Devised to punish: Policing, detaining and deporting Romanians from France
| Author | Ioana Vrăbiescu |
| DOI | 10.1177/1477370819859463 |
| Published date | 01 July 2021 |
| Date | 01 July 2021 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1477370819859463
European Journal of Criminology
2021, Vol. 18(4) 585 –602
© The Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1477370819859463
journals.sagepub.com/home/euc
Devised to punish: Policing,
detaining and deporting
Romanians from France
Ioana Vrăbiescu
University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Abstract
The criminalization and de-criminalization of foreign nationals is performed by the French state
through legal and institutional means in order to increase the deportability of unwanted EU
citizens. By policing petty criminals and then instrumenting administrative coercion as a form of
punishment, France opts to detain, deport and ban the entry of undesirable EU citizens, mostly
Romanian citizens. Moreover, under a bilateral state agreement, France also engages Romanian
police agents to help identify ‘their own’ nationals. This article uncovers, problematizes and
explains the relationship between state (de-)criminalization practices and the forced removal
of EU citizens. In doing so, it aims to respond to the following questions: What is the role
of the Franco-Romanian police alliance in the criminalization of migration? What are the legal
mechanisms advancing the de-criminalization of migration and how do they influence deportation
processes? What is the meaning of punishment for EU deportable/deported citizens?
Keywords
Crimmigration, deportation, detention, EU citizens, mobility, punishment
Introduction
France has set in motion an extensive repressive apparatus of policing, incarceration and
deportation of non-citizens (Fassin, 2013; Fischer, 2013; Cimade et al., 2012, 2017),
deportation relying on international cooperation. Various forms of state collaboration
have been encouraged via a shift in migration management towards policing, control and
surveillance of aliens (Block, 2012; Ellermann, 2008; El Qadim, 2014).1 One of these
political alliances is the Franco-Romanian bilateral police agreement, which allows
Romanian police officers to work together with French police agents in the French
Corresponding author:
Ioana Vrăbiescu, Department of Anthropology, University of Amsterdam, Nieuwe Achtergracht,
Amsterdam, 1018 WV, The Netherlands.
Email: ioana.vrabiescu@gmail.com
859463EUC0010.1177/1477370819859463European Journal of CriminologyVrăbiescu
research-article2019
Article
586European Journal of Criminology 18(4)
territory. The outcome is the maintenance of an oversized deportation apparatus and an
‘implementation surplus’ against Romanian citizens, which results in the policing and
deportation of more EU citizens than France’s average deportation of migrants.
Furthermore, within the framework of deportation mechanisms (Bosworth et al., 2018;
Drotbohm and Hasselberg, 2015), bilateral police collaboration sheds light on how two
states agree to apply exceptional measures to vulnerable, poor and racialized EU citizens
who are disproportionately affected by administrative sanctions, especially deportation.
This article aims to show the ways in which the declared goal of deportation conceals
and facilitates procedures that are punitive in character and directed at undesirable
mobile EU citizens.
Two allegedly distinct domains of public order – criminal law and immigration law
– increasingly overlap (Aas and Bosworth, 2013; Bosworth, 2012), leading to unpredict-
able outcomes for both migrants and citizens (Aas, 2014; Aliverti, 2016). A new stream
of social and legal investigation, ‘crimmigration’ (Stumpf, 2006), describes the ways in
which the criminalization of mobility is coupled with the administrative punishment of
foreigners who are found without the right documents to reside on a sovereign territory
(Aliverti, 2012; Stumpf, 2013). The criminalization of foreigners and the management of
migration through crime control have been tackled by several scholars (Chacón, 2009;
Dow, 2013; Legomsky, 2007) who particularly question the condition of ‘double-pun-
ished’ foreign criminals (Boe Sanchez, 2016; Bosworth, 2014, 2017; Turnbull and
Hasselberg, 2017), in which prisoners are not released but are deported at the end of their
sentence (Hasselberg, 2016). In addition, the deportation from European territories of
ex-offenders who are long-term residents raises the alarm on the limits of access to citi-
zenship and the increased deportability of citizen offenders (Bosworth et al., 2016). In
this context, deportation as Hasselberg defines it ‘is a practice of state power embedded
in anxiety, uncertainty and unrest that elicits different perceptions of (un)justice and
deservedness’ (2016: 40). In particular, administrative punishment or ‘removal’ enacted
due to the petty criminality of non-citizens problematizes the role of administrative
authority in managing migration (Eule et al., 2018; Zedner, 2016). These specific enquir-
ies are relevant for the present case study of EU citizens: ‘illegalized’ irregular mobile
subjects, petty criminals deemed ‘deportable’ even when no judicial charges have been
brought against them, and ex-offenders who are submitted to double incarceration plus
deportation (see De Genova, 2002).
