RT Article
T1 Immigration Detention as Social Defence: Policing ‘Dangerous Mobility' in Italy
JF Theoretical criminology
VO 24
IS 1
SP 50
OP 70
A1 Campesi, Giuseppe 1977-
A1 Fabini, Giulia
A2 Fabini, Giulia
LA English
YR 2020
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/169106095X
AB Drawing on an empirical study, this article explores the role of immigration detention in Italy by analysing the way a specific rhetoric of ‘dangerousness' has developed and is being used within the framework of immigration enforcement policies. Our argument is that immigration detention has been transformed into an instrument of crime prevention and ‘social defence', and that this transformation is fuelled by the central position that the legal categories of ‘risk' and ‘danger' have assumed in the regulation of the return procedure. The article contends that immigration law enforcement agencies can make use of immigration detention as a flexible control tool to manage what are perceived as the most problematic populations in urban areas, thus practising a policy of selective enforcement that while not explicitly built along racial and ethnic lines, clearly discriminates among migrants according to their ‘social marginality' or supposed ‘social dangerousness'.
K1 Crime prevention
K1 Dangerousness
K1 Deportation
K1 Immigration detention
K1 Policing
K1 Risk
K1 Social defence
DO 10.1177/1362480619859350