The art of soft power banishment. New insights into the Swiss deportation regime

ABSTRACT

In the second half of the 1990s, Switzerland established a new state regime of spatial-territorial exclusion in order to keep people out of certain urban areas. From a power-analytical perspective, this reveals a repressive sovereign power banishment. At the same time, novel organizations for outreach social work with public order service tasks emerged, using softer governmental tactics of spatial exclusion. Using two empirical case examples from our ethnographic research, we show how this new type of organization is able to extend the sovereign exclusionary formation of foreign nationals and police law. Our analysis focuses on a marginalized group of foreigners with precarious residence status who ultimately are being deported or put in detention. For them, the social work’s soft power banishment represents a lawless but sovereign power that creates territorial exclusion without having to enact, command or enforce it.

KEYWORDS:

• Police
• social work
• urban governance
• governmentality
• banishment
• deportation

Introduction

In the second half of the 1990s, a new state regime of spatial-territorial exclusion was established in Switzerland in order to expel or keep people out of certain urban areas or public zones. The focus was on people whose behaviour was perceived as a disturbance or social problem in public spaces by authorities and politicians, by passers-by and businesses. Most Swiss cantons created the legal basis for “police expulsion” (polizeiliche Wegweisung, Moeckli and Keller 2012). This gave the police the possibility for the first time to exclude their own citizens from certain urban areas or public zones based on cantonal police law (Gasser 2004). From the beginning, this measure was directed against the open drug scene, against alcoholics and other so-called marginalized people who stayed in exposed urban places (Litscher et al. 2012).

On closer inspection, another state strategy of spatial expulsion stands out, which appears at the same time, but now focuses on the target group of foreigners with precarious residence status. The instrument of “containment and exclusion” (Ein- und Ausgrenzung, art. 13e FNA, today art. 74 FNIA) was developed to combat asylum and foreign-related abuse, as part of new coercive legal measures in the National Foreigners Act (FNA) (Zwangsmassnahmen im Ausländerrecht) which became effective on February 1, 1995. Thus, the revised Federal Act on Foreign Nationals and Integration (FNIA), effective since 2019, also contains an exclusion procedure that focuses on foreign nationals and asylum seekers who cannot be immediately removed or deported from Switzerland, but who should nevertheless be kept away from certain places or be observed (Hugi Yar 2009, 506). In federally-structured Switzerland, the 26 cantons are responsible for the implementation of these measures. The cantonal migration authorities can thus restrict access to certain localities or also order that certain foreigners do not leave an assigned area.

“Containment and exclusion” as well as “police expulsion” are state practices of spatial exclusion that refer to a disturbance or threat to public safety and order and follow an explicit legal codification. Both of them are repressive acts performed by the sovereign state. Spatial exclusion takes place by official order in the form of what Foucault (1983, 84) calls a “law-power” of the state, which prohibits and, if necessary, also sanctions. In the early 2000s, another form of spatial-territorial exclusion emerged, which differs significantly from these two legal practices of individual-related exclusion in the way exclusion is organized and realized. In many Swiss cities, novel organizations have emerged, which see themselves as “low-threshold outreach social work with public order service tasks” – short: OSPOS. According to their self-concept they combine social work and social pedagogical logic with police logic to ultimately maintain or restore order in public areas – fundamentally a classic police task. These uniformed mobile intervention groups visit relevant places, patrol parks, river promenades and streets where drugs are consumed in public, homeless people spend the night or young people consume excessive amounts of alcohol or make noise – without having police powers to intervene. They solve conflicts of spatial interests and neighbourhood disputes. If they notice people behaving in a conspicuous or disruptive way and have to reprimand them, they typically proceed in a dialogical manner. They build relationships of trust, mediate and motivate in order to achieve certain regulatory goals.

While “containment and exclusion” and “police expulsion” take place as a legally repressive state practice which is aptly described as “banishment” (cf. in the field of foreigners and asylum, De Genova 2010; Sanchez Boe 2017; in the context of police expulsion, for example Belina 2007; Beckett and Herbert 2010; Wehrheim 2012; Palmer and Warren 2013), the OSPOS implements another form and quality of spatial exclusion that seems to operate in the mode of governmental management of the people (Butler 2005, 114; Foucault 2006, 161). In our paper we examine this relationship between coercive state intervention and governmental regulation in power-analytical terms, focusing on spatial-territorial exclusion mechanisms of a particularly marginalized target group of foreigners whose residence in Switzerland is (legally) in question. They are the target of coercive measures under the FNIA, who ultimately follow a deportation logic and represent a particularly harsh intervention. For this we first turn to the repressive instrument of “containment and exclusion”, which we classify from a power analytical perspective as sovereign power banishment. Research findings on urban development and governance since the 1990s, which assign special importance to a spatiality of dangers and criminalization of undesirables help us to understand “containment and exclusion” as an instrument to enforce the entrepreneurial city. This then serves as a background foil to sharpen the governmental quality of OSPOS tactics of territorial exclusion, which will be examined in a further step. For this purpose, we draw on material from an ethnographic research project on these OSPOS services. After presenting the research design and methods used, we analyze two empirical case examples from an OSPOS organization of a larger Swiss city. We show how the spatial exclusion practice of this organization takes place virtually “below the law” and analyze it from a governmentality perspective as soft power banishment. All empirical data were anonymized (organization, municipality, intervention sites, staff; we never learned the names of the people addressed in the field).

