(Cr)immigrant framing in border areas: decision-making processes of Dutch border police officers

Abstract

When the internal borders of the Schengen area were no longer supposed to be enforced, concerns about an influx of irregular migrants and an increase in cross-border crime in the Netherlands led to the instalment of the Mobile Security Monitor (MSM), a form of migration policing in the border areas with Belgium and Germany. Since its instalment in 1994 this instrument has developed from an instrument aimed at migration control to an instrument that is aimed at both migration control and crime control. Based on extensive observational study and focus group interviews with officers, this paper examines the reasoning behind and the outcomes of discretionary decisions of officers carrying out the MSM. It shows how officers’ individual street-level decisions are fundamentally shaped by a combination of legal and organisational ambiguity regarding the official aim of the MSM and the emergence of a political and public discourse in which certain ethnic and immigrant groups are increasingly framed as ‘dangerous others’. Our analysis results in insights into selection decisions that go beyond the more common discrimination-oriented analysis. As officers generally receive very little concrete guidance on what to look for during a control, such selection processes appear to be largely based on their own experiences and disseminated through informal and experience-based stories. The paper concludes with a discussion of our results in light of ongoing societal and academic debates about selectivity more in general.