Description
The state as an entity is, and European coloniser states are, historically racist. This ongoing racist legacy translates into a simultaneous over- and under-surveillance of migrants. The state uses historical data and legacy racist practices to gather and analyse data, which work as a means of policing migrants and defending deterrent immigration policy. Coercive policies such as arbitrary detention, deportation, removal to unsafe locations, pushbacks, and abandonment in hostile locations are habitually used in European immigration practices. They result in violence experienced by migrants in insecure status, including maltreatment, abuse, sexual violence and rape in state custody, the use of restraint, assault, and brutality to achieve submission, and increased vulnerability to violence in society. The state weaponizes data against migrants; consequently, people with insecure status are forced to evade the state. Unrepresentative data aggravates the problems of minoritization and related vulnerability. A lack of information leads to a lack of knowledge of experiences and outcomes along intersectional minoritized identity lines. I argue that turning critical attention to state data-gathering practices, coupled with data on violence and deaths along migration routes, highlights the logic behind coercive immigration policies that are a result of the (data-driven) rationale of lowering net migration.
