Integration against the state: Irregular migrants’ agency between deportation and regularisation in the United Kingdom

Reinhard Schweitzer

doi:10.1177/0263395716677759

Abstract

Reducing the number of foreigners residing unlawfully within the borders of a state requires either their removal or the legalisation of their presence within the territory. Increasingly, governments also employ measures of internal control and limit irregular migrants’ access to rights and services in order to encourage them to leave autonomously. This article aims to contribute to current debates on how to conceptualise and account for the agency that irregular migrants themselves exercise in such contexts. Within critical migration and citizenship studies, many of their everyday actions have been described as ‘acts of citizenship’ but also as instances of ‘becoming imperceptible’, neither of which captures the whole range of strategies irregular migrants employ to strengthen their fragile position vis-à-vis the state. I argue that conceptualising their agency in terms of (self-)integration allows us to account for both: practices through which they actively become political subjects as well as those that precisely constitute a deliberate refusal to do so. Empirically, this is underpinned by an analysis of recent policy developments in the United Kingdom and a series of semi-structured interviews I conducted during 8 months of fieldwork in London with migrants experiencing different kinds and degrees of irregularity.

Highlights

At the very foundation of receiving states’ efforts to effectively manage the entry and stay of foreigners who want to settle within their territories lies the seemingly clear-cut and binary distinction between ‘legal’ or ‘regular’ migrants and those whose immigration or residence is deemed ‘illegal’ or ‘irregular’.1 While integration, defined, is Politics 37(3)expected only of the former, it is the latter that in recent years have increasingly dominated the public and political discourse and spurred many of the regulatory measures taken in the field of immigration, both at the level of the European Union (EU) and individual Member States
Expected only of the former, it is the latter that in recent years have increasingly dominated the public and political discourse and spurred many of the regulatory measures taken in the field of immigration, both at the level of the European Union (EU) and individual Member States
Migrant irregularity is the relationship between the legal-political framework through which the state seeks to manage immigration and the strategies of those who are excluded from this increasingly blurred picture

Summary

Introduction

At the very foundation of receiving states’ efforts to effectively manage the entry and stay of foreigners who want to settle within their territories lies the seemingly clear-cut and binary distinction between ‘legal’ or ‘regular’ migrants and those whose immigration or residence is deemed ‘illegal’ or ‘irregular’.1 While integration, defined, is Politics 37(3)expected only of the former, it is the latter that in recent years have increasingly dominated the public and political discourse and spurred many of the regulatory measures taken in the field of immigration, both at the level of the European Union (EU) and individual Member States. One aspect that potentially links these different strands of literature but until now has received comparatively little scholarly attention is irregular migrants’ integration within host societies and its interference with immigration enforcement (notable exceptions are Chauvin and Garcés-Mascareñas, 2014; Kraler, 2011; Leerkes et al, 2007; Leerkes et al, 2012; Palidda, 1998; Sandoval, 2014; Vasta, 2011) This is surprising given the fact that the so-called ‘fight against illegal immigration’ increasingly targets various kinds of social and economic relations (Walsh, 2014) and intersects with other strands of (mainstream) public policy, most notably the welfare regime (Broeders and Engbersen, 2007; Lahav and Guiraudon, 2006). This policy trend towards the prevention of unlawful residents’ integration rather than entry is explicit in the United Kingdom, where the government is officially trying to ‘create here in Britain a really hostile environment for illegal migration’.3

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