Sovereign power banishment

Governing the undesirable

In conservative urban criticism, the city has always been seen as a place of value decay, public space as a sphere of insecurity, loss of control or deviance. In the course of “urban entrepreneurialism” (Harvey 1989, 4), competitive urban development and neoliberally-oriented forms of urban governance have increased since the 1990s. Urban public space has played a central role in this process. Efforts to upgrade the attractive inner-cities and certain representative urban spaces for profit were accompanied by campaigns and projects for cleanliness and order and combined with repressive measures against undesirable groups and marginalized people. Police forces increasingly directed their activities against homeless people, drug addicts, or (foreign) youth (Belina 2007). The “losers” of neoliberal urban policies became priority targets of spatial control practices such as video surveillance or residence bans, order maintenance or quality of life policing (Wehrheim 2012). Meanwhile, instruments and practices of spatial displacement can be found in many countries, sometimes also encouraging cities to criminalize behaviours considered disorderly, such as lying in public places or engaging in aggressive panhandling. In Germany and Switzerland, most federal states (Länder) respectively cantons (Kantone) had introduced “area bans” into their police law as a standard measure by 2005 (Belina 2007; Palmer and Warren 2013; cf. for Switzerland Litscher et al. 2012; Moeckli and Keller 2012). In many municipalities across the United States (such as Seattle, Washington, Portland or Oregon), legal tools were created to spatially exclude the socially undesirable with marginalized social status such as homelessness, drug addiction, alcoholism (Beckett and Herbert 2010). Many researchers conclude that a “transformation of urban social control” has taken place (Garland 2001). Here, urban space is understood as a stimulant for (further) criminal acts or deviant behaviour (Wehrheim 2012). Prominently supported by the controversially discussed Broken Windows thesis (Wilson and Kelling 1982), it is assumed that publicly visible traces of neglect, vandalism, or disorder in a residential neighbourhood are signs of weak social control and have a criminogenic effect. According to this minor disorderly acts and deviant behaviour at the lower limit of culpability would soon result in major offenses, so that an area would quickly deteriorate and become a social and criminal hotspot. Since the 1990s there has been an intensification of repressive policies and an expansion of criminal liability requirements to include even minor misdemeanours. This led to a shift from social to situational crime prevention, where the focus is no longer on treating or eliminating social deficits, but instead on reducing opportunities to commit crimes on the ground (Garland 2001; Belina 2007; Beckett and Herbert 2010). Crime prevention thus became tied to spatial aspects, which also brought the city or municipality to the forefront as central fields of action for crime prevention. The legal instrument of “containment and exclusion” also represent a measure of spatial-territorial exclusion of the socially undesirable or socially marginalized, since it focuses on foreigners with unclear or precarious residence status who pose a threat to public safety and order.

Containment and exclusion

“Containment and exclusion” is applied in cases where foreigners cannot be immediately deported (art. 74 FNIA) – e.g. because asylum proceedings are still pending or the necessary travel documents are not available (Hugi Yar 2009, 506). On the one hand, this means that action is taken against foreigners who disturb or endanger public safety and order, but who cannot be expelled (art. 74 para. 1 a. FNIA). Asylum seekers who have been repeatedly apprehended in the milieu as suspected participants in drug trafficking are targeted. Here, the measure serves in particular to combat unlawful trafficking in narcotics (art. 74 para. 1 a. FNIA). But other (threatening) violations of public security and order can also be subject to this sanction, especially since the legal provision (in the sense of a general clause) is formulated quite openly (BBl 1993, 317). Thus, individuals who exhibit unruly or antisocial behaviour or who repeatedly and persistently resist police or official orders (Hugi Yar 2009, 507–508) can be relocated to a remote place. On the other hand, “containment and exclusion” are used to facilitate the enforcement of deportation – for example, if the person to be deported does not comply with the deadline for departure, even though a “legally binding removal or expulsion decision has been issued” (art. 74 para. 1 b. FNIA) or if deportation has been postponed because of special circumstances such as health problems or a lack of transport facilities (art. 74 para. 1 c. FNIA and art. 69 para. 3 FNIA). The aim is to improve the control of expellees so that they can be apprehended more easily if they have the necessary travel documents.

With “containment and exclusion”, cantonal migration authorities can prohibit foreign nationals not only from entering a specific urban district, but also entire cities, regions or even a village (BBl 1993, 317). However, the intra-territorial exclusion here is part of an actual “deportation regime” (De Genova 2010), which ultimately seeks to exclude foreigners from Swiss territory. While in FNIA preparatory detention (art. 75 FNIA), detention pending deportation (art. 76 and art. 77 FNIA) and detention pending enforcement (art. 78 FNIA) are intended to ensure the implementation respectively enforcement of a deportation procedure to ensure that a person is expelled from Switzerland, the purpose of “containment and exclusion” is aimed at a designated area within Swiss territory (art. 74 FNIA). With this it becomes clear that a continuum between an intra-territorial exclusion and an exclusion into the extraterritorial outside of Switzerland is characteristic for this juridical-institutional complex of coercive measures under the law on foreign nationals. Thus, in the case of a violation or disregard of a “containment and exclusion” measure, under certain circumstances, detention pending deportation or deportation can be ordered or people can be sentenced to imprisonment or fines (Hugi Yar 2009, 506).

