Migration Policies in the OSCE Region

Chapter 1 Migration Policies in the OSCE Region Anisa Abeytia, Esther Brito, and John Sunday Ojo 1.1 Introduction In 2015 over one million Syrians sought asylum in Europe. This triggered a rise in migratory policy responses anchored in Eurocentrism, built on historical biases, and enshrined in European laws, codes, and legal norms (Ameeriar, 2017; Dunbar-Ortiz, 2021; Emilsson & Öberg, 2022; Mishra, 2017; Perocco, 2018; Walia, 2021). Today, these policies have fundamentally shaped OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) refugee and migration governance in a manner that warrants further analysis. Critical literature has highlighted that Eurocentrism is enshrined in the legislative structures that shape the OSCE approach to migration policy, which manifest as inequities and an institutionalized tiered system that favors the migration of European communities over that of non-Europeans (Abeytia, 2021; Dunbar-Ortiz, 2021; Walia, 2021). Understanding how these policies reproduce biases is fundamental to assessing the realities of modern migration. Tracing this evolution, Perocco (2018) identified the rise of anti-migrant Islamophobia in European societies as an embedded structural phenomenon. He observed its normalization and increase in line with nonwhite economic immigration, noting that throughout the 1990s, punitive policies, practices, and discourses began to take more explicit shape in Europe. These narratives included themes such as “the Islamic invasion, the irreducible difference, the A. Abeytia (B) Global Research Network, University of San Francisco, San Francisco, USA e-mail: anisa.a@grn.global E. Brito Global Research Network, American University School of International Service, Washington, USA e-mail: eb1913b@american.edu J. S. Ojo Global Research Network, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK © The Author(s) 2024 A. Mihr and C. Pierobon (eds.), Polarization, Shifting Borders and Liquid Governance, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44584-2_1 3 4 A. Abeytia et al. female condition, the incompatibility, and the impossible integration” to justify policies and practices of exclusion—manifesting as variations of discrimination, from social coverage and economic opportunity to targeted security policies, normalized institutional discrimination, and continued micro acts of violence across European states (Perocco, 2018). Subsequent mass displacements of refugees have further exacerbated these systemic political fractures, which have crystallized in the lack of consistent implementation of the international right to asylum. A clear example is the European Union’s (EU) recent adoption of the instrumentation of asylum law, which further erodes international norms in favor of the nation-state (European Commission 2021). This law highlights the growing social and political polarity driving the migration policy agenda by favoring the measures dictated by individual EU member states rather than more cohesive international legal obligations. As such, it affirms that white nationalism, not a refugee-centered agenda, is increasingly driving policy (Høy-Petersen, 2022; Campbell & Pedersen, 2014; Djuve & Kavli, 2019). These policy approaches adopted in the Global North have become normalized and remain unscrutinized for biases in their instrumentation of migration law. Implementing polarized domestic policy in OSCE countries recreates the social structures of otherness and sets the basis for discriminatory approaches toward migration flows. This becomes evident in the case of France and its relationship with local non-white and migrant populations. Such racial otherness was the basis of a controversial antiveil bill passed into law in 2010, which involved ethnonationalism rhetoric and did not target Christian religious coverings (Brayson, 2019). Again, across parts of France, migrant communities are segregated and often confined to banlieues—geographically isolated suburbs (Jobard, 2020), where young residents are commonly stereotyped as terrorists. Despite many being second and third-generation immigrants born and raised in France, they tend to be subjected to routine police and identity checks under the pretext of confirming their identities. The riots in France in 1983, 1990, and 2005 resulted from such collective racial stereotyping (Ware, 2014). As such, we see that general conceptions of integration or nationality are not the core driving factors of discrimination. However, non-white bodies are subjected to perceptions of threat, control, and otherness, both domestically and internationally (Linke, 2010). National security and social cohesion are often cited as justification for these exclusionary migration laws and policies in the Global North (Dunbar-Ortiz, 2021; Walia, 2021). Yet the impacts of these practices extend into the Global South and act to benefit elites that deploy them to maintain a hold over minority populations, political dissenters, refugees, and internally displaced populations. It is essential to examine the underlying ideological bias that shapes migration policy to begin to apply the standards and laws prescribed by international asylum law universally across regions and populations (Medeiros, 2019; Schain, 2018). 