1 Introduction

Analysing the approach and efficacy of EU countries in controlling international migrations, the Netherlands and Spain have often been portrayed as opposite examples. The former as the top of the class when coming to strict control enforcement and effective migration deterrence, the latter, in good company with countries like Italy, Greece or Portugal, as an example of weak control measures and inconsistent results. Yet, the dichotomist hypothesis of a North/South divide that stays behind this type of interpretation, frequently associated to a not too veiled moral judgment on the good and the bad, is difficult to maintain even after a first scratch to the surface (Finotelli, 2009; Finotelli & Kolb, 2017; Echeverría, 2020; Ponzo, 2021).

The comparative analysis of migration control realities – something very different from the examination of migration control political agendas, governments’ official statements, or even law provisions in the paper – reveal a much more complex and nuanced scenario. Migration control is neither a static nor a top-down, linearly determined, process. In this field, countries have displayed and keep displaying a very dynamic, at times erratic, conduct that generates both convergence and divergence with the others. Moreover, in each context, the efficacy of control efforts, the translation of the political and legal desires into practice, in other words, the overall outcomes of the adopted strategies appear to be influenced by a variety of interactions – not always easy to disentangle and assess – that are related to the configuration and functioning of societies as a whole. Against this backdrop, rather than as good or bad enforcers, efficient or inefficient implementers, strict or bland masters of migration phenomena identifiable with any geographical or cultural area, the European states emerge more as pragmatic actors that, considering their history, geography, socio-economic structures, administrative capacities and ever evolving internal political struggles, look after the best, temporary, adaptive and inevitably sub-optimal solution (Sciortino, 2000; Bommes & Sciortino, 2012; Echeverría, 2020).

Yet, assuming this perspective poses several conceptual and methodological challenges to the research in this area (Wimmer & Glick-Schiller, 2003; Bommes, 2012; Luhmann, 2012; Boucher & Gest, 2015). On the one hand, the idea that migration control is not a process fully determined by the states, but rather the outcome of complex social interactions determined by the interplay of social subsystems (economy, politics, welfare, communications, religion, etc.) requires the revision of dominant state-centric paradigms and the adoption of more sophisticated tools that assume complexity as the starting point and put the concept of society at its centre. The first implication of this shift is the dismissal of easy, clear-cut categorizations and the adoption of a radically differentialist view. Whereas is certainly possible to identify patterns and common trends in specific areas, each country is different from all the others, and requires an ad-hoc account. The second is that no state can be selected as a benchmark or model of migration control to be used as a measure for the compliance or rightfulness of all the others. Instead, the objective should be that of using comparisons to explain both the peculiarities of each case and the emergence of similar trends.

Another important conceptual challenge is to better understand the role and functioning of states and therefore, also, to produce more realistic appraisals of their capacities and “intentions” (Boswell, 2007). Too often, states are considered as monolithic, almighty actors endowed with a clear, coherent, time-stable stance. Something that enables a sort of personification of the state that is well represented by sentences commonly used like: “Greece doesn’t want to control migrants” or “Denmark has decided to stop migrations” or “Spain has lost the control of its shores”, etc. Also in this case, a more complex understanding and more sophisticated tools are necessary. States are internally fragmented institutions, conglomerates of functionally differentiated structures each one provided with an own perspective, functioning and apparatus. The governance of migrations, as adequately captured by concept of “migration regime” (Sciortino, 2000; Cvajner et al., 2018), is the result of the non-arithmetical sum of all the provisions, directly or indirectly affecting migration, that each of these structures implement and of the way in which all the other social actors react.

On the other hand, focusing on methodological issues, a more accurate understanding of migration control demands for systematic, multi-level, multi-perspective, and multi-disciplinary comparative effort. Analyses cannot limit themselves to the comparison of legal provisions, budgetary allocations or general statistics explicitly directed to migration control. They need to dig under the surface to unveil the actual impact on migrations of the whole state conglomerate. This, however, requires the combination of quantitative and qualitative research approaches and of different disciplinary standpoints at different levels. An effort that is inherently more time-consuming and inevitably less effective if asked to provide definitive conclusions.

Exploiting the results of an original, multi-sited, qualitative research among Ecuadorian irregular migrants in Amsterdam and Madrid, this chapter comparatively analyses the effects of migration controls in the two cities, focusing on internal controls. The irregular migration phenomenon, somehow the nemesis of migration control, is inquired from below – through the lived experiences of migrants in the two contexts – in search for hints able to throw some light onto the migration control realities in the Netherlands and Spain. From the 60 in-depth interviews and the collected ethnographic material, two ambiguous realities emerge, with differences and similarities, degrees of convergence and persistence of variance, complex enough to escape a clear-cut description in terms of opposites.

