The Fine Art of Camouflage: Migrant-Drug Distributors Negotiating Police Interactions in Switzerland

Abstract

Bogged down in exploitative jobs or unemployment, some migrants mitigate their precarious condition and forced idleness through involvement in petty crime, including low-level drug distribution. This article explores the daily lives of migrants who navigate asymmetrical interactions and relationships with police in ways that avoid detection of their illicit activities. Drawing from extensive ethnographic fieldwork and 18 biographical interviews with sub-Saharan male migrants active in low-level drug retail, I scrutinize how migrants negotiate the rules that are supposed to govern them. I am particularly interested in the ways in which migrants negotiate their legal status with the police, whose view of them is often heavily influenced by race. I demonstrate that relationships between police officers and migrants can be influenced by migrants’ deliberate mimicry of local norms, calculated conformity with informal policing practices, and influence over police officers’ moral judgment of whether they are deserving of police’s discretionary power to look the other way.

On a sunny afternoon, I went window-shopping in the city center of Beauregard, an anonymous Swiss city. ¹ Along the way, I met three acquaintances who had just finished lunch at a local African restaurant, taking a break from their work as street drug distributors. They invited me for a drink, and since I had free time, I happily joined them. We opened some beers in front of a supermarket and started to chitchat. Suddenly, two police officers on bicycles appeared and asked everyone but me for identification documents (ID). The three of them were Black male migrants; I and the two officers were white male citizens. When I asked what the purpose of this police check was, one of the police officers replied, “You obviously know who those guys are, they are not tourists.” Noticing the silence and docility of my three acquaintances, I did not insist, despite the legal obligation for the police to provide a clear explanation for such a measure. After checking their documents, the officers instructed us to move on, despite the fact that one of the police officers explained that Issa, a 30-year-old sub-Saharan migrant, had overstayed his visa and was now considered “illegal.” Before we separated, Issa disclosed to me, “One of those cops, we call him Mepton. He doesn’t care much about your documents. You just have to play it regular, play it square and he [will] let you be.” ² Apparently, they seemed to know each other.

This kind of humiliating experience is a recurrent one for “illegalized” migrants. ³ What is striking about this scene is how it captures not only the entanglement of mobility regimes and everyday policing, public disorder, and social ordering, but also the subtle strategies migrants use to manage face-to-face encounters with state representatives. Reinforcing discriminatory power dynamics, European mobility regimes facilitate the mobility of some—the so-called global citizens and highly skilled migrants—while fettering the movement of others (Glick Schiller and Salazar 2013). This perpetuates a (post)colonial and racialized filtering process (van Houtum 2010). Representations of the “deviant immigrant” (Melossi 2003), both criminal and alien, frame them as putting unbearable pressure on welfare systems and posing a threat to the ostensible national order. This sorting mechanism creates different groupings of migrants assigned varying degrees of status that translate into differential access to labor markets and mobility within Europe.

For the migrants, illegalization translates into a constant threat of detention and deportation (De Genova 2002; Khosravi 2010), which can upend their relationship to time, space, and self (Andersson 2014; Willen 2007). Fear becomes a part of the everyday life of these migrants, instilling in them a deep sense of discretion and a need to seek refuge in hiding (Bjørneseth 2017; Le Courant 2022; Madsen 2004). Moreover, the racialization of migrants plays a crucial role in shaping the experiences and treatment of individuals labeled as “illegal aliens.” Since the perception of migrants as illegal is not based solely on legal status but is deeply rooted in racial and ethnic categorizations (De Genova 2002), racial profiling is seen as an effective tool for detecting those who have violated a state’s sovereignty and subjects them to increased forms of surveillance, scrutiny, and potential deportation. Indeed, racial profiling exacerbated the racialization process by disproportionately targeting individuals based on their perceived and ascribed race, ethnicity, or religion (Harris 2002), which leads to the overrepresentation of certain racial and ethnic groups in migration raids, detentions, and deportations, as well as in drug law enforcement actions.

Trapped in seemingly endless periods of unemployment or exploitative work, some migrants mitigate their precarious condition and forced idleness through their involvement in petty crime, including low-level drug distribution. ⁴ However, contrary to the commonly held notion that depicts this market as highly lucrative, various ethnographic studies conducted in France have shown that the profit gained from small-scale drug retailing is lower than the minimum wage (Duport 2016; Lakhdar 2007)—findings that are consistent with earlier research conducted in the U.S. (Levitt and Venkatesh 2000; Reuter, MacCoun, and Murphy 1990). Instead of a convenient and effortless means of generating quick money, low-level drug distribution is a precarious niche, which paradoxically becomes a bulwark against extreme marginalization (Bourgois 2003; Whyte 1993). Rather than focusing on spectacular violent events, I explore the daily life of those who must routinely negotiate asymmetrical police relationships by refining camouflage techniques to avoid detection and, most important, to effectively navigate police contacts.