1 Migration Policies in the OSCE Region 5 1.2 The Underlying Ideological Basis of Migration Policy A growing body of literature highlights biases and colonial antecedents within policy structures. In his book, Julian Go (2016) postulates the necessity of recognizing and addressing the insertion of post-colonial structures within the social sciences. Similarly, in “Not a Nation of Immigrants”, Rozanne Dunbar-Ortiz (2021) outlines the deep social coding embedded in the USA’s racialized social structures, most apparent in its immigration laws. Walia (2021) writes that law and policies are the “bricks of Fortress Europe”. Building upon this literature, we recognize colonial antecedents as echoes of empires that continue to shape societal structures and bureaucratic apparatus through unchecked biases in law, policy, and codes rooted in Eurocentric racism developed during colonization (Abeytia, 2021). This legal structure not only negatively impacts non-European refugees in the Global North but also marginalizes populations throughout the OSCE region—as exemplified by detailed reports of the state of Islamophobia in Europe (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2018). This is because colonial antecedents escape empirical examination as a normalized worldview (Go, 2016). Additionally, colonial antecedents project outward from the Global North and broadly impact OSCE countries’ governance of minority and marginalized populations, promoting and favoring exclusionary practices over active democratic social inclusion—manifesting in varied ways, from targeted security policies to structural violence and deliberate state indifference (Davies et al., 2017; Perocco, 2018). Systems of exclusion are upheld by legal practices that favor whiteness by employing brutal tactics to discourage populations from the Global South from migrating such as long-term detention (Mainwaring, 2020) and which continues to be “amplified by the language of our discriminatory legal frameworks and migration policies” (Abeytia & Diab, 2021a). These practices are not applied uniformly with some high-skilled migrants actively sought out by Global North states to supplement a shortage of skilled workers in specific fields (OCED, 2020; Germany to Change Immigration Laws to Attract Skilled Labor, 2003). However, these instances remain the exception rather than the norm—migrants are welcomed not based on their rights or identity but in exception (Jaskulowski & Pawlak, 2020). As such, colonial antecedents continue reverberating throughout the OSCE region as deep racialized social coding based on hierarchies established by European powers and rooted in racial identity (Ameeriar, 2017; Dunbar-Ortiz, 2021; Go, 2016; Mishra, 2017; Walia, 2021). Indeed, constructing a white identity in the U.S. and its subsequent codification into immigration policy allows us to trace the blueprint of discriminatory migration practices and social exclusion in Europe (Samaddar, 2020). The production of a white racial category prevented non-European populations from gaining citizenship in the USA and limited the number of non-whites who could enter the country legally (Walia, 2021). In the 1900s, the eugenics movement bolstered this racial ideology. The exportation of USA racial ideology to Europe found a home in Nazi Germany, 6 A. Abeytia et al. where Jim Crow laws were the foundation of the infamous Nuremberg Laws (DunbarOrtiz, 2021). The Nuremberg Laws are an extreme manifestation, as was the transAtlantic slave trade and the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. However, blatant displays of racial exclusion should not be the only rubric to measure biases within migration and asylum policy in OSCE countries. The subtle insertions of biases into migration policies are legal microaggressions, intentional or not, and negatively impact nonEuropeans and marginalized populations. Scandinavian countries, renowned for their institutionalized egalitarianism, provide salient examples on the appearance of postcolonial antecedents. Despite efforts by Sweden and Norway to create structural practices of inclusion, Scandinavian states provide examples of the manifestation of biases situated in racial identity. In a recently published article, Høy-Petersen (2022) describes white Norwegian society as holding “deep-seated racist attitudes and stereotypes, but superficially display[ing] egalitarian behaviors”. She defines this as a duality of human cognition that “obscures people’s awareness of their negative stereotypes” and argues that this makes confronting racism difficult (ibid.). Policymakers are not immune to personal biases or those of the societies in which they live (Ameeriar, 2017; Samaddar, 2020). In this regard, Sivanandan writes, “we are moving from ethnocentric racism to Eurocentric racism, from the different racisms of the other member states to an everyday, market racism” (Webber, 1991, p. 11). This