Katharina Natter
Biographic Data
| ID | 1265898 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Katharina Natter |
| GIVEN NAMES | Katharina |
| FAMILY NAME | Natter |
| SIGNATURE | NATTER K |
| AFFILIATIONS | Leiden University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9683-0567 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 501 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
The Cambridge Handbook of Facial Recognition in the Modern State
In situations ranging from border control to policing and welfare, governments are using automated facial recognition technology (FRT) to collect taxes, prevent crime, police cities and control immigration. FRT involves the processing of a person's facial image, usually for identification, categorisation or counting. This ambitious handbook brings together a diverse group of legal, computer, communications, and social and political science schola…
Why Has Migration Research So Little Impact? Examining Knowledge Practices in Migration Policy Making and Migration Studies
Scientific and expert knowledge on migration is often disregarded in policy making and plays only a minor role in public debates - despite the massive growth and institutionalization of migration research in recent years. This article interrogates the limited impact of migration research(ers) by examining knowledge practices in both policy making and academia. We first look “outwards” at migration policy making. Revisiting and integrating the hit…
The il/liberal paradox: Conceptualising Immigration Policy Trade-Offs Across the Democracy/Autocracy Divide
This paper compares immigration reforms across democratic and autocratic states. Mobilising two large-scale datasets, it first challenges the prevailing notion that political regime types inherently dictate immigration policy outputs. The analysis shows that although immigration is central to political debates worldwide, reforms are not that frequent and, when enacted, their restrictiveness does not consistently differ by regime type. Instead, re…
Forced migration governance in Tunisia: Balancing risks and assets for state-making during independence and democratization
What explains the variation in states’ governance of forced migration? Why are some groups of forced migrants welcomed and others not? We argue that this depends on whether accommodating a particular group of forced migrants is perceived as an asset or risk to broader political developments at play. Drawing on qualitative material from Tunisia between 1950 and 2020, the paper analyses how the Tunisian state has dealt differently with the large-sc…
Strategic non-regulation as migration governance
Over the last decade, critical migration scholarship has been increasingly concerned with how state actors in both the Global South and Global North deploy forms of inaction and ambivalent action to govern migrants. Scholars have mobilized and developed concepts to capture such strategic non-regulation, ranging from notions of standoffishness, ignorance, indifference, ambiguity, adhocracy, and informality in political science, IR and sociology, t…
(Trans)formations de l’État et gouvernance des migrations forcées en Tunisie
Comment les États gouvernent-ils les migrations forcées lors des moments critiques de leur (trans) formation ? En s’appuyant sur des entretiens et des documents d’archives de la Tunisie entre 1950 et 2020, cet article analyse la manière dont l’État tunisien a géré l’arrivée massive de migrants forcés en provenance des pays voisins à deux moments critiques de sa formation : l’arrivée des Algériens après l’indépendance tunisienne en 1956, dans le c…
The Politics of Immigration Beyond Liberal States: Morocco and Tunisia in Comparative Perspective
Immigration presents a fundamental challenge to the nation-state and is a key political priority for governments worldwide. However, knowledge of the politics of immigration remains largely limited to liberal states of the Global North. In this book, Katharina Natter draws on extensive fieldwork and archival research to compare immigration policymaking in authoritarian Morocco and democratizing Tunisia. Through this analysis, Natter advances theo…
Embracing complexity in ‘Southern’ migration governance
This special issue argues for a more complex understanding of migration policy ‘beyond Fortress Europe’. It advocates a twofold approach that (1) historicizes the domestic contexts of migration governance across the Middle East, North, West and Central Africa; and (2) unpacks the conflicts, internal contradictions and coalitions within the policy communities in these four regions. In this introduction we outline the empirical and conceptual contr…
Tunisia’s migration politics throughout the 2011 revolution: Revisiting the democratisation–migrant rights nexus
How does democratisation affect the politics of migration? This paper analyses Tunisian immigration and emigration politics in the decade before and after the 2011 revolution, drawing on 57 interviews with Tunisian high-level civil servants, as well as representatives of civil society and international organisations. It shows that the democratisation of policy processes and the expansion of citizens’ political freedoms did not result in pro-migra…
