Migrants Before the Law

Contested Migration Control in Europe

Tobias G. Eule, Lisa Marie Borrelli, Annika Lindberg, Anna Wyss

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9783319987484
• eBook ISBN: 9783319987491
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Vergleichende Politikwissenschaften

This book traces the practices of migration control and its contestation in the European migration regime in times of intense politicization. The collaboratively written work brings together the perspectives of state agents, NGOs, migrants with precarious legal status, and their support networks, collected through multi-sited fieldwork in eight European states: Austria, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden and Switzerland. The book provides knowledge of how European migration law is implemented, used, and challenged by different actors, and of how it lends and constrains power over migrants' journeys and prospects. An ethnography of law in action, the book contributes to socio-legal scholarship on migration control at the margins of the state.

"This book is a major achievement. A remarkable and insightful study that through close analysis of the practices of migration control in 8 European countries (Austria, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden and Switzerland) provides powerful new insight into the power of the state at its margins and over those that are marginalised."
- Andrew Geddes, Director, Migration Policy Centre, European University Institute

" Migrants Before the Law provides a much-needed account of the dizzying legal labyrinth that migrants navigate as they seek to survive in Europe. Based on multi-sited ethnography in detention centres, migration offices, police stations, and non-governmental organizations as well as on interviews with key government actors, advocates, and migrants themselves, this book explores the systems of control and forms of migrant precarity that operate along Europe's internal borders, in multiple national and transnational contexts. Readers will come away with a deepened understanding of the perverse workings of power, the ways that the uncertainty and unpredictability of law foster both despair and hope, the degree to whichthe immigration "crisis" is both manufactured and experienced as real, and the ingenuity of migrants themselves in the face of Kafkaesque state practices."

- Susan Bibler Coutin, Professor of Criminology, Law and Society and Anthropology, University of California, Irvine, USA

" Migrants Before the Law is an excellent exposition of the dispersed sites of the law and the hinges and junctions through which this apparatus is actualized in the lives of migrants facing deportation, contesting their status as illegal migrants or seeking to regularize their precarious position. Written with great sensitivity and an eye to minute details this book is also an achievement in furthering the method of collaborative ethnography and new ways of staging comparisons."

- Veena Das, Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University, USA

© The Author(s) 2019

Tobias G. Eule, Lisa Marie Borrelli, Annika Lindberg and Anna WyssMigrants Before the Lawhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98749-1_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Tobias G. Eule¹ , Lisa Marie Borrelli², Annika Lindberg³ and Anna Wyss⁴

(1)

University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

(2)

University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

(3)

University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

(4)

University of Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland

Tobias G. Eule

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

Two caseworkers of a Swedish border police unit, a police officer and a civil employee, are holding a meeting with a family, a mother and her three daughters, at a small local police station. Since the family speaks Albanian, an Albanian telephone translator is called, but one of the daughters speaks Swedish well enough so that at times the translator is not needed. Pit, the police officer in charge of the case, introduces everyone and summarises the situation: the family’s asylum claims have been rejected, and they have been expected to leave Sweden since several months. This meeting takes place in order to find out the family’s attitude towards their rejection and return.

Ena, the civil employee, starts the interview. ‘Why are you still here? You do not have the right to be here. This is a huge problem. Should I go through the case?’ Slowly and friendly, she repeats the current situation and asks why the family has refused to leave until now. ‘I have read your file and can see that you have appealed against your expulsion, but your appeal was denied’. Pit explains: ‘You already stated your reasons against your deportation , they are in the file. But if there is anything new… That is how it works with the Migration Agency . We have respect for your reasons, but we are just the executive agency’.

The mother replies that they are grateful for the previous conversations they had with Pit via phone, as well as for this meeting. She says she can understand that the caseworkers are only working ‘according to the law’. Pit and Ena explain repeatedly that currently there are no obstacles to proceeding with the deportation and that if any new circumstances arise, they should be reported to the Migration Agency . The oldest daughter mentions that she has filed something to the Migration Court , but has no idea what will happen now.

Ena and Pit tell the family there is nothing new in their files. ‘The latest information we have does not show any new reasons [against deportation]. Maybe it got lost’. The conversation goes back and forth. Pit advises the daughter to double-check and make sure that the files are processed. At one point, the mother and the two daughters start crying silently.

The caseworkers continue with their questions in accordance with the protocol. ‘The process has started. You work in your way and we work in our way, and right now there are no reasons why you could not be deported. Therefore, we plan your journey. And your current position is that you do not want to travel?’

‘We have nothing against the police’, the mother replies, ‘but we are afraid to travel back home’.

