The State versus the Alien: Immigration Control and Strategies of Irregular Immigrants

Abstract

In the past decade the Dutch state and the European Union have initiated a number of measures to make the strategies of irregular immigrants more visible in order to exclude, apprehend and expel them more effectively. These measures have limited the scope of irregular immigrants to manoeuvre in the legitimate institutions of society. As a consequence irregular migrants are pushed towards the fringes of legality and beyond. This article discusses three shifts in the residence strategies of irregular immigrants: (1) from formal to informal work, (2) from legitimate to criminal behaviour, and (3) from being identifiable to being unidentifiable. In reaction to these strategies, the state is countering again with new measures, especially with instruments to identify immigrants who do not reveal their true identity. There is a constant struggle in the field of migration, in which individual and collective actors involved respond to each other with different strategies.

Notes

1. In a similar vein Scott (1985) refers to everyday popular resistance to state policies in situations of extreme inequality as the ‘weapons of the weak’. Hardly impressive, but nonetheless effective in certain contexts.

2. There are also ‘legal shifts’ that have a great impact on irregular migrant labour in the Netherlands. For example, with the extension of the free movement of people to some of the new member states (including Poland) the number of irregular migrants in some sectors – such as construction – dropped drastically overnight. The border is indeed everywhere.

3. Leerkes (2009) took five alternative interpretations into consideration. The increase in crime could also be due to 1) practices of status reclassification by the state, 2) an increase in criminal migration, 3) a rise in crime detection and reporting, 4) a simultaneous rise in crime among regular immigrants, or 5) demographic changes with regards to the composition or size of the irregular population.

4. The allowance for food, clothing and spending money is far from generous: adults receive around [euro]40 per week. Their income thus lies far below the statutory minimum income in the Netherlands.