Power analytical reflections

“Containment and exclusion” are organized as a coercive sovereign practice that restricts certain individuals in their personal mobility and expels or excludes them from certain publicly accessible places. As an instrument of under the law on foreign nationals, “containment and exclusion” bears the insignia of the power of a sovereign state that is essentially repressive, capable of drawing boundaries, and of denying or destroying something (Foucault 1983, 87). According to Foucault (1983, 85), this type of power produces absences or gaps, it shuts out elements, introduces discontinuities, separates what is connected or sets up barriers. As part of a deportation regime, “containment and exclusion” constitutes a sovereign intervention “upon the lives of migrants in a manner that frequently transmutes their deportable status into a de facto legal non-personhood” (De Genova 2016, 3–4). It takes place as a prohibiting, coercive act against people, with a whole litany of negative effects: Exclusion, repudiation, obstruction, concealment, etc. The authority for this kind of spatial-territorial exclusion issues from the state’s monopoly of legitimate physical coercion for the enforcement of order (Weber [1922] 1980, 29), which ultima ratio allows the police to physically exclude individuals from certain spaces or zones by means of state force. This form of exclusion is essentially created through a juridical ensemble of laws, ordinances (Foucault 2006, 25). Here, an authoritarian form of state power operates, characterized by a binary division between what is permitted and what is forbidden, establishing a norm of prohibition. According to the postulate of legality, sovereign power can also unfold symbolically, as an interplay of a (latent) threat and docility, of commands and obedience, as a relationship of domination of people over people. In the face of this sovereign power of “containment and exclusion”, the subject is a subordinate, an obedient subject (Foucault 2006, 101–102). Sovereignty culminates in the prerogative to seize life in order to extinguish it. The threat of punishment then becomes a method that is nothing more than suspension (Foucault 1979, 255). Such legally repressive state practices of spatial exclusion from sovereign territories are captured by the term “banishment” (Belina 2007; Beckett and Herbert 2010; De Genova 2010; Sanchez Boe 2017). This refers to measures or practices that are “resolutely territorial”, that seek to “remove those perceived as disorderly from particular geographic locations” (Beckett and Herbert 2010, 54). Foucault, too, conceives of banishment in terms of power analysis as a specific ritual of exclusion of incisive bipartite demarcation (Foucault 1979, 254). Banishment emphasizes the “central role of the state’s coercive power in the exercise of this form of spatial segregation”, it implies a “strong sense of overt state policy, a practice that emerges by dint of ‘official decree’” (Beckett and Herbert 2010, 6). This conception of banishment can certainly be linked to Jean-Luc Nancys’s (2017, 155; emphasis in original) conceptual examination, according to which the “bandon” (bandum, band, banish) is the command, the regulation, the decree, the permission, and the free power of disposal over it. “Abandonner” means to expose, entrust or leave to such a power – something or an act (Aufgeben) that always adheres to a law.

Soft power banishment

This analytical understanding of banishment as a sovereign power will now be questioned on the basis of our empirical findings on the OSPOS practice from one organization. This form of spatial-territorial exclusion operates beyond the scope of the law on foreign nationals or police law. Nevertheless, the following two case reports show how this practice is used to carry out forms of spatial expulsion, detention and deportation of foreign citizens without residence permit. These practices of the OSPOS organization present a different quality than sovereign state intervention; they can be described as soft power practices. First, we reconstruct these soft power detention and deportation practices through two empirical case examples – thus revealing a form of soft power banishment, which is performed by an actor who has yet not been recognized as a banishment authority. The two empirical case examples serve as examples for a recurring practice of this organization which we were able to witness several times in various situations. At the current stage of the analysis, these cannot be clearly identified as a structurally-anchored organizational practice. Nevertheless, these empirical examples serve as the basis for power-analytical considerations, which are to be subjected to further empirical testing in the form of theses.

Field of research

There are now nineteen OSPOS organizations in Switzerland. All of them are part of municipal administrative structures. Accordingly, these organizations are strongly shaped by regional specifics, so that they developed different task profiles depending on the municipality. In German-speaking Switzerland they are mainly known as “SIP” (Security, Intervention and Prevention) and in French-speaking Switzerland as “CN” (Correspondents of the Night). The OSPOS organizations have in common that they work on order disturbances in public space. Depending on the problem construction, however, different addressees are in the foreground, for example marginalized people such as drug addicts who consume in public places or dog owners who do not respect the leash obligation. As already mentioned, the OSPOS organizations do not have the authority of police or the law on foreign nationals behind them. Instead of intervening in a coercive manner, prohibiting or imposing by state authority, they apply methods that are typical for low-threshold outreach social work or mobile youth work strategies. They see themselves as preventive operating organizations; some emphasize their social work profile, while others see themselves as complementary to the police and social work. Others describe themselves as a kind of community police service that deals with non-criminal offenses (e.g. disregarding bicycle bans).

