A ‘crimmigrant ban’? Global mobility, urban (in)security and the changing dynamics of judicial practices
| Author | Eleonora Di Molfetta |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14624745211047873 |
| Published date | 01 April 2023 |
| Date | 01 April 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
A‘crimmigrant ban’?
Global mobility, urban (in)
security and the changing
dynamics of judicial
practices
Eleonora Di Molfetta
Erasmus University, the Netherlands
Abstract
In the last decades, western countries have developed a set of policies and practices
aimed both at crime prevention and social reassurance. Within this trend, the old-fash-
ioned sanction of banishment has regained prominence. Banning orders, in particular, are
widely used to remove from public spaces individuals who are deemed a threat to public
safety and urban decorum. This article investigates the use of banning orders towards
foreign defendants without a valid residence permit in an Italian criminal court. Based
on empirical material collected during a one-year period of courtroom ethnography
in Turin, this article sheds light on the rationales and objectives behind the use of banning
orders. The interviews with courtroom actors reveal how banning orders have lost
much of their preventive dimension to become an instrument of socio-urban control
towards immigrants. This article invites future research to consider the role that
urban management practices might play in the field of global mobility.
Keywords
Banishment, judicial practices, foreign nationals, urban policies, securitisation,
crimmigration
Corresponding author:
Eleonora Di Molfetta, Erasmus School of Law, Erasmus University, PO Box 1738, 3000 DR, Rotterdam,
the Netherlands.
Email: dimolfetta@law.eur.nl
Article
Punishment & Society
2023, Vol. 25(2) 537–554
© The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/14624745211047873
journals.sagepub.com/home/pun
Introduction
From the 1980s, in almost all European countries, there has been an increased interest
in security, or better the lack thereof, often understood in terms of incivilities and
improper behaviour (van de Bunt and van Swaaningen, 2012). Marginal groups,
such as homeless, prostitutes and drug addicts, are often portrayed as responsible
for lack of security and urban decay. In Italy, as elsewhere, what mainly affects citi-
zens’fear of crime is represented by visible manifestations of disorder and incivilities
in the area in which they live (Selmini, 2011). Immigrants are at the top of the list of
the ‘social outcasts’deemed responsible for social downgrading, especially immi-
grants without a valid residence permit. This social group, often labelled clandestini
to lay emphasis on their alleged crime propensity (Solano, 2014), stands ‘at the inter-
section of class and race exclusions’(Mireanu, 2014: 80). Consequently, images of
crime and disorder are consistently associated with their presence in urban spaces
(Melossi and Selmini, 2009). This situation leads to conflicts between residents and
the ‘unwanted guests’and it turns immigrants into the scapegoat for all economic
and societal problems (Marzorati, 2010).
One of the most vivid consequences of this global obsession with security is visible in
governments’reliance on preventive and exclusionary measures to control urban spaces.
Although containment and confinement still remain important forms of spatial control, an
old-fashioned tool of socio-spatial exclusion, that is banishment, has vigorously re-gained
popularity (Beckett and Herbert, 2009). The use of banning orders has been documented
across different national contexts, such as the US (Beckett and Herbert, 2009), Australia
(Palmer and Warren, 2014), the UK (Crawford, 2009), Germany (Belina, 2007), the
Netherlands (Schuilenburg, 2015), Italy (Crocitti and Selmini, 2017) and Denmark
(Søgaard, 2018). Banning orders are measures adopted by administrative or criminal
justice authorities to control undesirable behaviour by preventing an individual from
doing something or staying in a certain area. These measures generally fall under the
heading of ‘prevention’and, as such, they might even be imposed on individuals who
are not convicted of any criminal offence.
In this article, I intend to explore a particular form of banishment, that is a ban on resi-
dence, a measure imposed by judicial authorities on individuals accused of committing a
crime on the ground that he –less often she –represents a danger to society. By using the
criminal court of Turin (Italy) as a case study, this article explores the use of banning
orders towards a particular group of defendants, namely foreign defendants who stand
trial as irregular. This social group seems to be the preferred target of practices of banish-
ment from judicial authorities. This article has two aims. First, by looking at the
law-in-action, I intend to shed light on why courtroom actors rely heavily on banishment
towards foreign defendants, especially in cases of drug trafficking. Second, I use this
case-study to explore the relationship between urban management practices and migra-
tion management practices. In other words, I question whether judicial practices of ban-
ishment fall within the domain of ‘crimmigration’(Stumpf, 2006) and, in particular, if
they can be understood as bordering practices. With the latter term, in line with Diener
and Hagen (2012), I refer to national or local practices that, far from taking place at
538 Punishment & Society 25(2)
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