The Double-Deviant Identity of the Mass-Foreigner and the Lack of Authority of the Crimmigrationist State

Abstract

Crimmigration has its breeding ground in dystopian and securitarian narratives. The anti-hero of these narratives is the mass-foreigner, a stereotyped version of the foreigner usually depicted, alternatively or cumulatively, as an enemy or as a parasite of host societies. But not only does crimmigration presuppose such narratives (and the deviant identity of the mass-foreigner, which is connected with them) as a source of legitimation, it also fuels these same narratives by providing them with an official sanction: by merging criminalization and irregularization on a legal level, it heavily contributes to making the social identity of mass-foreigners into a doubly deviant one. The overarching aim of this strategy is that of facilitating the exclusion of unwanted foreigners: first of all, their territorial exclusion (expulsion), but also, as a means to expulsion, their social exclusion (dereliction). This, I argue, deprives crimmigration of authoritative force—authority being inclusive in nature—and reduces it to mere violence.