The investigated OSPOS belongs to those who see themselves as social work and is an office of the social department of a Swiss city. The employees have different professional backgrounds, mainly in social work and social pedagogical fields of practice, but also in the security sector (security guards, police, military) as well as the health sector. Most of the employees have a migration background and speak several languages, which, according to the management, serves to create closeness to the addressees from a diverse population. In its description of itself, the organization emphasizes its functions as a helping agency in the public space and moves its regulatory function into the background. Nevertheless, it operates in close collaboration with the local police. Its target groups have expanded since its beginnings: In addition to the management of visibly marginalized people in urban areas, the focus is now also on young people partying in public space. The employees have great discretionary powers in their work (Lipsky [1980] 2010). The political mandate is written in a very general way – to address conflicts of use and the plight of people in public space. At the same time, it also states its aim “to relieve the police considerably”. It’s also written that it “deliberately does not describe any target groups for the services” because of quickly changing circumstances. This legal ambiguity is typical for the OSPOS organization.

A number of international research studies have identified a confusion of tasks and roles as well as ambivalence in the professional profile of outreach social work, in particular when the subjective security needs of the population as well as ideas of social order have to be considered (e.g. Kessl and Otto 2007; Bonnet 2009). Dirks et al. (2016) note the rejection of an advocacy stance known from streetwork. Social work thus becomes an actor in spatial solution strategies of urban regulatory policies. In this context it must be taken into account that since its beginnings social work has found itself in a field of tension between help and control. As many studies show, the juxtaposition of help and control is empirically untenable; help always includes control tasks (Hasenfeld 1987; Piñeiro, Koch, and Pasche 2021). This is because social work is closely related to socio-political models of order and to the control of deviant behaviour. With the investigated OSPOS organization, however, a particular quality of this nexus of help and control becomes apparent. This self-proclaimed social work organization performs spatial-territorial exclusion in the name of emergency aid, which will ultimately prove to be a sovereign act of rejection or banishment. Moreover, the two empirical examples show that the interventions do not address individual social distress in the strict sense but are primarily aimed at addressing a problem of order.

Research design

This paper draws on ethnographic data from the ongoing research project “In between social work and the security police? Ethnographic perspectives on multiple institutional logics in regulatory social work” (funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation). The aim of the three-year research, designed as an ethnography of organizations, is to gain insights into the function that social work plays through OSPOS organizations with regard to ensuring order and security in public spaces. The two empirical examples discussed here are drawn from the observation protocol for a patrol shift that took place as part of the first case study (of a total of three cases). This first organization (case study 1) was researched in an initial field phase from January to November 2019. We participated in a total of 13 shifts and 6 meetings (internal and external) with a result of 290 pages of observation protocols. We were able to observe workflows and various interactions. Longer cross-situational case processes were not the subject of our research. Furthermore, we conducted 11 expert interviews and collected a large number of internal and publicly accessible documents of the organization. The procedure was based on the flexible processual method of grounded theory, which closely links data collection with data analysis as iterative steps (Strauss and Corbin 1996). This paper focuses on this first OSPOS organization, for which we have already conducted an initial data analysis.

We introduced ourselves to the organization as researchers interested in their everyday work life in order to understand what the organization deals with and how. After informing OSPOS management in detail about our research project, obtaining their consent, and signing corresponding privacy statements, we were invited to observe several different work situations. Primarily we went on patrol with the OSPOS employees. They instructed us to wear the same partial uniform as they did and as other visitors (i.e. journalists, other state employees) had done before. The uniforms consist of dark-coloured gilets on which the official logo of the city and the OSPOS organization are clearly printed. The employees were informed by the management and agreed to us participating.

We accompanied different employees in different patrol constellations, whom we also got to know better during the long shifts. Most of the observed situations with foreign nationals with precarious residency status, were observed during patrolling with Sandra. However, other employees from different positions also reported similar examples in (ethnographic) interviews. Accordingly, it can be assumed that the reconstructed practices of soft power banishment follow an organizational pattern and do not merely represent individual actions.

Whilst observing, we took part in what was happening in the field but did not take on any task. We held a peripheral, distanced position during interventions. While our role towards the OSPOS staff is best described as a “learning researcher”, it remained rather diffuse towards the addressees – we were hardly ever directly involved nor recognized as learning researchers. Therefore, we could not obtain consent from the addressees. Even though we did not act like employees, we were sometimes addressed as such, which was difficult to predict and therefore put us in a strange position. We repeatedly had to refer offers of interaction to the OSPOS employees. This led to uncertainty on all sides (Lavanchy 2013, 680). These obstacles tend to be fundamental to ethnographic research, as the presence of the ethnographer itself creates ethical issues (Fassin 2006, 523). Another ethical challenge was the fact that the employees introduced themselves to addressees as social workers. As we were “part of that team” we were disconcerted when the OSPOS employees suddenly got the police involved. These contradictions were not perceived as such by the employees. Since we wanted to reconstruct the existing everyday work practices, we were not able to address these ethical issues during the fieldwork. This incoherence of telling and doing that characterizes the everyday practice of this OSPOS practice led us to question the organizational classification or framing of low threshold social work. We believe it serves as a narrative to obtain the cooperation of the addressees and as a means of advertising their practice. Our findings shed light on the organizational work execution and self-description of such practices and contradictions rather than individual employee attitudes.