2 The Quest for Migration Control: Policies and Implementation

After the oil crisis of 1973, most European receiving countries observed a proliferation of policies, mechanisms, administrative structures, and legal frameworks dedicated to dealing with the control of international migrations. The real or perceived sense of failure signalled by the migration crisis of the 1990s intensified the development and implementation of newer and increasingly-sophisticated policies. This perpetual escalation of control measures, on the one hand, and migrants’ countermeasures on the other, is far from being concluded in our days. The main consequence for research has been a corresponding proliferation of studies, taxonomies, and classifications in the attempt to analyse and better comprehend a constantly evolving landscape.

Regarding the classification of migration policies, a first important distinction is the one between immigration policy and immigrant policy (Hammar, 1985). Immigration policies include those directed at controlling and selecting or deterring migration fluxes. Within this broad group, two main sub-groups can be distinguished: external control policies and internal control policies (Cornelius et al., 1994; Brochmann & Hammar, 1999; Cornelius, 2005; Broeders & Engbersen, 2007; Doomernik & Jandl, 2008; Van Meeteren, 2010). The second group, the one of specific interest in this chapter, includes three main type of policies: (a) policies directed at making irregular residence difficult and costly through labour market controls, for example, employer sanctions, employers’ deputation to check for identities, labour site inspections (Brochmann & Hammar, 1999; Cornelius,2005; Broeders & Engbersen, 2007; Broeders, 2009) and policies aimed at the exclusion of irregular migrants from public services (identification checks in order to use services) (Van Der Leun, 2003; Van Meeteren, 2010). (b) Policies directed towards the identification, detention, and expulsion of irregular migrants (identification and surveillance systems, random checks in public spaces, administrative detention, readmission agreements) (Schrover et al., 2008; Engbersen & Broeders, 2009; Schinkel, 2009; Van Meeteren, 2010). (c) Policies directed at the regularization of irregular migrants (collective and individual regularization, de jure, and de facto regularizations) (Papademetriou, 2005; Schrover et al., 2008; Boswell & D’Amato, 2012; Chauvin et al., 2013).

Since the early 1990s, many scholars highlighted the existence of a gap between the laws and policies stated on paper and what they effectively achieved in “reality” (Cornelius et al., 1994). This awareness stimulated an intense debate over the need for a more comprehensive understanding of policies and their interaction with social life. Within this debate, a group of scholars underlined the necessity to shift the focus from policy formation or policy classification to policy implementation (Guiraudon & Lahav, 2000; Van Der Leun, 2003; Castles, 2004). Whereas many studies existed on laws, explicit regulation, policy documents and decision-making processes, scarce attention had been given to their implementation as well as to the resilience of lower-level counterforces (Van Der Leun, 2003; Lahav & Guiraudon, 2006). As pointed by Van del Leun, a large body of literature not directly concerned with the study of migrations, had already “warned against straightforward ideas about the process of implementation of public policies” (Van Der Leun, 2003, 28).

The shift of attention to implementation dramatically increased the complexity of the picture. If focus was on laws and regulations, researchers could refer to the official documents and statements by politicians and administrators. Enquiring into implementation, instead, forced them to get out of the libraries and adopt qualitative strategies to find and recompose the pieces of the puzzle.

Notwithstanding these difficulties and the relatively recent attention given to implementation, the efforts made in the last two decades have produced significant results. On the one hand, theoretical attempts have been made to develop frameworks of analysis. Since every national context produces distinctive practices of implementation, two questions have been raised: (a) what determines the specific mode of implementation? (b) How is it possible to explain differences? Four aspects have been suggested as crucial to understand different practices: the peculiar national regulatory styles and traditions; the organizational culture of bureaucracies and the degree of discretionality; the grade of isolation of bureaucracies from external pressures; the social attitude and toleration towards informality (Scott, 1998; Heyman & Smart, 1999; Guiraudon & Lahav, 2000; Jordan et al., 2003; Van Der Leun, 2003; Lahav & Guiraudon, 2006).

