Master’s Thesis for Cultural and Social Anthropology
at the Graduate School of Social Sciences
AGAINST THE ‘TURN’
Scrutinizing the Implementation of Polish Deportation Policy
Maryla Klajn 11181303 Supervisor: Dr. Barak Kalir
Anilam81@hotmail.com 1st Reader: Dr. Alex Strating
2 Declaration on Plagiarism and Fraud:
I have read and understood the University of Amsterdam plagiarism policy
[http://student.uva.nl/binaries/content/assets/studentensites/uva-studentensite/nl/az/regelingen-enreglementen/fraude-en-plagiaatregeling-2010.pdf?1283201371000]. I declare that this assignment is entirely my own work, all sources have been properly acknowledged, and that I have not previously submitted this work, or any version of it, for assessment in any other paper.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Acknowledgments………..……… 5
Abstract……….……… 6
List of frequently used abbreviations……….……… 7
Introduction……….…………8
Theory and Background………..……….. 13
Deportation: Policy Design and Implementation……….……… 13
Assembling a Deportation Regime: ‘State Effect’ and ‘Deportation Continuum’………...15
‘Deportability’ and Labor Control……… 17
Cultural Ritual: ‘The Border Spectacle’………..……….. 18
The Polish Case……… 18
History and Population……… 19
Demographic Crisis and Demand for Immigration……….………….. 20
Foreigners in Poland………. 21
Polish Migration Policy………..……….. 23
Research Question and Sub-questions………..……… 25
Polish Deportation Continuum……….…. 26
Setting, Population, Methods, and Access: Expectations vs. Reality……….……….……. 26
Places and People……….………. 26
Access: Border Guards, Connections, and how the Best Gatekeepers can come in Unfriendliest of Forms………..……….……….. 27
Methods: Restrictions, Challenges, and Ethical Dilemmas………...……….. 31
Three Levels of Conflicts and Contradictions: From Policy Design to Its Implementation……….……….………. 34
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In the Web of Polish Bureaucracy………. 44
Freedom of Implementation………..……….……… 50
Two Faces of Border Guards……… 57
The BG Airport Unit: changing policy, new responsibilities, more paperwork……….... 57
The Public Face of Border Guards……….……….…….. 62
Two sides of the same coin – the reality of being a BG……… …………...………. 70
When all the face fit: BGs, the State, and ‘Deportation Continuum’………. 74
Conclusion………...………… 78
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
At the point when this intense year is coming to an end, I need to acknowledge that without an array of people who supported me over that time, this thesis would never come to be. I would like to express the most sincerest gratitude to all of UvA Anthropology staff: to my supervisor, Dr. Barak Kalir, for his knowledge and passion that were a continuous drive and source of inspiration; to my professors, Dr. Oskar Verkaaik, Dr. Alex Strating, Dr. Tina Harris, and Dr. Thuijs Schut, who helped to guide me through the program; to the readers of this thesis, for their time and comments; and to all of my classmates, who both stimulated me intellectually and supported emotionally, even in the moments of deepest doubt.
I am eternally grateful to all of my family and friends, whose generosity and kindness facilitated this research. Special thanks to my uncle, Aleksander Kartawik: for driving me to Amsterdam a year ago, putting up with endless hours of conversations and polemics, and essentially facilitating my most important fieldwork contacts. You rock! This would never happen without you.
To all of my informants: I cannot express how thankful I am for your time and patience in sharing your knowledge and experiences with me. I hope the end result would be to your liking, and all the information you shared have been used with respect and avoiding misrepresentations.
To Edgar, for always playing the sociological ‘devil’s advocate’, and for being my biggest fan all along.
To all of you: Thank you.
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ABSTRACT
At the times of ‘deportation turn’, a drastic increase in the use of deportation by modern states throughout the world, Poland stands out as a fascinating case. A country historically prone to emigration, due to new pressures of growing foreigner population and homogenization of migration policy with other EU states, it appears a likely candidate to follow the same trend. Surprisingly, the actual numbers of performed deportations in Poland over the last 10 years seem to be dramatically dropping. This thesis examines the reasons behind this anomaly, ‘following the numbers’ from the moment of policy design, through bureaucratic operationalization, to its final street level implementation. The analysis of the Polish Deportation Regime reveals not only a cacophony of conflicts and contradictions that cause a severe policy implementation gap, but also a trend of getting away from ‘deportations’ by shifting focus towards ‘voluntary returns’, obscuring how this shift in fact perpetuates the same migration rhetoric of ‘illegality’ as deportation. While Polish Border Guards, the hand and face of Polish deportation policy, struggle with changing job duties and their limitations and restrictions, the Polish state creates a ‘deportation continuum’, an infrastructure of institutions and organizations that progress a common goal. Deportation in the end reveals to have many uses and utilizations in the Polish Deportation Regime, serving its political, economic, and cultural needs.