Eurocentric worldview is expressed as preserving European values, cultural heritage, and religious traditions. It permeates to border security—underlying the efforts to maintain a fortress Europe—and refugee integration policy, which is imbued with the colonial mentality of the inadequacies of populations from the Global South who require civilizing by European integration policies (Emilsson & Öberg, 2022). Along this line, Brandt and Crawford’s (2016) boundary phenomenon can assist us in explaining the negative and sometimes violent reaction to refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs). As refugees and IDPs move into new regions throughout the OSCE countries, their entry serves as a breach of a barrier that previously existed physically and mentally. As such, Hungary’s and the United States’ push to erect border walls reflects a desire to literally build a boundary between refugees and local populations. Similarly, Australia’s offshore housing of asylum seekers and using African and Middle Eastern countries as sites to hold refugees and IDPs obey this logic. Brandt and Crawford further explain that “having clear boundaries helps people feel like the opposing group is distinct and far away. That is, they won’t be so much of a threat” (Tourjée, 2016). It had become evident that Fortress Europe and the model of erecting border walls and fences arose as a visceral spatial response to the boundary phenomenon (ibid.). These coercive aspects of migration policies and their harsh repercussions signal a despotic approach (Mitchell & Russell, 2020), visible in migration policies that institutionalize mechanisms rooted in the colonial past. Migration policy is thus increasingly shaped by political polarity and influenced by nativist and populous movements. In this line, Djuve and Kavli (2019) write, “[t]his highly ideological policy field is an interesting case for the study of policy learning 1 Migration Policies in the OSCE Region 7 versus ideas as drivers for institutional change or continuity”. The recent conflict in Ukraine contrasted with the international response to Syria, highlights that the application of immigration and asylum law is not universal or ubiquitous throughout the OSCE region and is a direct example of the functioning of colonial antecedents in the application of migration policy that is, a reflection of the privileges attributes to whiteness. However, the preferential treatment given to Ukrainian refugees has been attributed to Ukraine’s attempts to defend Europe from Russian aggression. Such a justification has been chastised in several socio-political fora. It has been claimed that such a discriminatory impasse demonstrates the unequal treatment and selective solidarity that exposes the prejudices embedded in EU asylum and refugee policies (Venturi & Vallianatou, 2022). 1.3 The Operative Frameworks of Migration of the OSCE and ODIHR In exploring how colonial antecedents shape and condition migratory policy responses, it becomes essential to understand the frameworks within which the OSCE political architecture is developed and rationalized. This analysis allows us to account for the significant differences between formal policy objectives and the practical realities and lived experiences of migrants and asylum seekers traversing OSCE territories. OSCE participating countries define the parameters of their migration policies within broader regional operation frameworks. Member states make several commitments to govern migration policy in a coordinated manner, including the Helsinki Final Act (1975), the Madrid Document (1983), the Vienna Final Document (1989), the Copenhagen Document (1990), the Paris Charter for a New Europe (1990), the Moscow Document (1991), the Helsinki Document (1992), the Budapest Document (1994), and documents adopted by the Ministerial Councils of Maastricht (2009) and Sofia (2004) (OSCE 2016). These various policies have included provisions promoting anti-discrimination, anti-racism, integrative integration, and social inclusion as part of the underlying values embedded in migration governance. While the OSCE has no enforcement mechanism and is only a political and nonlegally binding organization, it defines the framework for migration policies within the OSCE region. It is the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) that consolidates the activities of participating states to ensure the protection of human rights. The organization has a legal mandate to ensure that the participating states and their agencies’ programs align with the OSCE’s objectives, especially in mitigating discrimination against asylum seekers and refugees (Froehly, 2016). As such, the ODIHR engages directly with issues of migrant rights, including a push for electoral participation, democratization, integration, and resident registration systems. 