Criminalisation and Victimization of Migrants in Europe
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directed by Salvatore Palidda Criminalisation and Victimization of Migrants in Europe Contributions by Marcelo F. AEBI, Hans Jorge ALBRECHT, Edo BAZZACO, Mary BOSWORTH, José Ángel BRANDARIZ GARCÍA, Alessandro DE GIORGI, Nathalie DELGRANDE, Cristina FERNÁNDEZ BESSA, Mhairi GUILD, Bernard HARCOURT, János LADANYI, Yasha MACCANICO, Marcello MANERI, Laurent MUCCHIELLI, Sophie NEVANEN, Salvatore PALIDDA, Gabriella PETTI, Federico RAHOLA, Nando SIGONA, Jérôme VALLUY, Fulvio VASSALLO PALEOLOGO directed by Salvatore Palidda Criminalisation and Victimization of Migrants in Europe With the Contributions of Hans Jorge Albrecht, Edo Bazzaco, José Ángel Brandariz García, Alessandro De Giorgi, Cristina Fernández Bessa, Bernard Harcourt, János Ladanyi, Yasha Maccanico, Marcello Maneri, Laurent Mucchielli, Sophie Nevanen, Palidda, Gabriella Petti, Federico Rahola, Nando Sigona, Jerome Valluy, Fulvio Vassallo Paleologo Work Package 3 Criminalisation and Decriminalisation Processes Criminalisation and Victimisation of Migrants in Europe directed by Salvatore PALIDDA Contributions by Marcelo F. AEBI, Hans Jorge ALBRECHT, Edo BAZZACO, Mary BOSWORTH, José Ángel BRANDARIZ GARCÍA, Alessandro DE GIORGI, Nathalie DELGRANDE, Cristina FERNÁNDEZ BESSA, Mhairi GUILD, Bernard HARCOURT, János LADANYI, Yasha MACCANICO, Marcello MANERI, Laurent MUCCHIELLI, Sophie NEVANEN, Salvatore PALIDDA, Gabriella PETTI, Federico RAHOLA, Nando SIGONA, Jerome VALLUY, Fulvio VASSALLO PALEOLOGO Assessing Deviance, Crime and Prevention in Europe Sixth Framework Programme FP6-2004-Citizens-5 / Priority 7 / Citizens-2004-6.2.3 Contract n°: 028300 - Start date of contract: July 1st, 2006 Coordination: CNRS (France) Dipartimento di Scienze Antropologiche Università degli Studi di Genova c.so A. Podestà, 2; 16128 Genova (It) Criminalisation and Victimization of Migrants in Europe 2 Notice This book collects some contributions proposed to the workshop “Criminalization and victimization of immigrants in Europe”, organized the 13th and 15th March 2008 at the Dipartimento di Scienze Antropologiche of Genoa University, in the framework of Workpackage 3, “Processes of criminalization and (de)criminalization”, of the Crimprev Programme. The contributions of Delgrande and Aebi, De Giorgi, Valluy, Mucchielli and Nevanen, Bosworth et Guild, Maccanico, Brandariz García et Fernández Bessa, Bazzaco, Vassallo Paleologo, Harcourt, Sigona, Maneri, Palidda, Petti and Vitale are published in an Italian book. The contributions of Delgrande and Aebi, Bosworth and Guild are published in French or in English respectively in 4/2009 of “Déviance et Société” and in “British Journal of Criminology” 48:703-719 (2008): http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/48/6/703. Liste des participants au workshop de Genes List of participants to the Genoa workshop - Marcelo F. AEBI (Institut de Criminologie et de Droit Pénal, Suisse) - Hans Jorge ALBRECHT (director of Max Planck Institute of Freiburg-D) - Mary BOSWORTH and Mhairi GUILD (University of Oxford) - José Ángel BRANDARIZ GARCÍA (Un. de La Coruña - Fabienne BRION (UCL-A. Catholique de Louvain) - Daniele COLOGNA (Un. Milan) - Alessandro DAL LAGO (Un. Genoa) - Nathalie DELGRANDE (Institut de Criminologie et de Droit Pénal, Suisse) - Cristina FERNÁNDEZ BESSA (Observatori del Sistema Penal i els Drets Human, Spain) - Emilio FRANZINA (Un. of Verona) - Bernard HARCOURT (Un. of Chicago) - János LADANYI (University of Economics Budapest) - Yasha MACCANICO (Statewatch) - Marcello MANERI (Un. of Milano) - Laurent MUCCHIELLI (CESDIP-CNRS France) - Sophie NEVANEN (CESDIP-CNRS France) - Salvatore PALIDDA (Un. of Genoa) - Gabriella PETTI (Un. of Genoa) - Federico RAHOLA (Un. of Genoa) - Jerome VALLUY: (Un. Paris 1) - Fulvio VASSALLO PALEOLOGO (Un. of Palermo) - Tommaso VITALE (Un. of Milano) Criminalisation and Victimization of Migrants in Europe 3 CONTENTS Considerations on the main european countries (English and French version) Introduction (Palidda) General aspects - Media and the war on immigration, by Marcello MANERI - The Detention Machine, by Federico RAHOLA - The U.S. Penal Experiment, by Alessandro De GIORGI - The methamorphosis of asylum in Europe, by Jerome VALLUY - The Roma in neoliberal Europe by Nando SIGONA Nationals cases studies - Delinquency, victimisation, criminalisation of foreigners in France by Laurent MUCCHIELLI et Sophie NEVANEN - Immigration, crime and victimization in Europe and particularly in Germany by Hans Jorge ALBRECHT - The Construction of Migrants as a Risk Category in Spain by José Ángel BRANDARIZ GARCÍA and Cristina FERNÁNDEZ BESSA - La inmigración en España en los discursos de media y política by Edoardo BAZZACO - The Italian crime deal, by Salvatore PALIDDA