Abstract
This chapter examines the apparent paradox of French deportation policy: although thousands of undocumented migrants are arrested and detained for deportation, the process often goes uncompleted, as most migrants are never actually deported. But the failure to deport is not the failure of the deportation policy. Drawing on ethnographic data collected between 2006 and 2013 among undocumented migrants who remained in France after at least one detention period, I explore how this policy affects the lives of undocumented migrants. I argue that deportation and the threat of deportation are two sides of the same policy, which is, among other things, about population control, achieved by slowing down movement and confining people on both sides of the border.
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Notes
- 1.
The possibility to deport foreigners entered the French criminal code in 1832 and the power to proceed to such removals from the national territory was given to the préfets in 1849.
- 2.
All the names I employ in this chapter have been changed in order to preserve the anonymity of my interlocutors and the sensitive information they provided.
- 3.
I employ the term device as a translation of the French dispositif, a heterogeneous assemblage of laws, practices, discourses (Foucault 1994 [1977], p. 299).
- 4.
I employ the term undocumented in order to emphasize the absence of documents, considered as “powerful” material artifacts (Riles 2006). Sometimes I use the word unauthorized in order to stress individuals’ non-conformity with bureaucratic standards, in the same way as the French expression étranger en situation irrégulière.
- 5.
For a reflection on the ethical tensions and difficulties related to this double commitment in the field, see Le Courant (2013).
- 6.
In the following pages, I will mostly use masculine pronouns when describing the actions of a singular unauthorized migrant. As men are the main targets of immigration detention policy—because of the stereotype of a migrant being a single (young) man—most of the undocumented migrants who are arrested and deported are men, and most of my interlocutors are men as well. The data I was able to gather on women’s experiences show that although women use different strategies to obtain legalization and to stay in France, the effects of the deportation device are very similar on both genders.
- 7.
The distinction between undocumented migrants and clandestine migrants is acknowledged by the government. In a parliamentary report it can be read that: “Not all the undocumented migrants are clandestine migrants. Only those who have never had anything to do with the administration.” Sénat, Immigration clandestine: une réalité inacceptable, une réponse ferme, juste et humaine, April 2006, n°300 p. 19.
- 8.
Since 2006, the Eloi database has collected information on individuals subject to an expulsion order. Since 2009, the Oscar database has stocked information on the beneficiaries of return aid. In 2008, the European Return Directive introduced the compulsory incorporation of the names of deported individuals and their biometric identifiers into the Schengen information system (SIS) to make the entry ban effective in the EU for a period of five years.
- 9.
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Le Courant, S. (2020). Expulsion or Differential Inclusion? Governing Undocumented Migrants in France. In: McKowen, K., Borneman, J. (eds) Digesting Difference . Global Diversities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49598-5_10
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