Vol.:(0123456789) Crime Prevention and Community Safety https://doi.org/10.1057/s41300-021-00114-0 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Extending the net: from securitisation to civicisation of migration control Witold Klaus 1  · Monika Szulecka 1 Accepted: 10 March 2021 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited 2021 Abstract The article aims to contribute to the very actual theoretical debate concerning inter- section of migration control and crime prevention. Its objective is to review and critically discuss the process of extending control over immigrants. It is based on the analysis of control practices revealed in the countries of the Global North, which are the most common destinations for immigrants, be they forced or voluntary. We apply the three-stage notion of the development of migration control, of which two, i.e. securitisation and privatisation, have been quite extensively commented on in the literature so far. The third level, though, based on civic involvement in migra- tion control practices, named here civicisation of migration control, deserves spe- cial attention as possibly prospective tool applied by the states in migration govern- ance. We claim that increasing the net of social agents encouraged or obliged to control and report to authorities “suspicious” migrants or their “suspicious” behav- iours raises doubts whether the involvement of citizens of certain kinds of public and private bodies can be assessed positively. To support this argument, we indicate the consequences of unrefexive associations of migration-related phenomena with threats to security and crimes. Keywords Migration control · Securitisation of migration · Privatisation of control · Civic involvement · Criminalisation of migration Introduction Along with deepened European integration, migration of non-EU nationals has become increasingly politicised among European elites. It became associated with issues of security or—more precisely—the lack thereof. The roots of this process reach to the turn of the 1980s and 1990s, when the end of the Cold War contributed * Monika Szulecka m.szulecka@inp.pan.pl 1 Department of Criminology at the Institute of Law Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.