On the other hand, researchers have analyzed policy implementation in different countries with the purpose of detecting possible common trends. Lahav and Guiraudon (2006) have indicated an on-going shift of focus in the implementation of policies. While before the migration crisis of the 1990s, controls were limited to border enforcement and were implemented exclusively by states’ central institutions, after that, controls have been moving “away from the border and outside of the state” (Guiraudon & Lahav, 2000). This process has followed a threefold strategy: a shift outwards, with the adoption of remote control policies; a shift upwards, with the development of international frameworks for control; a shift downwards, with the delegation of control duties to the local institutional level. Another group of scholars have observed a slow but constant shift in the logic of policy implementation (Engbersen, 2001; Broeders & Engbersen, 2007). Broeders characterized this shift as the alternation between two contradictory logics of exclusion: exclusion from documentation/registration and exclusion through documentation/registration (Broeders, 2009). The first logic intended to exclude irregular migrants, denying them the possibility to acquire the documents necessary to access public services. While it may have been effective in fencing migrants’ access to welfare, this logic did not prevent the growth of irregular migration and was ineffective for expulsions. The main objective of the second logic was precisely to make expulsions effective trough identification technologies and surveillance systems (Engbersen & Broeders, 2009; Leerkes, 2009). The correct identification of migrants was the main condition that origin states asked for, in order to accept their citizens back once they were expelled. While the first logic has been implemented principally in Northern European countries, the second logic has been central to the European Union common policy and seems to be gaining importance in the rest of receiving counties.

Finally, several scholars have suggested the need to look beyond policies closely related to immigration control to fully grasp migration management (Finotelli, 2009; Garcés-Mascareñas, 2012). “Labour market, macro-economic, welfare, trade and foreign policies […] affect fundamental economic migration drivers” so “their influence might actually be larger than specific migration policies, which perhaps have a greater effect on the specific patterns and selection of migrants rather than on overall magnitude and long-term trends” (Czaika & De Haas, 2013, p. 5). It seems possible to conclude that only the joint analysis of the interaction and the implementation of migration and refugee policies, labour market policies and welfare policies allows for a full picture of the framework within which migration control takes place and evolves.

3 Internal Controls in Amsterdam and Madrid: A Case Study

This section is based on broader research project (Echeverría, 2020) whose objective was to compare the experience of irregular migrants in two receiving contexts and to assess the differences and similarities that characterized the two cases. The aim was to offer empirical material for the theoretical reflection on the practices and effects of migration control in two different European countries.

The chosen case was that of Ecuadorian irregular migrants in the cities of Amsterdam and Madrid. The empirical study combined ethnography and the collection of 30 in-depth interviews with irregular migrants in each context. The main research questions that prompted this study were: What have been the main structural characteristics affecting migration in the two contexts (migration history, migration regime, economics, welfare state typology, public and political opinion)? What was the experience of Ecuadorian irregular migrants within the two different contexts in the different aspects of their life (legal trajectories, work, housing, healthcare, controls, etc.)?

In this chapter, I will focus on three topics more closely related to the internal migration control. In particular, the experience Ecuadorian irregular migrants had in relation to work controls, ad-hoc identity and documentation controls and housing and healthcare access controls.

3.1 Work Controls

The work experience of Ecuadorian irregular migrants in Amsterdam and Madrid has presented several and evolving differences. In both cities, during the considered years, migrants experienced important changes in their working opportunities.

In Amsterdam, it was possible to recognize two very distinct moments. The first, that lasted until the early 2000s, was characterized by the abundant availability of jobs in numerous sectors (construction, services, industry, cleaning). Even though it is not too marked, a certain gender distinction was observable with irregular man finding good opportunities in the construction sector, in the port or playing and selling handicrafts in the streets, and irregular women in the cleaning sector, both in offices and private houses. In many cases, the migrants had more than one job. The second, from the mid-2000s on, was characterized by a progressive reduction of the available sectors. For irregular migrants it became increasingly difficult to find working opportunities in sectors other than private-house cleaning. As emerged from the interviews, this change was largely due to a restrictive turn on the part of the authorities. The increased inspections on the working sites and the higher fines in case of misconduct made it inconvenient for employers to hire irregular migrants.

The work in the hotel slowly reduced. A lot of people were looking for jobs and the employers preferred to hire those with papers. Maybe in the high season they would still take you on, but only because they really needed workers. But now it is difficult because you must have papers, even during the high season… The market is dead, dead, dead… The only thing possible to survive now, because we still survive [the irregular migrants], is to work in houses… Why? Because they are private… it is private people that want you. There papers are not required, and there nobody stops you.

The second reason given by the migrants was that new groups of migrants who had papers started to fill the labour market and take the jobs they used to get before.

The first to come were people from the East… they have papers, they started to work where we worked before. Then a lot of migrants from Southern Europe started to come… They go where the economy is still good. Many Spanish Ecuadorians [Ecuadorians with Spanish nationality] are coming, because they have papers and find work…

Yet, the shift towards the cleaning service in private houses was also part of a strategic option of the migrants themselves. Working in private houses offered several advantages in terms of salaries, flexibility of hours and security.

