Making (in)formality work in a multi-scalar European border regime

ABSTRACT

The European migration control regime claims to strife for ‘orderly’ and safe conditions of migration, yet systematically generates the opposite. This paper explores the role of informality in creating solutions to enable control and produce order in the European migration control regime by examining two areas of border policy characterised by high degrees of regulation and contestation : the implementation of the Dublin III Regulation (2013) and transnational negotiations over readmission agreements between European states and deportable people’s assumed countries of origin. We focus on Sweden and Switzerland, two countries perceived as having high degrees of ‘formality’ in their migration control regimes, and draw on ethnographic material generated between 2015 and 2018 in Swiss and Swedish migration control agencies. We demonstrate the central role of informality in making formal regulations 'work'. The Dublin Regulation necessitates tacit toleration of informality to be enforced, and readmission agreements rely on informal, transnational politics that neither follow migration law nor respectthe rights and lives of people on the move. The article underscores the importance of debunking the myth of an ‘orderly’ migration control regime, informality is what makes European migration control ‘work’, often to the detriment of people on the move.