52233325
Civic stratification and crime. A comparison of asylum migrants with different legal statuses
Contrary to natural born citizens, migrants can have a variety of legal statuses depending on how they are classified by immigration law. Together, such legal or ‘civic’ statuses constitute a system of civic stratification, from high (privileged) to low (restricted). Recent scholarship highlights the relevance of immigration law for understanding crime patterns. We analytically synthesize this literature and extend it empirically by examining its usefulness in explaining the relationship between asylum migrants’ civic statuses in The Netherlands and their chances of being registered as a crime suspect. Logistic regression analyses were conducted using a unique dataset in which comprehensive administrative data from various governmental sources were combined. Four civic status groups were compared: naturalized citizens, residence permit holders, asylum seekers in the procedure, and former asylum seekers whose stay in the country had become unauthorized. The results suggest that strain theory and more constructionist stances are required in order to understand the complex relationship between civic stratification and crime. We discuss implications for other countries.
144551343
Contemporary European migrations, civic stratification and citizenship
Since the late 1980s there has been a diversification of European migratory flows. States, which remain the key actors in migration policies despite growing European harmonisation, have responded to these complex patterns and contradictory pressures by diversifying migrant categories and statuses. The heterogeneity of migrant statuses, especially the growth in the number of those on temporary statuses and the undocumented, challenges the thesis of a post national citizenship as having been achieved in relation to non European Union or third country migrants in the European Union. The recent proposals to extend mobility and socio-economic rights to third country nationals in the EU will only apply to long-term residents with evidence of adequate resources. The inability to confront the contradictions and tensions between economic needs and political closure will lead to more repressive conditions for undocumented migrants and reinforced border controls, especially in the light of the electoral success of Far Right parties and widespread anti-immigrant attitudes in a number of European Union states.
143754490
Civic integration and class formation
The aim is to explore the usefulness of inverting the class analysis problematic, which starts from class structure and then asks under what conditions sociopolitical class formation occurs, and then how this in turn bears upon social cohesion. By contrast, the route followed here starts from the assumption that the institutional unity of citizenship, market and bureaucratic relations is central to social cohesion, and then concentrates on the questions of how inequalities of class and status affect the institutionalization of citizenship and thereby its integrative function. While its practice is heavily influenced by the structure of social inequality, citizenship cart be seen to exert a force-field of its own. Four main types of 'civic stratification' are distinguished by reference to citizens' differing enjoyment of, and abilities to exercise, rights, their social categorization by the rights themselves and by their motivation to extend and enlarge them: namely, civic exclusion, civic gain and deficit, and civic expansion. Their consequences for social integration are then briefly discussed. One advantage of this approach is that it allows inequalities related to age, gender and ethnicity to be incorporated within the same explanatory scheme.
154663619
Managing Migration: Civic Stratification and Migrants Rights
Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1. A cluster of contradictions: the politics of migration in the European Union Chapter 2. Rights and controls in the management of migration: the case of Germany Chapter 3. The ambiguous terrain of rights: Italy's emergent immigration regime Chapter 4. The shifting contours of rights: Britain's asylum and immigration regime Chapter 5. Stratified rights and the management of migration: national distinctiveness in Europe Chapter 6. Gender, race and the emdodiment of rights Chapter 7. Managing contradiction: civic stratification and migrants in Europe References
145404781
Managing Contradiction: Civic Stratification and Migrants’ Rights 1
Political and academic interest in cross-national migration has generated two very different and potentially polarized positions. One perspective emphasizes the continuing power or the nation state, while the other sees migration, and more specifically migrants’ rights, as the manifestation of an emergent ‘post-national’ society. This article offers a conceptual framework which addresses this polarization through the concept of civic stratification (Lockwood, 1996). In illustrating its application, the study shows how such an approach goes beyond a traditional citizenship framework (e.g., Marshall, 1950) in considering degrees of partial membership, but remains cautious with respect to claims about universal, transnational rights.
56001664
Crime among irregular immigrants and the influence of internal border control
Both the number of crime suspects without legal status and the number of irregular or undocumented immigrants held in detention facilities increased substantially in the Netherlands between 1997 and 2003. In this period, the Dutch state increasingly attempted to exclude irregular immigrants from the formal labour market and public provisions. At the same time the registered crime among irregular migrants rose. The ‘marginalisation thesis’ asserts that a larger number of migrants have become involved in crime in response to a decrease in conventional life chances. Using police and administrative data, the present study takes four alternative interpretations into consideration based on: 1) reclassification of immigrant statuses by the state and redefinition of the law, 2) criminal migration and cross-border crime, 3) changes in policing, and 4) demographic changes. A combination of factors is found to have caused the rise in crime, but the marginalisation thesis still accounts for at least 28%. These findings accentuate the need for a more thorough discussion on the intended and unintended consequences of border control for immigrant crime.