In this article, I investigate the subjective experiences of migrants involved in low-level drug distribution as they carry on with their lives in a society rife with structural inequality. Particularly, this research helps to illuminate the ways in which illegalized migrants handle everyday interactions with the police. Drawing from extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Switzerland from 2018 to 2023 and 18 biographical interviews with sub-Saharan male migrants active in low-level drug retail, I ask how illegalized migrants negotiate their illegalization and the racializing gaze of police. How do they navigate the scrutiny of police and their face-to-face interactions with them? My aim is to expand the anthropological literature on how individuals understand, experience, and negotiate implementation of the law, specifically during police contacts (Duck 2017; Gupta 1995; Stuart 2016). Understanding how a fugitive population survives on the fringes is crucial for comprehending the discrepancy between migration policy objectives and actual outcomes, as mobility regimes have both repressive and productive effects (Andersson 2014).

My analysis incorporates elements from border studies, critical criminology, and performative theory. I present a brief introduction that explains the produced data on which the article is based and contextualizes drug law enforcement. In subsequent analytical sections, I examine the consequences of police checks on the everyday life of illegalized migrants and explore the strategies those migrants use to negotiate such asymmetrical interactions. I demonstrate that the ever-changing relationship between police officers and illegalized migrants is influenced by migrants’ deliberate mimicry of local norms and calculated conformity to informal policing practices, and by police officers’ moral judgments of who is deserving and who is not worthy of police’s discretionary power. This work neither victimizes migrants nor romanticizes their experience by neglecting power structures (Abu-Lughod 1990); rather, I aim to scrutinize how illegalized migrants negotiate the rules that are supposed to govern them.

Illegibility, Police Discretion, and Tactical Avoidance

Border studies, a subdiscipline within mobility studies, generates a particularly lively debate about the phenomenon of sovereignty as a central point of analysis. In his seminal work, Seeing Like a State, Scott (1998) suggests that the sovereignty of nation-states has historically been performed through the making of a population “legible” within a predefined territory. A state, thus, needs to “read” its population in a standardized and simplified way to make it easier to administer. Bureaucratic machinery might be incoherent, full of loopholes, and opaque—all of which leads to implementation gaps. However, illegibility does not represent the failure of a nation-state or the inefficiency of bureaucrats. Indeed, Kalir and van Schendel (2017, 3) convincingly argue that “non-recording practices” are necessary elements of statecraft, where “the state simultaneously permits and prohibits, observes and looks away,” as the introductory vignette suggests. Hence, some individuals may partially escape the state’s purview and make themselves illegible at the margins of the states (Das and Poole 2004).

In addition to state agents in charge of border crossing points, such as checkpoints, airports, or ferry terminals, different actors have emerged who act as gatekeepers on behalf of nation-states (Yuval-Davis, Wemyss, and Cassidy 2018), notably police officers. To scrutinize policing beyond structural determinism, Sausdal (2019) proposes to explore day-to-day police work by looking at how officers deploy their discretion, making decisions or taking actions based on their own judgment. A primary source of suspicion, race, followed by age, gender, and social class, significantly influences police work (Fassin 2011). Police profiling is indeed based on reified categorizations but also always actualized through the incremental accumulation of subjective experience (Andersson 2014). Frontline bureaucrats seldom adhere strictly to rules but, rather, deploy normative judgment to assess their clients’ deservingness and, based on their own moral evaluation, to determine whether to comply with, or transgress, the state’s rules (Borrelli and Lindberg 2018). The discretion of street-level bureaucrats plays a central role in the strategies employed by illegalized migrants to manage their unpredictable relationships with police officers. While previous studies on policing have set out to understand how stereotypes influence polices discretion, this article will focus on the perspective of policing’s targets.

The constant threat of detention and deportation (De Genova 2002), implemented by state representatives armed with lethal weapons and vested with massive discretionary power, affects how people navigate a hostile environment. Given that institutionalized racism shapes the police gaze (Fassin 2011), police’s targets must develop a set of camouflaging techniques to mitigate discriminatory treatments. Consequently, individuals draw on a collective interpretation of police patterns and adapt their behavior accordingly, based on their perception of the moral judgments and worthiness attributions made by the police. By rendering police activity readable and predictable, developing an interpretative framework of “cop wisdom” (Stuart 2016) provides a means of reducing unwanted police interactions. This cop wisdom affects everyday life of illegalized migrants on three dimensions: self-withdrawal, space management, and self-presentation. First, quantitative and qualitative studies in the U.S. suggest that tactical avoidance, which takes the form of self-withdrawal and avoidance of public institutions (Brayne 2014; Goffman 2014; Harris 2002) or peers (Fader 2021), is a response to racialized mass incarceration. At the same time that self-withdrawal enables individuals to reduce police contact, it curtails access to basic services, such as education, health care, and legal assistance. Second, according to their perception of police activity, individuals tend to avoid certain places at certain hours. Thus, individuals reroute their daily paths, adjust itineraries, choose idle phases to avoid locations associated with drug activity or large groups (Stuart 2016), and ultimately restrict their presence in public spaces. Hence, the pervasive risk of detention pushes individuals to withdraw into private spaces, exacerbating social isolation and reproducing spatial segregation. Third, police contacts are inevitable, despite precautious avoidance, and negotiating those interactions is of critical importance.

