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Street-level Democracy?How Immigration Bureaucrats Manage Public Opposition

Antje Ellermann

Assistant Professor of Political Science

University of British Columbia

[email protected]

Published in West European Politics, 29(2), 287-303

Reprinted in Immigration Policy in Europe: The Politics of Control (2007)Virginie Guiraudon and Gallya Lahav (eds.), New York: Routledge

Abstract. It is commonly argued that immigration policies in advanced democracies are

consistently more liberal than the restrictionist preferences of publics. In this article, Ichallenge this view by examining the opinion-policy relationship at the stage of policyimplementation, rather than legislative choice. Bureaucrats, in fact, regularly encounter

local publics who are opposed to the strict enforcement of migration control measures.These pressures, I argue, reflect a shift in public attention between the stages of policy

design and policy implementation, from the benefits of restriction to the harsh costs ofcontrol. As implementation makes these costs visible, public opinion threatens thecapacity of bureaucrats to implement restrictionist legislative mandates. The article

specifies the conditions under which bureaucrats’ enforcement strategies can enhancetheir capacity to produce policy outcomes that are more restrictionist than public

preferences. Drawing on extensive interview data, the article empirically tests thisargument by examining the implementation of deportation policy in Germany.



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Migration control is a fundamental expression of the state's monopoly over the legitimate

means of coercion (Weber, 1979). By regulating the movement of noncitizens across national

borders, states set and enforce rules on who can reside within their territory, and defend the

national welfare against individuals who may pose a threat. And yet, while at the heart of

statehood, the politics of migration control is marked by high levels of political conflict. In

making immigration policy, state actors face difficult trade-offs between competing societal

interests and values. Migration scholars have identified the restrictionist immigration

preferences of the public as the key source of regulatory pressures bearing on the state (Freeman,

1995; Money, 1999). At the same time, civil actors who stand to lose from the imposition of

migration controls face strong incentives to mobilize and use the openness of democratic

institutions to forcefully assert their claims. In identifying these anti-regulatory interests,

scholars have argued that their political clout is sufficiently overwhelming to undermine the

capacity of liberal states to effectively exercise their sovereign powers of migration control

(Hollifield, 1992; Cornelius, Martin & Hollifield, 1994; Freeman, 1995; Joppke, 1998).

This article provides a two-fold challenge to these claims. First, I argue that the

preferences of the public are more nuanced, and not as consistently restrictionist, as the literature

generally assumes. As policies move from legislation to the stage of implementation, public

attention shifts from the purported benefits of migration control to its high, and individualized,

costs. I argue that once confronted with concrete and, by necessity, harsh policy consequences,

the public will be sympathetic to calls by immigrant advocates for a more compassionate

approach to enforcement. And, just as public preferences are shaped by the distinct political

dynamics characteristic of different policy stages, so are the incentives of state actors.

Importantly, public attention to the human costs of enforcement threatens to undermine the



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capacity of immigration bureaucrats to implement their legislative mandates. At the same time,

and in a second departure from the literature, the article presents evidence from the case of

Germany that suggests that bureaucrats have responded to these constraints by adopting

enforcement strategies that have strengthened their capacity to implement contested measures

and resulted in administrative decisions that are more restrictionist than public preferences.

This analysis of bureaucratic capacity examines the use of the state’s most heavy-handed

of weapons of migration control: deportation, the forceful removal of noncitizens from the

national territory. Not only has this means of migration control been virtually ignored by the

literature,

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but, because of its heavy-handedness, it is also particularly vulnerable to political

contestation, and so it presents a profound challenge to the state. Should we discover evidence in

favor of state capacity in this “least likely” case, this would suggest that the findings would

likely hold in other areas of migration control as well. Similarly, among the various stages of the

policy process, the arena of implementation—which constitutes similarly uncharted territory in

the study of migration control2 —presents a crucial test of state capacity. The vast “deportation

gap”3 that is evident across advanced democracies cannot be accounted for by inadequate legal

instruments of control, but rather by the lack of implementation of existing legal provisions. It

follows that only by studying the politics of implementation can we realistically gauge the scope

of state capacity.

The first part of this article engages the existing literature on the role played by the public

in shaping the politics of migration control. It proceeds by outlining a set of key propositions

that depart from these claims in important ways. The second part empirically tests the argument

by studying the implementation of deportation policy in Germany. The article concludes by



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assessing the significance of these findings for our understanding of the state's capacity for

migration control.