153591786
Crimmigration in the Netherlands
For a long time the Netherlands has been internationally known for its tolerant and humane environment for first‐ and second‐generation migrants. However, as in many European countries, over the past few decades the political debate on immigration has gradually grown more negative. Links between crime, security, migration, and integration have become more established, resulting in a series of policy and legislative reforms targeting migrants in the country. These developments seem to fit into the broader trend for which scholars have coined the term crimmigration, the intersection of crime control and immigration control. In this article, using crimmigration as a sensitizing concept, we seek to gain insight into the governance of migration and crime in Netherlands.
148326829
Marginalizing migrants: illegality, racialization, and vulnerability
This chapter examines how migrant deviance is constructed at the global and local level through processes of control manifested through law and policing. It then talks about the constitutive role of national and local border control agents in processes of exclusion and criminalization. The chapter considers the individual experiences of such control, and how such intensified controls both fabricate and escalate deviance. It further considers the intensified incarceration and deportation of irregular migrants, and how the stigma and criminalization of the deportation experience lingers upon individual identities following their forced return to the global South. The immigration detention complex operates parallel to a wider racialization of imprisonment, fuelled by the gravitation of policing activity towards those whose immigration status may be disputed, and where minor legal violations can result in incarceration and deportation.
145251539
Governing Through Migration Control: Security and Citizenship in Britain
Expanding mechanisms of border control increasingly depend on the criminalisation of non-citizens. While some criminology scholarship might suggest such measures announce an increasing governance of migration 'through crime', we argue that it is not simply a case of punitive crime control strategies leaching into migration policies. Not only are foreigners in a far more vulnerable position to the British citizen, but the restrictions they face play important constitutive roles in newly invigorated discourses of citizenship and nationalism. In this article we suggest that criminologists must move on from studies that emphasise control and criminalisation to consider more broadly the implications of basing a politics of national identity that aspires to 'solidarity' and shared values on the forcible exclusion of growing numbers of people.
152682443
Governing immigration through crime : a reader
In the United States, immigration is generally seen as a law and order issue. Amidst increasing anti-immigrant sentiment, unauthorized migrants have been cast as lawbreakers. Governing Immigration Through Crime offers a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the use of crime and punishment to manage undocumented immigrants. Presenting key readings and cutting-edge scholarship, this volume examines a range of contemporary criminalizing practices: restrictive immigration laws, enhanced border policing, workplace audits, detention and deportation, and increased policing of immigration at the state and local level. Of equal importance, the readings highlight how migrants have managed to actively resist these punitive practices. In bringing together critical theorists of immigration to understand how the current political landscape propagates the view of the "illegal alien" as a threat to social order, this text encourages students and general readers alike to think seriously about the place of undocumented immigrants in American society.
142017843
Criminalizing the Undocumented: Ironic Boundaries of the Post-September 11th 'Pale of Law'
The general hypothesis put forth in this Article is that well-accepted historical matrices are increasingly inadequate to address the complex issues raised by various U.S. government practices in the so-called "war on terrorism." The Article describes certain stresses that have recently built upon two major legal dichotomies: the citizen/non-citizen and criminal/civil lines. Professor Kanstroom reviews the use of the citizen/non-citizen dichotomies as part of the post-September 11th enforcement regime and considers the increasing convergence between the immigration and criminal justice systems. Professor Kanstroom concludes by suggesting the potential emergence of a disturbing new legal system, which contains the worst features of both legal dichotomies.
142493206
The Crimmigration Crisis: Immigrants, Crime, and Sovereign Power
This article provides a fresh theoretical perspective on the most important development in immigration law today: the convergence of immigration and criminal law. It proposes a unifying theory - membership theory - for why these two areas of law recently have become so connected, and why that convergence is troubling. Membership theory restricts individual rights and privileges to those who are members of a social contract between the government and the people. Membership theory provides decisionmakers with justification for excluding individuals from society, using immigration and criminal law as the means of exclusion. It operates in the intersection between criminal and immigration law to mark an ever-expanding group of outsiders by denying them the privileges that citizens hold, such as the right to vote or to remain in the United States. Membership theory manifests in this new area through certain powers of the sovereign state: the power to punish, and the power to express moral condemnation. This use of membership theory places the law on the edge of a crimmigration crisis. Only the harshest elements of each area of law make their way into the criminalization of immigration law, and the apparatus of the state is used to expel from society those deemed criminally alien. The result is an ever-expanding population of the excluded and alienated. The article begins with a dystopia, narrating a future in which criminal and immigration law have completely merged, and membership theory has resulted in extreme divisions in our society between insiders and outsiders - between the included and the alienated. The rest of the article describes the seeds of that future in the past and present. Part II describes the present confluence of immigration and criminal law. Part III sets out the role of membership theory in those areas in excluding noncitizens and ex-offenders from society. It details the role of sovereign power in drawing and enforcing those lines of exclusion. The article concludes by describing the potential consequences of the convergence of these two areas and the use of membership theory to justify decisions to exclude.