Theorising migration politics: Do political regimes matter
International audience
Dini, Sabine and Giusa, Caterina (2020) Externalising Migration Governance Through Civil Society. Palgrave MacMillan, Cham, CH, 94p
The peer review history for this article is available at https://publons.com/publon/10.1111/IMIG.12841
Ad-hocratic immigration governance: How states secure their power over immigration through intentional ambiguity
This article conceptualizes the term ad-hocratic immigration governance to capture how states intentionally use policy ambiguity as a tool to secure their power over immigration. It does so by analysing the flexibility, pragmatism and informality with which Moroccan and Tunisian authorities have governed immigration since the turn of the 21st century. Drawing on over 100 interviews and in-depth policy analysis, the article shows that Moroccan and…
Crafting a 'liberal monarchy: Regime consolidation and immigration policy reform in Morocco
This paper demonstrates that Moroccan immigration policymaking is intrinsically tied to the monarchy’s authoritarian consolidation agenda. Drawing on archival research and 87 semi-structured interviews conducted between 2011 and 2017 with Moroccan high-level civil servants, international and national civil society representatives, the paper dissects power dynamics among state and societal actors involved in Morocco’s 2013 immigration reform. The …
The Routledge Companion to Race and Ethnicity
Immigration changes the racial and ethnic composition of national populations; it reshapes urban environments, labor market structures and cultural diversity; and it raises a broad set of issues related to human rights, foreign policy and national identity. This chapter seeks to contextualize the debates by introducing the key processes through which immigration affects race relations and ethnic dynamics around the globe. International migration …
Political party ideology and immigration policy reform: An empirical enquiry
What drives the restrictiveness of immigration reforms? To what extent does the political ideology of parties in government and parliament matter? Drawing on immigration policy data offering unprecedented historical and geographical coverage, we analyse the drivers of immigration reforms in 21 Western immigration countries between 1970 and 2012. Our results show that there is no robust effect of the political ideology of governments and parliamen…
International Migration: Trends, Determinants, and Policy Effects
This paper synthesizes insights from new global data on the effectiveness of migration policies. It investigates the complex links between migration policies and migration trends to disentangle policy effects from structural migration determinants. The analysis challenges two central assumptions underpinning the popular idea that migration restrictions have failed to curb migration. First, post-WWII global migration levels have not accelerated, b…
Revisiting Moroccan Migrations
Over the 20th century, Morocco has become one of the world’s major emigration countries. But since 2000, growing immigration and settlement of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and Europe confronts Morocco with an entirely new set of social, cultural, political and legal issues. This book explores how continued emigration and increasing immigration is transforming contemporary Moroccan society, with a particular emphasis on the w…
Rethinking immigration policy theory beyond ‘Western liberal democracies’
How do political systems shape immigration policy-making? Explicitly or implicitly, comparative politics and migration policy theories suggest a 'regime effect' that links specific dynamics of immigration policy to liberal democracy. The literature's dominant focus on so-called 'Western liberal democracies', however, has left the 'regime effect' largely untested and research on variations and similarities in immigration policymaking across politi…
Growing Restrictiveness or Changing Selection? The Nature and Evolution of Migration Policies 1
Growing Restrictiveness or Changing Selection? The Nature and Evolution of Migration Policies 1
This paper demonstrates that, since 1945, migration policies have overall become less restrictive. Challenging common assumptions, this long-term trend is robust across most of the 45 countries included in the DEMIG POLICY database. While the period after 1989 is characterized by a slowing down of the rapid post-WWII liberalization of migration policies, liberal policy changes have continued to outnumber restrictive policy changes until today. Ye…
Conceptualizing and measuring migration policy change
This paper outlines the methodology of DEMIG POLICY, a new database tracking around 6,000 migration policy changes in 45 countries between 1945 and 2014. The article conceptualizes the notion of migration policy change and presents the coding system used to operationalize policy content, changes in policy restrictiveness, as well as the magnitude of policy changes. The paper also discusses the potential of DEMIG POLICY to improve our understandin…
