Deportation, smart borders and mobile citizens: using digital methods and traditional police activities to deport EU citizens

Taking the case of Romanian citizens in France, this article documents and analyses the digital methods and traditional police activities used for the deportation of EU citizens across the Schengen border and within EU territory. EU laws and Schengen regulations support states’ implementation of high-tech methods in migration governance and police work. Our fieldwork, conducted with several police units in France and Romania, indicates a gap between the claimed ‘controlled’ management of mobility through crimmigration and the actual messiness at the Schengen border as a result of policy implementation limitations (lack of legislative adjustment to digital demands), poor administration (training of border agents, allocating resources) and political decisions (harmonisation or competing narratives). Despite the promotion of cutting-edge technologies in the deportation process, traditional techniques as well as paperwork remain relevant. This raises questions regarding the articulations of traditional techniques with highly promoted control technologies. While the latter has modified the functioning of the deportation process, these changes do not necessarily make the former useless. In practice, this work is left to the discretion of police officers and ground-level bureaucrats who interpret, create and enforce norms and regulations in the name of ‘the rule of law’.