When the controls started to become tougher, I was scared. I said: no! I won’t look for jobs in hotels and restaurants anymore… In houses it is much better… There the people know you, they give you the keys, you go, you respect your schedule… the hours you have to work and you leave… You don’t see anybody and it is impossible that they come to check you. Moreover, they pay you more… a lot more. In the hotels and restaurants they used to exploit me. So much, so much! They paid me 6 euros, in my houses I don’t get less than 10… Can you imagine the difference?

Notwithstanding the gradual reduction of sectors and increasing controls, Ecuadorian irregular migrants have generally judged their working conditions and opportunities in Amsterdam as good.

At the beginning it is hard, you don’t know anyone… and it is hard. But then you start to know people, to make friends… They talk to you, they help you. Here there is a lot of work… once you start, you find more and more. There is plenty of work. And you can make money. Here the problems are others, the house, the papers, but there is work for everybody.

Even if labour controls became increasingly severe through the 2000s, both migrants and employers in Amsterdam have always been alert to the possibility of inspections. For this reason, a number of strategies have been developed both to employ irregular migrants and to escape possible inspections.

Regarding the first aspect, e.g. the irregular employment of migrants, some sectors, for instance, port services, industrial cleaning and construction, appeared to have more inspections and required specific strategies. The decisive factor seemed to be the size of the business. When the employer was a medium-sized or big company, a contract was usually needed. The strategies, therefore, were basically aimed at bypassing this limitation. The two main options were: for migrants to rent or borrow the papers of a regular migrant; for employers, to hire more than one worker with a single contract.

Once I worked in the port. We had to unload and load Russian ships… There you worked with the name of someone who had papers… Every morning when you arrived they told you: if the police of the port come, you have to say that this is your name… And you tried like hell, had to keep repeating to yourself who you were: Juan Charles, Juan Charles, Juan Charles… Sometimes they asked you just to check if you were alert. The “owner” of the job charged you a commission…

To avoid controls migrants and employers develop specific strategies, which depend on the type of work. An important aspect, in all cases, is to try to pass unnoticed, especially when working on exposed sites.

A lot of friends have been caught because they were working outside. You must always work inside because if you are working outside they can always ask you for your working permit.

Many migrants agreed on the fact that in Amsterdam it is customary that inspections arrive because someone calls the police. Therefore, it is always advisable to be as little eye-catching as possible. possible.

Many times there were inspections when I was on the building site. I had to hide, go to the roof. They first enter and ask, if they don’t see anything weird, nothing happens, but if they see something suspicious, they call and more inspectors arrive. Many times, they come because there has been a complaint. Here [in the Netherlands] there are many complaints. A group of friends of mine, they were Brazilian, they were working on a building site in the street and they were listening to music that the people here do not listen to. When I work outside, on the street, for example painting, I always listen to a Dutch radio. If you want to listen to your music, use headphones and that’s it. If you are showy, you fail! But if you learn to be discreet, there’s no problem.

In restaurants and hotels, the owners always told the migrants where to hide in case of a labour inspection or gave them other instructions so as not to raise suspicions. In certain cases, they had a way to alert the workers back in the kitchen or in the corridors, about the arrival of inspectors, so that they had enough time to hide.

We knew what to do in case of inspections. In those years [before 2003] it was very unusual… but once we had an inspection. A Moroccan, who was the oldest worker, took me by the hand and we climbed from the stairs up to the roof. He told me to be careful because up there it was all greasy since it was where the extractors were released… After a while we heard something like a little bell, it was the cook beating with a knife on the metal… It meant the inspectors had gone… I didn’t even see the guys of the inspection, their faces, what they looked like, how many they were. That was the only time, because before there were few inspections…

Also in Madrid, it has been possible to distinguish two very different phases regarding irregular migrants’ working opportunities. The first phase, which lasted until the end of the 2000s, was characterized by a great availability of working opportunities in many sectors. Although this was the case for both men and women, a rather marked sectorial division was registered. Men were mostly employed in the construction sector, women in private-house cleaning and the care sectors. The second phase, which started in 2008, with the beginning of the economic crisis, was characterized by a sharp reduction of the working opportunities that deeply affected all migrants. For irregular migrants, in particular, it became extremely difficult to find any occupation. The changed scenario especially affected men. The most important sector where they had found opportunities, e.g. the construction sector, literally collapsed.