Introduction: Revisiting Moroccan migrations
Since the 1960s, Morocco has evolved into one of the world's leading emigration countries and in many ways migration has permeated Morocco's social, cultural and economic life. However, Morocco's position within Euro-African migration systems seems to be undergoing significant changes since 2000. Although Morocco remains primarily a country of emigration, it is also becoming a destination for migrants and refugees from sub-Saharan Africa and, to …
The Formation of Morocco's Policy Towards Irregular Migration (2000–2007): Political Rationale and Policy Processes
The factors that influence the formation of transit states' policies towards irregular migration have been insufficiently analysed. The case study in this article therefore investigates why and how Morocco, at the interface of Euro‐African migration flows, created a policy towards irregular migration at the beginning of the twenty‐first century. This article shows that Morocco's policy, rather than being a by‐product of European migration policie…
International Migration: Trends, Determinants, and Policy Effects
This paper synthesizes insights from new global data on the effectiveness of migration policies. It investigates the complex links between migration policies and migration trends to disentangle policy effects from structural migration determinants. The analysis challenges two central assumptions underpinning the popular idea that migration restrictions have failed to curb migration. First, post-WWII global migration levels have not accelerated, b…
Growing Restrictiveness or Changing Selection? The Nature and Evolution of Migration Policies 1
This paper demonstrates that, since 1945, migration policies have overall become less restrictive. Challenging common assumptions, this long-term trend is robust across most of the 45 countries included in the DEMIG POLICY database. While the period after 1989 is characterized by a slowing down of the rapid post-WWII liberalization of migration policies, liberal policy changes have continued to outnumber restrictive policy changes until today. Ye…
Introduction: Revisiting Moroccan migrations
Since the 1960s, Morocco has evolved into one of the world's leading emigration countries and in many ways migration has permeated Morocco's social, cultural and economic life. However, Morocco's position within Euro-African migration systems seems to be undergoing significant changes since 2000. Although Morocco remains primarily a country of emigration, it is also becoming a destination for migrants and refugees from sub-Saharan Africa and, to …
The Formation of Morocco's Policy Towards Irregular Migration (2000–2007): Political Rationale and Policy Processes
The factors that influence the formation of transit states' policies towards irregular migration have been insufficiently analysed. The case study in this article therefore investigates why and how Morocco, at the interface of Euro‐African migration flows, created a policy towards irregular migration at the beginning of the twenty‐first century. This article shows that Morocco's policy, rather than being a by‐product of European migration policie…
Rethinking immigration policy theory beyond ‘Western liberal democracies’
How do political systems shape immigration policy-making? Explicitly or implicitly, comparative politics and migration policy theories suggest a 'regime effect' that links specific dynamics of immigration policy to liberal democracy. The literature's dominant focus on so-called 'Western liberal democracies', however, has left the 'regime effect' largely untested and research on variations and similarities in immigration policymaking across politi…
Embracing complexity in ‘Southern’ migration governance
This special issue argues for a more complex understanding of migration policy ‘beyond Fortress Europe’. It advocates a twofold approach that (1) historicizes the domestic contexts of migration governance across the Middle East, North, West and Central Africa; and (2) unpacks the conflicts, internal contradictions and coalitions within the policy communities in these four regions. In this introduction we outline the empirical and conceptual contr…
Crafting a 'liberal monarchy: Regime consolidation and immigration policy reform in Morocco
This paper demonstrates that Moroccan immigration policymaking is intrinsically tied to the monarchy’s authoritarian consolidation agenda. Drawing on archival research and 87 semi-structured interviews conducted between 2011 and 2017 with Moroccan high-level civil servants, international and national civil society representatives, the paper dissects power dynamics among state and societal actors involved in Morocco’s 2013 immigration reform. The …
The il/liberal paradox: Conceptualising Immigration Policy Trade-Offs Across the Democracy/Autocracy Divide
This paper compares immigration reforms across democratic and autocratic states. Mobilising two large-scale datasets, it first challenges the prevailing notion that political regime types inherently dictate immigration policy outputs. The analysis shows that although immigration is central to political debates worldwide, reforms are not that frequent and, when enacted, their restrictiveness does not consistently differ by regime type. Instead, re…
