**1. Introduction**

In the acknowledgement of his seminal work "Governing Through Crime: How the War on Crime Transformed American Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear" Jonathan Simon (2007) observes how 'crime and crime control have become one of the fundamental challenges to democratic governance that the developed world faces'. In his thesis Simon illustrates how crime has become the dominant frame through which a broad variety of social problems are presented, and therefore also seen. As he illustrates in 'Governing through Crime', this framing of, for instance, teen pregnancy as a possible future crime problem (as single mothers will most likely raise delinquent children), leads to the criminalization of behaviors that should not fall under the realm of the criminal law. A year after Simon's book was published, Bosworth and Guild (2008) used his 'governing through crime' thesis to call attention to what they called 'governing through migration control'. In their article, the authors illustrated how, in the context of the United Kingdom, discursive metaphors and practices of punishment have spilled over into public spheres beyond the criminal justice system, in particular into the realm of migration control (Bosworth and Guild 2008, p. 704). For instance, they note how there has been a growing tendency to lump together quite disparate groups of non-citizens in media and political discourse, from asylum seekers to so-called 'economic migrants' to foreign nationals in prison, effectively erasing differences between them (Bosworth 2008, 2016). Whereas much has been written about the criminalization and securitization of migration, the authors move beyond this dominant angle that had characterized much of the criminological analysis of border control until then, and instead highlight the governmental role of boundary reinforcement during insecure times. Apart from highlighting the preferred use by the UK governmen<sup>t</sup> of highly flexible administrative processes in dealing with migration matters, the authors call

**Citation:** Van Der Woude, Maartje, and Nanou Van Iersel. 2021. Governing Migration through COVID-19? Dutch Political and Media Discourse in Times of a Pandemic. *Social Sciences* 10: 379. https://doi.org/10.3390/ socsci10100379

Academic Editor: Robert Koulish

Received: 21 May 2021 Accepted: 23 September 2021 Published: 11 October 2021

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**Copyright:** © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

attention to the discourse that is being used to frame and build support for the development of a fine-grained system of migration control and boundary making. By taking the case of The Netherlands, a country that is often portrayed as 'tolerant' and very 'open', as a focal point in this article, we aim to shed light on the question of to what extent Dutch political and media discourse seems to imply a link between COVID-19 and migration and therefore seems to imply the necessity of border-tightening in response to potentially sick or virus-spreading migrants. In other words, we want to analyse whether the political and media discourse in The Netherlands is using COVID-19 in such a way that it might be setting up the introduction of repressive migration and border control measures like the 'fine-grained' system that Bosworth and Guild (2008) talked about.

### **2. A Quick Glance at the Wider Discourse on COVID-19 in Europe**

The image of the migrant as a threat to public health is not new; the narrative that migrant populations around the globe carry a wide array of communicable diseases, and therefore pose a threat to public health in destination communities, is a strong one and tends to resurface in moments of crisis. In 2018 the World Health Organization published the report 'No Public Health Without Refugee and Migrant Health' to counter this narrative in the context of the European continent (WHO 2018). Yet, the COVID-19 crisis has illustrated that the urge for scapegoats in times of global turmoil caused by a pandemic trumps scientific reports and more nuanced debates. According to Hungarian President Victor Orbán it is "( ... ) primarily foreigners who brought in the disease, and that it is spreading among foreigners."<sup>1</sup> Poland's prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, furthermore stated that most cases of COVID-19 in Europe are "imported, in the strict sense of the word," either by foreigners or by Poles returning from abroad. His message is that the Polish nation is clean and pure, and would not experience the current crisis if it were less involved in freedom of movement.<sup>2</sup> Greece's nationalist New Democracy government, meanwhile, has cited the risk of coronavirus infection as a reason for pressing ahead with its controversial plan to build "closed" camps—detention centres, in other words—for asylum seekers trapped by European policies on the Aegean islands of Lesbos and Chios. In France, Marine Le Pen has used the spread of the coronavirus to make a renewed call to close France's frontier with Italy, effectively suspending the Schengen agreemen<sup>t</sup> on open borders. Leaders of far-right parties in Germany and Spain have echoed the sentiment.<sup>3</sup> Furthermore, populist Eurosceptic Nigel Farage, whom many credit with making Brexit happen, tweeted about a "Covid crisis in Dover," baselessly claiming that a boat carrying migrants had landed in southeast England, "with 12 on board and they all tested positive for the virus."<sup>4</sup> These and other developments led the UN Secretary General in May 2020 to issue a public statement in which he warned of the fact that the 'pandemic continues to unleash a tsunami of hate and xenophobia, scapegoating and scare-mongering'. In order to counter this, he calls on political leaders 'to show solidarity with all members of their societies and build and reinforce social cohesion' and on the media 'to do much more to flag and, in line with international human rights law, remove racist, misogynist and other harmful content'.<sup>5</sup>

