Making Migrants Deportable: The Internalization of Restrictive Policies Through Transferred Responsibility and Borrowed Legitimacy

Abstract

This paper explores the connection between social policy and immigration law as one feature of migration governance to advance internal bordering and border internalization. It argues that responsibility for migration governance is being transferred: from immigration authorities and the broader field of immigration policy to social services and the broader field of social policy. This allows for the outsourcing of immigration control to “new” sectors of society. In a second step, immigration authorities borrow legitimacy from social services and related actors involved in assessing non-citizens, thus turning reports from one policy field to the service of assessments made in another. This work draws on empirical data collected from Swiss immigration authorities (Migrationsdienste) and social services (Sozialdienste) whose work concerns migrants in receipt of social assistance. In Switzerland, powerful stereotypes shape the legal residency rights of non-citizens by portraying them as undeserving of welfare, reinforcing a strict citizen vs. non-citizen divide. As I argue, the connections between “workfarist” policies that characterize the Swiss welfare state and restrictive immigration policies legitimate the withdrawal of residence rights from non-citizens rendered destitute. The transfer of responsibility and borrowing of legitimacy facilitated by this entwinement of social policy and immigration law entrench processes of internal bordering. With formerly less related policy fields now increasingly charged with immigration-related decision making, the existing bordering practices of immigration authorities are expanded to encompass new actors. This close entwinement of different policy fields is characteristic of how contemporary societies police and control non-citizens.