The Prison and the Border: An Ethnography of Shifting Border Security Logics

This study examines the ways in which border controls have taken on aspects of crime control. To understand this transformation, I draw on the methods of historical anthropologists who blend ethnographic and historical tools of analysis. The historical research shows that the shift occurred in 1990s, when New Democrats adopted crime politics of the New Right and supported bipartisan policies that restructured detention, deportation, and criminal prosecution. The ethnography documents the ways in which border controls have taken on aspects of internal security and domestic policing, shifts seldom captured in contemporary border security debates.     

Irregular migration: policy responses in Africa and Asia

This article reviews population policies designed to curb or respond to irregular migration flows, with particular emphasis on policies adopted by governments in Africa and Asia. An overview of policies on the world level indicates a number of similarities that transcend regional lines and levels of development. Policy decisions are often influenced by the nature and attributes of the undocumented migrant population and by the current social, economic, and political situation in the receiving country. Governments are frequently more tolerant of migrants who possess needed skills or settle in sparsely populated areas that have manpower shortages. Between the 2 policy extremes of amnesty and deportation, several measures have been employed, including stricter border controls, stringent visa requirements, work permit systems, and efforts to ensure that migrants do not violate the conditions of their admission. In many cases, several policy measures are used simultaneously. Ensuring the observance of appropriate measures for the recruitment of migrant workers, their departure from the home country, and placement in employment in the country of immigration is widely regarded as the best way to prevent illegal movements of workers. Temporary worker programs are sometimes advocated to provide legal channels for potential migrants. At the national level, institutions that deal with irregular migrants tend to be limited in their mandate to a law enforcement role. In Africa, most governments have recently strengthened border and documentary controls and attempted to regulate migration through the labor market. In many cases, mass expulsions have been necessary as a result of laissez-faire policies. In Asia, on the other hand, mass deportation has been less common as a result of more stringent security measures and documentary controls. In both countries, policies have been basically reactive in response to rapidly changing political and economic conditions. Needed is an international convention to serve as a guideline for the humanitarian treatment of undocumented workers.     

Subordinating Myth: Latino/a Immigration,Crime, and Exclusion

Rhetoric about “crime‐prone immigrants” has contributed to increased enforcement of the U.S.‐Mexico border, the passage of punitive immigration laws, and state and local efforts to make life difficult for new arrivals. Yet scholarly research refutes the notion that immigrants commit more crime. How do we explain this glaring contradiction? By reviewing recent research on immigration, crime, and social control in the context of racial stratification, this article describes the criminalization of Latino/a immigrants in the U.S. as a subordinating myth; that is, a falsity used as part of a larger effort to misallocate material, political, and cultural resources. Four ways in which the criminalization of immigrants contributes to racial exclusion are discussed: the profiting from immigration detention; the political scapegoating of racialized immigrants; the degrading of racialized bodies in enforcement efforts; and the literal control of exploitable populations. The article concludes with a call to develop further our understanding of the relationship between immigration and crime from this critical perspective in order to subordinate the myth of immigrant criminality.     

The fiscal and human costs of immigrant detention and deportation in the United States

An extensive body of literature has analyzed the individual impacts and collateral consequences of mass incarceration. However, few studies explore the consequences of a parallel and overlapping system: mass immigration detention and deportation. The last 30 years witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of noncitizens detained in and deported from the United States. Individuals detained under immigration laws are held pending adjudication, often mandatorily, and without many basic constitutional protections. Immigrant detention and deportation impose severe burdens on immigrants and their households and levy significant costs to society—financially, as well as in terms of social capital and community well‐being. Chiefly due to the difficulty in accessing noncitizens in the process of detention and deportation, this system has largely escaped sociological inquiry. This article provides a background for understanding the growth and consequences of detention and deportation in the United States. It reviews the literature on these immigration law enforcement programs and suggests topical and methodological directions for future research.     

Child Migration in the US and Spain: Towards a Global Border Regime?