The Assumption of Public Restrictionism in the Literature

The notion of “expansionary bias,” coined by Freeman (1995: 882), is a core assumption

underlying much of the migration control literature. The concept describes the claim that there is

a consistent and sizeable gap between the restrictionist preferences of the public (as reflected in

public opinion polls), and the pro-immigration preferences of their political elites (as expressed

in legislative output) (Simon & Alexander, 1993; Cornelius, Martin & Hollifield, 1994; Lee,

1998; Money, 1999; Fetzer, 2000). Even scholars who have challenged this body of research—

such as Lahav (2004), who uses European Union data to argue that public opinion is more

rational and better informed than commonly acknowledged—do not challenge the assumption

that the immigration preferences of the public are inherently restrictionist.

Importantly, this assumption of public restrictionism postulates a politics of immigration

control that situates the state at the center of a political tug-of-war between the broad but

unorganized restrictionist public, and the narrow, well-organized interests of pro-immigration

actors. For instance, in her analysis of the political geography of immigration control, Money

(1999) attributes the expansionary gap to the observation that electoral rules tend to

underrepresent public preferences that are spatially concentrated. Anti-immigrant pressures,

Money argues, are typically geographically concentrated because they result from native-

immigrant competition that is strongest in neighborhoods with high concentrations of

immigrants. Because electoral rules aggregate public preferences across locations with varying



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degrees of immigrant concentration, then, politicians face insufficient incentives to respond to

popular anti-immigrant pressures.

Freeman’s interest-based approach (1995; 2002) places the play of organized interests at

the center of immigration politics. Drawing on Wilson’s typology of public policy (1980), he

describes the politics of immigration control as entrepreneurial, marked by diffuse benefits and

concentrated costs. Because of this cost-benefit distribution, the restrictionist public faces weak

incentives to organize, whereas immigrants and associated interests—agricultural and business

lobbies, and ethnic and human rights organizations—will be quick to mobilize against regulatory

initiatives. In consequence, Freeman concludes, immigration policies tend to be more liberal

than public opinion would suggest.

We can sum up this body of immigration research, then, as resting on two basic

assumptions:

1. That the broad public has constant preferences that consistently favor restrictionist

immigration policies and measures.

2. That, because of the political clout of pro-immigration lobbies, state actors rarely take

into account the preferences of the unorganized public.

The constraints faced by the state, however, will look quite different wherever these conditions

do not apply, i.e., where the public opposes restrictionist measures or where state actors face

strong incentives to take into account public preferences. I argue that, in the arena of

implementation, these two basic assumptions in fact do not hold. Instead, once confronted with

bureaucratic enforcement, the public is regularly sympathetic to humanitarian concerns about the

harsh impact of regulation on individual migrants. Importantly, public opposition to harsh



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enforcement measures, often skillfully utilized by immigrant advocates, creates incentives for

state officials to adopt a more compassionate style of implementation.

Public Attitudes Across Policy Stages: Tracing Attention to Costs and Benefits

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once famously stated, “deportation … may result

… in loss of both property and life, or of all that makes life worth living.“4 Without doubt,

deportation imposes enormously high, and highly concentrated, costs upon individuals.

Importantly, these costs are most evident at the stage of implementation where the interventions

of state officers regularly result in the separation of families, deprive households of financial

security, confine migrants in detention centers, and forcefully return individuals to countries they

may have lost all ties to. Because of the magnitude of these costs, then, the politics of

deportation, and the politics of implementation in particular, are marked by high levels of

political conflict.

Crucially, this article contends, public attention to the costs and benefits of deportation

will vary systematically across policy stages. At the stage of agenda-setting and policy

formulation, the benefits of regulation—restoring the integrity of the immigration system, public

safety, fiscal savings for local authorities, and homeland security—dominate. Because

deportation policy targets what Arnold has called “politically repellent groups” (1990: 80)—

illegal immigrants, “bogus” asylum seekers, and “criminal aliens”—proponents of migration

control can easily play on the fears of the public and construe the presence of particular

immigrant groups as detrimental to the public welfare. Consequently, even elected officials who

may be supportive of more balanced policies will be reluctant to express their views publicly for

fear of being labeled as "soft" on "illegal aliens." In sum, at the legislative stage, demands for



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“cracking down” on immigrants are quickly established, policy debates are framed in pro-

regulatory, rights-restricting ways, and little attention is paid to the costs of regulation (Flood,

1998; Minkenberg, 1998; DeMaster & Le Roy, 2000; Fetzer, 2000).

