Illegal stay in the Netherlands is increasingly criminalized through new measurements and adaptations of the Aliens Law. In order to understand the incorporation of illegal immigrants in this restrictive political context, the ‘moral economy’ is introduced as a concept referring to the norms and expectations regarding justice and reciprocity that serve as guidelines for daily illegal live. This process of crimmigration minimalizes the opportunities of illegal immigrants and as an unintended consequence will push the illegal immigrants further towards charity, informal labour or crime. Paradoxically, illegal immigrants will become more vulnerable for exploitation instead of returning home as was intended.

The attitude towards ‘the immigrant’ is changing. Where they used to be seen as a necessity, they are now looked upon with distrust. A consequence of this new attitude is the ‘merging’ of immigration law policy and criminal law. Examples of this in the Netherlands are a law proposal to criminalize illegal stay and a mandatory quorum of illegals that have to be deported each year. In our research we have compared the ‘crimmigration’ discourse in both Arizona and the Netherlands.
Arizona’s law SB1070 has been the main legal focus in the research. The enactment of the law has been cause of many protests. The public’s fear was focused mainly on civil rights violations; the legal discussion was focused on the federalism issue, brought to Courts by the Obama administration. However, with the Supreme Court handing down its landmark decision in Arizona vs. United States, the legal focus will shift towards the civil rights spectrum.
In the most recent elections in the Netherlands, the immigration question seems to have been pushed to the background. However, it remains a vital issue when placed in the context of ‘Euro-skepticism’, which has played a major role , as much of the immigration policy making is done by the supra national European legislator.
We have seen that in the American context the federal government has been a ‘mitigating factor’ in the crimmigration debate to counterbalance draconian immigration policy. We hope that despite recent Euro-skepticism the EU will have a similar mitigating effect.

Over the past few years attention is placed on the influence of immigrants and asylum seekers on the security of the state. Due to this development the Dutch Criminal Law and Immigration Law are ‘merging’. Immigration and safety policies are applied to exclude certain groups of people from society, generally immigrants and (ex)offenders. This article will reflect upon this process by showing the exclusion of people from Dutch society on the basis of article 1F of the Refugee Convention. This legal ground is used as a condition for exclusion and therefore it can be considered as pre-sentencing.

This article examines the desirability of implementing a registration system as a means of control on the discretionary space in police powers of stop and search. Firstly, the legal background concerning these powers is sketched, and the discretionary space therein is highlighted. This is then placed within the current social context in the Netherlands. Finally, the desirability of implementing a registration system in the Netherlands will be discussed by analyzing a similar system that has been implemented in the UK. We conclude that implementing a registration system is an essential step in coming closer to a solution for ethnic profiling.

This paper reviews the status quo of immigration law in the Netherlands in regard to the human rights of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). Based on a thorough reading of the literature, Dutch detention law and policies aimed at immigrants are reviewed in relation to articles 3, 5 and 6 ECHR and 9 ICCPR to see whether they are compatible and whether a breach of human rights takes place in Dutch detention centres. Even though the ECHR has not yet ruled that Dutch immigration detention breaches drawn conclusions as to a potential breach of human rights, the writers of this paper argue that Dutch policy does potentially violate some of them.

The judge has a very important task in reviewing cases of immigration-related detention and guaranteeing the alien’s safeguards. This study examines the legal practice of reviewing detention orders from the theoretical perspective of crimmigration. Analyses of cases and interviews with judges show that the alien’s criminal background is not important for the review of grounds, but still of significance in the balancing of interests. In addition, the data reveal a protective gap in the reviewing mechanisms for aliens arrested on the basis of identification requirements. Moreover, the ultimum remedium principle proves to be a hollow notion, but the responsibility for its erosion lies largely outside the judicial practice.

Ever since prison overcrowding in Belgium emerged in the late 1980s, irregular migrants in prison were subjected to penal and migration policy initiatives. In this article, particularly (1) the opening of closed administrative detention facilities, (2) the periods of administrative detention in prison and (3) the installation of migration officers who identify irregular migrants in prison will be scrutinized. We will argue that besides a legal approach of the concept Crimmigration − as the convergence of Criminal and Migration Law and procedures − the evolution of the presented migration and penal policy in Belgium is a crucial aspect of the process of Crimmigration.