Crimmigration in the Netherlands

Abstract

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.

Op de grens van het vreemdelingentoezicht: discretionaire beslissingen binnen het Mobiel Toezicht Veiligheid

“…Deze manier van denken wordt volgens hem sterk beïnvloed door scepticisme ten aanzien van de noodzaak en mogelijkheid om de discretionaire beslisruimte van uitvoeringsambtenaren te beperken. Ook in Nederland is de ontwikkeling naar een bedrijfsmatig en instrumentalistisch strafrechtsysteem in de laatste decennia duidelijk waarneembaar (Van der Leun et al, 2013;Van der Woude et al, 2014). Volgens Sklansky is deze instrumentale benadering van het recht onlosmakelijk verbonden met crimmigratie.…”

“…Tegelijkertijd is het opvallend dat er over het optreden van actoren binnen het vreemdelingentoezicht tot op heden relatief weinig studies zijn verschenen (zie voor enkele uitzonderingen: Aas & Gundhus, 2015;Casella Colombeau, 2015;Pratt & Thompson, 2008;Weber, 2011). Dit is des te opmerkelijker in het licht van het proces van crimmigratie, waarmee gedoeld wordt op de toenemende vervlechting van strafrechtelijk en vreemdelingrechtelijk handhaven en toezichthouden (Staring, 2012;Stumpf, 2006;Van der Leun, 2010; Van der Woude, Van der Leun & Nijland, 2014). Dit proces is zichtbaar op het niveau van het politieke en publieke discours, het niveau van wetgeving, maar ook op het uitvoeringsniveau en heeft onder meer tot gevolg dat zowel immigranten als criminelen worden gezien als bedreigingen waartegen opgetreden moet worden met alle beschikbare middelen (Chacón, 2012;Stumpf, 2006; Van der Leun, Van der Woude & De Ridder, 2013).…”

Civic stratification and crime. A comparison of asylum migrants with different legal statuses

“…However, by calculating 'conservative' suspect rates for those who applied in 2004 and had exhausted all legal remedies by February 1st 2005, it could be established that the measured suspect rate of 8.9% is unlikely to be too high. 11 11 We calculated conservative suspect rates for 12 'month cohorts' among rejected asylum seekers who had applied in 2004. These rates are based on the conservative assumption that all these applicants were in the country without legal status throughout 2004 (even if all of them had legal stay as asylum seeker for at least part of the year, and even if part of them arrived midway 2004 and/or left before January 2005).…”

“…The second perspective does not attribute a causal role to civic status, but argues that the possible relationship between civic status and crime is due to various forms of social sorting in the allocation of civic statuses, and in the definition of what counts as a crime [9,[11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19]. First, in the regulation of international migration there is a tendency to channel migrants who are believed to represent a threat to public safety, including migrants with a known or suspected criminal history, into the lower statuses, while the higher statuses are reserved for migrants who are not believed to pose a risk to society.…”

“…Within this emerging approach there are two main perspectives. The first views the differentiation of civic statuses as a potential ultimate cause of differences in criminal behavior [6][7][8][9][10][11][12]. Here, the central assumption is that an individual's civic status influences the degree to which (s)he is being exposed to social conditions that produce, or prevent, offending.…”