Once implementation gets underway, however, the public comes face-to-face with the

costs of deportation as individuals and families in their communities become subject to removal.

And because of the demonizing nature of the earlier legislative discourse, the number of

deportees whose characteristics do not conform to these criminalizing images is substantial.

Once the public is confronted with the predicament of these immigrants, such as families with

small children who are socially integrated and contribute to community life, deportation begins

to offend their sense of justice. Rather than emphasizing the benefits of regulation, then, public

debates at the stage of implementation will focus on what is now perceived as the

disproportionate costs of deportation. Instead of appealing to the national interest, public

discourse now draws on universal values such as humanitarianism (“refugees should not be

forced to return to countries ravaged by civil war”), the sanctity of family life (“families should

not be torn apart”), and community (“individuals who have contributed to a local community’s

economic well-being should not be expelled”).

Recent research by criminal justice scholars has identified a political dynamic similar to

the one postulated here in the area of crime control. Whereas public opinion polls tend to show

overwhelming support for law and order policies, Tonry (2004) and Roberts et al. (2003) found

that members of focus groups consistently espoused highly differentiated preferences on matters

concerning the individual offender, such as views that sentencing decisions should take into

account humanitarian considerations. In a similar vein, in the field of immigration, Espenshade

and Belanger have collected data that distinguish between ideology and concrete policy



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measures. Their research has shown that, while there is strong public support for the principle of

immigration control, once confronted with specific and, by necessity, harsh, control measures,

public support begins to wane (1997; 1998). These finding are significant because they suggest

that arguments about public preferences based on opinion poll data that do not ask respondents to

consider specific policy measures and their consequences are likely to disregard shifts in public

attention across policy stages. In the absence of these considerations, then, public opinion

research tends to reflect public preferences at the legislative stage, rather than the more

differentiated attitudes evident during implementation.

Significantly, shifts in public attention from policy benefits to costs have consequential

political implications. Baumgartner and Jones have argued that “rapid changes in the tone of a

policy image held by key social actors … often presage changes in patterns of mobilization”

(1993: 26). We can thus postulate that, as the fates of individuals whose characteristics do not

conform to criminalizing policy images attract public attention, and as the costs of their

impending deportation become apparent, they are likely to gain public support even from

members of the public who at an earlier stage may have spoken out in support of stricter

migration controls. Public opposition to deportation might be articulated spontaneously as

members of the public witness the impact of forced repatriation; alternatively, advocates can

avail themselves of public support and appeal to elected officials to intervene in bureaucratic

decision-making on behalf of individuals under threat of deportation. Importantly, as policy

images shift, administrative decisions and practices that may be legally and procedurally correct

become reframed as violations of shared norms of basic human rights and reciprocity, thereby

threatening to undermine the legitimacy of bureaucratic enforcement.



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In an important sense, the public is a key player in this street-level conflict. Publicity is a

major weapon for those pursuing the halt to a deportation order, and the interventions of elected

officials on behalf of “deserving” cases clearly appeal to the public’s “potential preferences”

(Arnold, 1990). Accordingly, elected officials will likely consider a refusal to support

particularly sympathetic cases a political liability, should media attention turn the public’s

“potential preferences” into articulated opinion.

It follows that a key condition for the state’s capacity for migration control is the ability

of bureaucrats to effectively deal with public opposition to the implementation of particular

control measures. What means, then, do bureaucratic actors have at their disposal to counter

these challenges to their coercive capacity for migration control? Guiraudon and Lahav (2000)

have argued in the context of European integration that member states have responded to judicial

constraints to migration control by shifting the locus of control “upward” to intergovernmental

bodies, “downward” to local authorities, and “outward” to non-state actors. This article argues

that immigration bureaucrats have similarly pursued strategies that respond to the political

constraints to implementation. When faced with popular challenges to their coercive authority, I

contend, immigration bureaucrats have at their disposal three basic strategies: they can either try

to preempt , contain, or resolve political conflict.