Deportation as punishment has been theorized by scholars who explain the punitive
dimension of state repressive mechanisms enacted towards racialized, securitized and
criminalized aliens (Bleichmar, 1999; Chin, 2010; Cornelisse, 2010; Kanstroom, 2000;
Waltes, 2010). Mainly tackled within British and US literature (Armenta, 2017; Chacón
and Coutin, 2018; Golash-Boza, 2015), the racialization of crimmigration is an outcome
of deportation. Nevertheless, little has been done to expose the European conundrum of
deportation (Aas, 2014; Barker, 2017; Kalir, 2019; Kalir and Wissink, 2016; Khosravi,
2009, 2017). Khosravi (2017) provocatively highlights the limitations of deportation
studies that often stop at the borders of the nation-state. Deportation incorporates the
governmental technologies of securitization, racialization and criminalization, enacting
several state bureaucracies, from the police to the judicial and administrative system.
This article argues that certain stages of deportation proceedings are used with punitive
To continue reading
Request your trialUnlock full access with a free 7-day trial
Transform your legal research with vLex
-
Complete access to the largest collection of common law case law on one platform
-
Generate AI case summaries that instantly highlight key legal issues
-
Advanced search capabilities with precise filtering and sorting options
-
Comprehensive legal content with documents across 100+ jurisdictions
-
Trusted by 2 million professionals including top global firms
-
Access AI-Powered Research with Vincent AI: Natural language queries with verified citations
Unlock full access with a free 7-day trial
Transform your legal research with vLex
-
Complete access to the largest collection of common law case law on one platform
-
Generate AI case summaries that instantly highlight key legal issues
-
Advanced search capabilities with precise filtering and sorting options
-
Comprehensive legal content with documents across 100+ jurisdictions
-
Trusted by 2 million professionals including top global firms
-
Access AI-Powered Research with Vincent AI: Natural language queries with verified citations
Unlock full access with a free 7-day trial
Transform your legal research with vLex
-
Complete access to the largest collection of common law case law on one platform
-
Generate AI case summaries that instantly highlight key legal issues
-
Advanced search capabilities with precise filtering and sorting options
-
Comprehensive legal content with documents across 100+ jurisdictions
-
Trusted by 2 million professionals including top global firms
-
Access AI-Powered Research with Vincent AI: Natural language queries with verified citations
Unlock full access with a free 7-day trial
Transform your legal research with vLex
-
Complete access to the largest collection of common law case law on one platform
-
Generate AI case summaries that instantly highlight key legal issues
-
Advanced search capabilities with precise filtering and sorting options
-
Comprehensive legal content with documents across 100+ jurisdictions
-
Trusted by 2 million professionals including top global firms
-
Access AI-Powered Research with Vincent AI: Natural language queries with verified citations
Unlock full access with a free 7-day trial
Transform your legal research with vLex
-
Complete access to the largest collection of common law case law on one platform
-
Generate AI case summaries that instantly highlight key legal issues
-
Advanced search capabilities with precise filtering and sorting options
-
Comprehensive legal content with documents across 100+ jurisdictions
-
Trusted by 2 million professionals including top global firms
-
Access AI-Powered Research with Vincent AI: Natural language queries with verified citations