Research project
Tales from the European borderlands. A comparative analysis of perspectives, expectations and fears of managing cross-border mobility in Europe
To what extent are there differences between countries in and outside the European Union and the Schengen area in the level of crimmigration, the merger between migration control and crime control, and to what extent can these differences be explained by the way in which state and non-state actors in these countries are making use of (in)formal discretion and (in)formal power structures to guide their response to cross border mobility?
- Duration
- 2017 - 2021
- Contact
- Maartje van der Woude
- Funding
- NWO
“Tales from the European borderlands” is a subproject of the larger NWO funded project “Getting to the Core of Crimmigration”.
This synthesis project will draw from data and insights collected and obtained in the other two subprojects as well as from data collected through a multiple-country survey. The aim is to provide a comprehensive and comparative perspective on the process of crimmigration in the context of dealing with intra-Schengen cross-border mobilities and hence answer the research question that is central to the project at large.
This synthesis project will provide a comparative perspective on the process of crimmigration in relation to the notion of discretion as can be seen in all different countries included in the project as a whole. Whereas the two PhD projects will draw mostly from ethnographic fieldwork, in order to offer a truly comparative perspective, this project will also draw from legal and policy analysis as well as from quantitative survey data collected in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Austria, Norway, Denmark and Sweden.
The project aims to uncover decisions creating discretionary space as well as decisions taken within available discretionary space and the extent to which each of these decisions are either driven by or driving, or both, the merger of crime control and migration control. Particular attention will be paid to the various contextual factors influencing these decisions, the interaction between the multiple levels of governance, as well as to their impact and intended and unintended consequences for people, local, national and European institutions.