[1] The punishment of migrants and the political economy of punishment José Ángel Brandariz García University of A Coruna, Spain 1. Introduction The paper is aimed at applying the theoretical framework of the Political Economy of Punishment (from now on, PEP) to analysing Crimmigration policies. This analytical endeavour has been already undertaken by some authors (De Giorgi 2006, 2010; Melossi Melossi 2013) 1 . Yet this paper intends to examine what has happened in the field of Crimmigration policies in the Spanish case. It seems that there are at least a couple of good reasons to carry out such a case study. On the one hand, there is the magnitude of the migratory phenomenon experienced in the Spanish context throughout the first decade of the century, when Spain rated as the country that received the highest number of migrants worldwide, in relative terms (Arango, Aja and Oliver 2011) 2 . On the other hand, we see the peculiar evolution of Spanish Crimmigration policies, encompassing the imprisonment and civil detention of migrants, and the deportation regime, which have experienced a remarkable contraction since the onset of the Great Recession. The paper assumes that the analysis of Spanish Crimmigration policies requires an economic perspective. However, it is aimed at investigating whether this economic viewpoint may be developed in line with the theoretical framework of the PEP. 2. Political Economy of Punishment and Crimmigration policies As is widely known, the standpoint of the PEP assumes that the analysis of penality, in its concrete forms and expressions, cannot be disconnected from the evolution of the modes of production, since punishment practices are essentially determined by economic conditions (Rusche and Kirchheimer 1939/2003: 5 f.). In Georg Rusche and Otto 1 In order to analyse the criminalisation of migrants from an economic perspective see also Preston and Perez 2006, who nonetheless embrace a theoretical viewpoint which is fairly different from that of the PEP. 2 Between 2000 and 2010 in Spain the foreign-born resident population skyrocketed by 348.5%, climbing from a 3.6% of the whole population in 2000 (2.2% as regards non EU-15 born population) to a 14.0% in 2010 (9.0% in the case of non EU-27 born population) [Source: National Statistics Institute –INE-].