Policing strangers: The convergence of immigration law enforcement and crime control in contemporary Japan

Abstract

In twenty-first century Japan, crime control has become an increasingly pertinent and decisive factor in the politics of immigration. The convergence of immigration law enforcement and crime control is the product of two transformations in Japanese society at the turn of the century: changes in the immigration field changes in policing and the perception of crime. Through this process, immigration law enforcement and crime control have come to intersect in multiple ways. In terms of law enforcement, the police became an active participant specifically in immigration law enforcement. At the same time, in the area of law-making, more restrictive immigration laws were implemented in the name of crime control. My arguments are three-fold: (1) immigration politics are shaped by interactions among actors who represent different principles in immigration that are conditioned by larger social contexts outside of the immigration field; (2) law enforcement actors logically associate migrants and crimes in multiple ways, and the occupational habitus of law enforcers interprets the structural marginality of migrants as signs of criminality; and (3) the convergence of immigration control and crime control undermines the capacity of migrant-support activists and, thus isolates migrants from informal support. This dissertation investigates causes and consequences of the convergence of immigration law enforcement and crime control. By examining Japan as a case, it argues that structural marginalization and the symbolic criminalization of migrants interactively take place at the intersection of two forms of control.