During our fieldwork, we also noticed that OSPOS staff often made categorizations based on ethnicity, gender or age. Such attributions can be understood in ethnographic-ethnomethodological perspective as practices or processes of un/doing differences (Piñeiro, Koch, and Pasche 2021). Even though we did not explicitly focus on such differentiations in our research, the two case studies presenting foreign nationals with precarious residence status nevertheless raise the question of whether and how such attributions are accompanied by discriminatory dominance effects and ultimately banishment. In both, legal-administrative differentiations by nationality/residence status play a central role. Situational decisions are directly related to this, thus establishing an obvious hierarchical relationship in both cases. While this category is explicitly mobilized in interactions, further markers qua age, ethnicity or gender appear to be used more casually on the part of the OSPOS patrol, as quasi unreflected everyday interpretations. Nevertheless, they have a decisive influence on the further course of the interaction, for example, insofar as the factually neutral distinction qua nationality is charged with certain negative meanings – as illustrated in the second example in the form of a suspicion (Lavanchy 2013 or Wagner 2017). In the first example, on the other hand, there are many possibilities for ethnic, age- or gender-related differentiation – which is also indicated by our own reifications of skin colour, origin, age or gender in the observation protocols. Such categories, however, will not be actualized by the staff in the observed sequences. Here, a distinction according to nationality/residence status dominates, which also decisively determines the further course of intervention. In both cases, intentional discriminatory attitudes or explicit racist vocabulary can hardly be discerned, which is not surprising as these are subject to strong taboos in the state sphere. Therefore, the micro-sociological analysis of doing differences proves to be limited, since situated practices of differentiating can be part of systematic disadvantages, discriminatory routines or structures without being recognizable as such. Accordingly, ethnoracial, age- or gender-discriminatory distinctions may be unintentional in situ, but nevertheless operate latently and constellate as side-effects of a particular practice. The two cases point to such dynamics of institutional discrimination or racist structures insofar as they involve people of colour with a precarious legal residence status who ultimately experience banishment – a thesis that, however, requires further empirical substantiation.

Empirical example 1 – soft power stop and detention practices

A two-person patrol and two researchers are driving around in the nightlife area of a larger Swiss city in a van with OSPOS lettering. Sandra, the leader of the patrol in the passenger seat, becomes aware of a man on a park bench located in the forecourt of a bar. She asks her colleague Luca, the driver of the car, to stop. The patrol parks the car half on the sidewalk, half on the street of the busy nightlife district. It is Saturday night:

Sandra bends down to a person sitting on a bench, leaning over a hard-top suitcase with his hood over his head. The man does not react at first. She now gently pokes his arm a few times with her index finger, as if to check if he is still alive. Apparently, he was sleeping because he lifts his head in confusion and then flinches a little. We obviously startled him a bit. When he comes to, a young man of color looks up with a friendly expression on his face. Sandra asks if he is well and if he speaks German. He answers that he is Eritrean, but speaks a little German. He seems a little drunk. There is an open can of beer on the floor (shortened excerpt from the observation protocol).

Sandra approaches the man, speaks to him, and opens the conversation in a friendly manner. She bends down to communicate with him at eye level. In doing so, she creates closeness and trust. Initially, residence status is not addressed, and in the further course of the interaction, no explicit ethnic categorizations are made, nor is his age or gender addressed. The intervention is initially aimed at clarifying an emergency: Through gentle prodding, Sandra ascertains whether the person is responsive, whether he needs emergency medical assistance or psychosocial support. The young man’s suitcase suggests that he is currently travelling; perhaps he is a stranded tourist, perhaps he has no permanent shelter. Alcohol is involved and at first, his physical and mental state seems unclear.

He eyes us almost amusedly and, pointing with his hand at us, asks, “What’s that?” Sandra answers, “We are social workers”. He is clearly pleased with this answer and shakes hands with all of us. She goes on to ask if he lives in town and if he has a place to stay. Since he does not have one, Sandra offers to organize a place for him to stay overnight.

Since the patrol is in partial uniforms, the intervention is given an official character. Nevertheless, the person addressed reacts in a slightly irritated manner because he cannot clearly classify the OSPOS organization. Sandra eliminates ambiguity by identifying the patrollers as “social workers”. The patrol thus identifies itself as an offer of help, which reassures the young man. He seems relieved and open towards Sandra, which he underlines with the gesture of shaking hands. He has developed trust because he is being offered help. The interaction now follows a social work logic: the focus is on the man’s immediate health and social problems (alcohol, psychological condition, no shelter), which need to be investigated and, if necessary, he needs to be referred to the right specialized agencies. Sandra’s empathetic and sensitive communication as his equal also fits with this. The OSPOS patrol positions itself as outreach emergency aid in the field of social work. The man is thus addressed as a client of social work emergency assistance and, within the framework of this clientification process (Lipsky [1980] 2010), made into a potentially homeless person with possible psychosocial problems. In this interactional framework, Sandra’s intervention comes across as social work assistance with a service character. Since the man is responsive (and for the time being does not need emergency medical care), she offers to organize “overnight accommodation” for him. In this context, Sandra asks for his identity papers.

Whereupon the man digs out various A4 papers from a plastic bag. Sandra looks at the papers and cannot decipher his personal details due to various names and various official documents, including papers from France. When Sandra asks for his name, he points to his Eritrean identity documents, where his name is written in Tigrinya. In the meantime, Luca, the other OSPOS employee, who had so far kept somewhat aloof from the action, has run across the street and returns after a short time with a four-man police patrol.

