2024, http://theconversation.com/deadly-border-technologies-are-increasingly-employed-to-violently-deter-migration-231169.

[26] Rey Koslowski, ‘Smart Borders, Virtual Borders or No Borders: Homeland Security Choices for the United States and Canada Symposium: North American Migration, Trade and Security’, Law and Business Review of the Americas 11, no. 3 & 4 (2005): 527–50; Nick Vaughan-Williams, ‘The UK Border Security Continuum: Virtual Biopolitics and the Simulation of the Sovereign Ban’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 28, no. 6 (2010): 1071–83.

[27] Barnett and Duvall, ‘Power in International Politics’.

[28] Frowin Rausis, ‘Restrictive North versus Permissive South? Revisiting Dominant Narratives on the Evolution of the Refugee Regime’, Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, online first (2023), https://doi.org/10.1080/15562948.2023.2266419.

[29] Sandra Lavenex, Safe Third Countries: Extending the EU Asylum and Immigration Policies to Central and Eastern Europe (Budapest, Hungary ; New York: CEUPress, Central European University Press, 1999); Frowin Rausis, ‘The Global Spread of Safe Country Policies: Introducing the SACOP Dataset’, Working Paper Series nccr – on the move, Working Paper Nr. 31 (2022), https://nccr-onthemove.ch/wp_live14/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/nccrotm-WP31-Rausis.pdf.

[30] Tugba Basaran, ‘Security, Law, Borders: Spaces of Exclusion’, International Political Sociology 2, no. 4 (2008): 339–54.

[31] Tom W. Bell, ‘Special International Zones in Practice and Theory’, SSRN Scholarly Paper (2018).

[32] Daniel Ghezelbash, ‘Hyper-Legalism and Obfuscation: How States Evade Their International Obligations Towards Refugees’, The American Journal of Comparative Law 68, no. 3 (2020): 479–516.

[33] Fiona B Adamson and Gerasimos Tsourapas, ‘Migration Diplomacy in World Politics’, International Studies Perspectives 20, no. 2 (2019): 113–28.

[34] Barnett and Duvall, ‘Power in International Politics’.

[35] Matthew J. Gibney, ‘Asylum and the Expansion of Deportation in the United Kingdom’, Government and Opposition 43, no. 2 (2008): 146–67; Antje Ellermann, States Against Migrants: Deportation in Germany and the United States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

[36] European Commission, ‘A Humane and Effective Return and Readmission Policy’, n.d., https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/migration-and-asylum/irregular-migration-and-return/humane-and-effective-return-and-readmission-policy_en.

[37] Florian Trauner and Imke Kruse, ‘EC Visa Facilitation and Readmission Agreements: A New Standard EU Foreign Policy Tool?’, European Journal of Migration and Law 10, no. 4 (2008): 411–38.

[38] Philipp Stutz and Florian Trauner, ‘The EU’s “Return Rate” with Third Countries: Why EU Readmission Agreements Do Not Make Much Difference’, International Migration 60, no. 3 (2022): 154–72.

[39] Jean-Pierre Cassarino, ‘Informalising Readmission Agreements in the EU Neighbourhood’, The International Spectator 42, no. 2 (2007): 179–96.

[40] Sandra Lavenex and Gallya Lahav, ‘International Migration’, in Handbook of International Relations, ed. Walter Carlsnaes, Thomas Risse, and Beth A. Simmons, 2nd edition (London: Sage, 2012), 746–74.

[41] Patrick Müller and Peter Slominski, ‘Breaking the Legal Link but Not the Law? The Externalization of EU Migration Control through Orchestration in the Central Mediterranean’, Journal of European Public Policy 28, no. 6 (2021): 801–20.

[42] European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, ‘Severe Deprivation of Liberty in the Mediterranean Sea and in Libya – The ICC Must Investigate’, n.d., https://www.ecchr.eu/en/case/interceptions-of-migrants-and-refugees-at-sea/.