During stop-and-frisk checks, individuals deploy “performative competence” (Gupta 1995, 81). Using bribery as an example, Gupta emphasizes that these interactions are shaped by codified scripts that are based on presumed intentions and that both parties must adhere to. Mimicking established patterns of ascribed behaviors constitutes a performance that is a crucial tool in the collective repertoire of the marginalized, a way to negotiate, but also discreetly satirize and sometimes disrupt, power structures (Bhabha 1984; Butler 1990). Before and during these checks, the police target physical appearance, material possessions, and micro-behaviors—all of which play a determinant role in the profiling and the extent of scrutiny faced (Andersson 2014). Individuals first interpret how the police determine their target and then adjust their appearance to create symbolic and physical distance, what Stuart (2016) called innocence signals. By overplaying compliance, individuals engage in submissive civility (Duck 2017) and exaggerate passive politeness to negotiate asymmetrical power relations. Concerning specifically illegalized migrants, scholars (Andersson 2014; Bjørneseth 2017; Le Courant 2022; Madsen 2004) suggest that individuals attempt to downplay their alterity as foreigners in order to hide their illegal status. Indeed, to exploit the police’s racial profiling, individuals deliberately reproduce perceived social norms to pass as potential citizens. “Passing” refers to the intricate situation faced by individuals of color who may be able to pass as white, either intentionally or unintentionally, temporarily or permanently. In my case study, those performative competences can be categorized as passing for “racialized citizens,” passing for “docile deviants,” and passing for “dutiful taxpayers.”

Setting and Methodological Considerations

The following analysis draws on ethnographic data from Beauregard, a French-speaking city of 400,000 residents famous for its vivid nightlife. In Swiss cities, including Beauregard, there is significant consumption of synthetic drugs (EMCDDA, n.d.) and, in response, various strategies to manage drug-related issues. Switzerland is known for its progressive drug policies, but the focus remains largely on repression, with two-thirds of the state’s budget allocated to law enforcement measures (Herzog 2016; Jeanrenaud, Widmer, and Pellegrini 2005). Since 2018, Beauregard has implemented a spatiotemporal displacement strategy to mitigate the visibility of drug distributors: a hotspot approach that concentrates both sporadic raids and semipermanent community police in specific places. By increasing the presence of uniformed police officers in specific areas while also implementing a specific schedule when drug transactions are implicitly tolerated, the authorities aim to deter and disturb drug-related activities. In the face of limited financial and human resources, the main objective of selective targeting and negotiated consensus is not to eradicate visible drug distribution but, rather, to serve the city’s electorate by restoring at least ostensible territorial control. However, this displacement strategy faces limitations and has not led to a decrease in drug consumption: such repressive measures impact the marketplaces but leave intact the broader market, further marginalizing both consumers and distributors. Although quantitative or qualitative analysis of racial profiling is sorely missing in Switzerland (Plümecke, Wilopo, and Naguib 2022), evidence strongly suggests its widespread occurrence (dos Santos Pinto et al. 2022; Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent 2022). Indeed, four Afro-descendant men have lost their lives during fatal encounters with the police in the region of Beauregard since 2016. Negotiating sometimes violent police contacts, illegalized migrants have developed expertise in the art of camouflage.

Adopting a qualitative and inductive approach, this article aims to capture the elusive and discreet strategies of a hard-to-reach population. Given the opacity of illegal markets and the varying levels of illegalization individuals may face, establishing trust is crucial. Through patience and persistence, the ethnographer must become a “trusted outsider” (Bucerius 2013) and overcome suspicions of being an undercover police officer (Sandberg and Copes 2013) or related to (asylum regimes) authorities. Hence, my fieldwork leveraged my personal network that focuses on a squatters’ association that opens vacant buildings for and with migrants. This association hosted ⁵ around 50 men from sub-Saharan Africa aged from 18 to 50 years old, and I assisted them with various practical matters: administrative issues, medical appointments, money deposits, and money transfers. The social role I had in the squats gave me the opportunity to be physically present in the place where my interlocutors spent most of their day, away from the state’s eyes. I placed a high value on being able to share African delicacies and Swiss specialties, drinking weak tea and cheap beers, playing draft games and chess, and watching action movies or Nollywood comedies. This immersion into their daily life enabled me to observe the management of their unlawful careers, discuss profit margins, and converse about their marketing strategies and interactions with police officers, although my direct observations of such interactions were limited.

The particular journey, socioeconomic background, and administrative status of my interlocutors were extremely varied. Some had pending asylum applications, some had already been rejected, some had overstayed their three-month tourist visas while circulating in Europe looking for work, and others possessed relatively stable residency permits but were still unable to secure formal job contracts. For all of them, their access to mobility in Europe was restricted, and their access to the formal European labor market was limited or nonexistent. This left them trapped in a cycle of existential stagnation, and drug distribution served as a means to provide for themselves independently and support their loved ones remotely (Vuilleumier 2021). Therefore, my interlocutors, along with many other impoverished people, quietly established their autonomy, relying on the streets as their primary source of employment (Bayat 2013). Although most of my interlocutors initially viewed low-level drug work as a temporary stepping stone, some seemed to have become entrenched in this activity and pursued it as an unfortunate, long-term career. These drug distributors procured their merchandise—primarily cocaine and cannabis—directly from local wholesalers and divided it into smaller quantities for direct retail. Some focused exclusively on phone delivery, whereas others maintained a regular presence in a public place and used the phone only sporadically. These two methods of operation varied significantly in terms of client management and transaction visibility and, hence, potential police contacts.

