Informal practices and the street-level construction of migrant deportability: Chechen refugees and local authorities in Polish accommodation centres for asylum seekers

ABSTRACT

In a world of unprecedented mobility, an increasing number of migrants are confronted with policies that challenge their belonging and produce subordinate migrant inclusion. This article explores how the deportation regime saturated daily life in accommodation centres for asylum seekers in Eastern Poland, which acted as spaces of deportability that facilitated the deterritorialisation of European political space. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among Chechen refugees and local authorities, I argue that the street-level construction of deportability depends on an exchange between formal and informal practices and policies. Ethnographic data indicate that in the Polish centres, the deportation regime took both bureaucratic and non-bureaucratic forms. As street-level bureaucrats carried out their work duties in a way that reduced the scope of their power, the deportation regime relied on refugees to reproduce its disciplinary aspect.

KEYWORDS:

• Street-level bureaucrats
• refugees
• deportation regime
• Chechens
• Poland

Acknowledgements

This article would have been impossible without the people who supported and inspired me during my doctoral studies. I am extremely grateful to my supervisor, Frances Pine, for her wise advice and faith in me. The article also benefited from valuable comments from Ludek Broz, Zdenek Uherek and two anonymous reviewers. I am deeply indebted to the research participants who shared their experiences with me.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Michal Sipos http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7191-1253

Notes

1 This article describes the narratives and practices of people who lived and worked in Polish centres for refugees. I changed all names and identifying details to ensure confidentiality and protect the anonymity of the research participants.

2 In Homo Sacer, Agamben (1998) studies the ability of sovereign power to break the connection between the categories of citizen and man. Agamben argues that the very principle of sovereignty lies in its capacity to unchain itself from the law it represents (1998).

3 See also Brandel (2015) on this subject.

4 While carrying out the research, I adhered to the principle of informed consent. I considered my actions in the field to guard against foreseeable harm to the research participants. To be able to access the accommodation centres, permission from Polish authorities was sought. Obtaining the permission did not compromise any professional or scholarly responsibilities. Regarding other aspects of the research, the Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth’s ethical guidelines for research practice were followed.

5 Chechen refugees began to arrive in the EU en masse after the outbreak of the Second Chechen War in 1999.

6 Eurostat regional yearbooks (2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012) state that voivodeships in Eastern Poland between the years of 2005 and 2010 were among the rapidly growing regions in the EU. Nonetheless, GDP per inhabitant in these voivodeships did not exceed 50% of the EU average.

7 See Ustawa z dnia 13 czerwca 2003 r. o udzielaniu cudzoziemcom ochrony na terytorium Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej, available at http://www.bip.udsc.gov.pl/ustawy

8 See Council Regulation EC No. 343/2003, available at http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2003:050:0001:0010:EN:PDF

9 Some parts of these stories might have been true and sufficient to keep rumours alive.

Additional information

Funding

Research preparation and fieldwork were financially supported by the European Community’s Sixth Framework Programme within the European Partnership for Qualitative Research Training Project [grant number MEST-CT-2005-020702; SocAnth Marie Curie Early Stage Research Training Fellowship]. Part of the work on this article was supported by the Slovak Research and Development Agency [grant number APVV-0484-10].