Crimmigration, securitisation, and human rights protection

This chapter analyses how the ‘securitisation of migration’ - presenting migration as a security threat - and ‘crimmigration’ - the merger of criminal law and immigration law - have led, particularly in Western countries, to an increasing group of migrants who have been ever more readily and expeditiously deemed undesirable, many of whom were also unremovable. Drawing on legislation first implemented in the United States and subsequently adopted in various other jurisdictions, the chapter shows how the threshold for being labelled undesirable has steadily lowered, while the legal and practical obstacles to removability have grown higher. As a result, a growing number of non-citizens have become legally deportable, although they could not always be deported.