142592805
Ironies of Social Control and the Criminalization of Immigrants
As moral panic over immigrants spreadduring the early 1990s, immigrationpolicies became increasingly criminalized in the wake of the bombingsof the World Trade Center in 1993 and ofthe Murrah Federal Building in OklahomaCity in 1995. In response to the threat ofterrorism at home, Congress enacted theIllegal Immigration Reform andImmigration Responsibility Act along withthe Anti-Terrorism and Effective DeathPenalty Act in 1996. Since then severalkey provisions of those statutes haveproduced numerous violations of civilliberties and immigrants' rights. Drawingon a conceptual framework developed bysociologist Gary T. Marx (1981), thisarticle examines critically thecontradictions and ironies of immigrationcontrol, specifically the mostcontroversial aspects of the 1996 laws:court-stripping provisions, use of secretevidence, and growing register ofdeportable crimes. In light of theterrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001,the article expresses concerns over thegovernment's current campaign to fightterrorism, especially the use of racialprofiling and mass detention shrouded insecrecy.
143946074
Gender Stereotyping in the Dutch Asylum Procedure: “Independent” Men versus “Dependent” Women 1
Attention for discrimination against women in asylum law has grown considerably during the last few decades. Yet it is male claimants who have had smaller success rates in the asylum procedures of different countries. Using administrative data from the Dutch INS, we show this difference is caused by the traditionally gendered migration pattern of asylum seekers. Men have a smaller success rate than women because they are less likely than women to have a spouse or children, are less likely to follow their spouse to the country of destination, and are more likely to come from countries considered to be safe. This suggests that men are less successful in their attempts to seek asylum because they better fit the image of “bogus” refugees, while women more clearly match the image of “victim of patriarchal domination.”
145746954
Liminal Legality: Salvadoran and Guatemalan Immigrants' Lives in the United States1
This article examines the effects of an uncertain legal status on the lives of immigrants, situating their experiences within frameworks of citizenship/belonging and segmented assimilation, and using Victor Turner's concept of liminality and Susan Coutin's "legal nonexistence." It questions black-and-white conceptualizations of documented and undocumented immigration by exposing the gray area of "liminal legality" and examines how this in-between status affects the individual's social networks and family, the place of the church in immigrants' lives, and the broader domain of artistic expression. Empirically, it draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted among Salvadoran and Guatemalan immigrants in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Phoenix from 1989 to 2001. The article lends support to arguments about the continued centrality of the nation-state in the lives of immigrants.
5641000
The Educational Legacy of Unauthorized Migration: Comparisons across U.S.-Immigrant Groups in how Parents’ Status Affects Their Offspring 1
This research compares several national-origin groups in terms of how parents’ entry, legalization and naturalization (i.e., membership) statuses relate to their children's educational attainment. In the case of Asian groups, the members of which predominantly come to the United States as permanent legal migrants, we hypothesize (1) that father's and mother's statuses will be relatively homogenous and few in number and (2) that these will exert minimal net effects on second-generation attainment. For Mexicans, many of whom initially come as temporary unauthorized migrants, we hypothesize (1) that parental status combinations will be heterogeneous and greater in number and (2) that marginal membership statuses will exert negative net effects on education in the second generation. To assess these ideas, we analyze unique intergenerational data from Los Angeles on the young adult members of second-generation national-origin groups and their parents. The findings show that Asian immigrant groups almost universally exhibit similar father–mother migration statuses and high educational attainment among children. By contrast, Mexicans manifest more numerous discrepant father–mother combinations, with those in which the mother remains unauthorized carrying negative implications for children's schooling. The paper discusses the theoretical and policy implications of the delays in incorporation that result from Mexican Americans needing extra time and resources compared to the members of other groups to overcome their handicap of marginal membership status {i.e., being more likely to enter and remain unauthorized).
