Irregular Migration. A Challenge to the Nation State?

Seminar paper from the year 2016 in the subject Politics - Other International Politics Topics, grade: 1,3, University of Bamberg, course: The Liberal Paradox, language: English, abstract: With a lingering global refugee crisis that has shaken the western hemisphere the topic of immigration, refuge and how to deal with the challenges accompanying it have been running up and down the news cycle for quite a while now. While migration and seeking asylum as a refugee are two different cases, this development has certainly made it clear to many a people that while the globalization and liberalization of trade have reached an all-time high, the globalization of the movement of people might go along a similar course. Although the desire to regulate migration and the flow of people seems to be almost unanimously accepted as a prerogative of nations, this desire could be faced with a new modus operando where it becomes almost impossible to control - especially from the point of view of democracies adhering to liberal principles. The question this essay tries to answer is 'Does irregular migration pose a challenge to the nation-state?'. To answer this question this text will first give a brief overview of the definitions, causes and mechanisms of (im-)migration to better understand the concept of irregular immigration that is at the heart of this analysis. It will then, focusing mainly on a EU perspective, present the concept of irregular immigration and the nation state to then lay out the challenges irregular migration may pose to the nation state. Finally, using a short qualitative analysis it will then be shown which challenges are credible to arise from irregular immigration.