Sandra asks for his identity documents in order to clarify the urban accommodation option. Later, she explains to the researchers that the emergency sleeping centre needs the identity documents and that for people, who do not have their place of residence in the city, other conditions would apply. In such cases, the authority of another municipality or city would have to cover these costs. That is why Sandra asks right at the beginning whether the man lives in that city. She clarifies his residence status in order to determine the financing modalities of possible accommodation in a municipal facility. Categorizations regarding the legal-administrative status of the person are decisive for this.

However, the previous social work logic begins to change fundamentally when the man is asked to show his identity card. Noticeably, the checking of identity papers no longer refers to the administrative examination of the financing possibilities of an emergency overnight stay. In the course of the conversation, Sandra appears to be conducting a kind of personal check: She checks the man’s documents and notes irregularities. These become the focus of her interest, while the initially intended social work approach of finding a place to stay is no longer of relevance. The man is cooperative, even though he did not actually have to show his papers – the right to conduct identity checks in public areas is reserved for the police. However, he trusts Sandra (“social worker”) and willingly shows her his documentation. As the interaction continues, the original social work logic is completely transformed into a investigative police control logic. While Sandra is checking the young man’s identity papers, Luca stops a police patrol car that happens to be driving through the nightlife area. Thus, the original identity check by the OSPOS organization, legitimized by social work, smoothly turns into an identity check by the police which in situ mixes it with a tangible police practice. At this point at the latest, the original positioning of the OSPOS organization employees as social workers becomes contradictory.

Three policemen and a policewoman get out of the police van and come onto the scene. A total of eight uniformed people are standing around the man sitting on the bench. The police uniforms and the OSPOS partial uniforms are the same colour, which makes it difficult to recognize which person belongs to which organization and what authority they have to intervene. Sandra sits down with the man on the bench, the policewoman and policemen remain standing across from him. A policeman grabs the man’s papers.

The policeman says he can’t make sense of the documents and asks the young man his name. He points to the papers and smiles, that’s him. He also takes out the Eritrean identity documents again and holds them next to his face to show that he is the person in the photo. The policewoman calls the station to check his residence status. After a while, the policeman informs them what the investigation at the station have revealed: The young man’s asylum application has been rejected, but a date of departure has not yet been set. It is unclear whether the man is registered in Switzerland with two identities, and there is still an outstanding bill in one of the two names. The police would have to issue a payment order, because the bill must be paid within 10 days. The policewoman and the policemen take the man to the station for further investigation.

In this interaction sequence, the police take the lead and investigate the legal-administrative situation, whereby the personal problems and individual needs of the man are no longer relevant. The focus here is not on guaranteeing emergency assistance, but on a potential violation of the law that needs to be punished by the police. In fact, the police inspection leads to the man being arrested for further investigation. In doing this, the police proceed in a completely different way than the OSPOS organization: While the police position themselves authoritatively from the beginning, Sandra sits down with the young man on the bench, and is thus on a par with the man, in contrast to the repressive approach of the police. In this way, she continues to mark her social work-related commitment, while the police act as a state power. Contrary to the OSPOS organization, the police with their “monopoly of legitimate physical coercion” (Weber [1922] 1980, 29) are responsible for enforcing the law and thus also for checking personal data in accordance with the law. On closer examination, however, the OSPOS organization’s approach seems highly contradictory and diffuse. It identifies the young man in a public space and approaches him in the name of social work, in the further course of the case then to control him virtually “below the law” and finally turn him over to the police because of his unclear identity or residence status. Both Sandra and Luca said in retrospect, that it is their “duty” to get the police involved when the residence status of an addressee is unclear – there could be a warrant out for their arrest. The OSPOS organization does not want to hide anything from the police, so Sandra. This attitude was also expressed in interviews with other employees. This seems to be a given across the service. Therefore both Sandra’s “social work assistance” and the actions of her colleague Luca prove to be a kind of para-police practice that ultimately serves the police – without being the police themselves. Here, the OSPOS takes on the operative mode of a state power that exercises control in the name of help, addressing conspicuous people in public spaces as those in need of help, in order to make them processible as a disturbance to public order in a territorial logic of dealing with disorder (Beckett and Herbert 2010) – ultimately with the goal of banning them from public areas. The reference to social work proves to be a strategic move of this organization for the maintenance of order, which gives it a decisive advantage over the police: to initially remain unrecognized as a force for order, in order to get closer to certain persons and win them over for cooperation (Piñeiro, Koch, and Pasche 2021). This approach is highly problematic for ethical reasons, since the state, in the form of the OSPOS, plays a diffuse role toward civilians, which this organization does not reflect on. This is also shown by Sandra’s classification of the case in retrospect: From her point of view, the intervention seems to make sense because it was the only way to clarify the man’s residence status. Apparently, he was not entitled to be there anyway; even more so if he has filed two different asylum applications under two different identities. Now the public prosecutor’s office could apply for deportation, which would then be of help for the man, to get his status straight. Usually, it would take about ten days and then the deportation could be organized.