keywords: deportation, Poland, policy implementation, voluntary returns, Border Guards, ‘deportation continuum’
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LIST OF FREQUENTLY USED ABBREVIATIONS
AVR – assisted voluntary returns BGs – Border Guards
FRs – forced returns
IOM – International Organization for Migrants OFF – Office for Foreigners
OPAI – Office of Public Access to Information OTR – order to return
PMF – Polish Migration Forum VRs – voluntary returns
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INTRODUCTION
The wall of 38 degree heat hits me as I exit the bus, at a stop located in the ‘middle of nowhere’ on the outskirts of Warsaw. Quickly walking along the airport freeway, I finally approach the already familiar Border Guard Unit and enter the building. Today is an exceptional chance for me to interview multiple Border Guards who work in Deportation Units. It’s my third visit, and the previous two have proven progressively more informative and interesting. I feel like a ‘regular visitor’ by now, but as I walk in and greet the previously encountered employee of the ‘pass bureau’, my presence is barely acknowledged by her scowl. After making a quick call to the Unit Commander to confirm my presence, I approach the desk to request a pass, the formality necessary to allow my access to the rest of the building. Looking through my wallet I experience the unpleasant, stomach clenching realization: my Polish ID is missing! I explain to the reception employee that I have other IDs with me, but with unmistakable satisfaction and air of authority she informs me they are not acceptable. Feeling desperate I ask whether with the IDs I have we can confirm my identity based on the documents I filled out on the two previous visits. “Are you joking? We have procedures to follow!” is said with such indignant and contemptuous outrage I immediately retract and accept the fact I will not be let in today, and I have to reschedule my interviews. At this moment the Unit Commander appears and greets me cordially. “I am so sorry, but I’m afraid we will have to reschedule…” I state sheepishly, and explain the situation, feeling both foolish and worried due to my missing ID. “Oh, don’t worry, that’s not a problem at all!”, he says with a smile. Yet it proves to be one. The reception employee refuses to issue me a visitor’s pass despite her boss’s specific instruction to do so. “I don’t tell you how to do your job!” she yells at some point, causing commotion, and eventually catching attention of other employees who start curiously peaking from behind various doors, and even coming downstairs from upper floors. Finally (since it is implied I pose a potential threat) a head of Unit Security is called in, and the Commander, with receptionist’s interjections, describes the situation. The young, dark-hair
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officer in a uniform, armed with a gun and other ‘appeasing’ equipment, looks both amused and slightly irritated, and glares for a moment at me, the Commander, and the receptionist. Shrugging his shoulders he concludes with: “If the boss says it’s fine, I clearly have no problem with it” and walks away. Per his instructions to do what I suggested earlier (comparing IDs I had with the information already in the system), the ‘pass bureau’ employee resentfully obliges. Infuriated and bitter, she begrudgingly pushes the magnetized piece of plastic towards me without making eye contact.
Still shocked and quite embarrassed by the scene that my entrance has caused, with a pass in my hand I follow the Commander upstairs, and continue to apologize for not double checking my ID before the visit. “Are you kidding? She should be the one apologizing, that was ridiculous! But I guess…” he stops for moment at the top of the stairs, and with a small smile looks at me over his shoulder: “I guess we all have to find our power somewhere, don’t we?”
This vignette illustrates one of the main contradictions I encountered during my fieldwork among the Polish Border guards: a constant negotiation between policy-dictated procedures and individual employee’s choice in regards to their implementation, with the latter often trumping the former. Just as street level bureaucrats described by Lipsky (2010), Border Guards in Poland clearly exhibit “substantial discretion in the execution of their work” (3), while also being the ‘face’ of policy that the public sees as representative of the government, facilitating the state’s ‘fantasies of deportation’ (Kalir 2014).
One of the most important aspects of deportation is its polysemic nature, both conceptually and in execution. From policy design to the physical act of performing the expulsion, ‘deportation’ can validate, serve, and fulfill multiple needs of the state. It can be used politically, stemming from international context of laws and agreements on human mobility; economically, for gaining large scale labor and employment control; or socially, as an internal (domestic) process of re-establishing and strengthening citizenship boundaries
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(Bigo 2002; Cornelius 2004; Schuster 2005; De Genova 2007; Gibney 2008; De Giorgi 2010). Often utilizing NGOs and other non-state agents in addition to multiple state institutions, countries form a continuum of laws and procedures that validate and support state’s utilization of deportation, creating an infrastructure of modern Deportation Regimes (Mitchell 2006; Koch 2013; Kalir and Wissink 2015; Kalir 2017).