Particular practices - Borders of Punishment. A Critique of Immigrant Profiling by Bernard HARCOURT - An Attempt at Explaining the Frequency and Intensity of anti-Roma Atrocities, by János LADANYI - The criminalisation of young people by Yasha MACCANICO - Aspects of the war against migration in the Mediterranean by Fulvio VASSALLO PALEOLOGO - Practices of exclusion in international terrorism trials, by Gabriella PETTI Criminalisation and Victimization of Migrants in Europe 4 Introduction (S. Palidda) The history of different societies has always been marked by periods of persecution and violence, sometimes extreme, targeting the “outsider”, that is, the “enemy of the time”1. But how can the intensification of the persecution of Roma people and gipsies in general, and of the criminalisation of immigrants in present-day Europe be explained? As the contributions collected in this volume show, it is a matter of the most elementary mechanism that emerges as being useful if not indispensable for the solidity or re-alignment of political cohesion. The latter is nourished, precisely, by the fear and insecurities attributed to such an enemy to justify practices of power that blend all sorts of prohibitionism, protectionism and an authoritarianism that also strikes at the weakest part of the autochthonous population itself. The war against outsiders, those who are different, may thus be considered one of the “total political facts” that pervades all of society through discourses, rhetoric and practices that consolidate a real or supposed majority. Hence, we can understand that in the current racist approach that characterises the management of societies, there are overlapping aspects that are reminiscent of the discourses and practices applied to colonised peoples and the subordinate classes in the 19th and 20th centuries. In other terms, the persecution of gipsies and the criminalisation of migrants is currently written into a liberalist/neo-conservative political layout that is based on the asymmetry of power and wealth between powerful actors and the weak who have no rights or are reduced to the state of non-people. The story of the current war against migrations is intertwined with that of the development of criminalisation that began with the neo-conservative revolution in the United States and in England (Thatcher reached power in 1979, Reagan did so in 1981). The success of this revolution continued without interruption even under “democratic” or “left-wing” administrations (Clinton, Blair, Jospin, the centre-left in Italy and even Zapatero in Spain), also because the neo-conservative discourse (in the foucauldian acceptation of the term) has ended up phagocytising a sizeable part of the intellectuals and leaders of the left itself. But it is only today that the causes of this process appear somewhat clearer if it is analysed as a passage from the government that was meant to pursue the liberal-democratic myth (described by Foucault2) to a liberalist management that only pursues the hic et nunc prosperity of the stronger parties. The exacerbation of criminalisation, of “zero tolerance”, experiments towards the elimination of the “human 1 On the aspects, see previous works in which I refer, in particular, to Michel Foucault’s work (see especially Palidda, 2009, 2008 and 2000) 2 In particular, see: the following volumes of his courses at the Collège, namely, Il faut défendre la société, 1997; Sécurité, territoire, population, 2004; Naissance de la biopolitique, 2004; Le gouvernement de soi et des autres, Hautes Etudes-Gallimard-Seuil, 2008 Criminalisation and Victimization of Migrants in Europe 5 surplus”, in short, of what Simon (2008) and others term the crime deal, in fact, reflect a management of society that excludes social recovery, re- integration or rehabilitation, because it only seeks to “maximise” the profits of the subjects who are in power. Why take care of marginal people, drug addicts, the poor, deviants, and why promote the stable, peaceful and regular integration of immigrants when, today, the growth of profits can be played out through the erosion of workers’ rights, their inferiorisation until they almost reduced to a role as neo-slaves, and getting rid of them at the first sign of them making claims or when they are too worn and can easily be replaced by other rightless or non-people? The government of the people that was meant to have taken care of the inhabitants to construct a stable, peaceful and well-regulated society in accordance with the norms of a universalistic legal order, up to the point of seeking to make everyone happy3 has never existed. But, since the start of the 1970s (at the end of the “glorious thirty years”), the political organisation of the wealthy societies of the second post-war period had given the impression that it may have