The Deportation Gap as a Statistical Chimera: How Nonknowledge Informs Migration Policies
Publikation: Beiträge in Zeitschriften › Zeitschriftenaufsätze › Forschung › begutachtet
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in: Geopolitics, 21.06.2024.
Publikation: Beiträge in Zeitschriften › Zeitschriftenaufsätze › Forschung › begutachtet
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TY - JOUR
T1 - The Deportation Gap as a Statistical Chimera
T2 - How Nonknowledge Informs Migration Policies
AU - Scheel, Stephan
N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2024 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
PY - 2024/6/21
Y1 - 2024/6/21
N2 - Since the 2015 ‘migration crisis’, various measures have been introduced in Europe to enforce deportations. They include detention in prison-like facilities, unannounced executions of deportations at night-time and the scraping of legal safeguards like medical reasons prohibiting deportations. These evidently violent measures are justified with alarmist reports which suggest, supported by statistical knowledge, an ever-widening ‘deportation gap’. The term refers to the divergence between the number of migrants issued with a return order and the much smaller number of deportations. Illustrated through the case of Germany, this article combines insights from ignorance studies with a sociology of translation to show that the claim of a widening deportation gap is a statistical chimera that is based on various kinds and sources of nonknowledge. Contrary to actor-based approaches in ignorance studies, it is argued that this nonknowledge is not reducible to the production of ‘strategic ignorance’ (McGoey 2019) by policy actors seeking to advance their agenda. Rather, the production and circulation of nonknowledge appears to be dispersed and messy as it is facilitated by complex and fragile sociotechnical networks. In this way, a sociology of translation allows scholars to avoid the impression of entertaining a conspirational logic in the study of strategic ignorance and other forms of nonknowledge.
AB - Since the 2015 ‘migration crisis’, various measures have been introduced in Europe to enforce deportations. They include detention in prison-like facilities, unannounced executions of deportations at night-time and the scraping of legal safeguards like medical reasons prohibiting deportations. These evidently violent measures are justified with alarmist reports which suggest, supported by statistical knowledge, an ever-widening ‘deportation gap’. The term refers to the divergence between the number of migrants issued with a return order and the much smaller number of deportations. Illustrated through the case of Germany, this article combines insights from ignorance studies with a sociology of translation to show that the claim of a widening deportation gap is a statistical chimera that is based on various kinds and sources of nonknowledge. Contrary to actor-based approaches in ignorance studies, it is argued that this nonknowledge is not reducible to the production of ‘strategic ignorance’ (McGoey 2019) by policy actors seeking to advance their agenda. Rather, the production and circulation of nonknowledge appears to be dispersed and messy as it is facilitated by complex and fragile sociotechnical networks. In this way, a sociology of translation allows scholars to avoid the impression of entertaining a conspirational logic in the study of strategic ignorance and other forms of nonknowledge.
KW - Politics
KW - Sociology
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85196612828&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/72de0ac5-e358-3bc1-9b96-92ee9e4b65f8/
U2 - 10.1080/14650045.2024.2368620
DO - 10.1080/14650045.2024.2368620
M3 - Journal articles
JO - Geopolitics
JF - Geopolitics
SN - 1465-0045
ER -