In the context of Poland, international politics are strongly embedded in EU policy, with its needs often imposed on the Polish state, dictating new procedures and redefining old ones. Economically, due to growing emigration of the working-age population, there is a desperate need for labor, especially in the unskilled sectors such as agriculture, or service industry – a demand calling for increased economic migration. On the sociocultural level, Polish society generally expresses deep-rooted xenophobia, and the recent political changes have validated much of already present hatred towards foreigners, in turn pressuring politicians to appeal to these tendencies, driving a nationalistic propaganda that validates deportation as a migration tool with the fantasy of an ideal and pure nation, while in reality no state “can (or wants to) prevent the phenomenon of irregular migration” (Kalir 2017). These contradicting interests cause a severe policy implementation gap, a “slippage between orders and the carrying out of orders” (Lipsky 2010:16). One of the ways this ‘slippage’ is especially visible within deportation policy is in the growing ‘deportation gap’ – a difference between the number of people who are ‘deportable’, and those actually deported (Gibney 2008).
In the times of the ‘deportation turn’, a recent drastic increase in number of deportation performed all over the world by developed countries, Poland presents an anomalous case for deportation studies. Due to a combination of the rise of immigrant population with a more EU-compliant foreigner policy, Poland would appear a likely candidate to use deportation as a political tool, especially when considering its strong nationalistic and anti-foreigner sentiments.
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Surprisingly, the official data reveal a very different story. As the population of foreigners in Poland grows, the number of deportations appears to be dropping. According to the statistics published by the Polish Office for Foreigners on their official government website, against the trend visible all throughout EU, the number of people removed from Poland has decreased from 8280 in 2002, 6696 in 2004 and 1669 in 2010, to only 410 in 2014, and 23 in 2015 (see Figure 1 below). This data poses a true ‘Polish deportation puzzle’. What could be causing the expulsion numbers in Poland to decrease in stark contrast to international trends?
Figure 1. Numbers of issued OTRs and number of performed expulsion in Poland since 2002 (OFF Statistics Website)
This thesis presents the first ethnographic study analyzing the implementation of Polish deportation policy. The months spent in the field were a fascinating, albeit admittedly at times frustrating, journey of ‘following the numbers’, an attempt to authenticate and explain the anomaly of declining use of deportation. Yet in the end the specific numbers proved less significant than a process of looking into (and behind) them, which revealed an abundance of information about the policy implementation and interactions of various institutions involved in it, bringing together empirical data from the top level of policy making, mid-level bureaucracy, and street-level execution of deportation policy.
0
5000
10000
2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014
EXPULSIONS
ORDERS TO
LEAVE
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I begin with an overview of meanings and uses of deportation, and implications of deportation policy implementation gap, introducing concepts of state effect (Mitchell 2006), street level bureaucracy (Lipsky 2010), deportability (De Genova 2002), and ‘Border Spectacle’ (De Genova 2010), followed by a presentation of the specifics of the Polish case in its political, historical, and cultural context, linking the theoretical concepts to the specific case study.
After a look into the peculiar difficulties and idiosyncrasies of access and methods specific to the Polish setting, I offer an analytical review of my empirical data, showing how certain conflicts and contradictions are present in the Polish deportation policy from the moment of its design, and how deeply the institutions directly involved in the process of enacting the policy are disconnected from each other. By bringing to light inconsistencies between (and at times even within) major organizations of the Polish Deportation Regime, I show how in effect Poland’s Laws for Foreigners and its deportation policy facilitate an unavoidable implementation gap. Using De Genova’s concepts of ‘Border Spectacle’ and ‘deportability’ I analyze how and why this gap is created and utilized by the Polish state. Showing parallels between openly expressed economic needs of the Polish state and benefits of creating and sustaining a large ‘deportation gap’, the chapter exposes Poland’s similarities to other economically developing countries, whose growing need for cheap foreign labor results in a similar ‘inefficiency’ of their deportation policy via bureaucratic confusion and wide discretion involved in policy implementation.
In the following chapter I focus on the ground level implementation of deportation policy, as performed by Polish Border Guards, and analyze their role and impact on the public perception of the policy vs. its actual content. Using Lipsky’s (2010) analysis of street-level bureaucracy, I show how despite the militaristic image of the Polish Border Guards, propagated by both themselves and the state (and embraced by the public), in reality they operate much more as street-level bureaucrats, within the regulations, confines, and
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characteristics similar to those that shape daily struggles of other providers of public goods. In fact, Border Guards’ militarist image serves mostly as a coping mechanism with the boring reality of their job routine.
