**9. Conclusions**

Actions speak louder then words, but words do set the stage for possible further actions. The Dutch political and media discourse shows a two-sided picture: on the one hand, migration and migrant communities in The Netherlands are problematized in the light of COVID-19; on the other hand, the analysis of both political and media discourse also shows that pushback is indeed being offered against the 'pandemicization' of migrants, especially as far as migrant communities in The Netherlands are concerned. When it comes to discussions on asylum-seekers and refugees, the pushback is less visible and all parties express concern about the situation in refugee camps and the implications for

the country if the people living in these camps were to in fact make their way to The Netherlands. Interestingly enough, despite these concerns and contrary to many other European countries, The Netherlands has never closed its borders by reinstating permanent border checks. Although problems are observed in the way in which different groups of people comply with the COVID-19 rules, the causes that are identified to explain this non compliant behavior are very diverse. For example, the higher numbers of Dutch people with a migrant background in the ICU, and also the higher mortality rates among this group, are not exclusively sought in that background. Indiscriminate governing of COVID-19 'through' migration seems to be mostly absent. With the exception of the parties that have an explicit anti-migration, anti-Islam and anti 'open' borders agenda—Forum for Democracy and the Party for Freedom—the other coalition and opposition parties are reluctant to explicitly link COVID-19 to migration or to propose stricter anti-migration policies on that basis. The reasons for the limited presence of 'governing COVID-19 through migration' in the Dutch discourse are not clear, and somewhat unexpected. In our opinion at least, the absence of that clear link does not immediately give rise to too much optimism. This somewhat skeptical attitude is reinforced by the extent to which the linking of migration and crime—and thus the assumption of a causal relationship between the two phenomena—seems to have become normalized in the discourse, with neither governmen<sup>t</sup> nor opposition parties questioning it. The interlinking of crime and migration has been widely problematized by scholars studying the process of crimmigration (Stumpf 2006; Van Der Woude et al. 2014), who have illustrated how this process can lead to the creation of a penal subsystem focused on territorial exclusion of the national social body instead of reintegration which has been crafted for the non-citizen (Aas 2013, 2014; Bosworth et al. 2018; Bowling and Westenra 2020). Franko refers to this penal subsystem as a form of 'bordered penality', indicating how the absence of formal citizenship status crucially affects the procedural and substantive standards of justice afforded to non-members and leads to the creation of two parallel penal systems: one for citizens and one for non-citizens. The fact that the link between crime and migration—with all its underlying assumptions—is normalized all over the political spectrum is cause for concern.

It should also be noted that the analysis presented in this article focuses on the first phase of the pandemic in The Netherlands; the collected data include the first and part of the second wave. There have now been a third and fourth wave, and there are concerns about a possible fifth wave. In other words, uncertainty persists and, most likely, will affect the overall discourse. Both Bauman and Beck point out that in times of uncertainty, the most visible groups of 'others' will eventually be identified as being (partly) responsible for the underlying problem (Beck 1986; Bauman 1998). It will also be interesting to see how the pandemic will influence thinking about mobility in general. To stay with Bauman, the question is to what extent tourists (postmodern westerners) and vagabonds (refugees, asylum seekers, illegal immigrants or dissidents) will both be able to move around the world again or whether there will be (even more) attempts to limit the mobility of vagabonds and the 'crimmigrant other' (Franko 2020). While according to Bauman it was already the case before the pandemic that the light was green for tourists to move freely around the world, while the light for vagabonds was red, it is expected that this last light will turn a darker red due to the pandemic. After all, if tourists want to travel safely, the vagabonds have to give way. Illustrative of the latter is the development of the European Travel Information and Authorization System as part of a broader development towards 'smarter' border control. The description of ETIAS states that it concerns a "largely automated IT system created to identify security, irregular migration or high epidemic risks posed by visa-exempt visitors traveling to the Schengen States, whilst at the same time facilitate crossing borders for the vast majority of travelers who do not pose such risks."<sup>42</sup> Irregular migration here is lumped together with safety and health risks as a risk against which member states must be protected, but which should not affect tourists.

**Author Contributions:** Collection, M.V.D.W. and N.V.I.; data analysis, M.V.D.W. and N.V.I.; writing of the contribution, M.V.D.W. and N.V.I. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research was funded Leiden University Fund/ Schim van der Loeff Foundation, gran<sup>t</sup> number W20407-4-51.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.

### **Appendix A. Political Discourse Documents (Indicated in the Text as DocumentPolitical DP + Number)**

1.Plenairdebat02.06(2)







### **Appendix B. Media Discourse Documents (Indicated in the Text as DocumentMedia DM + Number)**

