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Introduction

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Crimmigration in Australia

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Abstract

This chapter introduces the book’s structure and each particular contribution within this edited collection, and familiarizes readers with the concept of crimmigration. It outlines, broadly, how criminal and immigration law, policy and practice are merging, or intersecting, and addresses the different subjects of crimmigration. This is informed by a review of the leading literature in the United States and in Europe; literature that maps the contours of crimmigration, explains the forces propelling the law’s convergence in those particular locales, and reveals the consequences of crimmigration. This literature survey supplies an important comparative context for the collection as several contributors contemplate the utility of the idea of ‘crimmigration’, its transplantation into Australia, and the virtues of crimmigration law exposition and theory relative to other theoretical accounts about immigration control and border policing.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Vogl and Methven 2017.

  2. 2.

    Chan 2015; Ritorto 2017.

  3. 3.

    See, for example, Pickering and Ham 2015, for an interdisciplinary study of migration and crime, the control of mobility.

  4. 4.

    Stumpf 2014, p. 244.

  5. 5.

    Rogers 2009; Missbach and Sinau 2011.

  6. 6.

    Van der Woude and van Berlo 2015.

  7. 7.

    Stumpf 2006.

  8. 8.

    Hernández 2018, p. 208. The criminalisation of migration in the US was the focus of legal scholarship pre-dating Stumpf’s crimmigration thesis. For example, Miller 2005.

  9. 9.

    For example, the body of legal scholarship by César Hernández, e.g. see, Hernández 2013, 2018. And also, see Chacón 2009, 2012, 2015. Stumpf’s reference list in her article “Crimmigration: Encountering the leviathan” is a good starting point for further literature: Stumpf 2014.

  10. 10.

    Aiken et al. 2014, citing Stumpf’s ‘handy neologism’ and illustrating how crimmigration has manifested in Canada.

  11. 11.

    See van der Woude et al. 2017; and Majcher 2013.

  12. 12.

    For example, Guia et al. 2013, 2016; Bosworth et al. 2018; Atak and Simeon 2018; and Aliverti and Bosworth 2017.

  13. 13.

    Stumpf 2014, p. 237.

  14. 14.

    Though, as several authors note in their contributions to this collection, some of the fundamental tenets of crimmigration are not a recent phenomenon.

  15. 15.

    Bowling and Westnara 2015.

  16. 16.

    Ibid.

  17. 17.

    Stumpf 2014, p. 241.

  18. 18.

    Ibid.

  19. 19.

    Chácon 2015. And on the flipside see, for example, Hoang and Reich 2017, and Billings 2019.

  20. 20.

    In the Australian context see for example, Schloendhardt and Craig 2015, 2016; Schloenhardt and Cameron 2012.

  21. 21.

    Stumpf 2014, p. 242. In the Australian context see, Leanne Weber’s important empirical and theoretical work on crimmigration: Weber 2013, which examines the criminal-administrative policing nexus: the role of police as migration officers, and immigration officers as immigration police. See also Boon-Kuo 2015, 2017, for Boon-Kuo’s compelling study of migrant’s experiences at the hands of police and immigration officers.

  22. 22.

    Stumpf 2014, p. 242.

  23. 23.

    On the, de facto, criminalisation of seeking asylum in Australia see, Welch 2011; Gerard and Pickering 2013; and van Berlo 2015.

  24. 24.

    Stumpf 2013.

  25. 25.

    Hernández 2013, p. 1458

  26. 26.

    Hernández is alert to the long tradition of animus toward foreign law-breakers in the US, and certain intersections between immigration legislation and the criminal justice system (e.g. penalties for entering and remaining unauthorized). But he sees the expansion and rigorous application of crimmigration law in the U.S. as a late twentieth century phenomena as unauthorised migration levels increased.

  27. 27.

    Hernández 2013, p. 1461

  28. 28.

    Hernández 2018, pp. 210–213.

  29. 29.

    Hernández 2013, pp. 1467–68.

  30. 30.

    See also, Legomsky 2007.

  31. 31.

    For example, criminal prosecution of immigration crimes through en masse hearings involving dozens of defendants.

  32. 32.

    Hernández 2013, p. 1479.

  33. 33.

    Ibid. p. 1482.

  34. 34.

    Hernández 2018, pp. 239–249.

  35. 35.

    Stumpf 2013. The criminalisation of migrants and securitisation of migration in Europe have been the subject of scholarly inquiries prior to the emergence of crimmigration. E.g. Bigo 2004.

  36. 36.

    Parkin 2013, p. 7.

  37. 37.

    Aliverti 2012.

  38. 38.

    Franko Aas 2011.

  39. 39.

    van der Woude et al. 2017, p. 4. And see Mitsilegas 2015, for a comprehensive legal analysis of the criminalisation of migration in Europe, and how E.U. law may function protectively to temper aspects of crimmigration

  40. 40.

    Welch and Schuster 2005; Broeders 2010. Also, note Wilshere 2012, for an examination of immigration detention in several states.

  41. 41.

    Bosworth and Guild 2008.

  42. 42.

    Weber and McCulloch 2018, p. 8.

  43. 43.

    Vecchio and Gerard 2018.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. TC Beirne School of Law, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

    Peter Billings

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  1. TC Beirne School of Law, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

    Peter Billings

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Billings, P. (2019). Introduction. In: Billings, P. (eds) Crimmigration in Australia. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9093-7_1

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