Introduction : special issue on ‘policing, migration and national identity’

For some time, the mobility of the global poor has been framed as a national security problem and policy priority for governments and inter-governmental institutions across the world (D’Appollonia and Reich, 2008; Guild, 2003; Huysmans, 2006). In this context, the police have been routinely tasked with detecting unwanted foreigners and routing them out of the country (Armenta, 2017; Weber, 2013) or, as Giulia Fabini (2017) explained in the case of Italy, with managing ‘illegality’. Increasingly, the policing of the border occurs inland and migration controls are becoming ingrained in ‘homeland policing’ (Gundhus and Aas, 2016; Weber and Bowling, 2004)

Enlisting the public in the policing of immigration

As border policing is no longer circumscribed to external borders and increasingly performed inland, in Britain migration work relies on the assistance of a range of unorthodox partners, including the public. The unearthing of the ‘community’ as a crucial partner to police a myriad of public safety issues, including migration, begs the question of what are the implications of mobilizing citizenship for law enforcement? This paper argues that enlisting the public in migration law enforcement yields important civic by-products: it ‘creates’ citizens and citizenship. It imparts civic training by instilling a sense of civic responsibility in law and order maintenance, and in doing so it intends to recreate social cohesion across a deeply fragmented society

The wrongs of unlawful immigration

For too long, criminal law scholars overlooked immigration-based offences. Claims that these offences are not ‘true crimes’ or are a ‘mere camouflage’ to pursue non- criminal law aims deflect attention from questions concerning the limits of criminalization and leave unchallenged contradictions at the heart of criminal law theory. My purpose in this paper is to examine these offences through some of the basic tenets of criminal law. I argue that the predominant forms of liability for the most often used immigration offences are, at least in principle, controversial and depart from what is often presented as the paradigm in criminal law. Above all, immigration offences are objectionable because they fall short in fulfilling the harm principle and, given that criminal punishment as used against immigration offenders is often a secondary, ancillary sanction to deportation, they license excessive imposition of pain

Patrolling the “thin blue line” in a world in motion : an exploration of the crime migration nexus in UK policing

This paper examines the contemporary role of the police in patrolling the nation’s territorial and social borders. The police play an important role in framing ideas and perceptions of order and disorder. By selecting when and against whom to apply coercion, the police not only constitute crime and criminals. They shape the boundaries of civility and patrol the margins of citizenship. Such role has been revitalized lately as they are tasked with immigration enforcement functions. Drawing on an empirical examination of immigration-police cooperation in England, I explore how police and immigration officers define the remits of their job and work alongside in everyday policing. I argue that the reliance on immigration enforcement by the police evinces the limitations of modern policing to decipher the new geographies of crime and disorder, and their difficulties in offering a reassuring response to public anxieties and ultimately in producing social order

Marchas y contramarchas en la jurisprudencia de la Corte Interamericana en materia de garantías procesales y sustantivas. La sentencia en el caso Fermín Ramírez v. Guatemala

Este artículo es un comentario de la sentencia de la Corte Interamericana en el caso Fermín Ramírez v. Guatemala, en el que se resalta esta decisión como un avance considerable de la jurisprudencia del tribunal interamericano en materia de garantías judiciales. No obstante este reconocimiento, se efectúa un análisis crítico de la decisión sobre tres aspectos particulares: el principio de congruencia y el derecho de defensa; el concepto de “peligrosidad”; y el derecho a un recurso efectivo

Strangers in our midst : the construction of difference through cultural appeals in criminal justice litigation

The criminalization of migration is heavily patterned by race. By placing race at the centre of its analysis, this volume examines, questions, and explains the growing intersection between criminal justice and migration control. Through the lens of race, we see how criminal justice and migration enmesh in order to exclude, stop, and excise racialized citizens and non-citizens from societies across the world within, beyond, and along borders. Race and the meaning of race in relation to citizenship and belonging is excavated through the chapters presented in the book, and the book as a whole, thereby transforming the way we think about migration. Neatly organized in four sections, the book begins with chapters that present a conceptual analysis of race, borders, and social control, moving to the institutions that make up and shape the criminal justice and migration complex. The remaining chapters are convened around the key sites where criminal justice and migration control intersect: policing, courts, and punishment. Together the volume presents a critical and timely analysis of how race shapes and complicates mobility and how racism is enabled and reanimated when criminal justice and migration control coalesce. -from publisher

Manufacturing obedience : coercion and authority in border controls

This article reassesses the relationship between state authority and violence in the context of border controls. Drawing on empirical research conducted with immigration and police officers in the UK, I show that the use of force in this context give rise to distinctively complex ethical questions which shape institutional and individual practices, and is entangled with the legally and politically fragile authority wielded by frontline staff. Faced with a morally, socially and politically controversial mandate, these officers devise a range of strategies to either minimize or conceal the use of violence. In doing so, they sometimes fall into oxymorons and euphemisms that at once evidence the shady line between coercion and consent, and shed light on the some of the profound moral dilemmas they encounter in doing border work. These dilemmas, I conclude, speak of broader challenges to the exercise of state coercive power, and the negotiated, contingent and provisional nature of state authority in a globalized, postcolonial and profoundly unequal world. I also argue for the social and intellectual urge to integrate the study of immigration enforcement in contemporary debates of state penality

Story telling and magic : meaning making in immigration policing

This article explores the place of storytelling and magic in immigration policing in the United Kingdom. ‘Immigration stories’ are important for grasping the role of narratives in migration policing. While aimed at rendering a complex social world legible, this form of knowledge reveals its limitations. Rather than producing a cognitive template to make sense of a boundless world, immigration enforcement practices show illegibility as a hallmark of the state. The work of immigration officers is dominated by hazardous and arbitrary practices and rules⸻which I call ‘immigration magic’⸻which often leave them devoid of power and control. As an exercise in southernising border criminology, I interrogate the received division of labour in theorising the state in the south and north, on the one hand, and state and society on the other. In doing so, I seek to lay this northern policing bureaucracy open to underexplored dimensions and angles, as frontline staff are tasked with re-spatialising state power.      

Benevolent policing? Vulnerability and the moral pains of border controls

In the United Kingdom, as in other jurisdictions, the language of vulnerability and ‘safeguarding’, protection and care is becoming increasingly prevalent, often dovetailing with punitive rationales and practices. Drawing from empirical material collected during a study on police–immigration partnership in everyday policing, the paper analyses how contemporaneous punitive and humanitarian turns in criminal justice are experienced by law enforcement officers doing border work on the ground and considers what implications these have. To what extent does the impetus to protect and care bolster or complicate the exercise of state coercive powers? And what challenges and tensions does it evince? It argues for a more nuanced understanding of the moral pain of border work and its disruptive potentials