Political party ideology and immigration policy reform: An empirical enquiry
What drives the restrictiveness of immigration reforms? To what extent does the political ideology of parties in government and parliament matter? Drawing on immigration policy data offering unprecedented historical and geographical coverage, we analyse the drivers of immigration reforms in 21 Western immigration countries between 1970 and 2012. Our results show that there is no robust effect of the political ideology of governments and parliamen…
Growing Restrictiveness or Changing Selection? The Nature and Evolution of Migration Policies 1
Ad-hocratic immigration governance: How states secure their power over immigration through intentional ambiguity
This article conceptualizes the term ad-hocratic immigration governance to capture how states intentionally use policy ambiguity as a tool to secure their power over immigration. It does so by analysing the flexibility, pragmatism and informality with which Moroccan and Tunisian authorities have governed immigration since the turn of the 21st century. Drawing on over 100 interviews and in-depth policy analysis, the article shows that Moroccan and…
Conceptualizing and measuring migration policy change
This paper outlines the methodology of DEMIG POLICY, a new database tracking around 6,000 migration policy changes in 45 countries between 1945 and 2014. The article conceptualizes the notion of migration policy change and presents the coding system used to operationalize policy content, changes in policy restrictiveness, as well as the magnitude of policy changes. The paper also discusses the potential of DEMIG POLICY to improve our understandin…
Strategic non-regulation as migration governance
Over the last decade, critical migration scholarship has been increasingly concerned with how state actors in both the Global South and Global North deploy forms of inaction and ambivalent action to govern migrants. Scholars have mobilized and developed concepts to capture such strategic non-regulation, ranging from notions of standoffishness, ignorance, indifference, ambiguity, adhocracy, and informality in political science, IR and sociology, t…
Tunisia’s migration politics throughout the 2011 revolution: Revisiting the democratisation–migrant rights nexus
How does democratisation affect the politics of migration? This paper analyses Tunisian immigration and emigration politics in the decade before and after the 2011 revolution, drawing on 57 interviews with Tunisian high-level civil servants, as well as representatives of civil society and international organisations. It shows that the democratisation of policy processes and the expansion of citizens’ political freedoms did not result in pro-migra…
Theorising migration politics: Do political regimes matter
International audience
Why Has Migration Research So Little Impact? Examining Knowledge Practices in Migration Policy Making and Migration Studies
Scientific and expert knowledge on migration is often disregarded in policy making and plays only a minor role in public debates - despite the massive growth and institutionalization of migration research in recent years. This article interrogates the limited impact of migration research(ers) by examining knowledge practices in both policy making and academia. We first look “outwards” at migration policy making. Revisiting and integrating the hit…
Forced migration governance in Tunisia: Balancing risks and assets for state-making during independence and democratization
What explains the variation in states’ governance of forced migration? Why are some groups of forced migrants welcomed and others not? We argue that this depends on whether accommodating a particular group of forced migrants is perceived as an asset or risk to broader political developments at play. Drawing on qualitative material from Tunisia between 1950 and 2020, the paper analyses how the Tunisian state has dealt differently with the large-sc…
The Formation of Morocco's Policy Towards Irregular Migration (2000–2007): Political Rationale and Policy Processes
The factors that influence the formation of transit states' policies towards irregular migration have been insufficiently analysed. The case study in this article therefore investigates why and how Morocco, at the interface of Euro‐African migration flows, created a policy towards irregular migration at the beginning of the twenty‐first century. This article shows that Morocco's policy, rather than being a by‐product of European migration policie…
Conceptualizing and measuring migration policy change
This paper outlines the methodology of DEMIG POLICY, a new database tracking around 6,000 migration policy changes in 45 countries between 1945 and 2014. The article conceptualizes the notion of migration policy change and presents the coding system used to operationalize policy content, changes in policy restrictiveness, as well as the magnitude of policy changes. The paper also discusses the potential of DEMIG POLICY to improve our understandin…
