The Double-Deviant Identity of the Mass-Foreigner and the Lack of Authority of the Crimmigrationist State

Crimmigration has its breeding ground in dystopian and securitarian narratives.The anti-hero of these narratives is the mass-foreigner, a stereotyped versionof the foreigner usually depicted, alternatively or cumulatively, as an enemy or asa parasite of host societies. But not only does crimmigration presuppose suchnarratives (and the deviant identity of the mass-foreigner, which is connectedwith them) as a source of legitimation, it also fuels these same narratives byproviding them with an official sanction: by merging criminalization and irregularizationon a legal level, it heavily contributes to making the social identity ofmass-foreigners into a doubly deviant one. The overarching aim of this strategy isthat of facilitating the exclusion of unwanted foreigners: first of all, theirterritorial exclusion (expulsion), but also, as a means to expulsion, their socialexclusion (dereliction). This, I argue, deprives crimmigration of authoritativeforce—authority being inclusive in nature—and reduces it to mere violence.