In The New Politics of Immigration, Professor Catherine Dauvergne proposes that as migration policies converge at the global level, the traditional difference between settler societies and former European colonies is becoming irrelevant. To test this argument, this article addresses the impact of externalization, militarization, detention and deportation on unaccompanied migrant children along the southern Spanish and US borders. I conclude that the combined used of these strategies is designed to keep all unwanted migrants away from the physical border of the state, regardless of their background, and prevents children from accessing specific protections. Current border policy in these two countries shows the primacy of national security concerns over human rights and supports Dauvergne’s argument that distinctions between former colonies and settler societies are disappearing. The evidence considered here points towards an increasingly restrictive and punitive global border regime, but one with regional variations.     

Policing immigrants or policing immigration? Understanding local law enforcement participation in immigration control

As the United States has expanded its immigration control strategies, police participation in immigration enforcement has increased in scope and intensity. Local law enforcement agencies contribute to immigration enforcement in three key ways: through the direct enforcement of immigration law, through cooperation with federal immigration authorities, and through the everyday policing of immigrant communities. These enforcement approaches have consequences for unauthorized immigrants, and for the agencies and officers tasked with providing them police services. This article reviews local law enforcement practices and argues that future research should move away from an exclusive examination of police policies towards immigrants, to consider how the policing of immigrants actually occurs on the ground. Moreover, we argue that as long as discretionary arrests funnel removable immigrants into the deportation system, some immigrant communities will perceive policing as fundamentally unfair and discriminatory.     

“Those who come to do harm”: The Framings of Immigration Problems in Costa Rican Immigration Law

This article examines the political rationales at work behind the particularly repressive 2006 Costa Rican immigration law and subsequent immigration reform process and resulting 2010 law through an analysis of two rival framings of immigration in Costa Rica. First, I examine how the rushed nature of the 2006 law constructed a crisis in which migrants, particularly Nicaraguans, represented urgent threats to national security. Next, I examine the 2010 law that emerged from the reform process and the alternative framings of immigration as an issue of human rights and integration that migration advocates contributed to the new law. I argue that the juxtaposition of integration and security frameworks in the new law reinforces the law's most repressive measures, contributing to an overall project of securitization and marginalization of immigrants.     

Managing International Migration in Australia: Human Rights and the “Last Major Redoubt of Unfettered National Sovereignty”

This article challenges the view of many commentators that the capacity of liberal democracies to regulate international migration has been significantly compromised by the growth of international human rights norms and the role of independent judiciaries in enforcing those norms. Focusing on three Australian case studies that deal with deportation, mandatory detention of refugee claimants, and judicial review of migration decisions, the article concludes that international and domestic legal constraints still leave very substantial latitude to liberal democratic States to regulate the size and composition of international immigration flows. With only modest qualifications, migration policy remains “the last major redoubt of unfettered national sovereignty.”     

The status and rights of undocumented aliens in the United States

At the most general constitutional level, American immigration law contains 3 structural features that directly affect the rights of aliens, including undocumented ones: 1) the plenary power of the national government over immigration and aliens, 2) the federal system per se, and 3) the separation of powers at the national level. 4 factors that affect the rights of undocumented aliens are 1) the possibility of formal relief from deportation, 2) the possibility of procedural challenges to deportation, 3) the possibility of delay and the resulting ineffectiveness of formal immigration enforcement, and 4) the informal system of enforcement to which the Immigration and Naturalization Service has been forced to resort. Undocumented aliens in the US have full acccess to state and federal courts, possess extensive procedural rights, and have acquired important substantive rights. Recent developments concerning the rights of undocumented aliens under domestic American law raise a number of questions that have not yet been squarely faced, much less resolved in satisfactory ways. These include: 1) the actual utilization by undocumented aliens of public benefits to which they are not legally entitled, 2) the appropriate criteria for determining which rights should be established, 3) the barriers that preve nt undocumented aliens from asserting those rights, and 4) the implications for an effective and fair US immigration policy of expanding undocumented aliens' rights.     

Migration and Human Rights on the Mexico-Guatemala Border

This paper identifies the protections in place for irregular migrants on the Mexico‐Guatemala border and analyzes Mexican government immigration enforcement policies and levels of compliance with international standards and national law. The history of the Mexico‐Guatemala border region and different types of migration flows into and through the area are also explored, as well as the linkages between migration, trade, security, and US immigration policy. It is argued that the Mexican government has partially complied with international conventions and national laws to protect the human rights of transmigrants in the Guatemalan border region, but that compliance is not complete and that an international response is required to ensure that human rights standards are upheld.     