After one week that I had been here, a friend of mine took me with him to the building site. The boss said: perfect, you can start right away. After that, I always worked in construction. I had to adapt, to learn all the names, because in Ecuador we call the tools with other names… My boss helped me to get the papers… The first year without a contract I earned 900 euro, then when I got the papers I started earning 1200 euro. It was very good. One day, in 2009, the owner of the company came and said to us: that’s it. There is no more work. He closed the company and that was the end… Now there is nothing… for 2 years I have been doing little things to survive.

For those who were still in an irregular administrative situation or those who “lost” the papers (because unable to renew them or in case of administrative withdrawn), it became increasingly difficult to find opportunities to work. Among the interviewed, few had been able to keep their previous jobs in restaurants and in transportation; others started to find jobs in a sector that until that moment had been exclusively for women, e.g. house cleaning and care, while others relied on small occupations such as painting, gardening, electricity, etc.

I worked in that discotheque for more than five years… I had to clean and prepare everything for the next day… In 2007, the things started to go badly… Two of my colleagues were fired… My boss was very nice to me and he said that I could stay for some time. In 2008, they fired my boss and me… Luckily, I had unemployment benefit for more than one year… Now I basically have not worked for 3 years … I mean, sometimes a friend calls me for 1 month or little things… I am thinking of going back to Ecuador…

For women the situation has got worse as well. Yet, the cleaning and care sector seemed to be still offering opportunities.

Until recently I was working with a cleaning company… The owner was helping me with the papers… I was there for two years. Two years ago, though, he said to me: ‘you had better not work until you have papers’. The people working there were legal, but they hired me because my cousins told him about me. He agreed to hire me… But since things have become more difficult, he told me to stay at home. Now, I have been unemployed again for 4 months. It is difficult because everyone asks you for papers… For one hour or two that you want to work they ask you for papers…

The effects of the economic crisis on irregular employment were made even worse by a stricter control policy and the availability of workers with a regular status. Until the mid-2000s before the start of the economic crisis, migrants’ descriptions reveal a very relaxed situation. Most of these migrants never experienced a control on a work site and the employers were not worried about hiring people with an irregular status.

There was no problem… You know, everyone was illegal… so you just went and you started working. I think they knew that nobody was going to check, because otherwise they would have been more worried….

In the restaurant where I worked for more than 8 years, we never had a control..

From the mid-2000s on, and especially in certain sectors, a gradual increase of controls was recorded. The employers, who until that moment had been basically unconcerned, started to ask more frequently for papers or to develop strategies to avoid possible controls. Accordingly, also irregular migrants had to develop their own strategies to get hired.

They kept hiring irregular migrants. It became only a little more difficult. When I finally regularized… My name say it is Xavier Ramirez, we went to the working site and there were three Xavier Ramirez… My boss said to me: don’t work there… I asked: why? He said: because there are two others with your name. I said: but you pay me the day? Yes! Since he had my documentation, he could do that… I went back home but he had to pay me the day. Why? Because he had my papers. Before, I could not say anything because it was me who was the one working with the name of another… But now… When controls increased, a lot of people made money acting as intermediaries.

Within this new changed scenario, the opportunities for irregular migrants became very limited. Many migrants decided to move to another country or to go back to Ecuador. Those who remained tried to survive doing small jobs in the construction sector, transportation, or in services. For men, an option was to switch to the cleaning and care sector.

Overall, while the double scenario is similar in both Amsterdam and Madrid, the underlying reasons for the dichotomy appear different, and likewise the consequences. In Amsterdam, the causes of changes experienced by Ecuadorian irregular migrants appear to be mainly political, in Madrid mainly economical. In Amsterdam, the increasing number of inspections in many economic sectors caused a sectorial shift on the part of the migrants. Since working in sectors such as construction, services and industry became increasingly difficult and risky, irregular migrants moved to the private-house cleaning sector. In Madrid, the effects of the economic downturn caused a general reduction of the working opportunities. For irregular migrants, it became very difficult to find a job in any sector. The reason in this case, was not, or not principally, that there were more controls, but simply that there was no work at all. Those migrants who had been able to regularize their status and who were also unable to find any employment have confirmed this impression.

Regarding the working opportunities for irregular migrants, two further differences can be underlined. Firstly, in the first phase, Amsterdam displayed a more even distribution of irregular migrants in different sectors (construction, services, industry, cleaning in private houses) and then, in the second phase, a concentration in one (cleaning in private houses). Madrid, instead, displayed a more marked concentration in some sectors (construction, cleaning, and care) in the first phase and, in the second phase, a concentration in two (cleaning and care) but with scarce opportunities even there. Secondly, the cases revealed a different situation concerning gender distribution. While in both cases a certain sectorial difference emerged, in the case of Madrid this was much more marked.

