Expanding crimmigration: The detention and deportation of New Zealanders from Australia
| DOI | 10.1177/0004865817730858 |
| Published date | 01 December 2018 |
| Author | Elizabeth Stanley |
| Date | 01 December 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Australian & New Zealand
Journal of Criminology
Expanding crimmigration: The
2018, Vol. 51(4) 519–536
! The Author(s) 2017
detention and deportation of
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New Zealanders from Australia
DOI: 10.1177/0004865817730858
journals.sagepub.com/home/anj
Elizabeth Stanley
Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
Abstract
The significant concept of ‘crimmigration’ has evolved to explain how criminal and immigra-
tion laws have begun to merge, expanding state powers to surveil, control and punish. States
use crimmigration processes to reinforce cultural, political and moral boundaries. In doing so,
states frequently displace principles of punishment or rights in favour of promoting
compliance, security or belonging. In relation to the case of New Zealanders detained–
deported from Australia, this article illustrates new forms of crimmigration. First, crimmigra-
tion is expanding in a context of neoliberal responsibilization. Given the gradual removal of
economic supports or political inclusion, ‘non-citizens’ share a deeply precarious space, and
more groups are being made ‘at risk’ of crimmigration interventions. Once likely to focus
upon certain populations, especially on ‘race’ or nationality grounds, crimmigration now
engages all ‘non-citizens’. Second, crimmigration has expanded to include pre-emption –
‘non-citizens’ are targeted not just on account of their criminal behaviours but also
their perceived associations, ‘risky’ behaviours or suspicious associations. Finally, and third,
crimmigration strategies have expanded across borders, in ways that fundamentally distort
established legal principles on the ever-shifting grounds of security. The contagion of
crimmigration creates multiple punishments for ‘non-citizens’ that far surpass the nature of
their offending or their ‘risk’ to society.
Keywords
Australia, crimmigration, deportations, New Zealand, pre-emption, responsibilization,
security
Date received: 29 November 2016; accepted: 21 August 2017
Introduction
In late 2015, the detention and expulsion of New Zealanders from Australia began to
dominate news headlines in New Zealand (NZ). While Australia has a very long history
of deportation practices, amendments to the Migration Act in 2014 have led to increased
Corresponding author:
Elizabeth Stanley, Victoria University of Wellington, PO Box 600, Wellington 6140, New Zealand.
Email: elizabeth.stanley@vuw.ac.nz
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Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 51(4)
visa cancellations of ‘non-citizens’ (Grewcock, 2014). Even people who have not lived in
NZ for decades, or never committed crime but are marked as ‘bad character’, are now
held within immigration detention centres and removed from Australian soil. Hundreds
of NZ citizens have been detained and deported.
A growing criminological literature has developed to understand immigration deten-
tion and deportations. The significant concept of ‘crimmigration’ has evolved to consider
the ways in which criminal and immigration laws have begun to merge, expanding state
powers to surveil, control and punish (Stumpf, 2006). Crimmigration processes have
allowed states to bolster their power, reaffirm who belongs, and assert dominant moral,
cultural and political norms (Bosworth, 2008; Leerkes & Broeders, 2013; Weber &
Pickering, 2013). In doing so, a parallel system has emerged in which ‘non-citizens’
are subject to the removal of legal protections and, in some cases, serious violations.
This has increasingly been the case for New Zealanders detained–deported from
Australia.
Thousands of New Zealanders now live in Australia. With diminishing access to
welfare supports or routes to citizenship, these residents hold a precarious position.
They live in a state of limbo (Nolan, 2015). Following amendments to the Migration
Act, New Zealanders have also increasingly begun to experience visa cancellations and
immigration detention.
Drawing upon these events, this article demonstrates that crimmigration is developing
in three new ways. First, crimmigration is expanding in an era of neoliberal responsibi-
lization. ‘Non-citizens’ enjoy few financial safety nets or supports, and are increasingly
blamed for their failure to thrive (Brown, 2016) and for their perceived resource claims
(Aas, 2014). Bearing the brunt of structurally maintained inequalities, ‘non-citizens’ are
placed at increased risk of certain types of offending, and subsequent exclusion
(Tazreiter, Weber, Pickering, Segrave, & McKernan, 2016). Thus, while crimmigration
was once likely to focus upon certain populations – especially on ‘race’ or nationality
grounds – it now engages all ‘non-citizens’. For New Zealanders, who historically felt
that they had almost full membership within Australia, this neo-liberal responsibiliza-
tion firmly devalues them from ‘mate’ to precarious ‘Other’.