Looking at these responses to the spread of the pandemic by various political figures in the European Union, they seem to fit in with a larger trend of anti-immigration and pro-nationalist sentiment on the continent that became especially visible in response to the so-called 2015 migration crisis. In that year, large numbers of refugees made their way to Europe in response to the Syrian war and the violence that erupted as a result. Scholars of border criminology have discussed how national responses to the so-called European migration crisis have also shown how some of the world's most seemingly open and wealthy societies feel the need to restrict mobility and, as Barker states, in so doing '"undo their own historical, albeit complex, trajectories towards equality, democratization and individual liberty'" (Barker 2017, p. 442). This urge to restrict mobility is reflected by a growing nationalist public and political discourse in which asylum seekers in particular, but definitely not exclusively, are being portrayed as dangerous and 'crimmigrant' others whose presence will threaten the national identity and the cultural fabric of society. As a result, there has been an increased focus all throughout Europe on developing mechanisms that can distinguish between 'good' and 'bad' mobilities, or what Bauman terms 'tourists' and 'vagabonds' (Bauman 1998; also see Weber and Bowling 2008). This development—that only seems to have been amplified and intensified by the pandemic— puts the right of free movement for all who are inside the European Union to the test (Van Der Woude et al. 2017).

### **3. A Closer Look at Simon's 'Governing through Crime' Thesis**

As mentioned in the introduction, in his work, Simon points out the connection between discourse—understood as the language beyond the sentence and thus including power dynamics—and policy. Both influence each other: discourse can spark policy change and vice versa. Without wanting to unravel the complex relation between the two, Simon highlights the problems of, as he sees it, an institutional tendency to approach societal issues through a military lens. This is problematic, he contends, because the rhetoric of securitization conflates societal issues with matters of national security. Since a central governmen<sup>t</sup> and its institutions are the sole legitimate actors to respond to threats to national security, a state maintains and extends its own purpose by securitizing complex societal challenges. One of the ways in which this dynamic manifests is through discourse. In an earlier publication, Simon notes that the use of military language in non-military policy domains can be indicative of governing through crime (Simon 2001). To illustrate this, one might think of expressions like 'The fight or battle against COVID-19-, 'Nurses and doctors at the frontline', and 'Healthcare workers as frontline workers'. This is exactly what Simon is talking about: military language (visible in words like fight and frontline) moving from one domain (namely, a military domain) to another policy domain (namely, public healthcare). This is not to say that anyone who has used such statements falsely treats COVID-19 as a matter of national security. Rather, it shows that language can be indicative of wider dispositions towards securitization.

Moreover, since our discourse analysis will be concerned with the dynamics of governing *through* crime (and migration), it becomes equally important to demarcate this from (simply) governing crime. Simon offers two points of departure for this differentiation, namely, proximity and proportionality (Simon 2007, p. 5). To start with proportionality, governing through crime often manifests in policy responses that are disproportionate to the harms they seek to address. In turn, such disproportionality raises questions about whether a certain policy response is aimed to mitigate or solve a certain harm, or whether it serves ulterior motives. As Simon also notes: "we can expect people to deploy the category of crime to legitimate interventions that have other motivations" (Simon 2007, p. 4). This tendency has also been described by Garland in the context of what he calls the political strategy of 'acting out': The act of showing force in response to complex and difficult-to-manage security problems by using strong language and far-reaching measures in order to give the impression that the problem is taken seriously, while knowing that the proposed measures will most likely not actually lead to a proper solution to the problem as they do not address its root cause(s) (Garland 2001).

Besides proportionality, there is the notion of proximity. This refers to whether a given societal issue is sufficiently related to (national) security to approach it as such, and more generally whether it is reasonable to connect two given policy domains to one another. Although the Dutch language does not distinguish between safety and security—an interesting observation in itself—this distinction does have an effect in policy. Security incidents, by definition, are purposefully caused or facilitated by mal-intended people (e.g., theft or terrorism). Contrary to this, safety incidents take place without anyone being fully responsible for them (e.g., earthquakes or unintended accidents). This difference demonstrates why securitization tends to come with scapegoats; indeed, there is no securitization without someone or some group to blame for it. In other words, proximity reminds us that when two policy areas are linked (both in discourse and in policy), the relationship between them should be judged for logical consistency and desirability. Together with

proportionality, these notions can also be employed to differentiate between governing migration and governing *through* migration.