142732446
Crimmigration at the Local Level: Criminal Justice Processes in the Shadow of Deportation
In recent decades, authorities have adopted a number of programs that tether the criminal and immigration enforcement apparatuses in novel ways. This mixed methods case study assesses the impact of such programs on local criminal justice processes and outcomes in King County, Washington. Although the empirical research on the effects of such programs is scant, the emerging literature on legal hybridity suggests that the enmeshment of the criminal and immigration systems is likely to enhance the state's power to detain and punish. The quantitative results support this hypothesis: non-citizens flagged by immigration authorities stay in jail significantly longer than their similarly situated counterparts. Qualitative focus group interviews with prosecuting and defense attorneys identify four key mechanisms by which Immigration Customs and Enforcement detainers alter the incentive structure, impact decisionmaking, and extend jail stays for non-citizens. Together, these findings suggest that immigration law and the threat of deportation now cast a long shadow over local as well as federal criminal proceedings, and enhance penal pain for non-citizens. Implications of these findings for the “crimmigration” literature and research on the effect of citizenship status on criminal justice outcomes are discussed.
142811462
Civic Stratification and Social Positioning: CEE Labour Migrants without a Work Permit
Civic stratification is a relatively new dimension of social inequality in contemporary Western societies. States grant, or deny, different legal statuses and related social and economic rights. European Union (EU) nationals, for instance, have full rights to settle and work in other EU countries. Most EU countries have made an exception for nationals of new member states such as Romania and Bulgaria, who joined the EU in 2007. As in the past, Romanian and Bulgarian nationals need a work permit to work in other EU countries. However, many Romanians and Bulgarians came to countries such as the Netherlands without a work permit. This study examines what this ambivalent legal position of many Romanian and Bulgarian nationals means for their social position. Using data from a survey among 654 Central and Eastern European labour migrants, we distinguish four migrant categories: (1) Romanians and Bulgarians with a work permit; (2) Romanians and Bulgarians without a work permit; (3) Romanians and Bulgarians who do not need a work permit; and (4) Polish labour migrants who hold a different legal position. We use three measures of the social position of migrants: occupational status, earned monthly incomes, and housing conditions. We find that Romanians and Bulgarians with a work permit (‘compliant migrants’) score better on all three indicators than Romanians and Bulgarians without a work permit (‘semi-compliant migrants’). Polish labour migrants have a comparable marginal position in the Netherlands with that of many Romanians and Bulgarians without a work permit. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
22141073
The impact of a long asylum procedure on quality of life, disability and physical health in Iraqi asylum seekers in the Netherlands
BackgroundRefugees in western countries often face long juridical procedures before their requests for a resident permit is granted. The, still scanty, literature shows high prevalence rates of psychopathology among asylum seekers, but there has been little interest for other impaired dimensions of health. The present study is part of a community-based mental health survey among Iraqi asylum seekers in the Netherlands, conducted between November 2000 and September 2001, on the risks of a long asylum procedure.ObjectivesThe objectives of this study were to explore quality of life (QoL), disability and physical health and their relationships with psychopathology and pre- and post-migration variables.MethodTwo groups of pre-stratified (length of asylum procedure), randomly selected Iraqi asylum seekers (N = 143 and N = 151), were interviewed with fully structured, culturally validated questionnaires. Quality of life was examined with QoLWHO-Bref, functional disability with the Brief Disability Questionnaire and physical health with a newly developed questionnaire. Psychiatric (DSM IV) disorders were measured with the WHO Composite International Diagnostic Interview 2.1. Multivariate logistic regression analyses were used to estimate the relationships between the outcome measures and socio-demographics, adverse life events in Iraq, post-migration living problems (PMLP) and psychopathology.ResultsRespondents with a long asylum procedure reported significantly lower QoL, higher functional disability and more physical complaints. Multivariate regression shows that length of stay is the strongest predictor for a low overall QoL. In addition, lower QoL was predicted by psychopathology, higher age, adverse life events in the Netherlands and the PMLP-clusters: family issues, socio-economic living conditions and socio-religious aspects. Disability was predicted by psychopathology, higher age and the PMLP clusters: family issues and socio-religious aspects. Physical complaints were predicted by length of asylum procedure, psychopathology, female sex, adverse life events in Iraq and PMLP-family issues.ConclusionA long asylum procedure has a negative impact on the overall health situation and the QoL of asylum seekers. The situation is not only harming the affected, but also interferes with the integration process in the Netherlands or elsewhere. The findings are important for health professionals, governments and human right specialists.
148194766
Back to the poorhouse? Social protection and social control of unauthorised immigrants in the shadow of the welfare state
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, De Swaan, a historical sociologist, speculated that heightened global interconnectedness, and the resulting increased potential for international migration, would lead to transnational social policies. In this view, states of richer countries would increasingly perceive an interest in financing social policies in poorer countries in an effort to reduce the need for the distant poor to migrate. By and large, such transnational social policies have not materialised. In this article, which focuses on ‘the Dutch case’, it is argued that international migration, and the desire by states to selectively limit international migration, is nonetheless leading to new forms of poor relief and poverty control, not in countries of origin but in countries of destination. In the shadow of the Western welfare states, we now find elementary and, in many cases, rather archaic practices of poor relief and anti-pauperism measures for certain categories of unauthorised immigrants. Scholarship on migration and citizenship indicates that the rights of immigrants increasingly resemble the rights of citizens, especially in comprehensive welfare states. This trend seems to be complemented, however, by a growing differentiation of social citizenship between those formally admitted (both citizens and residence permit holders) and those officially considered ‘illegal’ non-members.
