Full Text Available
Note: Clicking the button above will open the full text document at the original institutional repository in a new window.
This thesis investigates how the non‑penalization principle for irregular border crossing is formally upheld yet effectively undermined in contemporary migration governance. It argues that non‑penalization now operates as a narrow, conditional and status‑dependent “machine” whose protections are fra...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Thesis |
| Published: |
AUC Knowledge Fountain
2026
|
| Subjects: | |
| Tags: |
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| Summary: | This thesis investigates how the non‑penalization principle for irregular border crossing is formally upheld yet effectively undermined in contemporary migration governance. It argues that non‑penalization now operates as a narrow, conditional and status‑dependent “machine” whose protections are fragmented across refugee, smuggling and trafficking regimes and heavily mediated by open‑textured conditions and domestic discretion. Part I reconstructs this doctrinal architecture, showing how key norms convert a humanitarian intuition into limited exceptions within a legal order that otherwise normalizes the criminalization of irregular movement. Part II situates this fragile framework within security‑driven and externalized forms of European border control, where punishment is displaced “at a distance” through offshore, outsourced and seemingly administrative practices. Tested against the reality of mixed movements, the analysis shows how status‑dependence, late recognition and security governance combine to produce a tiered structure of protection in which some people are shielded from sanctions while many others remain systematically punishable. |
|---|