I analyze the interactions between policy, Border Guards, and ‘the state’, showing that while Polish Border Guards as the street-level bureaucrats do indeed ‘make’ the Polish Deportation Policy, they are still fully embedded and dependent on other aspects of the policy making and implementation process. Using the example of implementing deportation policy by Border Guards I demonstrate how the ‘state effect’ (Mitchell 2006) is produced and upheld within state institutions, and how individual Border Guards assert their individual agency through the power of discretion, creating and recreating the illusory borders between ‘state’ and ‘society’.
After suggestions for future research, I conclude with showing the larger implication for the Polish case study, which illustrates a shift from violent to ‘soft’ deportations, a trend observed through the rest of EU.
THEORY AND BACKGROUND
The following theoretical overview of deportation meanings and implications outlines the concepts used to analyze the Polish Deportation Regime.
DEPORTATION: POLICY DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION
Deportation is the act of ultimate demarcation between the rights of a citizen vs those of a non-citizen (Walters 2002; Gibney and Hansen 2003; Anderson et al. 2011; Paoletti 2011). Legal, or even a permanent residence still does not guarantee immunity from expulsion, making all legal migrants ‘eternal guests’ of the state (Kanstroom 2007). Walters (2002) analyzes the use of deportation as “a practice of citizenship (287)”, and while questioning the premise of a human being deemed ‘illegal’, he still concludes deportation is an
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unavoidable and logical consequence of the ‘modern regime of citizenship’. The moderns states that possess infrastructure of laws and institutions that facilitate and operationalize their ability to deport ‘illegal’ migrants have been named ‘Deportation Regimes’ (De Genova and Peutz 2010).
Initially deportation should be analyzed from the policy angle, revealing the bureaucratic infrastructure of laws and institutions involved in its design and later implementation. Designing migration policy is a process that prioritizes international context, since it relies on the inter-state recognition of national borders, and the state’s ability to find partnering countries that agree to accept the ‘returned’ deportees (Gibney 2008). Still, the laws must be feasibly applicable to the internal conditions, and ideally support the internal needs of the state. Even though policies face obvious conflicts and contradictions between internal and external demands, the negotiation on the international stage might be limited due to obligations and agreements that impose certain standards. In many instances a compromise is logically or legally impossible, compelling the state to employ strategies of operationalization and implementation in order to meet its own end goals.
Looking at the ‘other end’ of the policy, Lipsky (2010) brings our attention to its execution moment: policy street level implementation. By focusing on people who individually ‘deliver’ the policy to the public, he shows how the policy as it is recognized lies in the discretionary hands of the street level bureaucrats, who while usually following procedures, due to their own limitations and restrictions often end up increasing the ‘implementation gap’ and directly affecting the ‘face’ of the policy. While essentially being state employees, street level bureaucrats distance themselves from the idea of ‘the state’ using various strategies, at times contesting its legitimacy by opposing the policy at the moment of its implementation, using discretion as the power currency of their individual agency.
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Opposing each other pressures and interests represented and embedded in the policy itself (such as conflicts between economic and political needs of the state, i.e. demand for labor vs need for border security) result in the increased severity of the ‘implementation gap’ (Garcés-Macareñas 2013). Mitchell (2006) describes these conflicts as normal when discussing the idea of ‘the state’, where all conceptual demarcation lines (state-economy, state-society) are “not simple […] border[s] between two free-standing objects or domains, but a complex distinction internal to these realms of practice (2006:175)”. Employing institutions outside of state through creating multiple ties and dependencies between government and non-government structures facilitates a continuum of agents and laws that work cohesively towards a similar goal.
ASSEMBLING A DEPORTATION REGIME: ‘STATE EFFECT’ AND ‘DEPORTATION CONTINUUM’
Advancing ideas of the ‘state effect’ outlined by Mitchell (2006), deportation researchers show that involvement of what appears to be humanitarian aid-driven NGOs is in reality a perpetuation of the state agenda, facilitating a continuum of ‘immigrant rhetoric’, aiding state’s needs not strictly expressed via laws, or relieving governments of direct responsibilities and costs (Zembalyst 2010; Balibar 2012; Weizman 2012; Kalir and Wissink 2015). When it comes to the specific topic of deportation and its alternative of ‘voluntary returns’ (VRs), IOM (International Organization for Migrants) proves a well-recognized institution, regularly working with various states in supporting migration regulation (IOM).
