This article explores the possibility of resistance under conditions of extreme state power in liberal democracies. It examines the strategies of migrants without legal status who, when threatened with one of the most awesome powers of the liberal state—expulsion—shed their legal identity in order to escape the state’s reach. Remarkably, in doing so, they often succeed in preventing the state from exercising its sovereign powers. The article argues that liberal states are uniquely constrained in their dealing with undocumented migrants. Not only are they forced to operate within the constraints of the international legal order—making repatriation contingent on the possession of identity documents—but the liberal state is also constitutionally limited in its exercise of coercion against the individual. The article concludes that it is those individuals who have the weakest claims against the liberal state that are most able to constrain its exercise of sovereignty.
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Fort Washington, PA: Harvest Books, 1973).
2.
Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press, 1998 ), 126.
3.
David Jacobson, Rights across Borders: Immigration and the Decline of Citizenship ( Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); Yasemin Nuhoglu Soysal, Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1994).
4.
Christian Joppke , "Why Liberal States Accept Unwanted Immigration,"World Politics50 ( 1998): 266-93.
5.
I use the term "undocumented migrants" in two ways. First, in keeping with the literature, the term refers to migrants without legal status (i.e., illegal entrants and rejected asylum applicants). Second, and more specifically, I refer to migrants without legal status who have destroyed their identity documents.
6.
Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
7.
James C.Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance ( New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985), 31.
8.
Ibid, 33.
9.
Max Weber, Politics as a Vocation (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1965).
10.
Odd-Helge Fjeldstat, "Taxation, Coercion, and Donors: Local Government Tax Enforcement in Tanzania," Journal of Modern African Studies39, no. 2 (2001): 289-306.
11.
Robert V. Stover and Don W. Brown, "Understanding Compliance and Non-Compliance with the Law," Social Science Quarterly56, no. 3 ( 1975): 363-75; Kenneth Meier and David R. Morgan, "Citizen Compliance with Public Policy: The National Maximum Speed Law," Western Political Quarterly35, no. 2 (1982): 258-73.
12.
Margaret Levi , Of Rule and Revenue (Berkeley , California: University of California Press, 1988).
13.
Max Weber , Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretative Sociology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 946, emphasis original.
14.
Tom R. Tyler, "The Social Psychology of Authority: Why Do People Obey an Order to Harm Others?" Law & Society Review24, no. 4 ( 1990): 1089-1102; K. Kuperan and John K. Sutinen, "Blue Water Crime: Deterrence, Legitimacy, and Compliance in Fisheries," Law & Society Review32, no. 2 (1998): 309-38.
15.
Joel S.Migdal, State in Society: Studying How States and Societies Transform and Constitute One Another (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 255.
16.
Fjeldstat, "Taxation, Coercion, and Donors"
17.
Antje Ellermann , States against Migrants: Deportation in Germany and the United States (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Matthew J. Gibney, "Asylum and the Expansion of Deportation in the United Kingdom," Government and Opposition43, no. 2 (2008): 146-67.
18.
Joppke, "Why Liberal States Accept Unwanted Immigration"
19.
Of course, liberal states not infrequently violate international conventions-including the Refugee Convention-if not in letter, then certainly in spirit. It does not follow, however, that states are unconstrained. Imagine, for instance, a world where neither the norm nor the legal principle of non-refoulement exists.
20.
Tim Golden , "Tough U.S. Steps in Hunger Strike at Camp in Cuba," New York Times, February 9, 2006.
21.
Article 21, see http://www.wma.net/en/30publications/10policies/h31/index.html (accessed March 7, 2010).
22.
Agamben, Homo Sacer, 174.
23.
Ibid, 170.
24.
Richard A. Leo , "From Coercion to Deception: The Changing Nature of Police Interrogation in America," Crime, Law and Social Change18, no. 1 ( 1992): 35-59.
25.
Michael Walzer , "The Politics of Michel Foucault," in Foucault: A Critical Reader, ed. David Couzens Hoy (Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell , 1986), 66.
26.
John Torpey, The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship and the State ( Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
27.
Joanne van der Leun, Looking for Loopholes: Processes of Incorporation of Illegal Immigrants in the Netherlands (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2003), 108.
28.
Thorsten Böhling , "Abschiebungshindernisse Heute: Bürokratie, Zuständigkeiten und Desinteresse!" 10. Migrationspolitisches Forum (Berlin, 2001).
29.
Dita Vogel , "Migration Control in Germany and the United States," International Migration Review34, no. 2 (2000): 390-422.
30.
Dennis Broeders and Godfried Engbersen, "The Fight against Illegal Migration: Identification Policies and Immigrants’ Counterstrategies," American Behavioral Scientist50, no. 12 (2007): 1592-609.
31.
