Crimmigration: Criminal Justice, Refugee Protection and the Securitisation of Migration

Abstract

‘Crimmigration’ (Stumpf 2006) is a ‘determining context’ (Scraton 2007) of vulnerability for refugees and migrants. Analysing migration frameworks in the United States (US) context, Stumpf coined the phrase ‘crimmigration’ to capture the rapid conflation of immigration and criminal justice practice. This phenomenon is not restricted to the US; internationally we are witnessing increased reliance on criminal justice imagery and practices, and their application to certain groups of classed, racialised and gendered refugees and migrants. This construction of refugees and migrants as ‘criminal’ makes the application of criminal justice responses to irregular migration seem appropriate (Mountz 2010). It atomises the structural issues that affect migration trends, such as globalisation, violent conflict and the global economy, and reduces irregular migration to the single rational decision of an individual to cross a border extra-legally. The lived experience of crimmigration has been the focus of our empirical research in the European Union (EU), Australia and the US, and informs the analysis of global practices of crimmigration and their impact presented in this chapter.