15329824
Building on the Foundation of General Strain Theory: Specifying the Types of Strain Most Likely to Lead to Crime and Delinquency
General strain theory (GST) is usually tested by examining the effect of strain on crime. Researchers, however, have little guidance when it comes to selecting among the many hundreds of types of strain and have trouble explaining why only some of them are related to crime. This article builds on GST by describing the characteristics of strainful events and conditions that influence their relationship to crime. Strains are said to be most likely to result in crime when they (1) are seen as unjust, (2) are seen as high in magnitude, (3) are associated with low social control, and (4) create some pressure or incentive to engage in criminal coping. Drawing on these characteristics, it is predicted that some types of strain will not be related to crime, including types that have dominated the research on strain theory, and that others will be related to crime, including types that have been neglected by empirical researchers.
142242160
Legal Consciousness of Undocumented Latinos: Fear and Stigma as Barriers to Claims-Making for First- and 1.5-Generation Immigrants
This article examines the legal consciousness and incorporation experiences of undocumented immigrants in the United States. Although this population may be disaggregated along several axes, one central distinction among them is their age at migration. Those who migrated as adults live out their daily lives in different social contexts than those who migrated as children. Therefore, although all undocumented immigrants are legally banned, their identities, sense of belonging, and interpretation of their status vary. Based on ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews of Latino undocumented immigrants from 2001 to 2010, I examine how illegality is experienced differently by social position. The findings suggest that the role of life-stage at migration and work-versus-school contexts importantly inform immigrants' legal consciousness. Fear predominates in the legal consciousness of first-generation undocumented immigrants, while the legal consciousness of the 1.5 generation is more heavily infused with stigma. Fear and stigma are both barriers to claims-making, but they may affect undocumented immigrants' potential for collective mobilization in different ways. At a recent press conference in support of the DREAM Act,1 undocumented college students openly shared details about their lives as they eagerly waited for the event to begin. Off to the side, an older woman carried a stack of banners and smiled shyly every time our eyes met. I walked over to introduce myself, and after some chitchat she cautiously shared her story. Adela2 is the mother of one of the students who helped organize the press conference. This was the first time she had participated in such a public act, and she was nervous about being so visible. She and her family arrived in the United States from Mexico more than 14 years ago, but she has only recently started to participate in a local immigrant rights organization. After much prodding from her children, she joined them in their volunteer efforts. She hopes that under President Barack Obama's administration she and her family may finally have a pathway to lawful permanent residence. Adela was the only parent in the group of about 30 people. She had invited several other women to the press conference who attended meetings at the organization, but all had declined because they were too afraid of becoming targets for deportation. Meanwhile, the students proudly held up banners that made claims and tied their struggle to mainstream ideals: ''Our Dreams Can't Wait'' and ''My Dream, The American Dream.'' The visible contrast between Adela's behavior and that of the students was striking. Adela, whose demographics more closely match those of the imagined undocumented immigrant, is clearly afraid to step out of the shadows. Her children and their peers, on the other hand, seem unafraid to speak out in favor of policies that will help them and their families move out of the margins. This event, like so many other collective mobilization activities in support of undocumented immigrants, illustrates the difference in perspective, legal consciousness, and claims-making behaviors between undocumented immigrant youth and adults. Undocumented youth, many of whom are growing up and coming of age in the United States, are actively demanding full inclusion into U.S. society (Abrego 2008:560; Bloemraad & Trost 2008; Seif 2004). Undocumented adults, on the other hand, have mostly remained in the shadows. In fact, journalistic coverage (Bazar 2009) and a prominent Internet presence of various undocumented youth groups around the country suggest the greater visibility and political claims-making of youth compared to their adult counterparts. Politically, their participation in collective claims-making is important because it may lead to greater inclusion through legalization.3 However, their stratified participation suggests a diversity of experiences in what is often presumed to be a monolithic undocumented immigrant community. …
55718952
Estimating the Size of a Criminal Population from Police Records Using the Truncated Poisson Regression Model
The truncated Poisson regression model is used to arrive at point and interval estimates of the size of two offender populations, i.e. drunk drivers and persons who illegally possess firearms. The dependent capture–recapture variables are constructed from Dutch police records and are counts of individual arrests for both violations. The population size estimates are derived assuming that each count is a realization of a Poisson distribution, and that the Poisson parameters are related to covariates through the truncated Poisson regression model. These assumptions are discussed in detail, and the tenability of the second assumption is assessed by evaluating the marginal residuals and performing tests on overdispersion. For the firearms example, the second assumption seems to hold well, but for the drunk drivers example there is some overdispersion. It is concluded that the method is useful, provided it is used with care.