The argument of this article thus does not extend to all migrants equally. Two restrictions apply: First, as I have just argued, not all migrants have the option of effectively hiding their identity. Nationals of advanced industrialized countries are generally easily identified by means of multiple official proofs of identity. Second, the costs of return vary across migrants (generally speaking, they are higher for nationals of lesser developed countries). Not all migrants will consider the cost of return sufficiently high to offer sustained resistance.
32.
Broeders and Engbersen, "Fight against Illegal Migration," 1603.
33.
Author interview, senior civil servant, interior ministry Baden-Württemberg, Stuttgart, January 2002.
34.
James C.Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998).
35.
Author interview, deportation officer "H," INS San Diego, July 2002.
36.
Antje Ellermann , "The Limits of Unilateral Migration Control: Deportation and Interstate Cooperation," Government and Opposition43, no. 2 ( 2008): 168-89.
37.
Author interview, deportation officer, district Ostprignitz-Ruppin, Brandenburg, November 2001.
38.
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality Vol. 1: The Will to Knowledge ( London: Penguin, 1976).
39.
Broeders and Engbersen, "Fight against Illegal Migration," 1603, emphasis added.
40.
Author interview, senior immigration official, Bundesamt für die Anerkennung ausländischer Flüchtlinge (since renamed Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge), Nürnberg, January 2002.
41.
Author interview, deportation officer, district Potsdam-Mittelmark, November 2001.
42.
Author interview, director, Clearing House for the Procurement of Travel Documents, Trier, February 2006.
43.
Author interview, director, departure center Braunschweig, January 2002.
44.
Internal data obtained by author, March 2002.
45.
res publica, Ausreisezentren: Der Reader (München : res publica, 2002).
46.
Matthew J. Gibney, "Asylum and the Expansion of Deportation in the United Kingdom," Government and Opposition43, no. 2 (2008): 146-67.
47.
Ibid, 166.
48.
Author interview, social worker, detention center Köpenick, Berlin, December 2001.
49.
van der Leun, Looking for Loopholes, 108.
50.
Jorgen Carling , "Migration Control and Migrant Fatalities at the Spanish-African Borders," International Migration Review41, no. 2 ( 2007): 323.
51.
Antirassistische Initiative Berlin, Bundesdeutsche Flüchtlingspolitik und Ihre Tödlichen Folgen: 1993 bis 2004 (Berlin, 2005).
52.
For instance, Amnesty International, Amnesty International Report 2003-Germany, http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3edb47d42.html (accessed March 7, 2010).
53.
With the adoption of the EU Return Directive by the European Parliament in June 2008, all EU member states, with the exception of Denmark, the United Kingdom, and Ireland, now have in place a statutory eighteen-month time limit on detention. See Caroline Brothers, "EU Passes Tough Migrant Measure," New York Times, June 19, 2008.
54.
Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U.S. 678 (2001).
55.
Author interview, deportation officer "H," INS San Diego, July 2002.
56.
Anna Pratt, Securing Borders: Detention and Deportation in Canada ( Vancouver, BC: UBC Press, 2005), 49.
57.
This is not to claim that all signatories are liberal states, but rather that all liberal states are signatories to the Convention and/or the Protocol.
58.
Eva-Lotta E. Hedman, "Refuge, Governmentality and Citizenship: Capturing ‘Illegal Migrants’ in Malaysia and Thailand," Government and Opposition43, no. 2 (2008): 358-83, 361.
59.
Ibid., 362.
60.
Ibid., 368.
61.
Asia Forum for Human Rights and Development , "Malaysia-Immigration Detention Centers: How Many More Must Die?" (October 16, 2009), http://www.forum-asia.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2350&Itemid=129 (accessed March 3, 2010);
62.
United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, "Malaysia, 17 June 2009," World Refugee Survey2009 (2009), http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/topic,463af2212,469f2cd92,4a40d2adc,0.html (accessed March 13, 2010).
63.
United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, "Malaysia, 17 June 2009."
64.
Ibid.
65.
Loren B. Landau and Tamlyn Monson, "Displacement, Estrangement and Sovereignty: Reconfiguring State Power in Urban South Africa," Government and Opposition43, no. 2 (2008): 315-36.
66.
Ibid., 331.
67.
United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, "Malaysia, 17 June 2009."
68.
Landau and Monson, "Displacement, Estrangement and Sovereignty," 329.
69.
Ibid., 330.
70.
Scott, Weapons of the Weak.
71.
Jane Caplan and John Torpey , eds., Documenting Individual Identity: The Development of State Practices in the Modern World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 7.
72.
Peter Allen , "Calais Migrants Mutilate Fingertips to Hide True Identity," The Daily Mail, July 22, 2009.
73.
Caplan and Torpey, Documenting Individual Identity, 7.
