ISCI is a cross-disciplinary research centre working to further our understanding of state crime: organisational deviance violating human rights

'Border Controls in Europe: Policies and Practices Outside the Law (Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring 2014, pp. 4-28)'

  • Border Controls in Europe: Policies and Practices Outside the Law, Fran Cetti, State Crime Journal, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Spring 2014), pp. 4-28

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Summary

The forced migrant to Europe is hostage to a tight “migration-security nexus”, their conversion into a globally ubiquitous “illegal” presence facilitated by the incorporation of the global security industry into the region’s system of external border controls. The European Union not only outsources its border control activities to private security concerns (as well as third-party states), but also consults them on the direction of its policies, adopting their discourse and practices. It is using their expertise to meld member states’ border technology into an apparatus of detection and deterrence that stretches far beyond the region to intercept forced migrants long before they reach its borders. The agencies that patrol on Europe’s behalf outside its geopolitical boundaries also operate outside national legal structures, without regard to international human rights or refugee rights. Under cover of the privatization and securitization of its immigration and asylum regime, the European Union acts with impunity in a parallel world of extra-legal practices.

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