Introduction: Revisiting Moroccan migrations
Since the 1960s, Morocco has evolved into one of the world's leading emigration countries and in many ways migration has permeated Morocco's social, cultural and economic life. However, Morocco's position within Euro-African migration systems seems to be undergoing significant changes since 2000. Although Morocco remains primarily a country of emigration, it is also becoming a destination for migrants and refugees from sub-Saharan Africa and, to …
Revisiting Moroccan Migrations
Over the 20th century, Morocco has become one of the world’s major emigration countries. But since 2000, growing immigration and settlement of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and Europe confronts Morocco with an entirely new set of social, cultural, political and legal issues. This book explores how continued emigration and increasing immigration is transforming contemporary Moroccan society, with a particular emphasis on the w…
Rethinking immigration policy theory beyond ‘Western liberal democracies’
How do political systems shape immigration policy-making? Explicitly or implicitly, comparative politics and migration policy theories suggest a 'regime effect' that links specific dynamics of immigration policy to liberal democracy. The literature's dominant focus on so-called 'Western liberal democracies', however, has left the 'regime effect' largely untested and research on variations and similarities in immigration policymaking across politi…
Growing Restrictiveness or Changing Selection? The Nature and Evolution of Migration Policies 1
Growing Restrictiveness or Changing Selection? The Nature and Evolution of Migration Policies 1
This paper demonstrates that, since 1945, migration policies have overall become less restrictive. Challenging common assumptions, this long-term trend is robust across most of the 45 countries included in the DEMIG POLICY database. While the period after 1989 is characterized by a slowing down of the rapid post-WWII liberalization of migration policies, liberal policy changes have continued to outnumber restrictive policy changes until today. Ye…
International Migration: Trends, Determinants, and Policy Effects
This paper synthesizes insights from new global data on the effectiveness of migration policies. It investigates the complex links between migration policies and migration trends to disentangle policy effects from structural migration determinants. The analysis challenges two central assumptions underpinning the popular idea that migration restrictions have failed to curb migration. First, post-WWII global migration levels have not accelerated, b…
The Routledge Companion to Race and Ethnicity
Immigration changes the racial and ethnic composition of national populations; it reshapes urban environments, labor market structures and cultural diversity; and it raises a broad set of issues related to human rights, foreign policy and national identity. This chapter seeks to contextualize the debates by introducing the key processes through which immigration affects race relations and ethnic dynamics around the globe. International migration …
Political party ideology and immigration policy reform: An empirical enquiry
What drives the restrictiveness of immigration reforms? To what extent does the political ideology of parties in government and parliament matter? Drawing on immigration policy data offering unprecedented historical and geographical coverage, we analyse the drivers of immigration reforms in 21 Western immigration countries between 1970 and 2012. Our results show that there is no robust effect of the political ideology of governments and parliamen…
Dini, Sabine and Giusa, Caterina (2020) Externalising Migration Governance Through Civil Society. Palgrave MacMillan, Cham, CH, 94p
The peer review history for this article is available at https://publons.com/publon/10.1111/IMIG.12841
Ad-hocratic immigration governance: How states secure their power over immigration through intentional ambiguity
This article conceptualizes the term ad-hocratic immigration governance to capture how states intentionally use policy ambiguity as a tool to secure their power over immigration. It does so by analysing the flexibility, pragmatism and informality with which Moroccan and Tunisian authorities have governed immigration since the turn of the 21st century. Drawing on over 100 interviews and in-depth policy analysis, the article shows that Moroccan and…
Crafting a 'liberal monarchy: Regime consolidation and immigration policy reform in Morocco
This paper demonstrates that Moroccan immigration policymaking is intrinsically tied to the monarchy’s authoritarian consolidation agenda. Drawing on archival research and 87 semi-structured interviews conducted between 2011 and 2017 with Moroccan high-level civil servants, international and national civil society representatives, the paper dissects power dynamics among state and societal actors involved in Morocco’s 2013 immigration reform. The …
The Politics of Immigration Beyond Liberal States: Morocco and Tunisia in Comparative Perspective
