Policing Markets: Immigration Control and State Transformation in Europe

Recent efforts to construct border walls reinforce the perception that physical borders are the main sites for blocking irregular migration, when in fact much of the “action” in immigration control lies in internal enforcement. Motivated by a concern that employment is a major draw of irregular migrants, policy-makers across Europe have sought to construct virtual walls around their labor markets. These virtual walls are often of a financial nature: employers’ sanctions, ramping up of enforcement capabilities, and broader campaigns against the shadow economy and illegal work. This paper examines the proliferation of these initiatives across Europe in an effort to identify the political motivations that lie behind them.

The paper argues that not only has the bringing down of formal borders between states spurred intensified internal controls over labor markets, but EU actors and institutions also increasingly pressure member-states to combat their shadow economies. To share an open border has costs. In short, globalization and Europeanization, once thought likely to erode the power and autonomy of states, have instead brought about a reconfiguration and even expansion of state responsibilities. With this has come a recasting of the relationship between states and economies – formalization of the informal, regulation of the unregulated, and bringing into the light economic transactions that had hitherto been conducted in the shadows. Formal borders have been replaced by an intensification of the state’s role in overseeing economic transactions and monitoring the lives of denizens and citizens.