The deportation process has been judged as both financially draining and all-around ineffective (Kalir 2014; Coutin 2015). The state has to cover multiple expenses for deportation: detention, escort, travel, food, and often additional medical and legal fees - and not just for the migrant, but at least two additional state employees in charge of performing the procedure. Many states now address this budgetary concern via shifting the focus of
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their migration policy. A common goal is to regulate migration by incentivizing and yielding ‘illegal’ migrants’ amicable cooperation, rather than opting for a forceful removal (Gibney 2008). ‘Voluntary returns’ (VRs) and strategies for their popularization have now become the main objective of migration policy, often expressed by appointing additional organizations and institutions, including NGOs, to its implementation – well illustrated by the case of Assisted Voluntary Returns (AVRs).
The IOM AVR program offers assistance to those cooperating when pronounced ‘illegal’ by state authorities, agreeing to leave the country willingly. In addition to covering all travel costs, the organization provides legal travel documents, medical exams and care, food and shelter for the duration of the trip. IOM workers conduct research about the country of destination, gathering information about the political, economic, and social situation one can expect upon their return. The ‘returnee’ is secured with an initial financial support, and those interested in starting their own business can count on further assistance in a form of grants and subsidies (IOM; Bialas et al 2015).
On paper the AVR program seems straightforward and unproblematic. However, the implementation and its aftermath have been questioned. Many doubt the ‘voluntary’ aspect of the process, referring to VRs as ‘soft deportations’ (Kalir 2017), while others point out to the clear and direct cooperation between countries and their IOM offices. Some have suggested that states outsource deportation to IOM, manipulating the breakdown of foreign population by making access and process more favorable to some groups than others (Blitz et al 2005; Webber 2011; Ashutosh & Mountz 2011; Koch 2013), and in many ways IOM offices openly cooperate with state governments. In reality the manipulation of the ‘quality’ of foreign population that ends up using AVR (the poorest, sickest, most underprivileged and ‘unusable’ as labor capital) expose how the “state eclipses its citizenship regime under the market logic” (Kalir 2017:62).
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It is easy to understand the state’s attraction to VRs and AVRs. The latter require a negligible contribution from the state, while VRs call for essentially no state investment. Additionally, they do not carry cultural stigma, quite the opposite – its linguistic connotation with charity work generate the perception of humanitarian aid rather than a removal of a person from the country once they have been deemed unwanted.
However, this proclivity of the modern Deportation Regimes towards VRs has yet another implication: it facilitates the implementation gap. The fewer actual deportations are performed in relation to the number of ‘illegalized’ migrants, the greater possibility that a substantial number of them is remaining in the given state rather than complying with state’s order to leave. On one hand liberal and more humane than deportations, this shift in migration policy towards VRs has also enabled potential exploitation of ‘deportability’ of the remaining migrants as the source of cheap, replaceable labor (De Genova 2002).
‘DEPORTABILITY’ANDLABORCONTROL
Clearly the path from policy design to its implementation is complex, and between bureaucratic ‘red tape’, multi-level budgetary constraints, and a large number of institutions and actors involved in the process, some degree of a performance gap must be expected. In fact, it has been noted that (due to a high level of professionalization of jobs within migration and security services) the implementation gap is in fact a part of a well-planned process of reaching the desired end effect that is often quite different than stated in the policy (Van Der Leun 2006). When it comes to deportation this gap is expressed via difference between number of people pronounced ‘illegal’ by state authorities and the number of those actually deported (De Genova 2002; Gibney 2008; Anderson et al 2011). De Genova discusses the concept of consequences of such gap: migrants’ deportability. He argues it is not the deportation itself, but rather the continuous condition of the possibility of being deported that creates a peculiar precariousness and vulnerability of the migrant’s
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life. What truly makes their life so unstable are illegality and deportability. He sees deportation as a part of a machine of the well-developed neoliberal system, constantly feeding the vast demand for cheap labor – mostly by creating deportability. Despite living with the eminent fear of being uprooted and dispossessed, most illegalized foreigners don’t have the comfort of working in any other way than illegally. Employers are known to exploit such migrants, whose lack of any legal standing and protection allows for the most appalling treatment and detestable work conditions. Cornelius et al link the growth in immigration numbers to the neoliberal states’ need for cheap labor. The ‘gap’ between the numbers of ‘deportable’ and ‘deported’ is an intentional, and successful, method of labor and population control (Cornelius et al 2004).
