From ‘Crimmigration’ to Governmentality: Theoretical Perspectives on the Management and Marketisation of Immigration Control

Abstract

This chapter examines key theoretical positions employed in the examination of asylum seekers’ exceptional treatment by the state. It begins with the ‘crimmigration’ narrative advanced by Stumpf and expanded and adapted by others as a way of highlighting the convergence of crime control tactics, institutions and attitudes within immigration control practices. The second half of this chapter questions the appropriateness of adopting Giorgio Agamben’s interpretations of concepts like ‘bare life’ and ‘homo sacer’ in the study of the state’s role in victimising asylum seekers and other migrants through sovereign mechanisms of control and in using the law as a way of circumventing humanitarian responsibilities. Returning to Michel Foucault’s concepts of ‘biopower’ and ‘governmentality’, this chapter ends with an argument that Foucault’s articulation of power as diffuse and the state’s aim to ‘protect’ society—often at the expense of others allowed to wither and die—offers a much more promising theoretical approach, as it allows for the possibility of agency and resistance within highly controlled environments.