ABSTRACT
Harald Kleinschmidt Introduction For most of the postwar period, migration has been studied in its effects on the populations and institutions of the sovereign state. During the same period, migration policies of governments of sovereign states have mainly consisted in attempts to enforce immigration reduction. Migration has been categorized as a factor of the destabilization of state populations as putative groups of residents. By contrast, institutions of governance other than governments of sovereign states and national as well as transnational civil society institutions have hardly been allowed to play an active role in the formation and implementation of migrations policies. Similarly, at least, if not only, in Europe, regional integration has been approached with the goal of moulding institutions of the state. Thus, within and with regard to Europe, theorists as well as practical decision-makers have looked at regional integration in attempts to predict the likelihood or lack of likelihood that regional institutions might absorb institutions of governance pertaining to the sovereign state, thereby reducing the significance of international borders. Even though processes of regionalism elsewhere in the world have had less impact on the transformation of institutions, regional integration theorists have continued to be about potential consequences of regionalism for the destabilization of state institutions. Lastly, security has been the subject of inquiry mainly under the presumption that the state can and should be the unit which can provide security and for which security has to be provided in military terms. However, issues beyond military matters, such as environmental degradation, resource scarcity and political inequality, have been securitized over a period of some twenty years and the human individual has been recognized as a unit for whom security in a broader sense should be provided. Nevertheless, recognition of the widening range of issues covered in security discourses has been slow. Thus as late as in 2003, the UN-sponsored international Commission on Human Security could take the view that what they termed ‘human security’ was a new issue in international politics.