I identify as a white male Swiss citizen from a middle-class background with an anarchist leaning. My study focuses on Black male illegalized migrants engaged in drug distribution. The power dynamic inherent in my particular positionality was even more pronounced due to my active role as a local intermediary in the squat where my interlocutors lived. While these power asymmetries may have influenced the framing of the data production and interpretation, they also facilitated my transition into the role of a “trusted outsider” (Bucerius 2013). Acknowledging the inherent subjectivity of research, ethnographers are not detached observers (Becker 1967) but are ethically grounded (Scheper-Hughes 1995). I positioned myself as a participant-observer who witnessed power dynamics at play and as an activist who strived to alleviate the pervasive hardships faced by an illegalized population. Rather than uncritically endorsing migrants’ perspectives, my stance involved empathizing with their daily struggles and advocating for their rights in broader context while recognizing my potential biases. Thus, the work presented in this article is based on a form of narrative criminology (Presser and Sandberg 2019), linking subjective experiences to structural inequalities. Field notes and interviews were transcribed following a constructivist grounded theory method (Charmaz 2008), involving multiple cycles of coding to organize and triangulate emerging interpretations derived from the field.

Learning the Ropes of an Illegalized Existence

Through an analysis of migrants’ performative competences, the subsequent sections highlight the interconnected, subtle strategies that migrants can employ: (1) the imitation of perceived social norms to pass as racialized citizens, (2) calculated compliance to informal policing to pass as docile yet deviant individuals, and (3) dutiful participation in the local economy to distance themselves from those exploiting state assistance.

Deliberate mimicry

Illegality is not necessarily a fixed trait, but it is certainly an enduring condition that requires specific skills. One of my research participants, Johnson, had had many opportunities to hone his performative competences since he had been illegalized for almost two decades. Johnson, an affable and serene man approaching his 50s, took great pleasure in peppering his conversations with more or less profound quotes lifted straight from the Bible. Involved in the movement for Biafran independence, he had fled from armed conflicts in 2006 to seek asylum in Switzerland. While his administrative status was being processed, he found himself confined to an asylum camp for three long years. However, fate dealt Johnson a harsh blow when his asylum claim was denied, leaving him disillusioned and despairing that his status would ever be regularized. Overwhelmed by a barrage of letters that ordered him to leave Swiss territory, Johnson felt lost and abandoned, unsure of where to turn. As deportation threatened but was not implemented, Johnson began urging himself to leave. It was then that he sought refuge in the interstices of Beauregard, where he encountered a group of individuals who guided him to makeshift shelters hidden within “the bushes” there. Stripped of state support and left to fend for himself, he found himself grappling with the reality of being denied access to both the labor and the housing market while being under constant threat of deportation. However, lacking a social network elsewhere in Europe, he did not leave Switzerland but, rather, escaped from state control by hiding in the urban margins. In the midst of those struggles, Johnson had to confront yet another set of challenges: he was slightly overweight and suffered from hypertension. The ever-present uncertainty of his situation exacerbated his daily headaches and compounded his difficulties. With limited access to welfare, the labor market, and housing opportunities, facing the constant threat of deportation, and straining under the cost of his medications, Johnson was navigating a complex web of circumstances. It was within this context that he embarked on a career as a low-level drug distributor. Despite the challenges, he established a devoted customer base that enabled him to transition to an exclusive model of phone-based, rather than street-level, delivery. Over time, Johnson successfully avoided any legal record, which he considered to be his biggest advantage during police encounters.

Johnson argued that completely bypassing police contacts is impossible. Therefore, he and many others would cultivate performative competences to effectively negotiate such asymmetrical interactions, as this following anecdote suggests. While helping a friend to move some belongings, the informal cab carrying them was stopped by the police.

I stayed calm and polite, while my friend and the taxi driver got aggressive [with the police]. And I asked them in French, “What is happening? Is there a problem?” Then the cops asked me for my paper, and I just said, “Sorry, I left it at home. I live in Borgne.” I never lived there, but I know a lot of Blacks live there; I mean normal Black people. And, you know, I never say, “I’m from Nigeria.” I always say, “I am from Burundi.” . . . Finally, I started to chat a bit with the cops, “Who are those people? Are they making problems?” And he just said, “They are Nigerian; those are the ones who spoil Beauregard.” So, the two boys went to the police station, and I walked free. ⁶

His account of the incident demonstrated Johnson’s remarkable ability to guide his interaction with the police, addressing their suspicions by distancing himself from the usual suspect, while at the same time passing for a “racialized citizen.” Johnson managed police interactions calmly, in contrast with the agitation of the taxi driver and his friend. As a result of being repeatedly exposed to persistent and humiliating police controls and intimidation, illegalized migrants have learned to show goodwill and to overplay politeness and placid calm. In these cases, the body plays a crucial role in managing the face-to-face impression migrants make. As Plümecke, Wilopo, and Naguib (2022, 13) explain, “The police’s racializing gaze makes the body the primary object.”

