Abstract
Aiming to reduce unauthorised migratory flows, several European countries have in recent years focused on measures of deterrence, based on the idea of discouraging irregular mobility by threatening harsh sanctions. Such strategies have a great appeal for policymakers: Because individuals are expected to migrate irregularly when the anticipated benefits outweigh the foreseen costs, increasing the latter should make the conduct less profitable, thus reducing its occurrence. But can deterrence succeed in curbing unauthorised migration?This research aims to deconstruct deterrence strategies in the context of international migration, by investigating their functioning, effectiveness and potential consequences.
Theoretically, it builds upon the international political economy (IPE) debate on states’ ability to regulate migratory flows. If realists view states as being able to control entries, neoliberal institutionalists regard legal and institutional factors as significantly limiting such capacity, whereas transnationalist authors consider migration as structural and largely beyond states’ control. This thesis intends to add to such discussion, by focusing on the specific concept of deterrence, and analysing it through an interdisciplinary approach that draws from both IPE and criminological studies. The latter discipline enables in-depth understanding of the way in which deterrent strategies work, highlighting in particular the relevance of the certainty and (to a lesser extent) severity of sanctions, of how such factors are perceived by potential rule-breakers, as well as of the social costs involved in penalties.
Empirically, the study focuses on the criminalisation of irregular migration in Italy and France, that is, on the use of the criminal law to sanction foreigners’ unauthorised entry or stay, since the early 2000s. If Italy is the country that punishes irregular migration with one of the highest fines in the EU, France imposes more moderate economic penalties, but also commands imprisonment, being among the few member states inflicting a double punishment. Drawing from the ‘policy gap’ hypothesis, the dissertation thus investigates the problematics that influenced the effectiveness of the criminalisation of migration in reducing irregular flows to the two countries. Specifically, it looks for potential inconsistencies between politicians’ rhetoric and the actual design of the measures (‘discursive gaps’), the measures’ design and eventual enforcement (‘implementation gaps’), and, finally, the latter’s enforcement and overall results (‘efficacy gaps’).
To study the above, the thesis adopts a policy evaluation methodology, applying a set of five criteria derived from EU guidelines on ex-post evaluations, namely: Efficacy, efficiency, coherence, sustainability and utility. It relies on over 50 interviews with key stakeholders, more than 100 questionnaires with third country nationals, and two previously unreleased official datasets, triangulating both sources and methods.
Overall, the study finds that the criminalisation of migration, as an example of deterrence, has not been effective in either Italy or France. Not only has it scored poorly in most of the evaluation parameters considered, but it has also had counterproductive effects, including the promotion of vicious cycles of insecurity, through both heightened rhetoric and increased irregularity. While, in Italy, diverging interests, including those of employers of irregular migrants, seem to have played a key role in leading to policy incoherence, in France, the judicial system has been crucial in inducing the partial repeal of the norm. More broadly, the study finds criminalisation to have had only marginal significance, compared to the deeper drivers of migration. From a theoretical viewpoint, it concludes by suggesting that a parallelism may be traced between the three-fold understanding of policy gaps, outlined above, and the three main IPE approaches discussed, with each of the latter theories focusing, in fact, on a different level of gaps.
| Date of Award | 1 Jul 2020 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Supervisor | Simona Talani (Supervisor) & Roberto Roccu (Supervisor) |