40793558
Predisposing Factors and Situational Triggers: Exclusionary Reactions to Immigrant Minorities
This paper examines the bases of opposition to immigrant minorities in Western Europe, focusing on The Netherlands. The specific aim of this study is to test the validity of predictions derived from two theories—realistic conflict, which emphasizes considerations of economic well-being, and social identity, which emphasizes considerations of identity based on group membership. The larger aim of this study is to investigate the interplay of predisposing factors and situational triggers in evoking political responses. The analysis is based on a series of three experiments embedded in a public opinion survey carried out in The Netherlands (n=2007) in 1997–98. The experiments, combined with parallel individual-level measures, allow measurement of the comparative impact of both dispositionally based and situationally triggered threats to economic well-being and to national identity at work. The results show, first, that considerations of national identity dominate those of economic advantage in evoking exclusionary reactions to immigrant minorities and, second, that the effect of situational triggers is to mobilize support for exclusionary policies above and beyond the core constituency already predisposed to support them.
56473920
Ethnic profiling in the Netherlands? A reflection on expanding preventive powers, ethnic profiling and a changing social and political context
Over the past decades the Netherlands has developed into a culture of control in which criminals and immigrants are mainly seen as ‘dangerous others’. Tying in with this emergence of the culture of control is the development of a more preventive criminal justice system. By means of expanding preventive powers the criminal justice system is more and more aimed at detecting risky (groups of) persons as soon as possible. This so-called actuarial justice is accompanied by a great deal of discretionary power on the hands of those who have to enforce the law, bearing the risk that such powers may be carried out (in part) on the basis of generalisations relating to race, ethnicity, religion or nationality instead of on the basis of individual behaviour and/or objective evidence. The leading assumption in this article is that recent social, political and legal developments have increased the possibility for ethnic profiling in the Netherlands. Being a country of immigration, mostly immigrants tend to fall victim to these practices. Illustrated by the stop and search powers that have been introduced at municipal level in 2002 and in 2006 in the context of counterterrorism, the authors not only aim to provide insight into the complexity of actuarial justice in relation to ethnic profiling in the Netherlands but also aim to fuel the scientific debate on empirically researching ethnic profiling.
144618463
Ethnic Minorities and Criminal Justice in the Netherlands
Several ethnic minorities in the Netherlands, relative to population, commit more crimes and more serious crimes than do Dutch offenders. There are indications that minority offenders who commit less serious or nonserious offenses seem to be punished more harshly than similar Dutch offenders. Relatively more ethnic minority members are placed in pretrial detention and sentenced to prison-partly because of different crime patterns, partly because many have no fixed residence, and partly because many are less likely than Dutch defendants to turn up at the trial and to plead guilty. Even taking account of these variables, minority membership continues to be a factor in explaining sentencing. Although ethnic stereotyping may play a role, disparities appear to result largely from the unfavorable economic, social, and legal position of ethnic minorities.
11566473
Crime and Immigration: Evidence from Large Immigrant Waves
Abstract This paper focuses on empirical connections between crime and immigration, studying two large waves of recent U.K. immigration (the late 1990s/early 2000s asylum seekers and the post-2004 inflow from EU accession countries). The first wave led to a modest but significant rise in property crime, while the second wave had a small negative impact. There was no effect on violent crime; arrest rates were not different, and changes in crime cannot be ascribed to crimes against immigrants. The findings are consistent with the notion that differences in labor market opportunities of different migrant groups shape their potential impact on crime.
144494021
The Involvement of Different Ethnic Groups in Various Types of Crime in the Netherlands
Various studies have shown that registered crime among non-western immigrant groups in the Netherlands is higher than among the average Dutch population. Little is known however concerning the differences in the nature of crime. The authors studied the degree to which various ethnic groups are represented in various types of officially registered criminal offenses and the degree to which the chance of being a suspect in specific types of crimes can be explained by demographic and socio-economic background characteristics of the person in question. The results show that there are clear differences among ethnic groups with respect to the relative share of various types of criminal offenses. Only a small part of the differences relate to ethnic origin; demographic and socio-economic background characteristics play a more important role. A large part of the explanation might be found in personal factors, coincidental circumstances or background characteristics not included in the model.