8 A. Abeytia et al. With this aim, the ODIHR enacts guiding principles to be utilized by stakeholders—such as politicians, local authorities, and advocacy groups, among others— in defining migration responses coherent with overarching fundamental protections. As such, the ODIHR provides an enabling environment to evaluate migration policies and execute the rule of law programs. By reinforcing these various activities, the ODIHR seeks to support participating states in constructing inclusive and cohesive societies under a human rights-based approach to migration policy. Unfortunately, fundamental differences remain between these policy frameworks’ formal and practical spheres. Beyond structural failures in policy framing that may not account for the experiences of many migratory or displaced populations, political actors often adopt migration narratives to frame diverse social discourses to influence electoral outcomes. In this manner, polarizing domestic politics incentivizes political actors to instrumentalize narratives around migration favoring differential responses to specific sub-sets of migrants as a means of strategic framing. 1.4 The Instrumentalization of Migration Policy as a Political Strategy The polarization of domestic policy aligns with the rising controversies associated with migration in most OSCE-participating countries. Emerging fringe far-right and populist parties capitalize on exclusionary ideologies to mobilize voters and increase their political capital often resorting to misinformation, disinformation, or selective cases of unwanted consequences derived from migratory movements. In countries like the United States of America, Donald Trump successfully adopted anti-migrant catchphrases during the election campaign, such as describing Mexican migrants as rapists and drug dealers. Similarly, the Polish President consistently leveraged derogatory accounts of migrants, asserting the importance of protecting Polish citizens from the “epidemic” of immigration (Andreas, 2009). Countries are embroiled in a narrative that perceives outsiders as a threat (Esses et al., 2017), leading political actors to hijack these insecurities to promote negative sentiment for political gain (Dempster & Hargrave, 2017). These statements are then translated by the media and molded by receiving societies in ways that compromise practical inclusion at the community level (OSCE and ODIHR, 2021). Examples of rising political actors who have adopted these instruments to garner political support and encourage social fear abound (Juhász & Szicherle, 2017). The extreme right-wing party Vox in Spain used anti-migrant and xenophobic narratives as a springboard and now occupies the position of the third largest party in parliament. Similarly, conservative leaders Andrzej Duda in Poland and Viktor Orban in Hungary have sought to maintain power through the designation of internal enemies and the promotion of conservative hard-line policies, most aimed at migrants and minorities. Even in famously progressive Sweden, the arrival of asylum seekers from Syria in 1 Migration Policies in the OSCE Region 9 2015 and 2016 resulted in an increasingly negative framing of migrants, weaponized under the assumption that they would commit crimes and even acts of terrorism. These emerging polarized parties’ use of racially charged metaphors has continued to breed intolerance and discrimination against migrants across the OSCE region (Ameeriar, 2017; Dunbar-Ortiz, 2021; Mishra, 2017; Walia, 2021). Much of the language adopted in public migration discourse often dehumanizes migrants and infringes on their fundamental rights. For instance, framing migrants as “others,” “queue-jumpers”, and “not like us” has continued to promote a destructive relationship between the citizens of host countries and incoming migrants (Doherty, 2015). This has impacted the policy regarding public pushback and political calculations (ODI, 2019). Similarly, terms like “illegal” and “undocumented” have been widely chastised as pejorative, with many migrants being allowed to remain in their host countries without legal documents to work (MRCI, 2007). Alternative framings, such as that of “irregular migrants”, are also problematic, as the Migrant Rights Centre Ireland denotes “a person cannot be irregular, but rather be in an irregular situation” (MRCI, 2007, p. 17). In this context, “irregularity” can be considered a social construct because specific laws classify certain types of migration as irregular and unwanted. As becomes evident, political actors’ framing of migration significantly shapes public perception of migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers (Doherty, 2015). The capitalization of this narrative by polarizing political forces to pursue nationalist and populist political aims builds upon the historical, racial and colonial antecedents we have identified to create narratives of villainization and social exclusion. Thus, despite formal policies toward migrant rights having been introduced and committed to, current trends demonstrate that we are far from being able to truly address the primary concerns of refugees and asylum seekers in OSCE countries and that we continue to fail to implement international protection standards consistently. 