Empirical example 2 – soft power deportation practices

Tamara, an OSPOS employee, informs the researcher right at the beginning of a morning patrol shift, that a church organization that works primarily for homeless people had contacted the OSPOS organization the day before: A 67-year-old woman from Guadeloupe needed a place to stay at the city’s emergency shelter for one night. Tamara explains that the woman had run out of money and could no longer afford a place to stay overnight, so she reached out to the church organization. According to them, she had severe knee pain and wanted to be examined in France (she has French citizenship and French health insurance). Exactly what kind of social and health support the woman needs is not entirely clear to us (researchers). We are not aware of any in-depth inquiry into her social and physical needs. The church organization has paid for the bus ticket to a nearby French city but was not able to pay for the overnight stay in the emergency sleeping centre, as they only have vouchers for people who have their residence in the same (Swiss) city. The OSPOS organization took the woman to the emergency sleeping centre and arranged funding for the overnight stay through the city’s emergency assistance service; this service is responsible for out-of-towners in need. The OSPOS organization was thus asked to provide initial support in a social emergency: tap resources, accompany the person, and report the case to the institutions so that she can be helped.

The next morning, the researcher accompanies a two-woman OSPOS patrol to take the woman, who has spent the night at the emergency sleeping centre, to the bus station by car. On the way to the emergency shelter, Tamara and Sandra discuss the woman’s possible motives:

Sandra says that she probably wanted to “have a nice vacation” in Switzerland, then she might have run out of money. She had told the OSPOS organization and the church organization two different stories about the origin of her plight. She has two suitcases with her, one is quite heavy. Sandra assesses the woman as probably now being careful about what she tells them. Tamara thinks that it could also be that she suffers from dementia (shortened excerpt from the observation protocol).

The two OSPOS employees speculate about false statements and possible fibs by the woman. They distrust her and base their suspicions on short protocol entries of their colleagues the day before. With their interpretations, the employees reproduce a negative stereotype of foreign nationals who want to “exploit” the supposedly good conditions in Switzerland – perhaps also from the well-developed welfare state which corresponds here with the intersection of the attributions of foreign citizenship, gender, age, and disease marked by the OSPOS patrol. In order to assess the situation correctly, Tamara thinks it is best

to call the police briefly in order to find out if the woman is wanted. It is generally better to do this, she says. Tamara convinces Sandra and she calls the police, giving them the name and date of birth of the woman. The woman’s name appears not to be in the police database. Tamara explains that she is always careful with older women with heavy luggage.

The previous social work logic of emergency assistance now transitions into an investigative police logic that punishes irregularities or violations of the law– which is triggered here by the suspicion that they are dealing with a “exploitative” older sick woman, as the further course of the interaction shows. Clarifying whether a person is wanted seems to be common practice at the OSPOS organization when dealing with people of foreign nationality. We have been able to observe this repeatedly in cases and it is also evident in the case of the man discussed above. In the present case, the mistrust of the OSPOS employees seems to legitimize the police investigation. In the process, they also negotiate ambiguities in the status of the woman’s residence permit, which are typically the subject of the migration authorities:

Tamara asks Sandra why the woman is in X (a Swiss city where the OSPOS organization operates). She was just passing through, Sandra answers. She had come from Paris, also by bus. She refused to let the OSPOS organization organize and finance a return flight to Guadeloupe, she wanted to have her knee x-rayed and examined first.

The OSPOS employees try to clarify questions related to residence and migration law and find a solution regarding the woman’s residence status (return to Guadeloupe). In doing so, however, it operates virtually “below the law”, since it serves as a legal check on people without having the corresponding authority and as an extended arm of the migration authorities or police. Even though health problems play a decisive role in this situation and the following interaction sequences and social work assistance would be necessary in the woman’s current social plight (homelessness; no money; organize adequate medical treatment for the knee problem and the pain), the OSPOS organization does not take a social work approach to this case, but reduces it to dealing with a residence (legal) problem:

We arrive at the emergency shelter, a woman of color is sitting at breakfast. Her clothes look handmade, she is wearing high quality woven fabrics. We greet her with a handshake. The employee of the shelter tells us that she was able to make a sandwich to go and has already eaten two portions of breakfast. The woman gives precise answers to Sandra’s questions in French. Sandra asks if she slept well, to which the lady replies “yes, very” and explains that she had been awake for two nights before last night. Now she also has less pain.

The woman is now (still) in an emergency setting (shelter), which she has experienced as helpful support: She has been given a roof over her head and food, which enabled her to rest and improved her health situation (pain). As she has no claim to emergency assistance for a longer period, she is invited to leave the country. For the OSPOS organization, it is neither about social help (where will the woman sleep for the next few nights?) nor about securing medical help. The OSPOS organization concentrates exclusively on getting the woman onto the bus and thus out of Swiss territory.

Sandra points out that we must leave so that the woman will catch the bus. She quickly finishes her cereal and we follow her to the room where she spent the night. Her suitcases are ready packed. Sandra takes the heavy silver suitcase, Tamara the smaller one. We drive off. Tamara says in Swiss German that she is a “sweet woman”. As we get to the bus station, Sandra and Tamara help to transport the suitcases to the bus and to stow them in the luggage compartment of the bus. We say goodbye to the woman as she gets on. We stand next to the bus for ten minutes and wait until it departs. This is to make sure that the woman does not get off again, Tamara comments. I ask if Sandra and Tamara know how she will manage in the French city (destination), where she will sleep, without money. The woman has a French passport, Tamara answers. They do not know how she will manage there.

