“We have nothing to hide”: Legitimacy narratives, researcher positionality and the ethics of accessing the Dutch deportation apparatus

Abstract

This article presents a reflection on the contentious access negotiations involved in researching the Dutch deportation apparatus. Previous studies described how hostility towards researchers and the opacity within migration control regimes more generally lead to difficulties for conducting academic research. This article instead relies on a self‐reflexive account of two successful access negotiations to question what acquiring access tells us about the workings of migration control, and what consequences entering into a relationship with powerful actors has for academic knowledge production. I argue that granting access as such serves an important function for the deportation apparatus, as it helps to legitimise state power and assert their moral authority. By selectively facilitating access and enabling scrutiny by researchers, journalists and the wider public, I argue that the deportation apparatus strategically performs transparency and “voluntary accountability.”

Making pushbacks public: Secrecy, material witnesses and devices of dis/appearance

“…In research on security, borders and migration management, scholars can encounter challenges related to field access when investigating controversial policies and practices: extradition of terrorist suspects (Kapoor, 2018), deportation programmes (Cleton, 2022;Walters, 2018;Wissink, 2019), border violence and pushbacks (Davies et al, 2023;Karamanidou and Kasparek, 2022). Such challenges are often due to state secrecy, which is directly linked to the tactical production of non-knowledge to avoid 'repercussions of inconvenient evidence' and liability for malpractices (McGoey, 2019: 2-3).…”

“…Besides recognizing that 'exclusion requires silence and concealment' (Mountz, 2011: 122; see also Moran and Gill, 2016), I demonstrate how silences and concealments, taking the form of secrecy, are enacted and contested. Also, instead of approaching secrecy as a challenge that various actors -researchers, journalists, oversight bodies -deal with when investigating the injustices of contemporary borders (Cleton, 2022;Klimburg-Witjes et al, 2022;Wissink, 2019), I study secrecy as a construction: as emerging from a set of practices that go beyond hiding.…”

A power-knowledge approach

“…Articles about various aspects of deportation often lack methodological sections, yet they nonetheless successfully pass the review process (imagine if they were missing a section on theory!). Recent publications by Wissink (2019) and Cleton (2022), which analyse problems relating to access to the field, are notable exceptions to this rule. A volume of essays edited by Ilse Van Liempt and Veronika Bilger (2009), though not directly focussed on deportations, is another important publication, containing as it does chapters on the ethics of research with migrants with insecure immigration status.…”

“…Deportation often leads to social stigma in countries of origin, with deported people perceived as 'failed' migrants (i.e., as having not succeeded in their intention to migrate) and not infrequently suspected of criminal behaviour abroad (Schuster & Majidi, 2015;Radziwinowiczówna, 2019Radziwinowiczówna, , 2021; see also Chapter 2 by Witold Klaus, Justyna Włodarczyk-Madejska and Dominik Wzorek in this book). Secondly, secrecy is often the norm when it comes to how the state institutions we research conduct deportations (Lindberg & Borrelli, 2019;Wissink, 2019; see also Chapter 5 by Lisa Marie Borrelli in this book); information about deportation operations is frequently kept confidential (Radziwinowiczówna & Morgan, 2022) while the bureaucrats responsible for deportations are notoriously reluctant to share information with academics (Rosset & Achermann, 2019; for a positive experience accessing institutions, see Cleton (2022)). Stigma on the one side and secrecy on the other make access difficult (Kalir et al, 2019).…”