CULTURALRITUAL:‘THEBORDERSPECTACLE’
Another concept brought forward by De Genova (2007; 2013) resonates well with cases where general public trends express high degree of nationalism. Given the importance of ritualistic performance of exclusion of the ‘undesirables’, using deportation as ‘Border Spectacle’ fits well with the nationalistic rhetoric. As a performative ritual that is staged at the border, deportation can become a tool to deal with social unease of the times of ‘insecurity’, and prove to its citizens the government is willing and able to protect them, while scaring off the ‘others’. A construction of a ‘show’ in removing ‘illegal’ foreigners relies on the highly publicized performance of this procedure, and, interestingly, much less on its numbers.
THE POLISH CASE
How do the specifics of Polish history, its location, policy, and the sociocultural ideological norms fit into these theoretical concepts? How do they affect the perception and use of deportation? How is deportation negotiated within Polish migration policy? What are the challenges and tensions affecting the policy and its implementation?
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HISTORY AND POPULATION
Poland is ethnically and religiously one of the most homogenous countries in the world, with the smallest percentages of national and ethnic minorities living within the state of any EU country (Szczepanik 2015). The citizen population of Poland is estimated at about 38 million, with only 0.15% of non-citizens. Over 90% of people living in Poland are Catholics, and over 95% of Caucasian descent (Bialas et al 2015; Central Statistics Office of Poland). Lack of exposure to people representing other ethnicities, religions, and cultures regrettably facilitates the development of the most ignorant and demonizing stereotypes. Under the pressure of insecurity that lasted for centuries (since late 1700s till 1989), the Polish community was forced to fight off multiple oppressions of various empires, finding itself under repeated attempts to eradicate its discrete language and culture. The continuous fighting created a very tight-knit group, closed to outsiders, entitled by their own struggle and suffering to disregard the pain and need of others. For many years under USSR rule (1945-1989) Poland was restricted legally from allowing in any foreigners that did not come from the Eastern Block. Rarely permitted to travel beyond Eastern Germany or the Soviet Union, Polish people spent decades in isolation, under grueling social and political conditions. A cynical pragmatism and distrust of their own government, as well as other states’, appears a natural consequence of Poland’s history and geopolitical location. Studies now show some prevailing ideological similarities among Central European countries that functioned under Soviet control after WWII (Verdery 1993; Kuhejl 2011; Molnár 2016). These countries have developed a strong, almost ‘mythical’ nationalist ideology as a reaction to the experienced socio-cultural and political impositions of the ‘West’, exemplified recently by the ‘coalition’ between Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia, who refused to accept the EU-imposed refugee quotas (Global Detention Project September 2016).
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Joining EU for many Poles was indeed problematic, with initial reaction of silent antipathy over time turning into bitter and vehement resentment towards not only policy, but also much of ideology associated with the EU (Scott 2012). In many ways, socio-culturally closer to their Eastern rather than Western neighbors, Poles find themselves frequently deeply conflicted between taking full advantage of multiple EU financial subsidies and the open border policy, and a strong aversion to the liberal multi-culturalism advocated by EU. For example, the recent pressure from the EU to accept even as few as 2000 refugees was met with resistance from the general public and right wing parties. The resentment surrounding the EU’s request to accept a group of people many Polish citizens deemed unworthy of help and unfit to join the Polish community has fueled strong anti-EU sentiments. Many Poles perceive assistance given to foreigners as a betrayal of the Polish state and its citizens. Fearing multi-culturalism, Poland might continue to prefer groups of migrants more likely to assimilate well – such as Ukrainians, Russians, Belarussians, and Georgians (Mikulska 2008; Mikulska 2010; Bialas 2015; Raszkowska 2016).
DEMOGRAPHIC CRISIS AND DEMAND FOR IMMIGRATION
At this time Poland is experiencing a serious demographic crisis. Historically it has been a country of emigration – due to its turbulent history of partitions, wars, and USSR control, many Polish citizens were either forced to relocate, or chose to look for better social, economic, and political opportunities outside of the Polish borders. Even though since 1989 (fall of USSR), and especially 2004 (joining EU) the flow of foreigners into Poland increased, Poland remains a country of “a negative migration balance” (Szczepanik 2015: 14). Continuing historical trends, recent joining of the Schengen Zone in 2007 propelled Polish emigration to grow to unprecedented numbers. With current estimates, as many as 5-7 million Poles live outside of Poland.
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With increasing emigration of highly educated and skilled adults, and an aging population (negative population growth factor since 2014, only 1.3 fertility rate, one of the lowest in Europe) (Central Statistical Office of Poland), within a few decades the population decline will affect all aspects of social functioning. In 2015 alone 1.25 million Poles migrated out of the country. If Poland continues its general emigration patterns, the unsustainable job market (too many vacancies, especially for cheap, unskilled labor) with too few working tax payers will affect the state’s ability to provide education, healthcare, welfare, and other social services for its citizens, ultimately leading to a broad economic and social collapse. Many young Poles (the majority of most recent migrants are highly educated, skilled 24-35 year-olds) chose to start families and settle in places other than their country, thus increasing population and socio-economic investment elsewhere (TV Republica; European Migration Network 2015; GUS). Many politicians are now beginning to recognize the magnitude of this problem and try to offer remedies. The new government is promoting family-friendly policies and encouraging Poles to have more children (Brosz et al. 2012), but this will not produce an immediate increase in the Polish workforce. Increase in immigration appears to be the only solution to this problem.