Based on the knowledge he had acquired over the years about local norms, Johnson learned different innocence signals. First, he anticipated the police “language test” (Madsen 2004, 178), a kind of informal identification, and spoke French so that the police would see him as he wanted to be. Mastering the vernacular language and lying about his national origin enabled him to implicitly claim a place for himself in a French-speaking community and hence further distance himself from the police’s main targets—the English-speaking Nigerians associated with drug distribution. Moreover, Johnson used his knowledge of the social morphology of the city and quoted specifically a neighborhood where “normal Black people” were supposed to live, which added credibility to his performance of Swiss Blackness. Indeed, Johnson mimicked what he perceived as local norms to pass as a racialized citizen.

While most of my interlocutors tried to be inconspicuous to reduce unwanted attention and blend in with their surroundings, Johnson used camouflage to indicate his Swissness: any clothes with a white cross on a red flag seemed to be his mandatory uniform. Moreover, Johnson showed me some body gestures that he considered as typically white, such as raising his shoulders, displaying his palms, and widening his eyes. He would imitate these micro-gestures in an attempt to convince police officers that he was a “normal Black person.” These body expressions represent a strategic and intentional performance of what Johnson perceived as typically white behaviors: a form of deliberate mimicry to pass for a racialized yet legitimate citizen. As he could not hide the hypervisibility of his body, Johnson tried to recode it in a manner that would reduce suspicion from those he encountered. The development of a deliberate mimicry shaped his self-presentation, allowing him to dissimulate his stigmas.

Calculated conformity

Although the relationships between police officers and their targets were often loose or rare, Paul noted that he had regular contact with law enforcement. With a permanent smile on his face, Paul was a bon vivant who liked witty jokes but also had a reputation for occasionally losing his temper. In 2003, Paul arrived in Morocco and, with the assistance of a smuggler, successfully crossed the Mediterranean Sea by boat, reaching Spain at the age of 26. While waiting for his asylum claim to be processed, he managed to find intermittent work in the construction sector. After receiving successive short-term residence permits, he married a Spanish woman, which granted him a permanent residence permit and access to the formal labor market in Spain and the right to circulate within Europe. In 2016, feeling dissatisfied with his life, Paul decided to move to Sweden based on a work opportunity presented by an acquaintance. However, he struggled to find construction jobs in the informal market there, leading him to involve himself in street-level cocaine distribution for additional income. Still dissatisfied, he attempted to find better prospects in Norway but eventually settled in Switzerland, where he became involved in full-time drug retail.

Paul, despite his long-term presence in Switzerland and an established phone-delivery customer base, remained actively involved in street retail. Along the way, he set up a territory and knew every corner of what he called his “office”—a precaution that allowed for easy escape if needed. His office was situated on a bridge, strategically positioned to attract potential customers on both levels of two crowded streets. Unlike Johnson, who avoided stationary locations in public spaces at all costs, Paul had to cultivate relationships with police officers who might recognize him. According to him, police officers regularly referred to him as “the bridge guy.” Through small chats during police controls, Paul hoped that some of the police officers would use their discretionary power and selective application of law to let him work peacefully. For instance, with the newly implemented spatiotemporal displacement, police taught drug distributors how to assimilate to those norms and act accordingly. As Paul ironically put it, “They were teaching me how to work: not to stay in one place. Then, I still respected the rules, I kept walking.” ⁷ The “advice” Paul received from police officers was then shared around his own network to establish a consensus based on common ground. On the one hand, migrants need to work, nurture, and maintain the weak ties that they created during their journey and that represent a means to navigate uncertainty (Schapendonk 2015). On the other hand, migrants must also cultivate relationships with street-level bureaucrats, whose role is to deter their presence in a particular territory. Active for many years in low-level drug distribution, some of my interlocutors had built privileged but necessarily tenuous relationships with different police officers.

Along with the numerous anecdotes that my interlocutors shared during daily gatherings, they shared the nicknames used to refer to specific police officers; those names provided an essential clue about which behavior to adopt with which officer. The physical descriptions and nicknames created by migrants helped to collectively identify police officers, even for those who had never met them in person; it was a way to make police officers readable. For instance, the officer referred to earlier as “Mepton” had a reputation for being relatively unconcerned about the legality of documents and preferred to focus on perceived public disorder caused by people of color. Mepton’s leniency fostered submissive civility, wherein individuals who conformed appropriately ran few risks of legal actions and were simply required to disperse. However, another police officer, “Kosovo,” was notorious for his racist tendencies and strict enforcement practices. This particular officer had been accused of resorting to extreme measures, such as using indelible ink to write the word “dealer” in the passports of those suspected of involvement in drug-related activities. Since submissive civility would not be of any help with Kosovo, the most common behavior used was simply to escape any interaction with him, no matter what; that tactic seemed to be easier than expected, given that my interlocutors described him as an obese slacker. The officers’ reputations preceded them, and their actions inspired caution and fear among those who encountered them. However, while vigilance was the order of the day, the behavior adopted depended on an individual’s specific reputation; as the migrants anticipated and interpreted the intentions of the police, they adjusted their own behavior accordingly.