1.5 Differential Implementations of Migration Governance Having explored the structure and instrumentalization of policies that regulate migration management throughout the OSCE region, we examine the patterns of treatment by European Union authorities of Ukrainian versus Syrian and Afghan refugees as a case study. We use this analysis to evidence how migratory policies are implemented differentially according to the target groups’ identity characteristics. We thus explore the institutional dehumanization and structural racism that has become entrenched in EU migration and integration policies, in line with the rise of far-right populism and social polarization in narratives regarding migrants and their place in society. Furthermore, we note the longstanding impact of these policies beyond EU borders, as the political actions of the Global North condition migration management in the Global South. We conclude that the operationalization of migration governance is directly conditioned due to political polarization substantiated by xenophobic and racist narratives in Europe. 10 A. Abeytia et al. 1.5.1 The Cases of Mass Displacement of Ukrainian, Syrian, and Afghan Refugees The last few years have seen the rise of displacement crises worldwide—from Myanmar to Ethiopia. Over the last decade, Europe has been a destination for various mixed-migration influxes; the most prominent being those driven by the Syrian, Afghan, and Ukrainian conflicts. The Syrian conflict saw 6.8 million refugees over 11 years in the Middle East and Europe (World Vision, 2021). At the same time, Afghan asylum seekers represented less, only 21% of the refugees that fled to Europe from 2015 to 2016 (IRC, 2016). At that time, the EU recorded 2.4 million asylum applications, which marked the most significant influx of refugees to Europe since World War II (Brücker, 2022). Comparatively, since the beginning of Russia’s invasion in February 2022, over 6 million Ukrainian refugees have crossed into other states in only a few months (UNHCR, 2023) dwarfing the scale of previous displacements. Still, the reception that Ukrainian refugees have received has been entirely different from that experienced by those who came before. We emphasize the scale of the displacement to argue that the mass of those displaced was not the determining feature in the European migratory policy. While all the cases presented correspond to severe and intense crises of displacement affecting civilian populations due to the onset of war—and thus are somewhat comparable—the following social and political responses cannot be more disparate (De Coninck, 2022). Considering this, we explore the manifestations of refugee protection concerning social, political, and economic disparities. The displacement experiences of Ukrainian refugees have differed significantly from those of Syrian and Afghan asylum-seekers in terms of public opinion, political narrative, humanitarian assistance, and policy responses (Diab, 2022; Trauner & Valodskaite, 2022). European public opinion about the reception of displaced Ukrainian refugees has been overwhelmingly positive—including calls to “keep borders open” and widespread commitments to aid and integration from neighboring states. The EU has even implemented the “Mass Influx Directive”, a policy obligating Member State to provide humanitarian and medical aid, accommodation, and relocation assistance to refugees and access to education and the labor market (Brücker, 2022). This temporary protection regime is a watershed moment and a complete breakaway from previous EU migration governance in the twenty-first century (Trauner & Valodskaite, 2022). Individual state reactions have also been notably different. Key examples would be Poland and Hungary, which have implemented open border policies, deployed extensive humanitarian support and granted access to those fleeing without any need for documentation (Diab, 2022). These cases are particularly striking, given the states’ previously rigid stance against other migration flows. In contrast, Afghan and Syrian asylum seekers in 2015 and 2016 were met with villainization and apprehension (Bayrakli & Hafez, 2018; Benoist, 2018; Walida, 2021). European media described the mass displacement as a “refugee crisis” for Europe—a narrow, Eurocentric, and ahistorical assessment of the events. 1 Migration Policies in the OSCE Region 11 The problem focused on those fleeing violence rather than on nationalism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia, equating asylum-seekers to security threats (Poynting & Briskman, 2020). European countries institutionalized the redirection of flows of migrants and asylum seekers perceived as non-white and non-christian, often forcibly and violently (Islam, 2020). In 2015, Hungary went as far as to raise border fences, closing off migratory routes and enacting laws that made it a criminal offense to aid immigrants entering irregularly to apply for asylum (Human Rights Watch 2018). Other countries, like Greece and Spain, became notorious for illegal pushbacks on land and sea routes. The EU detained incoming refugees for up to 18 months (Global Detention Project 2022)in polar