Kriminologisches Journal

Getting to the Core of Crimmigration

The Imagined Reality that is Schengen

Zusammenfassung

The increased global movement of people continues to be a challenge to the European Union. As argued in the article, the European Union and in particular the Schengen Area should be seen as an imagined space of free movement and easy crossings of internal borders. A space that, on paper, is presented as such but which, in reality, is a space that can be travelled freely and without encountering bordering practices only by those who are not seen as the crimmigrant other. By reflecting on the interrelationship between the phenomenon of crimmigration and the notion of discretion, this article provides a somewhat grim critique of one of the main pillars of the European Union.