Lawrence Peter Ampofo
Limitations of the Confluence of Technology, Immigration and Terrorism
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Limitations of the Confluence of Technology, Immigration and TerrorismAs the Spanish Government simultaneously responded to the terrorist threats facing the country and the rising levels of immigration from outside the European Union, information and communications technologies played an increasingly important part in its response. However, responding to the three independent variables (or processes) outlined above, one particular issue is problematic. The relationship created by these three elements is ill-fitting, calling into question the possibility, relevance and utility of conflating such seemingly disparate variables. The consequences of bringing together such diverse elements to make one measurable outcome have been outlined by Elspeland and Stevens (1998) in what they term commensuration as a social process. Commensuration is a process of conceptualising unrelated qualities as a single common measurement and, as has been illustrated in this chapter, is a central part to the Spanish approach to immigration control. Simply put, ‘it is a system for discarding information and organizing what remains into new forms. In abstracting and reducing in-formation, the link between what is represented and the empirical world is obscured and uncertainty is absorbed. Everyday experience, practical reasoning, and empathetic identification become increasingly irrelevant bases for judgment as context is stripped away and relationships become more abstractly represented by numbers’ (Espeland & Stevens, 1998: 6). Here it is possible to see how the fusion of terrorism and immigration, facilitated by technological solutions, is neatly applied to the process of commensuration. Espeland and Stevens’s (1998) conceptual framework is useful as a way of unpacking understandings of immigration, technology and terrorism. It argues that the conflation of seemingly disparate topics, such as immigration and security, is problematic as it reduces the collection of complex topics to statistical figures and probability, meaning that a number of different elements within these issues are rendered irrelevant or invisible, similar to the issues raised in support of Dataveillance. In this case, immigration and terrorism have been brought together to create an entirely new discourse in Spain in which terrorism is thought to be made more probable by immigration and migratory flows and therefore becomes securitised as the perceived corollary becomes the notion that immigration flows are a gateway to violent attacks on mainland Europe (Colás, 2010). In a more unfavourable way, commensuration can be perceived as a ‘tactic [which] is embraced by some law-makers, environmentalists, and bureaucrats…who wish to expand what is considered relevant in bureaucratic decisions…by women advocating comparable worth as a means for redressing pay inequity…or by economists grappling with problems of externalities’ (Espeland & Stevens, 1998: 3). The argument that immigration and terrorism are commensurable, thereby becoming a singular security issue is compelling. This is due to the notion that the securitisation of immigration goes a long way to upholding realist notions of the primacy of the state in the face of increasing numbers of foreign nationals from developing countries arriving on Spanish borders. Indeed, it is perhaps the very idea of the survival of traditional notions of the state against the threat of unseen, non-state actors, that has drawn the two issues of immigration and security together and perhaps prevents policymakers and technology companies from tackling the two issues as effectively as they might. Ross writes, ‘[f]itting borders into emerging understandings of transnational networks associated with a global level of analysis, non-state actors and the spread of extreme Islamist terrorism, policymakers need to revise traditional understandings of borders as fixed, static entities that merely define the bounds of state sovereignty. Another approach is to recognize the global processes that territorial borders help produce in the first place, such as international migration, and the risks pertinent to those processes that highly restrictive border practices and exclusionary policies are not going to alleviate’ (Ross, 2004: 2). This suggests that commensuration by the Spanish State (and the EU more generally) could produce risks and threats too. The argument from Ross is provocative as it challenges states to conceive of national borders as entities in their own right that perpetuate violent international incidents such as terrorist attacks. This supports Barnett’s thesis that the boundary of the Functioning Core and Non-Integrating Gap must be overcome through intensified connections. If Ross’s argument is taken seriously then nation states could collaborate and find mutually beneficial solutions to issues such as illegal immigration and international terrorism. One such solution can be found in Spain’s leadership of multilateral agreements as a means of gaining international consensus on the best methods of securing national borders. The the Barcelona Process, the EuroMediterranean Summit of 2005 and the Mediterranean Union are three examples of Spain’s active leadership of multilateral agreements designed to ensure effective, humanitarian border control. In addition, these international agreements are examples of Spain’s willingness to adopt solutions that are not technological in nature, but rather focus on the utility of dialogue and human interaction. These examples of multilateral agreements highlight an important facet about Spain that merits mention. In spite of Spain’s short experience of immigration (since the 1980s) in comparison to France and the UK, which have both experienced immigration flows since the 1960s (Figure Seven), Spain continues to emphasise the use of its soft power as well as other techno-centric solutions to the securitisation of immigration. The country has retained its historical proclivity to use diplomacy and mediation as a means of halting the threat posed by terrorism which highlights Spain’s ‘emphasis on multiculturalism and its growing acceptance of diversity’ (Tansey, 2009: 29). The inclination towards diplomacy and soft power to tackle terrorism and illegal immigration, previously outlined in Chapter Two, was supported by Elena Sánchez when she asserted that, from the perspective of the general public, there is no tangible link between terrorism, technology, counter-terrorism and immigration; “[The Government] has linked more things with terrorism such as security and the immigrant population. It occurred in the first weeks after what happened in Madrid, but since then the link has been strong indeed. This is probably because the [majority] of the immigrant population is from Latin America although we say that the Moroccan is the second population with the most immigrants in Spain. It is also clear that regarding the problem of immigration and terrorism in Spain, it is my opinion that public opinion polls reveal that the things that most scare the Spanish population are unemployment…Definitely amongst the Spanish population, questions which focus on immigration are linked with employment and not so much terrorism.”34 Sánchez’s comment is indicative of the disjuncture demonstrated in the internet research presented in this chapter of understandings of the relationship between technology, terrorism, counter-terrorism and immigration by the Government and general public. This chapter will now analyse the extent to which this phenomenon was evidenced amongst Web users commenting on the 11 March 2004 Madrid terrorist attacks. This understanding will be analysed using a mixed-method online analysis technique that was explained in Chapter Three. Directory: portal -> files -> 4733003 files -> Impact case study (ref3b) files -> Ethics and Factual Television: a short history files -> P. O. Box 27, 00014 University of Helsinki, Finland tel. 358-9-191 58080 / 22216; fax 358-9-191 58096 / 23008 files -> The impact of a pledge campaign and the promise of publicity: a randomized controlled trial of charitable donations files -> Diversity and Voice: the Political Participation of Young People in the European Union files -> Chapter 15 a voice in Decision Making: young children in Denmark Stig Broström Introduction Download 1.29 Mb. Share with your friends:
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