Deportation, smart borders and mobile citizens: using digital methods and traditional police activities to deport EU citizens

ABSTRACT

Taking the case of Romanian citizens in France, this article documents and analyses the digital methods and traditional police activities used for the deportation of EU citizens across the Schengen border and within EU territory. EU laws and Schengen regulations support states’ implementation of high-tech methods in migration governance and police work. Our fieldwork, conducted with several police units in France and Romania, indicates a gap between the claimed ‘controlled’ management of mobility through crimmigration and the actual messiness at the Schengen border as a result of policy implementation limitations (lack of legislative adjustment to digital demands), poor administration (training of border agents, allocating resources) and political decisions (harmonisation or competing narratives). Despite the promotion of cutting-edge technologies in the deportation process, traditional techniques as well as paperwork remain relevant. This raises questions regarding the articulations of traditional techniques with highly promoted control technologies. While the latter has modified the functioning of the deportation process, these changes do not necessarily make the former useless. In practice, this work is left to the discretion of police officers and ground-level bureaucrats who interpret, create and enforce norms and regulations in the name of ‘the rule of law’.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital technologies
• migration
• citizenship
• borders
• Schengen

Acknowledgements

I want to express my gratitude to Mihaela Nedelcu and Ibrahim Soysüren for their precious comments on previous version of this article and for their effort in coordinating this special issue. Special thanks go to the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

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

Notes

1 Romania is part of the EU since 2007 and it was expected to join the Schengen area in 2014, which did not happen due to the opposition of some member states. However, Romania claims its technically readiness to join the European Border Regime by already signing the Schengen Convention (1990) and implementing Schengen Borders Code (regulation EC/562/2006).

2 These deportation orders (OQTF or ordre de quitter le territoire français) may have a deadline of 30 days or can be immediately executed by the police (i.e. when those considered irregular migrants are put in detention centres in order to be deported).

3 Administrative interdiction on the territory (initially called Interdiction de circulation sur le territoire français) is an entry ban applicable only for EU citizens introduced with the Law 272/2016, art. L511-3-1/2 and further amended by the Law L214-1/2019 (Interdiction administrative du territoire). Even if the principle is different from the ITF (interdiction de territoire français) the effect of entry ban are the same: people who have an IAT (or ICTF according to CESEDA/2016) will be stopped and returned at the border or deported immediately when found in the French territory. To emphasize this effect of the new regulation, I will use ‘entry ban’ from now on (GISTI 2019).

4 There are two successive steps here: first it is a police measure (mesure de police) which is taken by the police and counts to build up an administrative assessment of the migrants; second multiple police measures count for an administrative decision (arrêté préfectoral) that can take to the form of deportation (OQTF with delay or not).

5 All prefectural orders, such as OQTF or IAT, can be contested in administrative court (tribunal administratif). In the case of Romanian citizens there is a precarious jurisprudence due to a complex situation (detainees’ lack of knowledge about the French system, poor NGO attendance of detained EU citizens, judges’ biases, etc.) that leads to different approaches depending of the courts (some accepting almost all the deportation orders, others canceling them).

6 The European Dublin III Regulation: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2013:180:0031:0059:EN:PDF under which asylum seekers would be returned by any member state to the EU country where they first arrived, controlled or asked for asylum.

7 Prefecture de Police is a unit of police in charge for the metropolitan area of Paris, meaning Ile-de-France. The chief of prefecture of police has as the direct superior the minister of interior.

8 The IATA convention (2010) and the following regulations do explain the rules and limits of duties between the deporting state and the aircraft operator. However, there are no specification on the duties and obligations of the air companies on the point of arrival. See also: https://www.icao.int/ESAF/Documents/meetings/2014/FAL-FEB/Guidelines%20for%20the%20Removal%20of%20Deportees.pdf. In addition, for EU directives regarding responsibility of carriers please see: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A32004L0082 and https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=LEGISSUM%3Al33139.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the European Research Council, Starting Grant 336319; and by a WIRL-COFUND Fellowship jointly funded by the Institute of AdvancedStudy at the University of Warwick and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, under the Marie Sklodowska Curie COFUND action (grant agreement number 713548).