Creeping Crimmigration in CEAS Reform: Detention of Asylum-Seekers and Restrictions on Their Movement under EU Law

This article analyses freedom-restricting measures set forth in the Reception Conditions Directive and its proposed recast; it does so through the lens of the concept of crimmigration, understood as convergence between criminal and (administrative) immigration and asylum law. To tackle “secondary movements” within the European Union (EU), the proposed amendment of the Directive establishes a broad understanding of the risk of absconding, which can justify detention, and expands the restrictions on asylum-seekers’ freedom of movement. The article argues that asylum detention under EU law pursues penal law objectives, such as deterrence and retribution. Restriction on freedom of movement, on its part, may amount to systematic surveillance. This observed crimmigration phenomenon is detrimental to migrants and refugees because the incorporation of criminal law objectives into asylum law has an asymmetric form. Although states subject non-citizens to increasingly punitive measures, the administrative label of immigration detention and restrictions on movement allows them to evade due process guarantees, which typically accompany criminal law proceedings. As the article proposes, appropriate interpretation and application of the principles of lawfulness and proportionality with respect to detention and restrictions on freedom of movement will help circumscribe the scope of the phenomenon of crimmigration under the EU asylum legislation.