Criminalizing Immigration Activism and Crimes of Solidarity

Crimmigration processes and criminalizing practices extend beyond borders, and are inherent to national regimes. Dissuasion techniques and sanctions from states are additional difficulties that can impede legal mobilization. The panelists will reflect on these multiple challenges, faced by activists who advocate for migrants and refugees. 

Speakers:  

• Iker Barbero, Associate Professor in Administrative, Constitutional and Philosophy of Law at the University of the Basque Country, Spain 

Iker Barbero is an Associate Professor at the Department of Administrative Law, Constitutional Law and Philosophy of Law at the University of the Basque Country. He has been the author of several works in the field of sociology of law and migration studies: "When rights need to be (re)claimed: Austerity measures, neoliberal housing policies and anti-eviction activism in Spain "(Critical Social Policy, 2015); Legal aid services in Spain within the migration industry debate. Public policy, business or social compromise? (International Journal of the Legal Professions, 2019), “A ubiquitous border for migrants in transit and their rights: analysis and consequences of the reintroduction of internal borders in France” (European Journal of Migration and Law, 2020) or “When return orders are more than just a deportation receipt: Transit migration and socio-legal meanings of administrative documents” (Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 2021).

Abstract: Taking the Spanish and French case as an example, the objective of this talk is to analyze the “crimmigration” of protest and activism defending the rights of irregular immigrants both at Europe’s southern external border and well as its internal border with France. This analysis describes the development and implementation of the repressive tactics employed by the state against activists, including forms of police control of protests, informal and formal dissuasion techniques and the use of administrative and criminal sanctions. This work provides valuable insight into the practical impact of these crimmigration processes, particularly how they have affected activists, social organizations and immigrants, how they have extended beyond

• Sharry Aiken, Associate Professor at Queen's Law (Canada) with a cross appointment to Cultural Studies. 

Sharry Aiken is an Associate Professor of Law at Queen’s University and Academic Director of the University’s new Graduate Diploma in Immigration and Citizenship Law. She is an expert on immigration law and has appeared before the Supreme Court of Canada in a number of precedent-setting immigration cases. Professor Aiken is a past president of the Canadian Council for Refugees (CCR), a board member of FCJ Refugee Centre in Toronto, co-editor of the PKI Global Justice Journal, and former Editor-in-Chief of the journal Refuge. She is the author and co-editor of Canada’s leading casebook on Immigration and Refugee Law, currently in its third edition. Her research focuses on immigration detention and border policies.

Abstract: Over the past several decades, efforts to criminalize/combat both the “smuggled” and the “smugglers” have intensified in the global north. The growing salience of border control as “law and order politics” and an increasingly transnational strategy of preemptive exclusion for “self-selected” refugees, threaten to undermine the very foundations of asylum. The British government’s controversial Nationality and Borders Bill, the 2019 arrest of Sea Watch captain Carola Rackete, the prosecution of hundreds of Danes for giving asylum seekers lifts around the country in 2016 or the 2019 conviction of “No More Deaths” volunteers for leaving food and water for migrants crossing the Arizona Desert, are just a few examples. In Canada, the efforts of border enforcement officials to criminalize refugee mutual aid and acts of solidarity by humanitarian actors were defeated in a pair of groundbreaking judgements (R. v. Appulonappa; and B010 v. Canada) by the Supreme Court several years ago. My paper will examine the Palermo Protocol on Migrant Smuggling, Canada’s anti-smuggling laws and the successful court challenges that served to contain the reach of these measures. While legal challenges rarely produce transformative systemic change, strategic litigation has played an important role in protecting refugee and migrant rights in the Canadian context. 

• Agnieszka Kubal, Lecturer in Sociology, School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, UK and Witold Klaus, Head of the Department of Criminology at Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw.

Witold Klaus will talk about criminalisation of solidarity in law and in practice in the context of the recent migration ‘crisis’ at the Belarussian border, and Agnieska Kubal will talk about its (un)intended consequences – crimes against migration activists and media people in Poland by local vigilante groups. 

Professor Witold Klaus is the Head of the Department of Criminology at Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. He specialises in questions of migration and refugee law, criminalisation of migration, sociolegal studies. He is currently completing his fourth monograph on pre- and post-deportation experiences of Polish migrants (EU nationals) with criminal record removed from the UK. He is a member of Groupa Granica, the largest platform of NGOs and academics in Poland specialising in migration and human rights matters. 

Dr Agnieszka Kubal is a Lecturer in Sociology at SSEES, UCL in London. She is a migration and human rights scholar. She is the author of two monographs, most recently - Immigration and Refugee Law in Russia. Socio-Legal Perspectives (2019, Cambridge University Press). She has just been awarded an ERC Starter Grant (2022-2027) for a project ‘Who are the humans behind Human Rights in Eastern Europe and Russia?’ (HuRiEE).

 You can register here.