Larry had regular but distant contact with Kosovo. Larry, a mumbling 30-year-old man, had been granted two years of humanitarian protection in 2016. Feeling exhausted by his intermittent job in the agriculture sector in southern Italy, he relocated to Switzerland and, after months moving between emergency shelters, engaged in low-level drug distribution as a means of finally regaining control over his life. Unfortunately, this unlawful activity resulted in a five-year ban, and he had to abandon both Switzerland and his involvement in drug distribution. He traveled to France, where his older brother was living, to undergo knee surgery. During his daily activity as a drug distributor in Switzerland, Larry frequently encountered Kosovo, who began to recognize his face and personal style. Despite Kosovo’s reputation for toughness, Larry said, “I know Kosovo is not my friend, but he missed having someone like me around.” ⁸ This relationship led Larry to perceive that he shared utilitarian, although fragile, connections with certain police officers. By implying that Kosovo may have noticed his absence, Larry suggested a complex dynamic where respect and social recognition were intertwined with caution and wariness: a specific street moral economy.

For my interlocutors, the impact of police controls was situational and could be anticipated because of, on one hand, the ties binding them with specific police officers and, on the other hand, their tactic of passing for docile deviants. For instance, Paul did not contest the spatiotemporal displacement imposed by Beauregard authorities. On the contrary, he willingly complied with it, stating that his “office” would only be open during specific working hours when the spatiotemporal displacement tolerated it. Rather than a confrontational resistance, Paul, Larry, and others strategically performed intentional conciliation—or, in the words of Scott (1985), a “calculated conformity” (278–89).

After a weekly meeting at the squat, I noticed that Paul had visible bruises and a noticeable black eye. He shared that these injuries were the result of a regrettable encounter with the police, during which he had attempted to flee but was ultimately caught. As a consequence, he was given a severe beating from the police officers in the basement of a nearby building, where his body was used as a “ping-pong ball.” Galvanized by Paul’s distressing yet all-too-familiar account, the people gathered in the living room began sharing their own accounts of brutal encounters with the police. Naively, I asked if these incidents involved “bad cops.” Felix interjected, stating that the issue was not the officers being inherently bad. Instead, he emphasized that it was considered normal for the police to resort to such violent measures when individuals attempted to escape their control: “The cops keep telling us not to run if we meet them.” Kinsley added that if the police officers were Swiss, running was unnecessary as they typically only wanted to engage in a conversation and instruct individuals to leave or move on. For all those present, this situation was crystal clear: Paul had not complied with the simple requirement of not running, so he deserved to face the consequences of his actions. Looking slightly embarrassed by the consensus and the reprobation of his friends, he asserted, “You have to work with the police if you want to survive in that place. That’s what makes us survive also. We know who they are, and we know how to follow rules.” ⁹ According to my interlocutors, police officers implemented an informal system of sanctions, in which escaping police control would result in a beating. Far from being merely an individualized exception or isolated blunder, those beatings reflected a form of institutionalized racism. The repetition of this punishment, alongside the circulation of information between my interlocutors and the sometimes-exaggerated rumors, gradually created a code of conduct in low-scale drug distribution. A rumor is by definition circulating but unverified information, but unverified does not mean fake. The accumulation and repetition of rumors slowly give birth to a specific “code of the street” (Anderson 1999). Having learned about police views of public order, Paul was ready to abide by the rules as long as his drug distribution activity was tolerated.

Paul’s reflexivity suggests the construction of a street moral economy where individuals negotiate both their illegalization and their unlawful career. This negotiation is, however, complex, as it is not solely based on a binary distinction of “good” or “bad” police officers. Instead, migrants have to adapt to and comply with the specific context of their encounters with police. Hence, passing for a docile deviant is a modest but effective strategy for continuing a drug distribution career. As Mahmood (2001) argues, agency cannot be reduced to a confrontation between domination and resistance, conformity and subversion, but represents the ability to take actions shaped by specific relations of subordination. Paul summarized that his agency was grounded on his docility; he said, “I have to work, so I have to be a good boy, walking in the street all the time like a good dog.” Laughing, he then started to bark. ¹⁰ Consistent with previous studies on illegal markets (Arias and Grisaffi 2021; Beckert and Dewey 2017), this moral economy of a docile deviant suggests how morality structures the everyday routines of illegal markets. Performing a calculated conformity to comply with formal and informal rules is a way to prompt worthiness attribution and hence police’s discretionary power.

Legibilization from below

When their deliberate mimicry of a racialized citizen failed and conforming to a docile deviant did not suffice, my interlocutors still had some negotiation opportunities left: they could try to pass for “dutiful taxpayers.” Since remaining totally invisible to the state is impossible, illegalized migrants attempt to determine what personal information is recorded and in which ways: they try to manage how state bureaucrats will see and read them.

Obviously, by taking part in an illegal market, my interlocutors risked legal sanctions, which Larry described as a humiliating stigma: “It is a sin. It is a stain in a person’s document. I don’t want any stain in my document again. The one I have is enough for me.” ¹¹ Evaluated both for its moral implications and practical consequences, a police record remains an indelible mark. Johnson had managed to avoid a police record: “Since I arrived here, I don’t have any record. None. I am clean, that’s my advantage. If police start to check me out, [they will] see that I [have been] here since 2006 without no record. The cops would think, ‘It’s simply impossible.’” ¹² For Johnson, unlike for Larry, the absence of a police record was proof of good behavior, a confirmation of compliance, a validation of deservingness.

