Criminalizing black solidarity: Dublin deportations, raids, and racial statecraft in southern Germany

Abstract

Intensive police raids targeted southern German asylum camps in 2018. The police accused black men of rioting against deportation enforcement, and local courts prosecuted numerous individuals. This article examines three such raids as political policing during a time of a strong yet contested state mandate for deportations. Drawing on observations of court proceedings, police and court statements, and ethnographic fieldwork conducted over several years with West African residents of these camps, I analyse how the police and courts intervened in local conflicts over deportation. As these authorities sought to restore deportability, emotions, particularly fear, functioned as a vital supplement to exercising state violence. By criminalizing protest and solidarity among the migrants and spreading fear, the raids drove many to leave the centres. The police and courts also performed fear as they depicted black, dangerous ‘others’ as endangering law enforcement and the ‘Nation’. This contributed to the broader deportation agenda and produced race by normalizing migrants’ exposure to deportation and policing.