Conflict Preemption. “One of the most conclusive ways of checking the rise of conflict,”

Schattschneider has argued, “is simply to provide no arena for it” (1957: 934). Among the most

basic features of public opposition to the implementation of deportations is the observation that it

thrives on the visibility of the costs borne by the targets of the state. The most efficient way for

bureaucrats to preempt public challenges to their deportation efforts is to render implementation

invisible, thereby hiding the costs of regulation. Among the three strategies pursued by



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bureaucrats, I argue, the preemption of conflict is easiest to achieve and imposes the weakest

demands on the state. In order to render implementation invisible, bureaucrats chiefly require

administrative, or infrastructural (Mann, 1993), resources that will allow for the removing of

deportation from public view.

Conflict Containment. In contrast to conflict preemption, containing political conflict

places substantial demands on the state. The strategy of conflict containment requires

immigration bureaucrats to utilize their political resources to carry out deportation orders in the

face of public protest. Specifically, as immigrant advocates draw elected officials who oversee

immigration agencies into this conflict, bureaucrats require a substantial degree of political

insulation from the interference of their political overseers (see Ellermann, 2006). Political

insulation, in turn, is principally a function of the institutional structuring of executive-legislative

relations in a given political system.

Conflict Resolution. Political conflict in the arena of implementation can be understood

as the changing salience of policy costs and benefits at different points in the policy process.

While immigration bureaucrats have no choice but to impose individualized costs, they can make

some headway toward resolution by lowering the costs associated with migration control. In

order to meaningfully lower the costs of regulation, however, bureaucrats need to adopt

comprehensive policy approaches that take into account the consequences of deportation. I

argue that bureaucracies are most likely to pursue this strategy if the goals of deportation policy

closely correspond with the state’s broader geopolitical interests.



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Deportation and the Politics of Implementation: The Case of Germany

Method and Data

Case Selection. Germany is a well-suited country case for analyzing the coercive

capacity of immigration bureaucrats. The historical legacy of the Holocaust has given rise to a

political culture shaped by a particularly profound ambivalence about the state’s use of coercion.

Immigration bureaucracies in this “semisovereign” country (Katzenstein, 1987) thus operate in

highly politicized milieus characterized by sustained grass-roots mobilization against particular

deportation cases.

Further, the case of Germany provides us with important subnational variation in the

institutional relations between bureaucrats and their elected overseers, thus allowing us to test the

argument underlying conflict containment. I present data on the Länder Baden-Württemberg and

Brandenburg to capture maximum variation in vertical oversight structures. Further, the case of

Baden-Württemberg provides us with additional change over time in oversight structures.

Data. The article draws on data gathered from in-depth interviews with over 120

immigration bureaucrats, senior executives, elected officials, and immigrant advocates in

Germany. Wherever possible, I triangulated data from diverse interview sources to substantiate

claims by bureaucrats concerning the efficacy of their efforts to deal with political conflict.

Likewise, I checked claims by immigrant advocates about the successes of mobilization against

the perceptions of bureaucrats.

Public Attitudes and Political Conflict at the Stage of Implementation

Our understanding of public preferences on immigration control, I have argued, is

hampered by the literature’s focus on the public's ideological and issue positions. In the absence



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of systematic public opinion data that would allow us to examine attitudes toward the concrete

consequences of policy measures, interview data can begin to fill this gap. The interview

evidence of this study clearly shows that bureaucrats consider public attitudes on matters of

implementation to be regularly biased against deportation. In the words of one deportation

officer:

Political pressure is always exerted against, never in favor of, deportation. Even

those who in principle support deportation don’t dare to publicly demand the

deportation of a particular individual or family.Deportation officer "A," regional authority, Karlsruhe (Baden-Württemberg), 25 January 2002

Not surprisingly, bureaucrats expressed high levels of frustration with what they perceived to be

a consistent public pro-immigrant bias. When questioned about the reasons underlying this

dynamic, officers argued that pro-immigrant attitudes emerge once the public is confronted with

the harsh implications of deportation. As an interior ministry official argues,

It is unbelievably difficult to convey deportations to the public. This is becauseit impinges on human dignity, and because of all the emotions involved. It is a

difficult situation for those affected. No matter where they return to, their lives

will deteriorate.