The expansion of “crimmigration,” mass detention,and deportation

In recent years, the deportation and detention of immigrants has become a common phenomenon around the world. In this article, we shed light on the global expansion of crimmigration (the increasingly blurring of lines between immigration and criminal laws) and examine in depth the United States as an example of this trend. Crimmigration scholarship has largely focused on the processes in which laws, media narratives, and political discourses criminalize undocumented immigrants. We summarize the literature that demonstrates how these processes are predicated on the racialization and gendering of certain immigrants, in the United States and elsewhere. Using the US case as an example, we discuss how criminalization practices are closely tied to for profit prison interests. Finally, we provide suggestions for future research to critically examine the criminalization of immigration and immigrants.     

French immigration policy since May 1981

Examining the immigration policy changes undertaken by Socialist President Francois Mitterand between May 1981 and September 1982, this discussion provides backgroung information for the study of immigration policy reform in France, discusses the institutional and historical contexts within which recent policy changes have occurred, and examines the initial measures taken, the new immigration legislation adopted in October 1981, the "Exceptional Regularization" carried out in 1981-82, and various other immigration measures announced during the period under study. The discussion also identifies some of the problems which arose and are likely to arise as a result of the new policies. The French government has historically taken great pains to track the movement of both foreigners and natives within its territory. All citizens are issued a national identity card, and all foreigners residing in the country for longer than 3 months must obtain a residence permit from their local prefecture of police. The entry of some 347 million people annually into France must contribute to the problem of exercising strict control at entry. French measures to enforce immigration laws within its borders have not prevented the development of clandestine immigration nor the employment of undocumented foreigners. French law requires that all employers and employees contribute to the system of the Securite Sociale and to a variety of other government programs providing social and economic assistance to workers and their families. The year 1932 marks the date of the first French laws limiting immigration. On July 5, 1974 the French government closed the country's borders to immigration and have not reopened them since. Following that date a more severe attitude towards clandestine immigration became evident. Despite the anti-immigration policies of the 1974-81 period the number of foreigners residing in France did not diminish. 3 basic goals guided the new government in the development of its policies: to limit the entry of new foreigners; to end the precariousness which has characterized the existence of many immigrant families in France; and to examine immigration problems through bilateral negotiation with various sending countries. The immigration policy developed and carried out by the Mitterand administration during its first 15 months in office expressed an attitude of generosity towards established immigrants and external rigor vis-a-vis new immigration. The generosity of the new government is evident in the limitations placed on expulsion and detention, the guarantee of due process of law and all job-related rights for undocumented foreigners, the reaffirmation of family reunification, easier access to "privileged" immigrant status, the extension of the right of employment to foreign students and to Polish and Lebanese refugees, and new legislation guaranteeing the right of association to immigrants. The government's desire to control immigration more effectively is evident in the tightening of control at France's borders and in the substantial increases in sanctions against employers of clandestine workers.     

Immigration Detention under the Global Compacts in the Light of Refugee and Human Rights Law Standards

The article explores how immigration detention is addressed in the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) and Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) and investigates the potential implications of the compacts on the existing legal framework regulating the use of immigration detention. While Objective 13 of the GCM largely reflects detention‐related standards under international human rights law, the GCR makes only scarce references to detention in §60. Overall, the compacts risk inhibiting gradual endorsement of the norm of non‐detention of children. On the other hand, they rightly restate the priority for alternatives to detention for adults. States should implement the provisions of the compacts in line with their obligations under international human rights and refugee law. The compacts cannot be used as a pretext to lower domestic detention‐related standards or to diminish the validity of the existing framework governing immigration detention.     

Transnational families and return in the age of deportation: The case of indigenous Ecuadorian migrants

Recent social science research has highlighted the chaos imposed by detention and deportation policies on migrant families and communities. This paper expands on these discussions by examining the role of transnational family dynamics as people experience detention, deportation, reintegration and/or remigration. Analysing five exemplary cases of indigenous Ecuadorian families drawn from a larger sample, we highlight the reconfigurations of transnational social relations resulting from these cycles of (im)mobility. We argue that transnational family support structures play a crucial role in the reconfiguration of families affected by deportation by combining material and emotional support and healing with social control. Our findings suggest that the social, emotional, and economic effects of deportation over time are shaped both by family and community contexts of reception and by migrants’ own gender, class, life-course stage, time spent in the United States, and migration experiences. These findings allow us to conclude that deportation is a heterogeneous social and temporal process that does not impact families uniformly but in fact unfolds in diverse ways within family situations where social relationships, gender roles, care arrangements, and social expectations for the most part are already profoundly transnationalised and reconfigured by migration.     

