Introduction

The intense regulation of migration is a central feature of our contemporary ‘world order’ (Castles et al, 2013) and is, in its current form, closely intertwined with the development of the modern nation-state and the history of colonial imperialism (Soysal, 1994). As will be shown throughout this chapter, the principles of national sovereignty and citizenship and the corresponding attribution of rights to those who are seen to belong shape how welfare and social policy are organised vis-à-vis those who are considered outsiders. The privileging of citizenship when it comes to social policy provision is a largely unquestioned doxic paradigm in our contemporary social imaginary, albeit we know that experiences of belonging and membership are much more complex and contested than governmental practices usually acknowledge (Gonzales and Sigona, 2017).

As in the other chapters of this book, criminalisation is conceptualised broadly and therefore refers, on the one hand, to some of the overtly violent and punitive practices of border policing, detention and deportation, and, on the other hand, to how criminalisation occurs through the operation of the welfare state and liberal (at least on the surface) policies. Overall then, it is proffered that these distinct, yet interrelated forms of criminalisation, regulation and control for those who are deemed to be ‘outsiders’ of our ‘imagined nations’ (Anderson, 1983), are similar to the dividing practices deployed by neoliberal welfare states to determine deservingness amongst its citizenry: who is deserving of how much support, who is to be excluded from the circle of rights-holders and how do austerity-driven welfare states continuously refine exclusionary practices, rendering them simultaneously more invisible and more insidious and punitive?

The governing rationality of neoliberal governance, which is more ‘termitelike than lionlike’, ‘boring in capillary fashion into the trunks and branches’ (Brown, 2015: 35– 6) of all aspects of our societies, is the foundational logic of exclusionary practices across all population groups, creating universal precarities beyond boundaries of citizenship. Yet the harmful impacts of exclusionary and criminalising processes affect migrants much more profoundly, as will be discussed throughout this chapter. The status of being a migrant intersects with other precarious social positions, particularly gender, ethnicity and social class, and doubly excludes and criminalises those experiencing migrant status vis-à-vis those who are categorised as insiders by virtue of citizenship.