143745929
Sociological Criminology and the Mythology of Hispanic Immigration and Crime
Our sociological knowledge of crime is fragmented and ineffective in challenging and correcting mistaken public perceptions, for example, linking immigration and crime. These misperceptions are perpetuated by government reports of growing numbers of Hispanic immigrants in U.S. prisons. However, Hispanic immigrants are disproportionately young males who regardless of citizenship are at greater risk of criminal involvement. They are also more vulnerable to restrictive treatment in the criminal justice system, especially at the pre-trial stage. When these differences are integrated into calculations using equations that begin with observed numbers of immigrants and citizens in state prisons, it is estimated that the involvement of Hispanic immigrants in crime is less than that of citizens. These results cast doubt on the hypothesis that immigration causes crime and make more transparent the immigration and criminal justice policies that inflate the rate of Hispanic incarceration. This transparency helps to resolve a paradox in the picture of Mexican immigration to the United States, since by most measures of well-being, Mexican immigrants are found to do as well and sometimes better than citizens.
143182621
Does Immigration Increase Homicide? Negative Evidence From Three Border Cities
Understanding the complex relationship between immigration and crime was once a core concern of American sociology. Yet the extensive post-1965 wave of immigration to the United States has done little to rekindle scholarly interest in this topic, even as politicians and other public figures advocate public policies to restrict immigration as a means of preventing crime. Although both popular accounts and sociological theory predict that immigration should increase crime in areas where immigrants settle, this study of Miami, El Paso, and San Diego neighborhoods shows that, controlling for other influences, immigration generally does not increase levels of homicide among Latinos and African Americans. Our results not only challenge stereotypes of the “criminal immigrant” but also the core criminological notion that immigration, as a social process, disorganizes communities and increases crime.
143699501
A Comparative Assessment of Criminal Involvement Among Immigrants and Natives Across Seven Nations
This article examines the relationship between immigration policy and crime in seven nations. The countries involved are Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Japan, and the United States. Immigration policy and the criminal involvement of immigrants are compared to determine whether there is a pattern between the two, what that pattern is, and why it exists. The nations examined have very different immigration policies. Some are "immigrant nations," where the volume of immigrants is high, barriers to entry are low, and naturalization is encouraged. Others are "nonimmigrant nations," in which the volume of immigration is relatively low, the barriers to entry are substantial, and permanent settlement and attainment of citizenship are not encouraged. There is a general (but not perfect) pattern in which "immigrant" nations have lower ratios of immigrant to native crime than nations with less liberal policies. It is not clear whether this relationship is due more to the general ability of these nations to integrate foreign populations or to immigration policies per se.
146712524
Race, immigration, and homicide in contemporary Europe and the United States: an urban comparison
In this paper we ask a key question: Do immigrants contribute a disproportionate amount of crime beyond what we would expect from native-born populations? We start with a description of the immigration and homicide literature in the United States and Europe and transition into a description of lessons learned from this topic in the United States. Specifically, we compare the level of immigration to white, black, and Latino homicide rates between 1985 and 2009. We compare and contrast racial/ethnic/immigrant group specific homicide rates in the cities of Miami and San Diego from 1980 through 2000. We do so since both cities are major entry points into the United States. We compare these findings to European countries, because there are some similarities on immigration into the United States and Europe and, by extension, the study of immigration and violence. In many ways, the study of urban immigration and homicide in the United States is relevant to the study of urban immigration and homicide in Europe. Many of the topics discussed in this paper are likely to be faced by European countries in the future and our hope is that findings from the United States are useful in other contexts.
151334087
Unregistered residents and registered crime: an estimate for asylum seekers and irregular migrants in Norway
Abstract The purpose of our study has been to better estimate the number and types of crimes committed by asylum seekers and irregular migrants. While data on immigration status for non-residents are lacking in Norwegian crime statistics, we use indirect identifiers (lack of a national ID number, citizenship, residency) to arrive at an estimate for persons with a pending asylum claim and the related group of irregular migrants (i.e. non-EU citizens). A very small amount of the total crimes registered with a known offender are committed by this group. However, these groups are most likely overrepresented as offenders compared to the registered resident population, also when taking age and gender into consideration. Our method is recommended in a field otherwise dominated by political arguments and as an alternative to registering asylum status in crime registers.
152447576
Handbook of policing
The Handbook both reflects and addresses the massive changes and transformations that have taken place in policing in recent years, the constant debate about the role and function of the police, and the increased professionalisation of one of the country's most important services. It draws upon the expertise both of leading academics and police practitioners themselves.The Handbook of Policing is divided into four major sections. The first considers policing in its comparative and historical context; the second the context in which policing takes place, including the relationship of policing to other forms of security provision and private policing. The third section looks at how the police operate, with chapters on the analysis and investigation of crime, approaches to crime prevention, community safety, drugs, terrorism and organised crime, and the final section looks at a range of key issues and debates in contemporary policing, ranging from race and gender to ethics and restorative justice.