According to the academic literature, “the state” is not a homogenous and monolithic entity but is rather fragmented into different administrative sectors with sometimes divergent objectives (Eule et al. 2019). However, for illegalized migrants who must navigate complex regulations, the various state bureaucracies with which they interact can seem to form a single network, opaque and impenetrable. The omnipotence of this seemingly monolithic state and the panoptic surveillance it relies on create the feeling of being under constant scrutiny and penetrate daily activities and intimate life (Le Courant 2022), a form of “somatic modes of attention” (Willen 2007). Police officers, hospital security services, public transport controllers, and money transfer employees effectively serve as border guards who could potentially link any mundane activity with deportation (Yuval-Davis, Wemyss, and Cassidy 2018).

Beyond the official police record, which they could not truly control, my interlocutors could accumulate artifacts that conferred on them a degree of legibility to police—a form of what I call “legibilization” from below. Illegalized migrants would put together a diverse collection of almost-IDs intended to influence police officers’ evaluations. Hence, this material documentation aimed to imitate legality (Bjørneseth 2017) but, more significant, to testify to one’s deservingness. Indeed, to circumvent their lack of proper ID, ¹³ illegalized migrants accumulated heterogeneous documents that could serve as identification papers—for instance, letters from asylum procedures, medical certificates, membership cards of local associations, bills and receipts, and, most important, bus passes. The local bus pass was a red plastic card that featured the holder’s name and picture. While virtually none of these IDs was officially recognized, they seemed to be nevertheless accepted by police as sufficient and were highly valued by migrants. Indeed, with these bus passes, my interlocutors were not only legible but could also perform the third performance strategy: passing for a dutiful taxpayer. The migrants thus acquired a proof of legitimacy that implied that they diligently paid all kinds of state debts, including public transport and medical bills. Slim Eddy, the father of a four-year-old who lived with his mother in Germany, was exemplary: after he recovered from appendicitis, Slim Eddy asked me to accompany him to the hospital to pay what he owed. Although the hospital in question had a social fund that had already paid for his hospitalization, he was keen to pay his share, even though his modest contribution (SF 100) did not cover the costs involved. Larry, Slim Eddy, and many other illegalized migrants regarded the absence of unpaid debt as an indicator of dutiful compliance and financial participation in the local economy, in sharp contrast with so-called bogus migrants who allegedly abused the welfare system.

Although the role of hospital security services as border guards is more imaginary than factual, Swiss public transport controllers do take their role of regulation and social control seriously. Indeed, according to my interlocutors, if a free rider was unable to present ID or did not immediately pay the resulting fine, public transport controllers had the prerogative of immobilizing that individual until the police arrived. Carrying a bus pass and paying fines were thus crucial.

Aware of their limited ability to affect how they were officially recorded and perceived, my interlocutors made efforts to influence their legibility modestly, realistically, and prudently. Even as they understood the constraints they faced, they strived to exert some control over how they were seen and read by police. Indeed, the impact of passing for a docile deviant in face-to-face interactions is amplified if one can also pass for a dutiful taxpayer. Illegalized migrants will try to influence and guide the discretion of state bureaucrats to look away (Kalir and van Schendel 2017). As Johnny, the former secretary of the squat, put it, “If [police] catch you, you have to pray, you are illegal, you overstayed. But if they find out that you don’t have any problem in the country, the good people will pardon you.” ¹⁴ Therefore, appealing to the empathy and compassion of the police while demonstrating their own worthiness is a significant priority for illegalized migrants. This dynamic highlights the importance of not only recognizing one’s legal vulnerabilities but also employing persuasive tactics to influence the outcome of these encounters with police. Indeed, Kinsley, a 42-year-old man with a keen sense of fashion, explained,

The bad cops, they make sure to take you to the [police] station. They will take you to their office and check you very well. They will say, “You are here illegally, you stay three months.” They will check if you have multa [fines] and, before you know it, you will be locked down for six months. . . . But those that collect money from you, maybe SF 80 or 100, they will allow you to go on your way. They allow you to have freedom. . . . And this is the most important thing. ¹⁵

Several of my interlocutors confirmed that, after undergoing police inspections, their cash had been seized, with some receiving official receipts and some claiming otherwise. Officers might temporarily confiscate this money if they suspected that it had been earned through criminal activity, such as drug trafficking; even though it could be legally reclaimed if no investigation ensued, my interlocutors never exercised this right. For the most part, they saw being taken to the police station as the worst outcome possible, as it could raise unwanted attention that might ultimately lead to deportation. Some interpreted the confiscation of their money as a bribe or blatant corruption—something they perceived as a degrading injustice that highlighted the impunity of the police. On the contrary, others, like Kinsley, saw these transactions as acts of empathy: paying a small informal tax on their unlawful activity had less of an impact on them than being jailed and deported would. Kinsley was very aware that accumulating legal records related to his immigration status, public transportation fines, or any suspicions linking him to unlawful activities would diminish his perceived worthiness and increase the likelihood of his being detained.