Senior civil servant, ministry of the interior of Baden-Württemberg, Stuttgart, 7 January 2002

Crucially, the punitive policy images that dominate in the legislative arena operate in the

abstract and conjure up images of individuals who present a clear threat to the public welfare. A

deportation officer refers to the distinction between “legal integration” and “actual integration”

to express this tension between the assumptions underlying immigration law, on the one hand,

and the complex realities of community life, on the other.

The problem is relatively simple—the disconnect between legal integration and

actual integration. The standard for legal integration is the law, the standard for

actual integration is set at the emotional level. And these two standards are in

conflict with each other. Many people simply can’t understand this. And then wehave to tell politicians [contesting the deportation of particular individuals] over

and over again: all we do here is implement their laws.Director, county immigration authority, Beeskow (Brandenburg), 2 November 2001



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To return to our earlier propositions, then, these interview data suggest that, once

confronted with the harsh implications of policies that at an earlier stage enjoyed broad support,

the public is likely to express views that oppose implementation. Consequently, this pro-

immigrant bias in public attitudes provides the basis for publicity campaigns surrounding

particular deportation cases. A deportation officer voices his frustration with public

mobilization:

There is a lot of public pressure. … The longer that immigrants have been here,the bigger the problem gets. All legal recourse has been exhausted, …

administrative proceedings are over. And then the church gets involved, or fellow

pupils in school. … There is no legal basis for this. ... But these instances ofmobilization occur on a daily basis.Deportation officer “D,” local authority (Brandenburg), 19 November 2001

In an important sense, public mobilization against deportations presents a substantial

threat to bureaucratic capacity. Not only may mobilization prevent bureaucrats from

successfully implementing their mandate of migration control in particular instances, but public

protest also serves to publicly discredit their authority. For instance, a deportation officer

working in a small community complained that he and his staff were considered “the local

bogeymen” and “heartless administrators.” In a typical comment, the officer argues:

In these situations, immigration agencies really lose in credibility. … Once youget mobilization drives and there are unfair newspaper articles all over place, then

public agencies get portrayed as authoritarian machines. … So their reputation

suffers, and civil servants feel left in the lurch. And you start forgetting that it’s

your first duty to uphold the law.

Deportation officer, municipal authority, Luckenwalde (Brandenburg), 22 November 2001

This account clearly illustrates the threat that political conflict poses to bureaucratic capacity.

Importantly, sustained patterns of intense public confrontation will have implications for

bureaucratic behavior far beyond those cases that have reached the point of public contestation.



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To the extent that bureaucrats consistently feel powerless to defuse public opposition, they are

likely to engage in anticipatory behavior and will steer clear of making unpopular case decisions

even before these cases attract public attention—a dynamic identified by Gilboy in her study of

U.S. immigration inspectors (1992). We will now closer examine the extent to which the

strategies pursued by German bureaucratic actors have succeeded in defusing political conflict.

Bureaucratic Reponses to Political Conflict

Strategies of Conflict Preemption. As holders of the legitimate means of coercion,

immigration officers have at their disposal the use of physical force as the ultimate means of

implementation. At the same time, the actual exercise of this prerogative is intensely

problematic. Once directly confronted with the physical costs of deportation, the German public

has regularly opposed the use of force by deportation officers. This has been particularly

pronounced in the case of deportations on commercial airliners, where tourists and business

travelers alike have protested the use of physical coercion against unarmed individuals. As a

result, once officers resort to physical force to deal with resistance by deportees, they generally

are forced to call off deportations.

This problem is clearly reflected in the political scandal following the 1999 death of

Sudanese asylum seeker Aamir Ageeb, who asphyxiated on his deportation flight as a result of

the use of force by escorting officers. In the aftermath of the incident, border patrol officers

were clearly constrained in their capacity to cope with deportee resistance, as illustrated in this

bureaucratic account:

Since the Sudanese guy was killed, a lot has changed. First the federal border police willtry to deport normally, without an escort. Recently we had such a case. We drive an

African woman, Sandra, to the airport. As we enter the office of the border police, she

says, “I don’t want to go.” And because the border police have become so careful, they



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just say, “OK, you take her back.” So we try a second time, two weeks later. They put

her into a dress that is buttoned at the back. She also gets handcuffed, but somehow …

she manages to undress herself on the way to the plane. So then the border police abortsagain!Director, central immigration authority, Eisenhüttenstadt (Brandenburg), 24 September 2001

