Managerial Borders?: Understanding the evolution of Spanish policies of migration control

• In Event: ERacing Borders: Global Trends in Border Criminologies

Abstract

Over the first decade of the century Spain was a primary destination of international migrations. In line with European Union policies, the successive Spanish governments, acting as gate-keepers of the EU Southern border, managed this phenomenon by implementing a number of devices of migration control, such as selective and racially-motivated policing, detention centers for migrants and deportation of undocumented foreigners. The enforcement of those legal measures has entailed widespread and most concerning violations of human rights. However, the persistence and deepening of the current economic crisis has led to the readjustment of the whole apparatus of migration control. Taking into account a wide range of quantitative data, the paper aims to grasp the rationales underlying the current mutation of Spanish policies of migration control. It examines the paradoxical intertwining between sovereign and exceptionalist measures aimed at walling external and internal borders and managerial policies geared toward an actually efficient management of the deportation regime. Moreover, the paper analyses whether the Spanish regime of migration control is evolving in line with what Brett Neilson and Sandro Mezzadra (2013) have recently termed a ‘sovereign machine of governmentality’.

Authors

• José A. Brandariz-García, University of A Coruna, Spain

• Cristina Fernández-Bessa, University of Barcelona