The OSPOS employees help with transporting the suitcases until the end. They are kind, helpful and express sympathy towards the woman. What ostensibly appears to be a friendly, state-supported travel escort on closer inspection turns out to be a veritable exit control. The fact that the OSPOS employees monitor that the woman definitely does not get off the bus, turns the social travel accompaniment into a soft deportation practice. The OSPOS staff is not concerned about the social and health problems of the woman, but cares only about the woman leaving the urban area the OSPOS organization is responsible for. The overnight stay in the emergency sleeping centre thus appears as a soft form of temporary confinement – nota bene “below the law” – in contrast to the hard, coercive and legally valid deportation detention until the person can be taken away. Seen in this light, the “social work” emergency aid, the social (travel) accompaniment by the OSPOS organization and the emergency sleeping centre foster the woman’s willingness to cooperate in order to ultimately execute a practice of soft power deportation.

Soft power tactics of sovereign banishment

In contrast to “containment and exclusion” under immigration law, which involve the state’s monopoly on the use of force and thus the possibility of juridical coercive acts against people (Weber [1922] 1980, 29), OSPOS practice proves to be an art of managing things and people (Butler 2005, 114) that works with tactics, not with laws (Foucault 2006, 161). Instead of prohibiting actions and punishing transgressions, the OSPOS organization operates with softer communicative methods that differ from the juridical prohibition of police removal and the sovereign intervention of the FNIA. The OSPOS carry out a form of territorial exclusion (and containment), which instead of sovereign intervention by a law-power, allows soft social techniques to regulate people and regulating the public (Butler 2005, 70). The OSPOS manages with an ensemble of diffuse tactics of spatial regulation, with relationship-based cooperative approaches in the name of a person-centered emergency assistance, rather than with legal prohibitions and sanctions. Nevertheless this practice is organized by a nation-state-informed legal-administrative distinction qua nationality and Swiss residence status. While in the first case with the man, further differences qua ethnicity, racialized identities, age or gender are not explicitly marked, in the case of the woman further attributions according to age and gender are interwoven with nationality quite explicitly and indeed as negative classifications – they serve to create the negative stereotype of the “exploitative” older sick foreigner. But instead of forcing or suppressing actions or punishing misconduct by the law, the OSPOS patrol works with the communicative techniques of persuasion and incentive (Foucault 2006, 506) – ultimately, however, with the aim that certain people are restricted themselves in their personal mobility or exclude themselves from certain publicly accessible places (with the help of the OSPOS). This is because it is not about modelling or “improving” their behaviours within certain public spaces, but instead about influencing their behaviours in such a way that they are simply no longer in these spaces as disruptors (Wehrheim 2012, 69). This spatial-territorial exclusion represents an act of sovereignty insofar as it forms part of a rejection or suspension, in other words, of a banishment – which is, however, the consequence of a governmental administration of people (Foucault 2006, 161). The coercive intervention of the police is kept alive by the OSPOS organization or (in the first case) is explicitly incorporated in the intervention process. However, the OSPOS organization itself operates within the framework of an extra-legal configuration of exclusion, it engages in the management of populations and individuals in the various spatial public spheres. In doing so, it retains a particular affinity with sovereign power intervention of the state, which is, however, located outside of itself. This is precisely what characterizes its tactical calculations.

Conclusion

The researched OSPOS organization operates using procedures of governmentality and as such is not reducible to law (Butler 2005, 74). However, it helps the (police and foreign nationals) law, and thus sovereign power, to expand into the realm of extra-legal regulating state government. Firstly, the OSPOS is able to prepare and initiate the sovereign intervention of the police (in the first example), thereby co-processing it in the mode of a soft-power detention, which seamlessly transitions into a sovereign power intervention. Secondly, the OSPOS organization sometimes also turns to the police to check if someone is wanted (in the second example), which is tantamount to an upstream and thus diffusely applied police control of individuals. In both case examples, the OSPOS holds a form of administrative power that is not binding by virtue of its legal status (Butler 2005, 81). However, our analysis shows that OSPOS’s governmental management conflates with state sovereignty and ultimately result in spatial-territorial exclusion. OSPOS’s soft power tactics are able to extend and ultimately strengthen the sovereign exclusionary formation of foreign nationals and police law. A remarkable convergence of law and governmental procedures and techniques (“below the law”) can be observed, which ultimately fosters a resurgence of sovereignty in the field of governmentality (Butler 2005, 75). The OSPOS practice appears as a novel figuration of soft power banishment in the field of social work that is to be studied as territorial government of marginalized people. Irritatingly, the focus of social work here is not on personal support for clients in public space, but on professionalized practices of policing and spacial exclusion which have not been assigned to social work so far. Accordingly, it could be concluded that OSPOS’s and thus social work’s soft power banishment – its practices of soft power stopping and detention and soft power deportation – represents a lawless but sovereign power (Butler 2005, 116), a governmental sovereign power that creates and enhances territorial exclusion without having to enact, command or enforce it. This is what soft power banishment is all about.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung (SNF) [grant number 178898].