The Conflictive Meanings of Expulsion for Criminal Justice Agents in Spain

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Abstract

In Spain, the incorporation of expulsion into the realm of criminal justice has been complex. Judicial actors have faced practical difficulties at adjusting their ongoing bureaucratic processes to deal with the issues originated by the application of that measure.
As a concrete manifestation of so called crimmigration, its practical implementation has
revealed the extent to which judicial and administrative agencies work in an unarticulated and unsystematic fashion. This paper purports to shed light on the dilemmas that criminal justice actors face at dealing with expulsion in the management of criminal cases. Those dilemmas include such aspects as correctly determining the measure to apply, trusting administrative officers’ assumptions, reducing caseload pressures, and signifying punishment. In that regard, this presentation will introduce the findings of my doctoral research, conducted in Malaga during this year. It consisted of semi-structured interviews,
participant observation, and critical content analysis of judicial decisions.

Author

• Byron Ernesto Villagomez, Universiteit Utrecht / Universität Hamburg