“I call it a system.” Unauthorized Migrants’ Understandings of the Long Reach of Dutch Internal Migration Controls

We draw on the concept of deportability to show how unauthorized migrants who (used to) live in the Netherlands perceive and experience Dutch internal-control mechanisms. We first conclude that these migrants’ deportability has serious legal, social, and existential effects on them, which they feel long after their return or deportation to their home country. Second, we state that unauthorized migrants evaluate the Dutch internal- control mechanisms as “one system” in which they distinguish three important, interlinked layers, consis ting of (1) divergent actors, (2) laws and policies inside and outside the migration control domains located within (3) different geographies. This implies that individual nation-states, through their internal control mechanisms, also contribute to the externalization of migration control at a supranational level. We conclude that the state’s internal migration controls bring about immobility not only in the countries of settlement but also in the transit and home countries. existential effects on these migrants, which are felt long after their return or deportation, even for those respondents who returned to their home country using financial return assistance (Staring and Kox 2020). This study shows how the multilayered structure of the divergent Dutch control mechanisms is being perceived by those subjected to it —that is, as “one system of control. ” The analysis of the migrants’ stories gives meaning to three important, interlinked layers within the system: the divergent actors, a broad range of laws and policies not restricted to migration policies, and different localities. First, the migrants discern a whole range of public and private actors who are involved within this system of internal migration control, including (immigration) police, immigration officers, officers from the Immigration and Naturalisation Service, officers from the DT&V, border officers, employers, acquaintances, citizens, lawyers, flight captains, landlords, and IOM employees. A second input to the layered structure of the internal migration control is presented by the divergent laws and policies that all try to control the mobility of the unauthorized migrants in the Netherlands and which, as such, also add to the encompassing control system: criminal laws, development aid, civic integration requirements, labor laws, housing laws, and social rights. We show how these layers are interlinked, as the merger of these policy domains with the migration domain also implies an extension of the controlling actors with whom unauthorized migrants are confronted from the moment that they choose to migrate until their post-return or deportation. Third, we conclude that specific internal migration-control mechanisms dealing with entry bans and deportations have severe consequences that go far beyond internal migration controls, with their national policy goals of withstanding unauthorized stay. As a consequence, migrants returned or deported to their home country often experience immobility, economic or social exclusion, as well as traumas related to their separated families. As we have shown, the individual nation-state, through its internal migration management, adds directly to the externalization of migration control at a supranational level. These insights, based on the migrants’ experiences, reveal that multilayered bordering regimes have an even wider reach than is usually assumed in the theoretical debate on