Le bon,la brute et le migrant ? Le rôle négocié des acteurs religieux dans un dispositif policier d’enfermement des étrangers en Allemagne

Contrary to the French model, the German detention and deportation centre for irregular migrants that has been studied here does not allow for any third parties other than chaplains. However, their scope of action goes far beyond spiritual assistance and extends to the defence of detained aliens’ rights and political contestation of the confinement regime. The detention centre therefore brings together two professional groups, chaplains and police officers, whose goals are a priori irreconcilable. After explaining the origins of this unique juxtaposition, I will analyse here the impact of the presence of religious actors within the state confinement regime on the construction, by each group of actors, of its professional legitimacy and on the practices of assistance and control that go along with it.     

The State,Unauthorized Mexican Migration,and Vulnerability in the Workplace

For the last 20 years, migration scholars have generated a number of important empirical insights about the ways in which the state, through the enactment of immigration policies, creates workplace vulnerabilities such as discrimination, harassment, wage theft, workplace raids, and the threat of deportation. Recent studies of illegality also examine the role of the state but do so in a way that explores what legal status means and how it is experienced in everyday lives of migrants marked as “illegal” by the state. This article reviews recent research that shows that the state operates in a gray zone of enforcement that puts migrants in ambiguous social spaces and heightens their vulnerability at work. However, research also finds that migrants find ways to exert their agency in challenging work environments.     

The new grounds for deportation of European Union citizens in the United Kingdom

Politicians often mention immigration enforcement, and deportation in particular, as a means to assert state sovereignty. This article looks at deportation through exiting the European Union, an event that was interpreted as regaining sovereignty from the supra-national organisation. New immigration regulations in the United Kingdom were meant to end the EU Freedom of Movement and equalise the statuses of EU- and non-EU migrants in the United Kingdom. The research question this article addresses is the following: how do the new immigration regulations and policies affect the possibility of deportations of EU citizens in the United Kingdom? With the lens of Interpretive Policy Analysis, the article analyses primary sources and expert interviews. It concludes that the deportability of EU citizens has increased post-Brexit. It also anticipates that the deportability of EU citizens will be differentiated, as rough sleepers, former convicts and irregular migrants may be first to be targeted with deportation.     

Irregular Immigration,Labour Market and Enforcement at the US‐Mexico Border. Evidence from a Time‐Series Analysis (1963–2014)

This article provides evidence on irregular immigration to the US from Mexico in the years 1963–2014. It aims to answer to two questions. The first is: how much is irregular immigration responsive to changes in the US labour market? Compared with legal immigration, irregular immigration seems to be more sensitive to short‐run economic cycles as it is not directly regulated by the policies of the destination country. Second, what effect does border enforcement have on irregular immigration? One of the proposals of the recent bill is the construction of a double layer fence on the Southern border. We do not know, however, to what extent a further increase in border security will prevent irregular immigration and at which economic cost. The contribution of this article is dual: first, it provides empirical evidence on irregular immigration to the US Second, it provides evidence about the effect of US border policies on irregular immigration.     

The right to stay: challenging the policy of detention and deportation

The aim of this article is to shed light on the situation of refugees (formally designated as asylum seekers) and undocumented migrant workers, who are among the most vulnerable inhabitants of Europe. Both groups face the threat of detention and deportation. The normative framework, which consists of legal standards and residential institutions, will be critically examined. Despite international standards for respecting the human rights of refugees and undocumented workers, policies of detention and deportation and the mass rejection of asylum claims leave little hope for the empowerment, autonomy and social inclusion of these persons. Instead of a straight-forward argument for closing down all detention centres and putting an end to forcible deportations, the article investigates small scale structural possibilities for inclusive – non-selective – responses to these non-citizens.