opposition to the reception we now see of Ukrainian migrants, who have been granted immediate access to protected status without applying for asylum. The migration and refugee move since 2022 also saw the re-emergence of ethnonationalist discourses of European identity. It made evident Europe’s belief in the continent’s universe of obligation that is, its conception of who deserves to be saved. Thus, nationality and racial origin have played a significant role in determining who got what at any given moment, creating polarity between refugees and asylum seekers who were to be protected and those who were not. The combination of these elements has caused the EU’s migration governance to have devastating effects on the human rights of non-white migrants (Crépeau & Purkey, 2016). Indeed, the acceptance and protection of Ukrainian refugees fleeing the RussiaUkraine war contrasts with the EU’s approach to other refugees, such as Iraq, Afghanistan, and Africa. Recently, at the Belarus-Poland borders in November 2021, this inhumane treatment resulted in the deaths of at least 13 people, including a oneyear-old Syrian boy (HRW, 2021). It is also worth mentioning that, during the mass displacement of Syrians following the Arab Spring, no Temporary Protection Directive was activated (World Vision, 2022). Even now, excluding non-Ukrainian refugee permits—primarily Afghans, Syrians, and other non-white minorities—and asylum seekers from temporary residences has resulted in allegations of discrimination in EU migration policies. While Ukrainian refugees have been granted freedom of movement within the EU, refugees and asylum seekers from other non-EU countries remain accommodatedor, more aptly, contained—in detention centers (Micinski, 2022). The selective treatment of refugees and asylum seekers raises the truism of non-discrimination inherent in OSCE policies (OSCE, 2009), evidencing the racial hierarchy in migration management (Ray, 2022). We also highlight that the undertakings of the EU regarding refugee policy manifest as special policies of exclusion and have long-standing effects beyond the region (Stock et al., 2019). Migration scholars have increasingly analyzed how extraterritorial migratory control by states in the Global North affects countries in the Global South (Rechitsky, 2016). Notably, before the onset of the Syrian war in 2011, the EU furthered its coordination with bordering states through the establishment of agreements that provided incentives to neighboring non-EU states to become permanent hosting areas. The aim was to create low-cost alternatives to prevent migrants from being able to reach mainland Europe as part of the EU’s externalization policies (Diab, 2022). In this line, the EU expanded its previous agreements with multiple 12 A. Abeytia et al. African nations—most infamously with Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi—to prevent African migrants from accessing the continent (European Council, 2022). Similarly, to manage migration flows from Syria, the EU entered into an agreement with Turkey that provided reduced visa restrictions for Turkish citizens and 6 billion euros in aid (Terry, 2021). Another notable example of this policy logic can be found in the offshore processing of asylum seekers on the islands of Manus and Nauru by Australian officials, simultaneously held up as a model by EU states and condemned by human rights organizations for violating international law. In 2015, as Syrian and Afghan refugee flows increased, Europe further strengthened its re-bordering process. It continued to undermine the regional internal asylum procedures enshrined in the Dublin Agreement (Knudsen & Berg, 2021). EU states violated humanitarian law and forwent their responsibilities under the EU’s standard asylum system—including via the use of illegal pushbacks, militarized borders, deportations, unlawful denial of entry to asylum-seekers, and even the subcontracting violence to bordering states. This illustrates the boundary phenomenon introduced by Brandt and Crawford (2016), which explores phenomena such as the “off-shoring” of asylum seeker processing, constructing border fences, bolstering border patrol enforcement, and criminalizing search and rescue efforts. An example of these exacerbating abuses would be the murder of 23 young migrants attempting to cross the fence separating Morocco from the Spanish city of Melilla (Brito, 2022). In this way, Europe has institutionalized policies of containment that create centers, camps, informal shelters, and other structures to limit mobility for migratory populations both within and outside the EU. These policies seek to indefinitely contain and control those deemed as “unwanted” populations (Knudsen & Berg, 2021). This phenomenon is often referred to as “campization” through which asylum laws and reception policies have consolidated camp-like characteristics in refugee accommodation. Many other non-OSCE countries have since replicated these policy approaches (Frelick et al., 2016) throughout the Middle East and Africa, regions heavily impacted by refugees and IDPs, where