An interesting facet regarding the topic under discussion concerns the care sector and, in particular, the care service for the elderly. While this sector has had a crucial role in Madrid, employing a vast number of irregular migrants and especially women, in Amsterdam employment in this sector has been completely absent. As pointed out by many migrants, in the Netherlands, the government offers several subsidized services to the elderly so that no working opportunities “under the table” are available in the sector.

Finally, also regarding the working conditions, the two cases have shown a differentiated picture. In Amsterdam, notwithstanding the necessary sectorial shifts, the working conditions for irregular migrants have generally and steadily been valued as positive. The large majority of the interviewed migrants told stories of relative success. They were treated well, were able to save money and to fulfil their economic expectations. In Madrid a distinction must be made. The interviewed migrants clearly distinguished in their stories between the pre-crisis and the crisis period. The first was generally characterized, although with a slightly higher number of exceptions, by a great availability of opportunities, good working conditions and economic success; the second, by very limited working opportunities, unstable and underpaid jobs.

3.2 Ad-hoc Identity and Documentation Controls

Regarding the experience of internal controls that Ecuadorian irregular migrants had in Amsterdam and Madrid two aspects will be discussed: A. the experience of police (or other authorities) controls that migrants had in their daily lives; B. the actual fear that migrants had of being deported.

The results that emerged from the fieldwork have revealed two different situations regarding internal controls in Amsterdam and Madrid. In Amsterdam, there have not been ad-hoc controls on irregular migrants in the streets or in public places. Migrants, therefore, did not feel under direct threat and did not usually feel scared about moving around and carrying out their normal activities. However, the rigid checks regarding respect for the rules that regulate most social activities, such as, walking in the street, riding a bike, using public transportation, have been an indirect form of control. Irregular migrants know that a simple mistake, an administrative fault of any kind, can lead to an identity check, to administrative detention. For these reasons, these people are usually very alert to the situation around them at all times and very self-controlled in their public activities.

No, no… in this country there are no controls in the streets… I mean, there are controls in the labour sites, as for all workers, but not for the papers. Then if there is something irregular, they can ask you for your papers, but they never come for the papers… Here in the Netherlands, only if there is a complaint or if you made a slip, can they check you… Otherwise no… they let you live in peace… Those who have been caught, it is because they were in a nightclub, they had been drinking too much and they started a fight outside. Others, pitifully, were caught with the bicycles… If you make a mistake and you are unlucky, a policeman stops you… Many of us have fallen for a red light, or for other little things… Those little things betray you…

Regarding the possibility of being deported, the impression gathered is that in Amsterdam this has become in the last decade a very realistic one among irregular migrants. In other words, most migrants seem to know that if they get caught, the most probable consequence is that they are going to be deported.

There was a change around 1999 or 2000… Before that, even if they caught you, it was rare that they deported you… But, after that, they started deporting everyone… We were scared, you heard about this and that… Many people who were deported before 2003 were able to come back a week later… In Ecuador, you simply ask for a new passport… They had a different number each time… So, there was no problem… But after 2003, they started asking for the visa… If they sent you back, you could not return.

In Madrid, there has always been the possibility of ad-hoc controls on irregular migrants. Until the second half of the 2000s, though, these were very limited, unsystematic, and largely without consequences. Migrants, therefore, described a very relaxed situation and a negligible possibility to be deported.

I was always outside… nothing happened… When I was illegal, the police stopped me on two occasions… The first time I was waiting for the bus… A policeman came and asked me for papers… I had only a photocopy of my passport… I was scared, but nothing happened… He looked at the picture, looked at me… and said: it’s ok! Don’t get into trouble… And he left… The other time was the same…

After the start of the economic crisis, this scenario changed. The controls on irregular migrants became more frequent and systematic. Every street, metro station or public place could be the place for a potential raid. These controls, however, were rather intermittent.

A couple of months ago, there were many controls… it goes in spells. In Metro Plaza de Castilla [the name of a metro station], there were those paisanos [policemen in plain clothes] as they call them. There were many of them, checking for papers. And also in Metro Usera… I always go there, because one of my cousins lives there… And I saw that they were also stopping women… they were taking them away… I could not believe it… Because, before, they used to stop only men, but now also women…

When the raids started, there were latino radio stations that alerted the places where the police were… They alerted the illegal migrant… Be careful in that station, they are checking for documents there… It was the people who called to say where the controls were…

They increased in particular months or weeks and diminished afterwards. While the fear of being deported certainly increased in the second phase, for the interviewed migrants, this possibility remains rather unlikely. As pointed out by many, to be actually deported, it is usually not enough to simply not possess a residence permit; the irregular migrant has to have a criminal record.

