Border Criminology Flashcards
(12 cards)
What is border criminology?
- Focuses on the growing convergence between criminal justice and immigration control. The border is not just legal thresholds but zones of control, punishment and exclusion that extend into society
- Crimmigration, coined by Stumpf, is a narrower field looking at how immigration enforcement is criminalised (e.g. being detained, criminal penalties), blurring the lines between the criminal and the immigrant
What is the difference between criminal and administrative law and why does this matter?
Administrative Law: Concerned with actions and undertaking of the government / public agencies
Criminal Law: System of laws concerned with punishment for offences committed in society
Distinct justifications for penalties under the two have blurred. Immigration is meant to be a matter of administrative law which govern processes and decisions about entry, residence and deportation
- Immigration violations are now treated as crimes rather than regulatory infractions, e.g. deportation often triggered by criminal convictions
What are the historical antecedents that can be drawn on to explain modern border controls?
Historical approaches to criminology focused on citizenship and race, such as Lombroso who categorised criminals as ‘primitive people’ with throwbacks to prehistoric individuals
Bosworth
- Since 9/11 and 7/7 laws have been posed at ‘reducing risk’ of a vague external threat (i.e. idea of terrorism)
- Aim is to differentiate one from the other
Aas
- Media portrayals of asylum seekers as bogus, fraudulent and scroungers conflate public fears, mixed with security concerns about supposed terrorism threats
Stumpf
- In the late 20th and early 21st century laws expanded to impose severe consequences for immigration violation and non-citizens who commit crime
- Post 9/11 security concerns accelerated these trends
Arab uprising of 2011 led to long summer of migration in 2015. The hostile enviroment policy in the UK aimed to make life so difficult that they would choose to leave themselves
How has the UK moved towards a system of crimmigration?
- Increasing use of immigration detention, Bosworth studied Manston holding facility noting how it was overcrowded, same meals served daily and a man dying due to illness
- Short term solutions have become longer term plans that are not suited
- Government argues detention is necessary to facilitate the removal of people who have no right to be in the UK but refuse to leave voluntarily
Nationality and Borders Act 2022, removed distinction between entry and arrival. Increased penalties, 4 years imprisonment for arriving in country
Hostile Envrionment Policy, since 2012 under Thersea May, this aimed to make life so difficult for immigrants that they would leave. Landlords and employers had to check right of person to be in UK, unable to open banks or recieve social support with documentation
What have academics argued about border controls?
Bosworth
* If the concern was security, close community monitoring and effective reporting would be sufficient
* There is a focus on criminalising foreigners in all respects, sharp distinction between those who are deserving and undeserving
* Double edge sword, ‘risk’ will always increase whilst more harsh tactics are used
Aas
* Border criminology has not reached mainstream as they are still concerned with the ‘outsiders’ who are still ‘insiders’ to the Western club
* Increasing channels of communications means we cannot view states from what simply happens inside them
* Beck, fragmentation of the word into nation states removes accountability for global inequalities
Bowling and Westenra make similar arguments
Who is the target of studying border criminology? What is the benefit?
- Migrant has no clear definition, constantly being redefined by political sphere (e.g. idea of economic migrant is new creation)
- The right to asylum is meant to be an internationally protected right, 1951 Refugee Convention gives basic minimum standard of treatment for refugees, could argue this being eroded, e.g. Rwanda deal
- Argument by some that we should move towards a term of ‘people on the move’ rather than using the terms migrant and refugee due to the confusion this causes and lack of consensus
- The UK by accepting asylum of a national from another country is making an adverse statement about that country and their government
Can border controls ever be legitimate?
Depends on the supposed purpose and aim of such border controls. Carceral forms of control meant to be in order to ‘facilitate the removal of people who have no right to be in the UK but refuse to leave voluntarily’
Bosworth
- Manston holding facility, overcrowded with same meals being served and a man dying due to illness
- Detention centres often built in former penal centres with security given to third party companies
- Number of people held in detention long outnumbers those that have actually been deported
Griffiths & Walsh
- Detention meant to be used as a last resort, yet there is no statutory limit as to how long someone can be detained for
- Unregulated power like this pushes us more towards crimmigration, in which case border controls cannot be legitimate because that is not their purpose
No statutory upper limit on how long someone may be detained for, UK is only country in Europe (e.g. France is 32 days)
What effect does the methods of detention have on those subject to it?
Mary Bosworth (2015)
- Carried out questionaries and surveys across 4 removal centres
- 4/5 were suffering from depression
- Participants when asked about the negative aspects focused on the restrictions, food, living conditions, and separation from the rest of their family
- Low levels of trust with detention staff
How might we compare border control / detention with prisons?
- Immigration detention and prison are very similar: it is punitive just like prison because it deprives a person of their liberty and confines them to an area defined by another, an affront to liberty (Sykes)
- No evidence that rising prison population reduces crime or acts as a deterrent and there are calls for reform (Lamble). Why would we think this would therefore work for people seeking a better life?
- Prisoners know their sentence and how long they will be detained for, displaced people have no idea, making it worse
- Criminal and administrative law are meant to be distinct, continued merger of the two undermines democratic values and the due process deserved (Stumpf)
How does the media shape our understanding of immigration?
Study by Dr Scott Blinder made the following observations:
- ‘Illegal’ is the most common descriptor in the news, despite the vast majority having legal status and obtaining entry for school and work
- Gave different groups stories concerning different migrant groups
- Subtle shifts in the language shifted public conception, with them preferring different immigration policies based on the group they had and their definition
- Effects were only small (people may have established views) but media may have solidified this. Fact that small changes to survey questions can change participants attitudes means large exposure over many years could have a big impact
What recent news examples can be used to show shifting ideas and responses to immigration?
- US ICE raids, with enforcement officers sweeping through immigrant communities in large scale raids (more than 40% of farmworkers in the US are immigrants)
- Protests in LA and across other American cities against this use of force and expelling of people
- Contrasts with the 2016 policy of build the wall, shows a greater blurred line and that the border is shifting
- Contrast with 2024 UK riots which were against immigration, different response by the community based on how we conceive ‘the immigrant’
How does Carolina Sanchez Boe show a shifting border in the US?
- Instead of immigration detention, methods such as ankle monitors and SmartLINK facial recognition app is used as a lighter form
- Ankle monitors track individuals and find hotspots where more illegal immigrants are to carry out raids
- Those forced to use facial recognition regard it as more intrustive
- Boe argues this is carceral continuum, technology from the criminal justice system is implemented into immigrant communities, expanding the scope beyond just the monitored person