To concretize this with an example, on 20 April 2021, a plenary debate on minors that went missing after entry into The Netherlands took place. Several members of the Dutch parliament critiqued the Secretary of State for the Ministry of Justice and Security for her lack of effort to trace these missing children. One member of parliament suggested the following: "We cannot imagine the miseries these children have experienced. If the Secretary of State truly wishes to protect these children, she must close the borders. She must close our borders and she should not let those children in here anymore."6 While it is true that closing the borders may decrease the numbers of unaccompanied minors that go missing in the long term, this policy measure is neither proximate nor proportionate; the policy proposed (closing the borders) is not straightforwardly connected to the harm that is discussed (missing unaccompanied alien children). Consequently, it is questionable whether such a proposal is in fact aimed at resolving this harm, or if the harm is used to justify and operationalize underlying sentiments such as xenophobia.

To also illustrate a counterexample, we do *not* consider the following statements to be 'governing through migration and/or crime': During the pandemic it has been frequently discussed whether refugee camps on the islands of Lesbos and Chios should receive (additional) humanitarian support from, among others, the Dutch government. There were fears of outbreaks of COVID-19 and of its consequences for the already appalling conditions in the camps. In this case, a discourse is forming that indeed links migrant groups such as refugees on the one hand and the potential outbreak of COVID-19 on the other. Nevertheless, the connection is correct in this context; (the living conditions in) refugee camps are causally related to the risk of spread. All in all, the distinction between 'governing' and 'governing through' is facilitated by Simon's proximity and proportionality principle, but it is fair to say that discourses always have borderline cases—a caveat that we will explain further when explaining the research method for discourse data collection and interpretation.

### **4. The Netherlands: A Beacon of Tolerance Gone Dim?**

Several countries in Northern Europe have the international reputation of being leading examples on inclusion, equality and tolerance. With strong welfare systems in place, countries such as Norway, Sweden and The Netherlands, are seen as countries that in general are taking good care of their citizens. Besides the aspect of social welfare, having relatively mild and humane penal climates also seems to be part of this grand narrative of hospitality and inclusion. Dutch criminal justice polices have long been characterized as "tolerant", lenient and liberal: permissive towards many vices, foreigner-friendly and blessed with a mild penal climate, and generally perceived to be a beacon of moderation (Downes 1988). The centrality of tolerance and humanity in matters of criminal justice in The Netherlands seems to coincide with a strong emphasis on human rights. With Norway and Sweden, The Netherlands is often depicted as a so-called gidsland ("guiding country") and thus seen as the 'conscience of the world' by setting moral standards in international relations and guiding other countries in the proper direction (Dahl 2006; Engh 2009; Herman 2006). The Netherlands is an interesting case as the country is historically known to be a 'gidsland'—a guiding country—for the implementation of human rights and often praised for its tolerance (Franko et al. 2019). Yet, more recent history has shown a different face of The Netherlands as a country where, upon taking a closer look, immigration law and criminal law are becoming increasingly intertwined (Van Der Woude et al. 2014) and in which political parties that actively and openly claim to be anti-Islam and racist are gaining a foothold (Van Der Woude 2020). The tweet by Geert Wilders, party leader of the anti-Islam and Euro-sceptic right wing party "Party for Freedom" (PVV) in response to the COVID-19 crisis is illustrative in that sense. In October 2020, when COVID-19 cases were soaring in The Netherlands he tweeted: "So the treatments and surgeries of "Henk" and "Ingrid" [two quintessential Dutch names to refer to the native, white Dutch population, AUTHOR.] who are suffering from cancer, heart failure or other illnesses have to, ye<sup>t</sup> again, be postponed because our IC units are predominantly being occupied by "Mohammed" and "Fatima" who do not speak our language and who don't care about the restrictions?". Not only is he stigmatizing Dutch citizens of Moroccan descent as not being able to speak Dutch and abusing our healthcare system, he is also presenting them as a risk to public health for not following the rules. Despite an overall loss in the total number of seats in parliament compared to the previous elections, the Party for Freedom (PVV) did come out as the third largest political party in the Dutch elections of March 2021.