Here in Spain, it is not that they get you without papers and they deport you. No! You need to have a criminal record… You need to have been involved in something like fights, thefts, vandalism… Otherwise it is very difficult… They can even take you to jail or the CIEs [administrative detention centres] but they let you go after a while… A change took place with the beginning of the economic crisis. From that moment on, they started to check and deport the people. I had been stopped before, but, I swear, it was as if they checked you only to check you… The second time, I think it was two years ago [2011], a policeman stopped me. You could see that it was not like before. Now, they stopped the people and sent those without papers away. Now they were checking in order to deport.

3.3 Housing and Healthcare Controls

The access to housing and healthcare for Ecuadorian irregular migrants in Amsterdam and Madrid has presented a number of important differences.

Regarding the first issue, the access to housing in Amsterdam has been generally much more difficult than it is in Madrid. This has been due to two main factors: A. the lower supply of housing opportunities; B. the existence of a strictly regulated and controlled system of public housing. The combination of these factors determined a very precarious situation for irregular migrants. The available options were generally unstable, expensive and at risk of frauds.

The house is the biggest problem here in Amsterdam. Imagine: there is no house for the Dutch, so what do you expect for irregular migrants? I have changed more than 10 houses in the last number of years… It is really bad.

Here it is very difficult. If you don’t have someone who knows you, it is very difficult to get a good house. You cannot go and say: I want a room or a house. They ask you for your residence permit. The other option is to sublet a room in a government house, but in that case, you never know if a control may come. Those houses are very much controlled.

In contrast, in Madrid, after a first moment in which the housing opportunities had been relatively scarce, the situation rapidly improved.

At the beginning it was difficult. The Spaniards didn’t want to rent you a house without the nomina [a working contract] and you could not have a contract without the papers… So, the only option was to rent rooms… You know, in Ecuador there is a lot of space… we were not accustomed to renting rooms, to living with other people that you don’t know… It was hard.

As many Ecuadorians and migrants from other countries started to get their status regularized, they were able to rent entire houses or flats and sublet rooms to the newly arrived. This determined a quick expansion of the housing opportunities and, therefore, the availability of relatively cheap, stable, and safe housing for the irregular migrants.

As far as the second issue is concerned, a similar situation has been found. In Amsterdam, access to healthcare has been much more problematic for irregular migrants than in Madrid.

For more or less 10 years now, things have been very difficult. We were not 50 or 60 who went to the hospital… We were 500… Each time that you go to the hospital it costs at least 300–400 euros… So that was a debt that the government has. I think it was for that reason that they changed the law. Now you cannot buy a medical insurance, you need the residence permit. There is a fund that the hospitals can use in cases of emergency for us… [by “us” she means irregular migrants]. So now, what we must do is to hope not to get ill, otherwise you have to go and pay the bill… Sofia, that friend of mine, broke her leg… I think she has 15,000 euro of debt with the hospital…

In this case, the determining factor was the different regulations regarding access to the public healthcare system. Whereas in Amsterdam, irregular migrants have been excluded from non-emergency care since 1998, in Madrid they could freely access the public system until 2012. Hence, while for irregular migrants in Madrid, the issue of healthcare was basically not a problem, in Amsterdam they had to find ways to overcome the existing limitations. The most common option, in case of serious medical problems, was to go to the public hospitals and pay the costs at market prices. For minor problems, there was the option of medical support offered by humanitarian associations or by private unofficial doctors.

Luckily, I never had problem, so I didn’t need to go to the hospital. I discovered how expensive it was when I had to give birth. One echography costs 200 euro… Here they don’t give you anything, absolutely anything if you are illegal. Now I am legal, and I pay insurance, so I can go whenever I want. But when I was illegal I could not. I mean, I could but I had to pay…

4 Internal Migration Controls in the Netherlands and Spain: Differently Similar?

The results of the case study presented in this chapter, far from providing the final word on the functioning of internal migration controls in the Netherlands and Spain, offer however interesting material for reflection on the differences and similarities that have characterized their approaches.

