Abstract
Modern immigration is a highly regulated procedure governing the mobility of peoples between sovereign jurisdictions. This procedure has been progressively refined since the late eighteenth century through mechanisms of government that have frequently deployed the apparatus of criminal law. In this chapter we examine the long history of the intersection of criminal law and policing regimes in the service of immigration control in Australia. We take the Australian case as exemplary rather than exceptional. The particular conditions of British settlement of the convict colonies and the later construction of the White Australia Policy constitute a particular local formation of a more general phenomenon found in the development of modern states. Through a brief history of Australian immigration law and policing we highlight both the long-standing criminalisation of migration regulation breaches, and the persistent governmental concerns with the exclusion of undesirable populations, especially of those with criminal records. In the light of these histories we question the assumption that ‘crimmigration’ is a peculiarly late modern convergence of criminal law and immigration regulation.
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Notes
- 1.
Stumpf 2014, p. 245.
- 2.
- 3.
Aliverti 2017, p. 376. While this is not the place to explore the history of European law, it is worth noting that administrative law commonly involved an expansive use of the police power of the state from the nineteenth century onwards, and that in German states illegal migration was regarded as a crime: e.g. Fahrmeir et al. 2003.
- 4.
For a more nuanced social science view of the evolution of immigration policy as ‘adaptation’ in an administrative and political context see Slaven and Boswell 2018.
- 5.
Zedner 2013, pp. 49–50.
- 6.
- 7.
Pickering and Weber (2013).
- 8.
- 9.
Finnane 2013b.
- 10.
- 11.
Petrow 2012.
- 12.
- 13.
Speedy 2016, p. 20.
- 14.
Kimber 2013.
- 15.
- 16.
- 17.
NSW Police Gazette, Sydney: Office of Inspector General of Police. 30 October 1907, p. 377.
- 18.
WA Police Gazette, Perth. Government Printer. 15 September 1943, p. 386.
- 19.
- 20.
Fischer 1989.
- 21.
Nicholls 2007, p. 54.
- 22.
- 23.
- 24.
- 25.
Barker 1919.
- 26.
- 27.
Bashford and Howard 2004.
- 28.
- 29.
Smith 2018, p. 505.
- 30.
Lake and Reynolds 2008.
- 31.
Nicholls 2007, p. 63.
- 32.
Kaladelfos 2010.
- 33.
Ibid. p. 258.
- 34.
Puddifoot 1925.
- 35.
- 36.
- 37.
Finnane 2009.
- 38.
Rosenberg 2006.
- 39.
- 40.
Finnane 2013a.
- 41.
Re Yates; Ex parte Walsh.
- 42.
Zogbaum 2004; R v Carter; Ex parte Kisch (‘Kisch’s Case’).
- 43.
- 44.
- 45.
- 46.
Persian 2017.
- 47.
- 48.
Finnane 2009
- 49.
- 50.
Kaladelfos and Finnane 2018.
- 51.
Kaladelfos and Featherstone 2017.
- 52.
Queensland Times, 5.4.1954 “Migrant’s Letter Explains Killings”, p. 1.
- 53.
Townsville Daily Bulletin, 7.4.1954, “Migrant’s Health Papers Cleared”, p. 5.
- 54.
The Daily Telegraph, 3.1.1951, p. 7.
- 55.
Finnane and Kaladelfos 2017.
- 56.
Nicholls 2007.
- 57.
Horner 2014.
- 58.
Deery 2005.
- 59.
Terence Robson, a British fascist, initially accepted as an assisted migrant with his wife and two children, was subsequently refused entry owing to his political associations: P R Heydon to the Minister for Immigration [Billy Snedden], 21 December 1966, Security screening British migrants – policy – Part 1, NAA A6980, S250772.
- 60.
Aliverti 2015, p. 17.
- 61.
See e.g. the numerous European and North American nineteenth-century examples reviewed in Fahrmeir et al. 2003.
- 62.
For a striking nineteenth-century example of the impact of global conditions on domestic migration policy see Zolberg’s study of the hardening of state laws in the US in the face of mass Irish and other European immigration in the 1850s: Zolberg 2003.
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Finnane, M., Kaladelfos, A. (2019). Australia’s Long History of Immigration, Policing and the Criminal Law. In: Billings, P. (eds) Crimmigration in Australia. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9093-7_2
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