Deportation Regimes in Transatlantic Comparison: Policies, Practices, and the Politics of Expulsion in the U.S. and Europe

• In Event: EHC-WG Panel 2: Memories, Attitudes and Comparative Perspectives in Historical Criminology

Abstract

Over the past few decades deportation has surged in importance, especially in relation to migration policy within the Global North. Despite such prominence, there still exists considerable variation between the political discourses, practices, and policies that underpin the United States’ and Europe’s respective deportation regimes. Using data from immigration enforcement agencies and governmental statistics from the EU and U.S. alongside qualitative data from migrant advocacy groups, this paper examines deportation policy in the context of broader public policy changes with regard to migration control, criminalization, and human rights. The U.S. has created a highly expansive deportation infrastructure that increasingly fuses with the criminal legal system, especially with initiatives such as Secure Communities, but European systems are more varied, where some countries emphasize voluntary departure and reintegration, while others are more focused on quick expulsions. This paper further analyzes how the externalization of the EU borders affects deportation policies and compares them to the American attempts of post-ending-birthright citizenship migration control through third-country agreements. In the end, the paper constructs the deportation regimes in relation to wider socio-political and legal systems describing the considerable impact of such varied approaches to enforcement on non-citizens and the worrying reality of deepening militarization.

Author

• Edwin Grimsley, Baruch College, CUNY