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Logistic Regression: Why We Cannot Do What We Think We Can Do, and What We Can Do About It
Logistic regression estimates do not behave like linear regression estimates in one important respect: They are affected by omitted variables, even when these variables are unrelated to the independent variables in the model. This fact has important implications that have gone largely unnoticed by sociologists. Importantly, we cannot straightforwardly interpret log-odds ratios or odds ratios as effect measures, because they also reflect the degree of unobserved heterogeneity in the model. In addition, we cannot compare log-odds ratios or odds ratios for similar models across groups, samples, or time points, or across models with different independent variables in a sample. This article discusses these problems and possible ways of overcoming them.
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The emerging migration state
Since 1945 immigration in the core industrial democracies has been increasing. The rise in immigration is a function of market forces (demand-pull and supply-push) and kinship networks, which reduce the transactions costs of moving from one society to another. These economic and sociological forces are the necessary conditions for migration to occur, but the sufficient conditions are legal and political. States must be willing to accept immigration and to grant rights to outsiders. How then do states regulate migration, in the face of economic forces that push them toward greater openness, while security concerns and powerful political forces push them toward closure? States are trapped in a "liberal" paradox-in order to maintain a competitive advantage, governments must keep their economies and societies open to trade, investment, and migration. But unlike goods, capital, and services, the movement of people involves greater political risks. In both Europe and North America rights are the key to regulating migration, as states strive to fulfill three key functions: maintaining security, building trade and investment regimes, and regulating migration. The garrison state was linked with the trading state in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries have seen the emergence of the migration state, where regulation of international migration is as important as providing for the security of the state and the economic well being of the citizenry.
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The Borders of Punishment: Migration, Citizenship, and Social Exclusion
The Criminology of Mobility Introduction. Humanizing Migration Control and Detention PART I: CRIMINALIZATION The Ordered and the Bordered Society: Migration Control, Citizenship, and the Northern Penal State Is the Criminal Law only for Citizens? A Problem at the Borders of Punishment The Process is the Punishment in Crimmigration Law The Troublesome Intersections of Refugee Law and Criminal Law PART II: POLICING Policing Transversal Borders The Criminalization of Human Mobility: A Case Study of Law Enforcement in South Africa Human Trafficking and Border Control in the Global South PART III: IMPRISONMENT Can Immigration Detention Centres be Legitimate? Understanding Confinement in a Global World Hubs and Spokes: The Transformation of the British Prison Seeing like a Welfare State: Immigration Control, Statecraft, and a Prison with Double Vision PART IV: DEPORTATION The Social Bulimia of Forced Repatriation: A Case Study of Dominican Deportees Deportation, Crime, and the Changing Character of Membership in the United Kingdom Democracy & Deportation: Why Membership Matters Most PART V: SOCIAL EXCLUSION Governing the Funnel of Expulsion: Agamben, the Dynamics of Force, and Minimalist Biopolitics People on the Move: From the Countryside to the Factory / Prison Epilogue. The Borders of Punishment: Towards a Criminology of Mobility
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Attrition through Enforcement: A Rational Approach to Illegal Immigration
The public debate about illegal immigration in the United States has been based on the false dichotomy that the only choices are either total removal of all twelve to twenty million illegal aliens or total amnesty. This article proposes a concerted strategy of attrition through enforcement such that if the risk of detention, prosecution and involuntary removal increases, and the probability of obtaining employment decreases, the only rational decision for an illegal alien is to depart the United States on their own. A nation-wide strategy of attrition through enforcement would require, most importantly, employer use of the E-Verify system to verify the work authorization of new employees. Additional components include increasing the removal rate of aliens not convicted of serious felonies, increasing the rate of detention during removal proceedings to prevent absconding, increasing agreements between ICE and state agencies, ending sanctuary cities; and increasing the number of ICE interior enforcement agents. Attrition through enforcement works as has been shown to work in Arizona and through the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System. If implemented nationwide, it would do much to restore the rule of law in immigration and gradually reduce the number of illegal aliens in the United States.
56020874
When the Border is “Everywhere”: State-level Variation in Migration Control and Changing Settlement Patterns of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population in the United States
Governments increasingly exclude unauthorized migrants from labor markets and public provisions and apprehend those who have settled in the territory. In the U.S., recent increases in interior control coincided with a reduction in (the growth of) the estimated unauthorized population. This study describes the mechanisms through which interior control may impact migration patterns and analyzes whether interior control has been responsible for the changing settlement patterns. We find that when the effects of labor markets and internal dynamics of migration processes are controlled, policy has a (moderate) negative effect on estimated levels of unauthorized residence, both in individual states and the U.S. as a whole.