Crimmigration describes the merging of criminal and immigration law, creating a punitive system for migrants that lacks criminal justice safeguards and protections.

About Ana Aliverti
I am a Professor of criminal law and criminal justice. My research work looks at the intersections between criminal law and criminal justice, on the one hand, and border regimes, on the other, and explores the impact of such intertwining on the national criminal justice institutions and on those subject to the resulting set of controls. I am a 2017 Philip Leverhulme Prize Winner.
My research examines questions of citizenship and belonging in criminal justice, and law's instrumental and symbolic power for boundary drawing, as well as the place of morality and affects in state power. I concluded a project on the policing of migration which investigated the growing cooperation between immigration enforcement and the police, and explores the new contours of law enforcement in the context of globalization

Key Points
• Crimmigration describes the merging of criminal and immigration law, creating a punitive system for migrants that lacks criminal justice safeguards and protections.
• Public discourse increasingly frames migration as a criminal threat, normalizing policies initially justified as emergency measures post-9/11.
• Criminalizing migration relies heavily on symbolic deterrence rather than active enforcement, indirectly leading migrants into riskier and more dangerous migration routes.
• Citizenship status significantly influences treatment within criminal justice systems, disproportionately disadvantaging non-citizens through harsher penalties, difficulties accessing bail, and poorer legal representation.