Despite their lack of administrative status, illegalized migrants consistently strive to be responsible members of a society where they find themselves unwelcome: “ironically, the undocumented migrant exemplifies the impeccable citizen” (Khosravi 2010, 91). Feeling constantly under the scrutiny of a monolithic network that keeps track of their behaviors, illegalized migrants perform an ostensible commitment to paying their taxes and participating in the local economy as model citizens, thereby trying to earn a reputation for integrity through a form of legibilization from below.

Conclusion

Because illegalized migrants can be stuck in precarious work conditions, endure long-term unemployment, live under the constant threat of detention and deportation, and survive in a situation of uncertainty, they struggle to fulfill their aspirations. Responding to their powerlessness and social entrapment, some engage in petty crime as a means of regaining control over their lives and fulfilling their individual and familial expectations (Vuilleumier 2021). However, as I have demonstrated, this path seems to be a dead end that further marginalizes them and exposes them to considerable risk. In this article, I have identified the ways in which they manipulated police’s racializing gaze, by using camouflage techniques to quietly downplay suspicion and influence the tenor of face-to-face interactions—or avoid contact altogether. By drawing from extensive ethnographic fieldwork and biographical interviews, I explore the intricate relationship between illegalizing policies, street-level criminalization, and individuals’ resultant behaviors (Stuart 2016). Emphasizing migrants’ strategic adaptations and complex negotiations of illegalization and police scrutiny, I reveal the proactive agency they enact when exposed to punitive migration policies.

Use of almost-IDs, display of innocence signals, tactics of avoidance, strategies of deception, and conformity with informal policing all testify to illegalized migrants’ agency as they strive to remain imperceptible, draw police’s attention away from them, or persuade them to look the other way. However, migrants live in an unpredictable environment, and their refinements of a subtle art of camouflage reflect their narrow room to maneuver, rather than their agency or ability to thwart both mobility regimes and drug law enforcement.

Although violent police contacts are widespread, when we focus on these “border spectacles” (De Genova 2002), we tend to overlook both the pervasive and discreet forms of violence and the everyday forms of resistance enacted by an impoverished population. Navigating spaces of asymmetrical power relationships (Eule et al. 2019), illegalized migrants know that direct confrontation with police is futile and even potentially fatal. On the contrary, they imitate specific, coherent scripts that render them identifiable and intelligible but eventually ungovernable. Overall, focusing on the effects of repression in Beauregard’s drug policies raises questions about the effectiveness and potential harm caused by this approach. Since the city center is perceived as a tourist hub and economic engine, illegal markets are pushed back to the peripheries of the city. This displacement aims to relocate unlawful and disruptive activities in a less visible manner and, in so doing, makes those already at the margins more invisible. By examining the everyday negotiations associated with the implementation of the law, I suggest that the persistence of the illegal drug market does not merely represent a failure of state policies, but rather manifests a complex, and fragile, process of adaptation and avoidance, toleration and cooperation.

Discretion is of particular importance for those who navigate at the margins of the state (Das and Poole 2004) and, sometimes, outside of the law. While institutionalized racism may frame the generalized police gaze (Fassin 2011), its implementation may differ dramatically depending on the specific police officers in question. The two paradigmatic examples of Mepton and Kosovo remind us of the crucial importance of knowing how to act with a given interlocutor. Hiding in plain sight, illegalized migrants must remain unnoticed in the eyes of the state, but because those migrants working as drug distributors must paradoxically stand out for potential clients, they may be subject to police contact. To last in a risky business, drug distributors need to professionalize, refining how they operate and mastering different performance competencies. Obviously, different modes of performance are needed for illegalized migrants involved in drug distribution and those who are not; while passing for a racialized citizen or dutiful taxpayer may apply to both, passing for a docile deviant is only required for the former. The entangled dance between concealment and visibility (Bjørneseth 2017) that migrants perform daily necessitates a nuanced understanding on how they can exert agency amid criminalization. I have demonstrated that my interlocutors, despite their involvement in unlawful activities, exhibit remarkable clarity in their understanding of what constitutes dutiful, proper, and exemplary conduct. These individuals engage in illegal activities primarily because of restrictions on their job opportunities or legal employment options; at the same time, they align themselves with prevailing state-defined notions of what constitutes desirable behavior and the police perspective on public disorder. This adherence to perceived norms can be attributed, in part, to necessity. However, this research indicates that this conformity is also deeply internalized, as was the case with Paul’s peers’ understanding of the police response to his flight. Therefore, the resulting unlawful career is less a direct consequence of criminalizing policies and more an intricate coping mechanism in an asymmetrical power structure.

While drug distribution initially provides these migrants with a means of self-employment and control over their lives, it ultimately becomes a social and political trap with harsh working conditions, the threat of violence, and limited benefits. The lack of alternative economic prospects and distrust of state institutions further marginalize illegalized migrants, making it difficult to organize politically or seek legal assistance. Moreover, although leveraging police stereotypes of migrants to escape arrest might provide temporary relief, such apolitical strategies reinforce migrant stereotypes and thus ultimately reproduce structural inequalities.

In conclusion, my article challenges the deterministic narratives of migration policies’ impact on migrants. It posits that the interplay between migration policies and migrants is less a one-way imposition of effects and more a dynamic interaction of agency, adaptation, and resistance. The implications of this argument are profound, necessitating a reevaluation of policy effectiveness and a deepened understanding of the lived realities of migrants.