‘If we do plan and book a trip back [to Albania] and organise your travel documents, will you cooperate?’

The mother and eldest daughter maintain: ‘We have nothing against your job or against the police’.

‘But if we let you know [the flight date] a couple of days in advance, will you cooperate?’

The mother cries and explains that her youngest daughter is disabled, and the middle daughter suffers from depression and has suicidal thoughts.

Pit: ‘Then it is high time you submit this to the Migration Agency. We are absolutely not going to send you back if there is any reason not to. We keep an eye on the case all the time. And you have my phone number’.

Ena adds: ‘If we book the journey and you do not follow the instructions, you will be listed as absconded’.

Ena turns to Lisa and explains: ‘It is an emotional job, but we try to have a dialogue, in order to make it as easy as possible’.

The oldest daughter chimes in: ‘Social services are taking care of my daughter. What will happen to her?’

‘We will reunite you with her’, Ena replies, ‘and you will travel together as a family’.

Medications are documented. Pit and Ena decide that the family has to sign in at the local police station twice a week. The oldest daughter asks when they would need to go back and if they could get two to three more months to stay. ‘Yes, you will not travel today, it takes time . But you should start to prepare yourself mentally. That is the best’.

The mother replies: ‘This is not the best’.

‘It is, because if you get a different decision [a positive one], then you can see that as a bonus’, Ena argues.

The mother maintains: ‘I respect the police and will file an application and find reasons why we should stay. And if it is rejected, then we are ready to travel. All my daughters are not doing well’.

Ena tries to convince the family: ‘There are people who are illegally in this country for ten years. But either way they will need to go back home. It is better to go now than in ten years. Because then one has started to adapt. But yes, it is not easy’.

The mother answers: ‘I do not want to discuss this again. I take responsibility for this’.

In the middle of this, the oldest daughter receives a phone call. Their lawyer informs her that the Migration Agency needs further documents to process their case.

Pit replies: ‘You have to put a little bit of pressure on them [the Migration Agency ], be tough, maybe exaggerate a little, so something happens’.

A couple of signatures and reassurances later the meeting is over. (field notes Sweden 2017)

Across Europe ,¹ the control of unwanted migration has been a central issue in public, political and academic debates. Whereas mobility within Europe has been greatly eased by the abolishment of border controls in the Schengen Area , the movement of people whose entry, stay and work in a given country are deemed to be against the law is both a fact of life and constant cause for irritation and agitation for governments and state agencies, who seek to reassert control over their mobility . State agencies and migrants interact in a dynamic field of contested control over mobility, shaped by a loose European policy framework, national laws, organisational cultures and individuals acting at the margins of law and the state. This book traces these practices, from police stations and migrant hangouts in Italy to border controls and detention centres in Sweden , via a multi-sited ethnography of migration control in eight European countries: Italy, Switzerland , Germany, Austria , Latvia, Lithuania , Denmark and Sweden .

While migrants lacking legal residency amount to a fraction of the total migrant population in Europe, they are pushed to the centre stage of public and political debates, as they are seen to fundamentally challenge states’ sovereignty. Migration control, and particularly the procedures aimed at the exclusion of unwanted migrants, has quite unique characteristics that warrant closer consideration and that can be summarised in three aspects. First, migration control needs specific attention as the legality of a person’s residence status determines access to most other services and the possibility to claim and assert rights within a given state territory. The structural or legal violence targeting migrants with precarious legal status manifests itself not only in their exposure to coercive measures but also in the everyday ‘insecurity in wages, a chronic deficit in basic needs such as housing, and a constant, general uncertainty ’ (Abrego and Lakhani 2015, 267). Moreover, migration law increasingly intersects with the criminal justice system (Bosworth et al. 2018; Stumpf 2006), welfare regimes (Rosenberger and Ataç 2013; Ataç and Rosenberger 2019) and questions of membership and citizenship (Barker 2017), and often involves exceptional uses of force, notably in cases of ‘administrative’ detention and deportation (De Genova and Peutz 2010; Ellermann 2009; Walters 2002). Therefore, the production of migrant ‘illegality’ in practice, generated by the state and legitimised by law, lies at the centre of our study. Second, state officials working in the field of migration control hold substantial power as gatekeepers of the state and the law: Not only do they make decisions on residence, deten...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Inside the Migration Regime
• 3. Decision-Making and the Role of Law
• 4. Illegibility in the Migration Regime
• 5. Time as Waste and Tactic
• 6. Responsibility in a Migration Regime of Many Hands
• 7. Conclusion: The Production of Order Before the Law
• Back Matter