The state versus the alien: Immigration control and strategies of irregular immigrants

In the past decade the Dutch state and the European Union have initiated a number of measures to make the strategies of irregular immigrants more visible in order to exclude, apprehend and expel them more effectively. These measures have limited the scope of irregular immigrants to manoeuvre in the legitimate institutions of society. As a consequence irregular migrants are pushed towards the fringes of legality and beyond. This article discusses three shifts in the residence strategies of irregular immigrants: (1) from formal to informal work, (2) from legitimate to criminal behaviour, and (3) from being identifiable to being unidentifiable. In reaction to these strategies, the state is countering again with new measures, especially with instruments to identify immigrants who do not reveal their true identity. There is a constant struggle in the field of migration, in which individual and collective actors involved respond to each other with different strategies.