17 June 2024
Bilbao Campus
Given the current tendency of States to resort to criminal power as a migration control
mechanism, this research seeks to understand the regulatory framework of the right to
asylum in the face of the series of processes that currently govern migration; these are
securitisation, externalisation and criminalisation. The analysis shows that such
processes operate ‘in a cascading fashion’ (from securitisation to the criminalisation of
migration) and extend their effects ‘by association’ with asylum seekers at borders who
resort to irregular migration routes. The question that arises is to what extent the law
itself contributes to expand the criminalisation of irregular migration into the asylum
system. The research concludes that the criminalisation process operates through both
criminal and administrative regulations in European Union law. In criminal (or formal)
legal terms, the criminal offence of facilitating irregular migration notably extends the
criminalisation of migration to civil society, without guaranteeing access to the
protection system. In administrative (or material) legal terms, it has been observed that
various forms of detention have proliferated which are mostly directed against asylum
seekers within the EU legal framework. In short, the thesis argues that the elements
typically found in criminalisation (containment, immobility and expulsion) permeate the
asylum system and have proven to be an additional cause of the lack of protection at
the borders.
