ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the expansive criminalization of immigration law-breaking in European countries. It presents the rise in immigration prosecutions in the United States (US) and argues that this increased punitiveness, rather than being an aspect of the so-called ‘American exceptionalism’ in criminal justice, represents a more general trend in the ‘developed world’ – albeit magnified by its quantitative dimensions in the US case. The chapter reviews criminal immigration laws in several European countries, and explains the interconnections between criminalization, incarceration and deportation. European states are not going about the dirty job of policing and blockading access to their poleis secretly. Instead, immigration policies are increasingly widely publicized and defended primarily based on discourses about protection and security, about ‘doing good’. Immigration controls are thus transformed from a necessary evil to a legitimate activity, a means to an end to safeguard citizens and non-citizens alike from the harms brought about by the ‘ungovernability’ of the powers unleashed by globalization.
