“I call it a system.” Unauthorized Migrants’ Understandings of the Long Reach of Dutch Internal Migration Controls

Abstract

We draw on the concept of deportability to show how unauthorized migrants who (used to) live in the Netherlands perceive and experience Dutch internal-control mechanisms. We first conclude that these migrants’ deportability has serious legal, social, and existential effects on them, which they feel long after their return or deportation to their home country. Second, we state that unauthorized migrants evaluate the Dutch internal-control mechanisms as “one system” in which they distinguish three important, interlinked layers, consisting of (1) divergent actors, (2) laws and policies inside and outside the migration control domains located within (3) different geographies. This implies that individual nation-states, through their internal control mechanisms, also contribute to the externalization of migration control at a supranational level. We conclude that the state’s internal migration controls bring about immobility not only in the countries of settlement but also in the transit and home countries.