A first remarkable point is the confirmation of the dynamic character of migration control strategies in relation to more general societal processes, directly or indirectly, linked to migration. In the Netherlands, there has been a clear shift in time from a more relaxed to a stricter enforcement of internal migration controls. Until the late 1990s, irregular migrants could easily find jobs in a variety of sectors and controls on the worksites were rather limited. Likewise, access to healthcare and other social benefits was possible for everyone without regard to his/her migratory status. From 1998 on, things changed. Work controls increased in every sector and, in a relatively short time, the opportunities for irregular migrants severely reduced. Moreover, the Linking Act (Koppelingswet), approved that year, established a direct nexus between the possibility to access public services, such as, social security, healthcare, education or public housing, and the holding of a valid residence permit. These important transformations can be related, on the one hand, to a long-term process of deterioration of the social and political acceptance of migrants and, on the other, to a slow transformation towards a more qualified and formal labour market. The Netherlands, in this sense, does not appear to be generically more prone than other countries to strict migration control, but rather to have adaptatively modified its approach in relation to transforming of societal demands. Until irregular migration was not especially unpopular, and its contribution engrained well into the functioning of the national economy, controls were rather relaxed.

Also in Spain, the experience of Ecuadorian irregular migrants allowed to observe a transformation in time of migration controls. Whereas until the outbreak of the economic crisis in 2008, migration controls were very limited, the sudden and abrupt collapse of economy and the concomitant change of the political forces in charge had an impact in this area. The new, rightist government inaugurated a rhetoric against irregular migration and promised a tougher hand. In the immediate, this translated into a sensationalist yet ineffectual policy of random identity controls in the public spaces. For the longer term, into a promise – never really fulfilled – of more controls on the labour market and the exclusion of irregular migrants from the welfare. The conditions for irregular migrants changed indeed, but as a result of the practical disappearance of working opportunities due to the economic crisis. Many irregular migrants left the country and the phenomenon appeared contained at last. What at a political level some tried to “sell” as a migration control success was, in fact, the result of self-regulatory socio-economic dynamics.

A second point of interest is the very different approach to internal migration controls in the two countries. Once the change of attitude was decided, the Netherlands adopted a comprehensive, systemic strategy based on the social exclusion of irregular migrants and the effective expulsion of irregular migrants through identification. The new course required interventions in different social realms (economy, welfare, housing) and implicated all state apparatuses. In Spain, the new strategy, mainly based on identity checks, was more explicit and direct, but rather unsystematic. These differences can be related to several factors that bring into play complex political, cultural, historical dynamics. Firstly, an historically different grade and mode of state/society interpenetration in the two countries. In the Netherlands, the state apparatuses appear to be much more pervasive in their ambition, and therefore also in their capacity, to regulate social transactions in a myriad of social areas and at different levels. Three examples of this clearly emerged in the fieldwork: the regulation of the housing market; the extension of the welfare system (which for instance has a dedicated program for elderly care); the capillarity of regulation compliance (all regulations) controls in the public spaces. Secondly, a different political culture that affects the way in which controls are implemented and accepted by the public opinion. The practice of random identity checks in the public spaces, for instance, is considered unacceptable in the Netherlands, whereas the exclusion of irregular migrants from healthcare not. The opposite takes place in Spain. It could be cautiously inferred that this may be related to a different societal valuation of political and social rights. If addressed in moral terms, as often done in the public debate (and not only there), what can be observed is not the presence of a morality on one side and the lack on the other, but, instead, the presence of different moralities. Thirdly, it is probable that a different underlaying objectives sustained the design and implementation of control policies. In the Netherlands, which has a long migration history and a relatively formal labour market, also in connection to a large and bipartisan political consensus in favour with a hardening of controls, the main objective was to reduce the burden of migrants on the welfare system and to further advance in the formalization of the labour market. In Spain, which has a very recent migration history and a largely informal labour market, the main objective was to display toughness in a conjunctural situation of political transition, without excessively interfering into the free regulation of the economic dynamics largely perceived as functional.

All in all, the results presented in the chapter show two very different realities in relation to internal migration controls in the Netherlands and Spain. Such differences can be explained, in part, by the different objectives the two countries were pursuing, in part, by the different approaches and implementation strategies adopted. Observed from a more distance perspective, however, these marked differences reveal also, and somehow paradoxically, a degree of similarity. In both countries, governments’ approaches appeared to combine pragmatist – tendentially less restrictive – stances to more ideological/moralistic – tendentially more restrictive – ones in relation to broader and dynamic societal contingencies. In both countries, although in different ways and with a different timing, it was possible to recognize an overall tendency towards more restrictive policies very much linked to the political acceptance of migration. Finally, in both countries, the persistence of the irregular migration phenomenon, notwithstanding the efforts against it, revealed the existence of structural limitations to migration control that are common to all countries and especially to liberal democracies.