FOREIGNERS IN POLAND
In the beginning of 2016 reported 211 869 non-citizens were living in Poland legally – a significant jump from 121 thousand in 2013, and 33 thousand in 2008 (European Migration Network 2015; Bialas et al 2015). What’s interesting, this number only includes foreigners who are holders of the Residency Card, provided the length of their stay is minimum 1 year1. However, this ‘legal’ non-citizen population does not include a
1This includes those holding a temporary or a permanent residency, long term EU residents, and those under certain kinds of humanitarian or international protection. The latter are quite negligible in numbers, as Poland is very ungenerous in recognizing need for asylum or international protection – as seen recently during the Ukraine crisis and more recent migration crisis in Europe, where the refugee status was denied to almost all applicants. Since 1991 Poland
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substantial number of foreigners coming to Poland using student, tourist, and other visas, invitations, seasonal work permits, or cross under the Proximity-Border-Traffic agreement. There are over 700 thousand ‘Schengen visas’ (allowing travel and stay throughout all EU countries in the Schengen zone for up to five years) and ‘Polish visas’ (issued for a minimum 91-day stay, but no more than one year) issued annually, 300 thousand – 400 thousand seasonal workers (mostly from Ukraine and Russian Federation) are given permits to work in Poland for six months out of a year, and over 5 million people cross Eastern borders under the Proximity-Border-Traffic agreement every year2.
The ‘legal’ non-citizen population number clearly does not include the illegalized migrant population, estimated between 150 thousand – 500 thousand (European Migration Network 2015; OFF; Bialas et al. 2015; Polish Parliament Deliberations 2013). Adding all the groups together makes it clear that the 200 thousand is a stark underestimate of the actual non-citizen population size in Poland, putting the real number closer to 2 million. Since 2004 Poland has experienced pressures to confirm to EU’s migration policy, imposing laws not always fully applicable to Polish reality. Threatened by the increasing numbers of migrants and motivated by its own desire to become a respectable and equal partner to the ‘West’, Poland is rebuilding much of its immigration legal infrastructure. The new laws are meant to facilitate a smoother and more efficient process of legalizing and regulating the migration flows, an answer to the substantial growth of the foreigner population living in Poland.
has recognized only 888 such cases and 2446 of extended international protection, awarded mostly to citizens of Russian Federation coming from Chechnya (Jazwinska 2015; Szczepanik 2016).
2
This agreement between EU countries and those bordering them allows citizens from non-EU countries who occupy the near-border territories to apply for a card allowing them to cross the border freely, without any additional documents or permits, as long as time and territorial restrictions are observed. The countries belonging to the Border-Proximity-Traffic agreement with Poland are: Ukraine (since 2008), Russian Federation (since 2012), and Belarus (signed in 2010 but has not been reified) (Lysienia 2015, pp. 43).
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POLISH MIGRATION POLICY
The vast political transformations that took place in Poland over the last 25 years, starting with relinquishing of the USSR control in 1989, reification of the new democratic constitution in 1997, and joining EU in 2004, unquestionably impacted Poland’s migration policy, as well as its demographic makeup. Last 19 years have seen multiple changes and adjustments in Poland’s foreigner policy, progressively more reflecting international (especially EU) standards for controlling entry, stay, exit, and general treatment of non-citizens. These regulations lately focus especially on the provision of humanitarian aid for the refugees, and controlling Schengen borders.
The first Law for Foreigners in post-communist Poland was written in 1997. The new Law provided the general structure for treatment of foreigners in Poland, their rights, obligations, and various statuses, focusing on establishing a clear process of application for asylum seekers, and instituted the Office for Foreigners and Repatriates (Malanowski 2003). As Poland moved towards European partnership, a new Law for Foreigners was created in 2003. The most recent and currently observed Law for Foreigners of 2013 included multiple adjustments necessary once Poland became one of the EU states – with the added responsibility of being the ‘Eastern gatekeeper’ for the Schengen zone. There were new definitions and processes added (such as different treatment of EU citizens, or the Border-Proximity-Traffic agreement), and changes that made the process of application and appeal for non-citizens easier and more feasible (OFF).