[43] Gregor Noll, ‘Visions of the Exceptional: Legal and Theoretical Issues Raised by Transit Processing Centres and Protection Zones’, European Journal of Migration and Law 5, no. 3 (2003): 303–41; Frowin Rausis, ‘Safe Country Policies Dataset (SACOP) (Version 1.1)’ (Zenodo, 2022), https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5886863.

[44] Frowin Rausis and Konstantin Kreibich, ‘Externalising Refugee Protection: Less a Vision than a Mirage’, The Loop (blog), 9 May 2022, https://theloop.ecpr.eu/externalising-refugee-protection-less-a-vision-than-a-mirage/.

[45] Daniel Ghezelbash, Refuge Lost: Asylum Law in an Interdependent World, 1st ed. (Cambridge University Press, 2018).

[46] Frowin Rausis, ‘Policy Diffusion across Political Ideologies: Explaining Denmark’s Desire to Externalise Asylum’, West European Politics, online first (2024): 1–29, https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2024.2348311.

[47] Barnett and Duvall, ‘Power in International Politics’.

[48] Foucault, ‘The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978 – 79’.

[49] Han, ‘Psychopolitik: Neoliberalismus und die neuen Machttechniken’.

[50] Australian Government, ‘No Way: You Will Never Set Foot in Australia’, n.d., https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/foi/files/2019/fa-190801764-document-released-p4.PDF.

[51] Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen, ‘Refugee Policy As “Negative Nation Branding”: The Case of Denmark and the Nordic’, SSRN Scholarly Paper (Rochester, NY, 2017).

[52] Omar N. Cham and Florian Trauner, ‘Migration Information Campaigns: How to Analyse Their Impact?’, International Migration 61, no. 6 (2023): 47–57.

[53] Rossella Marino, Joris Schapendonk, and Ine Lietaert, ‘The Moral Economy of Voice within IOM’s Awareness-Raising Industry: Gambian Returnees and Migrants as Messengers’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 50, no. 6 (2024): 1355–70.

[54] Kamila Shamsie, ‘A Hostile Environment Baton Passed from Theresa May to Priti Patel – and a Decade of Cruelty’, The Guardian, 23 June 2022, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jun/23/hostile-environment-theresa-may-priti-patel-rwanda-deportation; Werner Krause, Denis Cohen, and Tarik Abou-Chadi, ‘Does Accommodation Work? Mainstream Party Strategies and the Success of Radical Right Parties’, Political Science Research and Methods 11, no. 1 (2023): 172–79.

[55] Bríd Ní Ghráinne, ‘Safe Zones and the Internal Protection Alternative’, SSRN Scholarly Paper (2020), https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=3578292.

[56] Vestin Hategekimana et al., ‘Crises, Migration and (Im)Mobility: Towards a Reflexive and Multilevel Approach’, Working Paper Series nccr – on the move, Working Paper Nr. 37 (2024), https://nccr-onthemove.ch/publications/crises-migration-and-immobility-towards-a-reflexive-and-multilevel-approach/.

[57] Mathias Czaika, Hein de Haas, and María Villares-Varela, ‘The Global Evolution of Travel Visa Regimes’, Population and Development Review 44, no. 3 (2018): 589–622.

[58] Rausis, ‘Restrictive North versus Permissive South?’

[59] Katharina Natter, Kelsey Norman, and Nora Stel, ‘Strategic Non-Regulation as Migration Governance’, Migration Politics 2, no. 1 (2023).

[60] Fiona B. Adamson, ‘The Growing Importance of Diaspora Politics’, Current History 115, no. 784 (2016): 291–97; Jiaqi M. Liu, ‘When Diaspora Politics Meet Global Ambitions: Diaspora Institutions Amid China’s Geopolitical Transformations’, International Migration Review 56, no. 4 (2022): 1255–79.

[61] Sandra Lavenex, ‘The International Refugee Regime and the Liberal International Order: Dialectics of Contestation’, Global Studies Quarterly 4, no. 2 (2024).