Faced with these constraints, bureaucrats have devised administrative strategies that

remove the use of physical force from public view. In January 1993, the border patrol

directorate conducted the first private charter deportation flight to Rumania. Since then, charter

planes have become an integral part of German deportation policy. In 2000, the federal border

police started to use small Lear jets for the deportation of individuals with particularly high risks

of physical resistance. Importantly, both administrative means facilitate deportation by hiding its

implementation, thereby preempting the possibility that airplane passengers will solidarize with

deportees. A federal interior ministry official clearly spells out this rationale when explaining

the use of private Lear jets:

We use those with really difficult cases, for one or two persons. … The

advantages are clear: the pilot will definitely cooperate, and there is no public that

can take the side of the deportee.

Senior civil servant, federal ministry of the interior, Berlin, 13 November 2001

In addition to forestalling public protest, charter flights lessen the constraints on

deportation officers regarding the scope of acceptable violence. The privacy of these flights,

officers have argued, allows them to use physical force in ways that can deal more effectively

with deportee resistance.

Some time ago we flew 30 deportees, escorted by 60 officers of the federal border patrol and one medical doctor, to Rumania. Admittedly during these flights

officers exert more pressure. The deportees can be chained at their hands and feet

and can also get pushed down—just not in a way that could result in asphyxiation.Senior federal border patrol officer, regional federal border police office, 4 October 2001



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Yet another strategy designed to preempt political conflict has been the contracting out of

escorting tasks to foreign security personnel. By delegating the performance of air deportations

to security personnel from foreign (and, as a rule, more authoritarian) states, German bureaucrats

not only render invisible the exercise of coercion, but further assure successful implementation

without being held legally liable should deportees sustain serious injuries in the process. A

German deportation officer comments on the efficacy of the policy:

With these flights we are better prepared to deal with physical resistance. Onegood example is Algeria. Deportees respect the Algerian security forces. All

they have to do is to whisper something in their ear, and all of a sudden

everything is quiet. When a few moments before the deportees had acted up like

crazy with the [German] border patrol.Deportation officer, regional authority, Reutlingen (Baden-Württemberg), 23 January 2002

As an inadvertent witness to deportations, then, the German public has been strongly

averse to the use of physical coercion by state officers. This opposition has served to

significantly constrain deportation officers in their ability to carry out deportations where

individuals have physically resisted their control efforts. At the same time, bureaucrats have

successfully pursued strategies that have rendered the use of violence invisible to the public, in

particular by the institution of charter deportation flights. By removing the physical costs of

deportation from public view, then, German bureaucrats have succeed in weakening the

bureaucratic constraints arising from pro-immigrant public preferences.

Strategies of Conflict Containment. As immigrants are issued removal orders and local

communities come face-to-face with the costs of deportation, I have argued, the public is likely

to mobilize in opposition to implementation. Importantly, grassroots mobilization is most likely

to avert deportations if immigrant advocates succeed in securing the support of elected municipal

officials who oversee immigration bureaucracies.5 As constituency-servicing officials,



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municipal mayors play a particularly important role in constraining bureaucratic decision-

making, as one deportation officer recalls:

When I used to work for the municipal immigration authority, we had to deal with

a whole group of individuals who constantly tried to exert influence over ourdecisions: the principal of the local school, the pastor, and, in the end, even the

municipal mayor. ... Every time when a municipal authority is charged with

implementing a federal law, there are countless opportunity points for local

political influence.Deportation officer “A,” regional authority, Karlsruhe (Baden-Württemberg), 25 January 2002

However, in 1989, Baden-Württemberg became the first Land to move the

implementation of deportations from the municipal to the regional level in an attempt to increase

deportation rates for rejected asylum seekers. In what turned out to be a crucial development, the

heads of these regional authorities were no longer subject to municipal oversight, instead being

overseen solely by Land parliamentarians. And because Land parliamentarians are far less

accessible to local activists than municipal officials, centralization has had important

implications for the articulation of grassroots public opinion.