Immigration presents a fundamental challenge to the nation-state and is a key political priority for governments worldwide. However, knowledge of the politics of immigration remains largely limited to liberal states of the Global North. In this book, Katharina Natter draws on extensive fieldwork and archival research to compare immigration policymaking in authoritarian Morocco and democratizing Tunisia. Through this analysis, Natter advances theo…
Embracing complexity in ‘Southern’ migration governance
This special issue argues for a more complex understanding of migration policy ‘beyond Fortress Europe’. It advocates a twofold approach that (1) historicizes the domestic contexts of migration governance across the Middle East, North, West and Central Africa; and (2) unpacks the conflicts, internal contradictions and coalitions within the policy communities in these four regions. In this introduction we outline the empirical and conceptual contr…
Tunisia’s migration politics throughout the 2011 revolution: Revisiting the democratisation–migrant rights nexus
How does democratisation affect the politics of migration? This paper analyses Tunisian immigration and emigration politics in the decade before and after the 2011 revolution, drawing on 57 interviews with Tunisian high-level civil servants, as well as representatives of civil society and international organisations. It shows that the democratisation of policy processes and the expansion of citizens’ political freedoms did not result in pro-migra…
Theorising migration politics: Do political regimes matter
International audience
Forced migration governance in Tunisia: Balancing risks and assets for state-making during independence and democratization
What explains the variation in states’ governance of forced migration? Why are some groups of forced migrants welcomed and others not? We argue that this depends on whether accommodating a particular group of forced migrants is perceived as an asset or risk to broader political developments at play. Drawing on qualitative material from Tunisia between 1950 and 2020, the paper analyses how the Tunisian state has dealt differently with the large-sc…
Strategic non-regulation as migration governance
Over the last decade, critical migration scholarship has been increasingly concerned with how state actors in both the Global South and Global North deploy forms of inaction and ambivalent action to govern migrants. Scholars have mobilized and developed concepts to capture such strategic non-regulation, ranging from notions of standoffishness, ignorance, indifference, ambiguity, adhocracy, and informality in political science, IR and sociology, t…
(Trans)formations de l’État et gouvernance des migrations forcées en Tunisie
Comment les États gouvernent-ils les migrations forcées lors des moments critiques de leur (trans) formation ? En s’appuyant sur des entretiens et des documents d’archives de la Tunisie entre 1950 et 2020, cet article analyse la manière dont l’État tunisien a géré l’arrivée massive de migrants forcés en provenance des pays voisins à deux moments critiques de sa formation : l’arrivée des Algériens après l’indépendance tunisienne en 1956, dans le c…
The Cambridge Handbook of Facial Recognition in the Modern State
In situations ranging from border control to policing and welfare, governments are using automated facial recognition technology (FRT) to collect taxes, prevent crime, police cities and control immigration. FRT involves the processing of a person's facial image, usually for identification, categorisation or counting. This ambitious handbook brings together a diverse group of legal, computer, communications, and social and political science schola…
Why Has Migration Research So Little Impact? Examining Knowledge Practices in Migration Policy Making and Migration Studies
Scientific and expert knowledge on migration is often disregarded in policy making and plays only a minor role in public debates - despite the massive growth and institutionalization of migration research in recent years. This article interrogates the limited impact of migration research(ers) by examining knowledge practices in both policy making and academia. We first look “outwards” at migration policy making. Revisiting and integrating the hit…
The il/liberal paradox: Conceptualising Immigration Policy Trade-Offs Across the Democracy/Autocracy Divide
This paper compares immigration reforms across democratic and autocratic states. Mobilising two large-scale datasets, it first challenges the prevailing notion that political regime types inherently dictate immigration policy outputs. The analysis shows that although immigration is central to political debates worldwide, reforms are not that frequent and, when enacted, their restrictiveness does not consistently differ by regime type. Instead, re…
Political science (20 works) · Economics (18 works) · Migration, Refugees, and Integration (17 works) · Migration and Labor Dynamics (15 works) · Political economy (14 works) · Politics (14 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Development economics (12 works) · Law (10 works) · Law (10 works)