More and more countries regulate migration through criminal law. With the introduction of the European Pact on Asylum and Migration, Europe in undergoing the most far-reaching reform of migration law in decades. In academic literature, this phenomenon is known as 'crimmigration'.
At the CINETS conference, organised this year by Professor Maartje van der Woude of the Van Vollenhoven Institute, more than 200 legal professionals, (legal) sociologists, criminologists and artists from all over the world gathered at Leiden Law School to exchange thoughts. CINETS stands for Crimmigration Scholars Network, an international research network established in 2012 which studies the intersections between migration law and criminal justice systems across the globe.
One of the conference's most compelling contributions was delivered by Professor Leti Volpp of UC Berkeley, one of the world's most cited voices in discussions on law, race, and migration. Her analysis of the Trump administration goes beyond policy. 'This is a racial project aimed at reducing the number of non-white immigrants in the United States, whether they are outside the country or already within it,' she said.
The scale of this project is unprecedented: whereas the Biden administration carried out an average of 294 arrests per day, the current administration has announced a target of 2,000. Hospitals, schools, and courthouses - previously considered off-limits to immigration enforcement - are no longer safe havens. 'Everyone's now being criminalised,' says Volpp. Immigration courts have effectively 'turned into deportation courts.'
The spectacle of 'slopaganda'
Volpp's analysis focuses on imagery. The Trump administration actively creates visual content, ranging from AI-generated propaganda and vintage-style deportation posters to what Volpp calls 'slopaganda': images that are designed to evoke melancholy, complete with blue-tinted filters and solemn saxophone music. One of the most striking examples is a post with the text: 'Our hearts will grow as our illegal population shrinks'; sentimental language that conceals exclusion politics. While the government implements a cruel campaign, citizens look on as if it were entertainment.
These images are not intended to spur people into taking action, making them more passive instead. 'Reality becomes a spectacle that diminishes meaning and distracts attention,' says Volpp. 'It works by displacing racism. It casts another group as the victim and obscures the gradual, quiet unfolding of what's actually happening. The public does nothing, and ordinary people become spectators.' She cites a piece in The New York Times: the purpose of certain government propaganda is not to get Americans to do something, but to ensure they do precisely nothing.
When even democracies choose exclusion
What Volpp describes as an American phenomenon is by no means unique to the United States. Vanessa Barker, Professor of Sociology at Stockholm University, demonstrates how the same logic has taken root in Sweden - a country that has long seen itself as a moral superpower in the field of human rights.
Barker calls it penal humanitarianism: policy that presents itself as being protective but actually has serious consequences. In 2015, Sweden closed its borders in an apparent attempt to protect the welfare state. What followed was a gradual merging of safety and migration in public discourse, culminating in a coalition government supported by the far-right Sweden Democrats. 'Sweden is perhaps one of the least likely countries for this to happen,' says Barker. 'But the social safety nets and democratic safeguards proved insufficient.'
According to Amnesty International, the European Migration Pact follows the same logic: from accelerated procedures with fewer safeguards to the detention of families with children in so-called return hubs outside the EU. Human rights organisations regard the term as deliberately misleading, arguing that these facilities are, in effect, prisons located outside Europe's borders.
The question that remains
Crimmigration as a phenomenon is neither exclusively American, nor exclusively far-right. It is a policy logic that has taken root in democracies of very different origins - from Washington and Stockholm to Brussels, and even in the Netherlands too, as research conducted by van der Woude shows.
Volpp's question, therefore, is not a political indictment aimed at the Trump administration, but a broader observation about the rule of law that deserves sustained attention far beyond the borders of the United States: if the law adapts itself to politics rather than the other way around, what, then, is the law still protecting?
