"The Secret Is to Look Good on Paper"

Appropriating Mobility within and against a Machine of Illegalization

STEPHAN SCHEEL

Reports in the media of spectacular border crossings tend to create the impression that the majority of illegalized migrants enter the European Union (EU) clandestinely, hidden in freight containers or in unseaworthy boats. It is, however, by now an established fact that the majority of illegalized migrants arrive perfectly legally with a valid Schengen visa in the EU and only become "illegal" once it has expired (Collyer et al. 2012; Düvell 2011; EC 2003; Schoorl et al. 2000:101; Sciortino 2004; Zampagni 2013). The importance of visas as a mode of entry for illegalized migrants has also been documented for other destination countries such as the United States, where it is estimated that so-called visa overstayers account for 40–50 percent of the country's illegalized population of 12 million people (Andreas 2000:100; Pew Hispanic Center 2006:3). Likewise, reports on illegalized migration in the United Kingdom (which is not part of the Schengen area) underline the fact that, contrary to public perception, the vast majority of illegalized people in the UK are nondeported rejected asylum seekers and visa overstayers (Sigona and Hughes 2012:6). This observation has also been confirmed for the global level: The IOM's World Migration Report 2010 emphasizes that most of the 10–15 percent of the world's international migrants who are in an irregular situation are, in fact, overstayers (IOM 2010:29). Yet neither the importance of restrictive visa policies for the illegalization of migration nor the significance of visas as a mode of illegalized migration has been sufficiently acknowledged by border and migration studies so far.

This is well reflected by the relative neglect in the border and migration studies literature of the Schengen visa regime, which is the focus of this chapter. The meager but growing number of publications one finds on the Schengen visa regime sits in stark contrast with the attention dedicated to more visible aspects of border control such as detention centers, deportations, militarized border controls under the lead of Frontex, or interception policies in the Mediterranean in border, migration, and critical security studies. It could indeed be argued that much of the research in border and migration studies suffers from the same bias as media coverage and public debate, which, by focusing on more visible and often dramatic forms of unauthorized border crossings and the spectacle of militarized border enforcement, "help to generate a constellation of images and discursive formations, which repetitively supply migrant 'illegality' with the semblance of an objective fact" (De Genova 2013a:1830). The relative neglect of the Schengen visa regime is all the more astonishing given that it affects the access to mobility of billions of people. Phenomena such as the much-debated attempts to cross the Mediterranean in overcrowded boats simply constitute what are, in fact, effects of this vast machine of illegalization, which provokes these and other dangerous forms of border crossing, as I show in this chapter.

Moreover, we know virtually nothing about aspiring migrants' attempts to appropriate mobility to Europe via Schengen visas and the less spectacular border struggles that occur, on a daily basis, in the 3,500 visa sections that the EU's member states maintain worldwide. This chapter uses the introduction of the Visa Information System (VIS), one of the largest biometric databases in the world, as an occasion to compensate for this twofold lacuna in the borders and migration studies literature. Drawing on the autonomy of migration approach (AoM), I engage the Schengen visa regime from the perspective of aspiring migrants in order to investigate how they appropriate mobility to Europe via Schengen visas in the context of biometric border controls.

This question is raised by the AOM's core thesis. As indicated by its name, the AoM suggests that migration features moments of autonomy — that is, moments of uncontrollability and excess — in relation to the attempts to control and regulate it (cf. Bojadzijev and Karakayali 2007; De Genova 2010d; Mezzadra 2011; Moulier Boutang 1993). This claim is in tension with the promotion of biometric technologies as adequate means for " 'filling the gaps' in traditional methods of border control" (Thomas 2005). What makes biometric recognition systems so attractive for border control purposes is their alleged capacity to verify the claimed identity of a person with unprecedented speed and accuracy. One purpose of the VIS is, for instance, to verify that the person seeking to cross the EU's external border is the same individual to whom a Schengen visa has been issued at a consulate. To this end, the fingerprints of all visa holders are captured upon arrival at the EU's external borders and compared to the fingerprint templates that have been created and stored in the VIS when the people concerned applied for visas at the consulates. Thus, the VIS is meant to forestall passports with valid Schengen visas being used by so-called lookalikes, that is, similar-looking persons (Broeders 2007). What this example demonstrates is that the VIS forecloses some of the practices by which migrants could successfully appropriate mobility to Europe. Hence, the introduction of the VISraises the question: How do migrants appropriate mobility to Europe via Schengen visas in the context of biometric border controls?

Engaging this question provides me — and this is the second contribution that this chapter seeks to make — with the opportunity to introduce the notion of appropriation as an alternative concept to theorize migrants' capacity to subvert border controls. To this end, I will identify six features that practices of appropriation share, irrespective of...