Before examining the consequences of administrative reform, let us take a look at the

politics of implementation in Brandenburg, a Land where deportations continue to be

implemented by municipal agencies. There, mayors and city councilors routinely respond to pro-

immigrant publicity campaigns by approaching deportation officers to retract removal orders. A

municipal bureaucrat reflects on the constraints of public mobilization:

The city councilors decided to form a working group to consult with us onquestions pertaining to deportation. … We get summoned to their meetings where

we discuss individual cases. Afterwards the press reports on the meeting andcreates further moral pressure.Deportation officer, municipal authority, Brandenburg a.d. Havel (Brandenburg), 21 November

2001

Significantly, a prominent immigrant advocate also shares this assessment of the political

exposure of municipal agencies:



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In Potsdam … there are clear channels of communication between us, local

politicians, and the immigration authority. We usually manage to find a

compromise and can avert deportation. … Councilors cannot afford to ignore us because we have both legal expertise and political power.Lutheran refugee chaplain, Potsdam (Brandenburg), 12 December 2001

Contrast these statements, then, with the following accounts from a regional deportation

officer in Baden-Württemberg, where bureaucrats are no longer subject to the oversight of

municipal elected officials.

It is no longer possible to exert political influence at the county level. Local

umbrella organizations [opposed to deportation] of course continue to makestatements and try to influence the outcome of decisions. But these efforts fail. …

A municipal mayor can no longer use his opposition to a particular deportation

decision in order to win the next election.Deportation officer "A," regional authority, Karlsruhe (Baden-Württemberg), 25 January 2002

Significantly, regional bureaucrats were not alone in arguing that centralization had

afforded them an unprecedented degree of political insulation. Immigrant advocates also

pointed out that centralization had severely weakened the political clout of grass roots

initiatives.

The establishment of the regional immigration authorities marked a clear turning point. The shift of responsibility away from municipal authorities added a new

element of anonymity. … Before we were able to strike deals with municipal

authorities … now these authorities have little power to influence decisions.Lutheran refugee chaplain, Stuttgart (Baden-Württemberg), 18 February 2002

Faced with recurrent public opposition to the implementation of deportation orders, then,

bureaucrats in Baden-Württemberg have utilized centralization as a means for evading political

control by municipal officials who represent the demands of pro-immigrant local publics. As the

above account by a regional deportation officer indicates, this strategy has not served to preempt

conflict—grassroots mobilization continues—but rather has given bureaucrats the capacity to

implement deportation in the face of public opposition. In doing so, bureaucrats have succeeded



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in containing political conflict arising from the public's unease with the human costs of

immigration enforcement.

Strategies of Conflict Resolution. Public sympathies for immigrants targeted by

immigration enforcement, I have argued, can be understood as a response to the enormous costs

that deportation imposes on individuals. In a relatively recent development, German bureaucrats

have pursued deportation strategies designed to defuse political conflict by substantially

lowering the costs that repatriation inflicts upon individuals and families. Through a

combination of carrots and sticks, bureaucrats have pursued the voluntary return of deportable

migrants.

In the latter half of the 1990s, this strategy was applied to the return of the 350,000 civil

war refugees from the former Yugoslavia. Among the Länder, Baden-Württemberg led the way

in developing the first comprehensive voluntary return policy. In an impressive development,

while in 1996 about 60,000 Bosnia refugees resided in the Land, by the end of 1998 this number

had shrunk to just over 5.500. Most strikingly, of the close to 55,000 returns, only about 550

relied upon forced deportations (Jäger & Rezo, 2000).

Specifically, Baden-Württemberg’s return policy involved a dual strategy of rewards and

punishments. On the one hand, individuals who agreed to return voluntarily were offered a

generous financial aid package. Importantly, the Land and federal governments made available

substantial reconstruction funds to help rebuild destroyed infrastructures in the region, thereby

aiding refugee reintegration. At the same time, bureaucrats were quick to deport those who

refused the offer of voluntary return, thereby drastically raising the costs of non-compliance.



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Importantly, these incentives visibly lowered the immense costs of expulsion. As a

leading government official explained:

We had to be really careful. There were so many uprooted individuals, so many

who were traumatized by the war. There you can’t apply that much pressure.You must never lose sight of the individual case. … So we kicked out the capable

ones, but when it came to vulnerable groups, we were exceedingly careful. That

was in the interest of success. If you deport traumatized refugees, then media

coverage will cause you serious harm. … As a result, you got situations where weallowed heads of families to stay on for a few extra months to save up more

money, while the rest of the family returned.Former deputy to the Federal Commissioner for Bosnian Refugees, Stuttgart (Baden-

Württemberg), 28 January 2002

At the same time, by offering generous repatriation support, bureaucrats were able to take the

wind out of their opponents’ sails.

