A Review of Making People Illegal: What Globalization Means for Migration and Law by Catherine Dauvergne

Catherine Dauvergne’s book, Making People Illegal: What Globalization Means for Migration and Law, is a study of the intersection between the phenomenon known as globalization and the evolution of migration law. Dauvergne’s central assertion is that migration law, accompanied by what she sees as the recent global crackdown on illegal migration, has become the “last bastion of sovereignty” for the nation-state in the face of the advancing forces of globalization.¹ Dauvergne argues that, as more of the policy decisions that traditionally fall in the domain of national sovereign power enter the murky realm of globalization, nation-states have increasingly turned to their domestic migration laws as a way to shore up their borders—both physical and intangible—and thus to reassert their national identities.² This reassertion of nation-states’ weakening sovereignty serves as a barrier to meaningful progress in fighting illegal migration because it “contributes to failures of policy, law, and imagination” by discouraging creative proposals that seek to detach migration policy from domestic legal frameworks.³ Where Dauvergne’s book remains focused on developing this argument, it is compelling, original, persuasive, and generally successful.

The book focuses on a diverse range of topics, including labor migration, refugee law, human trafficking and smuggling, national security, and the nature of citizenship.⁴ She makes clear at the outset that her book is not confined to any one of these topics; rather, it is meant to “select sample instances for analysis that offer original insights regarding each of these areas.”⁵ Dauvergne refers to this strategy as “core sampling,” an analogy to the methodology used by ice scientists.⁶ Dauvergne’s core samples serve as focal points for each of her chapters, and range from international events to agency reports. For each of her focus areas, Dauvergne chooses a core sample of current significance and uses it to tell the broader story of illegal immigration and globalization. In her introduction, she accurately observes that “[t]he persuasive effects of these choices will be one of the crucial ways to assess this book.”⁷

In this review, I will examine this structure and whether Dauvergne’s examples have the power to persuade. After a discussion of Dauvergne’s foundational chapters, in which she examines the importance of modern terminology as applied to migration and migrants and migration’s significance in the larger framework of globalization, I turn to her five core sampling chapters. In discussing each chapter, I identify the specific sample on which Dauvergne focuses, followed by an analysis of the effectiveness of her arguments. Finally, I conclude with a broader perspective on the success of her strategy as a whole.

Before she begins her project of core sampling, Dauvergne examines the term “illegal” as it is applied to people in the context of migration. The chapter “On Being Illegal” begins with the argument that, because being an illegal migrant is a status imposed by a legal framework, the only way to truly eliminate the problem of illegal migration would be to repeal all laws meant to regulate it.⁸ Although this suggestion will be seen by most as wildly unrealistic, it is effective in making Dauvergne’s point that the term illegal, when used to describe a group of people, is a procedural term meant to carry with it a whole host of substantive assumptions. Within the rhetoric of the global crackdown on illegal migration, those known as illegal are contained within the stereotype of the “poor, brown, and destitute.”⁹ Dauvergne sees this label as essential to the reassertion of individual national sovereignty. When physical borders fail, she argues, states exclude undesirable people from within by labeling them illegal—thus robbing them of the rights and privileges belonging to legitimate members of the society.¹⁰ Hence, the state retains control of its national identity even when it fails to physically exclude “outsiders.”¹¹

Dauvergne successfully invokes a real sense of moral alarm as she presents her argument in this section. Her observations regarding the stereotypes conjured by the term illegal...