Unravelling the ‘crimmigration knot’: Penal subjectivities, punishment and the censure machine

Abstract

This article explores the challenges that (cr)immigration practices pose to draw the boundaries of punishment by examining foreign national prisoners’ penal subjectivities. More exclusionary and draconian migration policies have blurred the boundaries between border control and crime control, creating hybrid forms of punishment that, even if officially claimed as measures outside the criminal justice realm, inflict pain and communicate censure. Drawing on 37 in-depth interviews with foreign national prisoners facing expulsion in the Dutch penitentiary facility of Ter Apel, we detail how hybrid (cr)immigration practices are capable of imposing and delivering meanings that go well behind rooted significances and aims of administrative measures. Traditionally designed with preventive purposes, administrative measures have now become part of a project of social exclusion and reaffirmation of the worth of citizenship. This circumstance raises problematic questions for the legitimacy of the criminal justice system in dealing with non-citizens.