states now utilize camps as barriers, for example, ‘The Jungle in Calais’ in France; Moria on the Greek island of Lesbos and the vast network of camps in southeast Asia that house the Rohingya, or Jordan’s Za’atari; and the largest camps located in Africa are all expressions of colonial antecedents halting the flow of non-European populations fleeing from the continued aftermath of colonization (Abeytia & Diab, 2021a, 2021b). The severity of the situation and the dire conditions in these camps have led many of these refugee populations to exist in a status of “social death” (Patterson, 1982), as their experiences of structural disenfranchisement operate as a form of slow attritional violence, placing them outside of life (Afana, 2021). It has become evident that there is a differential consideration of who has the right to move through social spaces and exist within society. Ukrainian refugees have not been segregated or put in camps; families house them and receive extended social and economic support for integration. Afghan and Syrian refugees, however, were contained in overcrowded and insecure camps or informal settlements, with limited aid and little opportunity or intent to facilitate integration, often not being 1 Migration Policies in the OSCE Region 13 granted refugee status at all. The racialized element of this containment becomes evident in the treatment of Ukrainian refugees of color, who were obstructed from leaving and discriminated against in processing areas (Ray, 2022). This differential perception of belonging has often been presented inhumanely by news reporting that sought to differentiate Ukrainian displaced from African refugees—evoking notions of whiteness, civilization, and a sense of kinship in messaging that embodies ideals of white nationalism and colonialism. In this way, we affirm that it is not necessarily the nature of the conflicts themselves that truly drive differential responses but the perceived notion of belonging that defines treatment in destination states. To analyze the underlying conditions that account for the differential policy responses and implementations in migratory movements, we draw from scholars like Stephan et al. (2009). Their research states that discriminatory treatment can arise when migratory populations are deemed a “symbolic threat”. This refers to the belief or fears that migrants will “challenge the in-group’s religion, values, belief systems, ideology, or worldview” (De Coninck, 2022). Scholars in the field have identified this as a significant source of prejudice (De Coninck & Matthijs, 2020). The perception of a symbolic threat in the European context is inherently tied to Islamophobia and colonial antecedents. Indeed, studies on anti-immigrant sentiments in Europe have found not only that it is on the rise (Wieviorka, 2018), but that threat considerations are applied primarily to those arriving from non-European states (Czaika & Di Lillo, 2018), mainly those migrants who are associated with Islam, whether or not that be their actual religious affiliation (Heath et al., 2020). This was confirmed by the results of the European Social Survey, which established that, after the Roma, Muslims were the most unwelcome group in Europe (Heath & Richards, 2020). As noted, these perceptions have their roots in colonial and racial ideologies. However, their rise in prominence also derives from their instrumentalization by specific political actors in domestic politics (Kaya, 2019). It is well-documented how populist parties have sought to leverage politics of fear around xenophobia, Islamophobia, and Euroscepticism as a fundamental electoral strategy (Oztig et al., 2021). The rise of populism in Europe has been particularly intertwined with Islamophobia—to the extent that selectively restrictive immigration has become the “battle horse” of right-wing populist movements (Pickel & Öztürk, 2021). Conversely, while far-right parties have further exacerbated these exclusionary sentiments, these groups have only been able to capitalize upon racism and anti-immigration as electoral strategies because of the pre-existing social biases and fears already present among European populations (Bayrakli & Hafez, 2018). Populist movements have drawn upon concepts of nativism and identity politics to affect public opinion through discourses surrounding European and national heritage, substantiated by rejecting the integration of Muslim refugees and refugees of color (Kaufmann, 2018). In this line, Dennison and Geddes (2019) have explored the main drivers of voter support for populist parties in Western Europe related to immigration. The two main pain points exploited by these parties were economic and cultural uncertainties (Grossman & Helpman, 2021). Economic anxieties related to recessions and austerity policies increased receptivity to messaging of cultural backlash from anti-immigration populist parties. Primary messaging revolved around hostility to 14 A. Abeytia et al. immigration and nationalist conservative values. To follow our previous examples, Andrzej Duda’s administration in Poland and