Second, crimmigration has expanded to include pre-emption, with authorities seeking
to disrupt imagined risks or threats (McCulloch & Wilson, 2015). These pre-emptive
strategies dismiss established legal principles – such as the presumption of innocence –
in favour of stopping crime before it even starts (McCulloch & Wilson, 2015).
In Australia, New Zealanders (and other ‘non-citizens’) are now targeted not just on
account of their criminal behaviours but also their perceived associations, moral conduct
or ‘bad character’. Visa cancellations and deportations are justified on the grounds of
suspicion.
And, third, within a context of cross-border securitization, the receiving state of NZ
has also sustained a performance of crimmigration. NZ politicians have re-iterated a
rhetoric of ‘dangerousness’ and introduced legislation that advances further punish-
ments upon returning offenders. Faced with deportations, recipient states may therefore
disregard established punishment principles in a bid to market their ability to protect
(Pratt & Anderson, 2016, p. 8). Crimmigration, it seems, is contagious and expansive,
creating multiple layers of punishment for ‘non-citizens’.
Stanley
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Crimmigration
Over a decade ago, Stumpf (2006, p. 379) engaged the term ‘crimmigration’ to describe
how immigration and criminal law is being merged to ‘marshal the sovereign power of
the state to punish’. Within ‘global north’ states, in particular, immigration and criminal
law enforcement are ever-more closely entwined. Immigration authorities draw upon
expansive surveillance and police powers to find and control ‘illegals’, and subject them
to severe punishments that far outstrip the seriousness of any offence (Stumpf, 2014).
Meanwhile, ‘non-citizens’ who commit crimes are regularly met with immigration-
responses, including deportation. They are managed through immigration systems
that streamline and manage people outside the usual norms of criminal justice protec-
tions. Crimmigration developments are flexible, discretionary and ever-shifting – it is ‘a
cauldron of legal and social transformation’ that is increasing state powers in ways that
we are still to fully comprehend (Stumpf, 2014, p. 237).
At a time of politically charged debate on the apparent failure of states to secure their
borders, crimmigration has a role in re-establishing a strong image of the governing state
(Bosworth & Guild, 2008, p. 714). Monitoring and expelling ‘non-citizens’ functions to
bolster state power, and to remind citizens of the state’s role in their protection
(Bosworth, 2008; Noferi, 2014). It provides the appearance that the state can, and
will, manage ‘risky’ populations, through whatever means (Malloch & Stanley, 2005).
Significant ‘public spectacles . . . to communicate the worth and purpose of securing bor-
ders’ are common (Pickering & Weber, 2014, p. 1007). Practices of detention and deport-
ation serve to illustrate ‘who belongs’, and who should be excluded (Leerkes & Broeders,
2013, p. 96). These border performances reassert the ‘territoriality of the nation-state’
and reinforce ‘cultural, political and moral boundaries’ (Weber & Pickering, 2013,
pp. 112–113).
Against this backdrop, ‘non-citizens’ are now commonly depicted in ways that empha-
size their illegitimate or abnormal status (Bigo, 2007; Krasmann, 2007), they are presented
as the ‘great unknown’ or an ‘indeterminate threat to social order’ (Bosworth, 2008,
p. 203). A culture of suspicion has evolved towards those who arrive at the border, and
national or ethnic difference is often represented as an indicator for an inherently risky
or dangerous nature (Malloch & Stanley, 2005; Noferi, 2014). These ‘notions of other-
ness and suspicion’ have developed in relation to a ‘global privilege’ of citizenship
(Aas, 2011, p. 332). That is, there is also a hierarchy between foreigners – while some
‘can never be more than aliens’, others are ‘potential citizens’ who might seamlessly
integrate into the mainstream economy and culture of the receiving state (Bosworth,
2008, p. 202). The risk of ‘non-citizens’ is declared, therefore, not just in terms of what
they have done, but also for who they are. Membership lines are drawn on the basis of
criminal behaviours but also with regard to ethnicity and nationality – crimmigration
is a process of socio-cultural, economic and political sorting (Stumpf, 2014).
Differential treatment and violation
While crimmigration is, certainly, about the convergence of criminal justice and immi-
gration spheres, it is – as Aas (2014) makes clear – also about ‘differentiation’. A parallel
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