It would have not been possible to deport 50,000 individuals just like that …

Politically it would have been very difficult. …We really were very

accommodating. If someone said, “I want to return, but I need a power drill,”then we provided him with a power drill! It was really important politically to

provide return assistance, because this then allowed us to respond to opponents of

deportations by pointing out that those cases previously had been offered theoption of voluntary return.Former civil servant in Baden-Württemberg’s Bosnia refugee repatriation unit, ministry of the

interior, Stuttgart, 11 January 2002

Finally, this strategy brought on board members of the communities who had initially been

opposed to repatriation. Numerous church congregations, for instance, sent trucks with supplies

to the villages and towns that refugees had returned to and actively supported reconstruction. In

an important sense, this shifted public attention from the individualized costs of repatriation to its

potential benefits, i.e., the reconstruction of a country destroyed by war.

Clearly, this administrative strategy of voluntary return cannot be equally applied to all

groups of deportees. Without doubt, Germany’s financial generosity in supporting repatriation

and reconstruction was fueled by a clear geopolitical interest in the region’s political stability.

Nonetheless, the voluntary return of the Bosnian refugees shows that political conflict at the



21

stage of implementation can to a considerable degree be resolved if state actors have at their

disposal means to meaningfully lessen the individualized costs of control.

Conclusion

Charged with the mandate of deportation, the bureaucrats examined in this article are

regularly faced with public opposition as they embark upon implementation. Contrary to the

expectations of the immigration literature, which has postulated a pervasive public restrictionism

on matters of immigration, the public here readily abandons its restrictionist preferences once

confronted with the human costs of immigration enforcement. As policies of migration control

move from legislation to implementation, the salience of diffuse policy benefits gives way to a

focus on its concentrated and severe costs instead, thereby tapping into values and concerns that

at previous stages had lain dormant.

Significantly, the public's pro-immigrant preferences that emerge in the process have

consequential political implications. Most basically, the conflict they engender constitutes a

fundamental challenge to the state's capacity for migration control. Immigration bureaucrats,

charged with carrying out legal mandates that reflect restrictionist public preferences, suddenly

find themselves confronted with a public hostile to implementation. The power of this

opposition is principally moral in nature. As immigrant advocates construe deportation as an

unjustifiably harsh and coercive state intervention, the legitimacy of the state’s use of coercion is

threatened. This shift in public attention, then, creates strong incentives for elected officials to

join in opposition against the implementation of deportation orders.

Faced with this public challenge to their coercive capacity, German bureaucrats have

pursued administrative strategies aimed at defusing political conflict. Whereas administrative



22

strategies that remove implementation from public view have allowed bureaucrats to preempt the

emergence of conflict, the centralization of implementation tasks has helped contain conflict by

insulating bureaucrats against the interference of municipal elected officials. In a more radical

step, bureaucrats have adopted policies designed to resolve the conflict arising from public

concern with the harsh consequences of implementation by drastically lowering its costs.

In adopting this set of strategies, the German state has effectively asserted its authority to

regulate migration. These findings provide a striking contrast to arguments that policy outcomes

in this area are consistently more permissive than public preferences would suggest. In the cases

of deportation examined here, implementation outcomes recurrently were more restrictionist than

the preferences of local publics. Nevertheless, the multiplicity of enforcement strategies adopted

by bureaucrats indicates the magnitude of the political demands migration control places on the

state. Whereas strategies of conflict preemption and containment serve to strengthen the

capacity of state actors, they cannot resolve the basic tensions set in motion by the coercive

control of individuals. Strategies of conflict resolution, by contrast, while best suited to

overcome political challenge, will continue to be constrained by the condition that their pursuit

correspond to policy goals external to migration control.



23

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Endnotes

1 With the exception of Gibney and Hansen (2003).

2 Notable exceptions are Barrios (1999), Calavita (1992), Gilboy (1992), Nevins (2002), and van

der Leun (2003).

3 The gap between the number of deportable immigrants and the number of actual deportations.

4 Ng Fung Ho v. White, 259 U.S. 276 (1922)

5 For a more detailed and comparative investigation of this argument, see Ellermann (2006).

ellermann street level democracy pre pub

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