Viktor Orban’s in Hungary have used this discourse of migration and Islam as political leverage. Other groups, like Vox in Spain, National Rally in France, and the Northern League in Italy, have implemented similar strategies villainizing non-white migrants. It is also worth noting that even these seemingly anti-immigration parties have welcomed Ukrainian refugees openly—once again evidencing that the issue is not one of displacement but of identity. As such, there is a direct connection between the securitization of immigration and formal and informal political strategies selectively leveraged to exclude foreign populations (Orsini et al., 2022). The practical manifestations of European refugee governance represent a paradigmatic example of the colonial and racial functioning of migration policies. Despite formal policies advocating for equal treatment, the imposition of a vision of symbolic threat upon non-white and non-christian migrants and asylum seekers has evidenced that, contrary to the narratives in OSCE and EU institutions, historic biases still define the lived experiences of migrants from the Global South in Europe. This is true throughout the OSCE region, primarily due to the policy ripples that have followed the securitization of European migratory movements. The reception of Ukrainian refugees evidences how protection frameworks should work. As such, the stark differences that can be appreciated when evaluating how these mechanisms operated for Syrian and Afghan refugees highlight how colonial mindsets and Islamophobia warp the implementation of international obligations in an irrefutable manner. We have reviewed how the utilization of these issues by populist movements has become a centerpiece of regional politics, noting that it will only have further long-standing impacts on local and refugee populations threatening social cohesion and prompting further segregation. It remains clear that people are not disconnected from their history. As for other research endeavors, we must incorporate a critical colonial lens into understanding and assessing migration policies throughout the OSCE region. 1.6 Conclusion This chapter has addressed the political polarization of migration policy across the OSCE region and in some of its 57 participating states most affected by migrants— most of them EU countries. Although several policy structures have embraced an equitable approach—influencing how the reception and integration of refugees and asylum systems are operationalized—the current migration regime remains heavily conditioned by historical, racial, and religious biases. This affects the practical implementation of policy and is aggravated by the political instrumentalization of migration narratives by emerging nationalist and populist forces seeking to leverage social insecurities for political purposes. 1 Migration Policies in the OSCE Region 15 The international community’s response to the Ukrainian crisis exemplifies the appropriate course of action that states should undertake when faced with mass displacement, as its implementation of policy and structural protections adhered to international asylum and human rights laws. Adopting this approach across populations is a critical first corrective measure in addressing colonial antecedents within migration policy frameworks. A second step requires the inclusion of diverse voices in the drafting of migration policy—particularly those of affected populations. The fact that authorities implement migratory measures without accommodating representatives of displaced communities inherently makes these approaches fallible, fragile, and subject to political bargaining. Non-inclusive and state-centric policies are ineffective in addressing the human security impacts of mass displacement and thus worsen, rather than ameliorate, social crises. As such, it becomes crucial to ensure that representatives from refugee and asylum-seeker communities are active agents in migration governance. Representation in this sphere becomes a source of policy transformation and social resilience, potentially facilitating counterfactuals to historical and racial biases in developing a more inclusive policy formulation and implementation. Finally, inequalities in migration policy stand to be challenged by an expansion of permitted policy actors, promoting whole-of-society collaborations between local policymakers, researchers, refugees, host communities, and civil society to reduce political and social polarization. These networks emerge as sites of civic resistance and become a base to sustainably address and acknowledge colonial antecedents within migration policy across the OSCE region. Localizing these migration decisionmaking frameworks allows for developing micro-social policies of active social inclusion that are responsive to specific local conditions and promote bottomup integration through increased social and political engagement with displaced populations. The impact of historical, colonial, and racial hierarchies on migration policy is undeniable. 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