Abstract
Crimmigration policies, in Spain and elsewhere, have shown a complex interplay between neoliberal and sovereign rationales of control throughout the first decade of the twenty-first century.
However, the analysis of this domain of penal control should be revised in the context of the Great Recession. Indeed, in the Spanish case, crimmigration policies have incorporated a set of innovations in recent years. Some of them, such as the readjustment of the deportation system, can be understood from a neoliberal perspective. Others, such as changes in policing, have a more hybrid profile, in which neoliberal features encounter sovereign and neoconservative trends. Therefore, the context of the Great Recession requires a new analysis of the hybridization between neoliberal and sovereign devices of control in the area of crimmigration policies.
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Notes
- 1.
New public management (NPM) is an expression which denotes the government policies that since the 1980s have aimed to modernize and allegedly render more efficient the public sector. The basic hypothesis holds that market-oriented management of the public sector will lead to greater cost-efficiency for governments. On the concept of NPM, see Osborne and Gaebler (1992) and Clarke and Newman (1997).
- 2.
On the concept of “expressive justice,” see Tonry (2004), pp. 159 ff.
- 3.
The level of coherence or contradiction between this neoconservative penality and the neoliberal penal policies of risk management and economic utilitarianism must be further researched. While the majority of the academic literature tends to highlight their inherent contradictions (Easton and Piper 2008; Garland 2001; Sullivan 2001), some authors (Kemshall and Wood 2008; Rose 2000; Sparks 2000b) emphasize their consonance.
- 4.
- 5.
- 6.
In academic literature, it is highly contested whether high prison population rates are consonant with neoliberal penal trends or if they are, first and foremost, a key feature of a neoconservative penology of harsh punishment. On the former point of view, see O’Malley (2006) and Rose (2000); on the latter perspective, see Garland (2001) and Sullivan (2001). In my opinion, it appears fairly difficult to frame a model of high and rising prison population rates within a pattern of neoliberal penal policies grounded on a principle of economic efficiency, due to the considerable amount of public expenditure that such imprisonment requires.
- 7.
Carrasco Carpio (2008, pp. 229 ff.) estimates that the amount of irregular migrants in Spain by the middle of the decade was over one million people.
- 8.
The figures of the foreign-born resident population are slightly higher than the numbers of foreign resident population due to nationalization practices. According to INE official data, in 2000 the foreign-born population resident in Spain amounted to 3.6 % of the total population; in 2010, it had risen to 14.0 %, and it slightly dropped to 13.4 % in 2014.
- 9.
Circular No. 1/2010 was abrogated by the subsequent right-wing Spanish Government in May 2012, through the Circular No. 2/2012, which changed the official interpretation of police powers to stop, search, and arrest migrants. Nonetheless, the practice of police raids against migrants remained untouched and seems to have sidelined the new normative framework (see Bradford et al. 2013; Fernández Rodríguez de Liévana et al. 2013, p. 58).
- 10.
See ElDiario.es, 03/30/2013.
- 11.
- 12.
See El Periódico, 05/01/2012.
- 13.
The aforementioned evolution of the deportation policy and the concern for public expenditure may be also appreciated in the coetaneous evolution of the prison realm. In effect, the Spanish prison population has dropped by 15.0 % between May 2010 and February 2015, according to Spanish Home Office official data. The most striking feature of this recent evolution is its contradiction with the criminal justice system data, since the number of arrested individuals, the number of convicted individuals, and the number of individuals sentenced to prison have risen during the mentioned period.
- 14.
Nonetheless, the poor official data available in this field leads to certain ambiguities, which require further analysis. In effect, the data provided by the Spanish Home Office are not consistent at all with the ones published by the Fiscalía General del Estado (2014) [Office of the Spanish Attorney General], which accounts for a number of penal deportations far lower than that stated by the Home Office. It may well be the case that a significant amount of the expulsions counted by the Home Office as “qualified” (or criminal) deportations are not formally “criminal” (i.e., enforced by a penal court following a conviction by a criminal offense), but they are the consequence of a criminal conviction or record, even though the sanction is formally an administrative removal. This might allow us to infer that the current Spanish deportation policy seeks efficiency in the use of scarce resources, and also utility of this policy in terms of political currency, by presenting the deported foreigners primarily as dangerous aliens.
- 15.
- 16.
It should be pointed out that, mirroring the dualism of neoliberal and sovereign control policies, the scholarly literature shows a distinct cleavage in how it analyzes Foucault’s concept of biopolitics. On the one hand, some authors (e.g., Agamben 1998 or Esposito 2008) interpret the concept as a derivative of the Reason of State, tying biopolitics to the notion of sovereign exceptionalism. In contrast, another body of literature (e.g., Hardt and Negri 2000 or Rose 1999) understands biopolitics as a paradigm pertaining to the domain of liberal governmentality. On this debate, see Campesi 2011, pp. 179 ff.; Lemke 2011, pp. 34 ff/51 ff.
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Brandariz García, J.Á. (2016). Crimmigration Policies and the Great Recession: Analysis of the Spanish Case. In: Guia, M., Koulish, R., Mitsilegas, V. (eds) Immigration Detention, Risk and Human Rights. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24690-1_11
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