As a rule all foreigners enter Poland with an understanding of their obligation to leave the country before the legality of their stay expires. Overstaying one’s visa, temporary residence, invitation etc., is one way for a person’s stay to be considered illegal. In a case when a person’s stay was evaluated as ‘illegal’ by state authorities, such person must leave Poland under an ‘order to return’ (OTR).
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There are two kinds of OTRs: with an established date, referred to as a ‘voluntary return’ (VR), when a person upon receiving the ‘order to return’ agrees to do so and commits to leave Poland on a specified date. The OTR issued without a date, until recently called ‘expulsion’ and now renamed a ‘forcibly performed order to return’ (or ‘forced return’, FR), fully meets the definition of ‘deportation’.
Unlike with the case of amicably leaving foreigners who can count on the assistance of IOM, in the instance of FRs the foreigners have to cover all of the costs (travel to the border, shelter, food, flight ticket if needed, costs of ‘escorts’ such as translators, doctors etc.). If the foreigner is unable to do so, the employer, or a person who originally vouched for the foreigner to facilitate their entry into the country, is responsible for covering the expulsion costs3. In the event there is no such person or institution, Polish Treasury will cover the
costs from the Border Guard part of the national budget (OFF). In reality, most of the deported foreigners are unable to cover these costs, and rarely is the state able to extract the necessary funds from elsewhere than its own budget.
A strong shift towards use of VRs and away from FRs is clearly a direct attempt of Polish state to avoid these expenses. The incentives offered to deportable migrants include ability to re-enter Poland on more accommodating timeline and conditions, or have one’s name removed from the Registry of Forbidden Persons (Border Guards). Economically that works for the Polish state on a dual level: directly avoiding deportation costs, and creating a system of ‘revolving doors’ for the immigrant labor population that assures their constant inflow, a feature crucial at this time in Poland due to its internal population shifts (De Genova 2002).
The deportation machine, consisting of policy, state institutions and agents, public and civil servants, NGOs, as well as private citizens, create a ‘deportation continuum’ - full
3Costs of FRs vary anywhere from a few hundred zlote (PLN, which is about 4 PLN to 1 EURO) to as much as 4062,48 PLN
(in a case of an expulsion of a Vietnamese national), averaging between 500-1400PLN, or 100-300 Euros (depending on the country of destination) (Sowinski 2006).
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infrastructure needed to operationalize a Deportation Regime (Kalir and Wissink 2015). The designed migration and deportation policy, an expression of the top international level of negotiations and expectations, remains a regulatory text that links exogenous pressures with the state’s sovereignty and internal regulations. On the other hand, the actual deportation policy implementation (including effects of the implementation gap) has the capacity to satisfy various needs of the state: political, economic, and social.
RESEARCH QUESTION AND SUB QUESTIONS
What causes the anomaly of apparently dropping deportation numbers in Poland?
How is deportation in Poland used in political, economic, and social context? How are the Polish state’s needs expressed and met by its migration policy and the policy implementation?
What is the main goal vs the main result of the Polish migration policy? Is there a gap between deportation policy and its implementation? What can be deduced from this gap or lack thereof?
What state institutions are involved in designing and implementing Polish deportation policy? How does the Polish state utilize non-government organizations in implementing the deportation policy?
What is the role of AVRs and VRs within the Polish Deportation Regime, and how is it related in the Polish migration policy? How does funding affect policy execution?
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IN THE POLISH DEPORTATION CONTINUUM
SETTING, POPULATION, METHODS, AND ACCESS: EXPECTATIONS VS REALITY
PLACES AND PEOPLE
My fieldwork took place in Poland, June through September 2016. During that time I lived in Warsaw, with additional trips to Wrocław and Szczecin for interviews and meetings. Given a current volatile political situation in Poland the specific settings involved in researching Polish migration policy and deportation implementation, especially on the state’s side, proved difficult in access. Most of the time informants appeared closed-off and protective in giving information to a stranger, since the topic touches on several politically and ideologically sensitive areas. The issues of security, human rights, deportation, state economy, EU policy, and immigration are all relevant, and all at this moment are considered quite controversial and inflammatory subjects. Thankfully I had the advantage of being a Polish national, and at least there was no cultural or language barrier during my interactions.
Warsaw, the capitol of Poland, is its largest and most multicultural city. With all important political institutions that relate to immigration (OFF, Border Guard Headquarters, IOM Warsaw, Frontex, as well as Senate and House of Representatives, all major ministries, and multiple migration-oriented NGOs), Warsaw offers a fertile ground for migration research. Initially I have had secured contacts at IOM Warsaw with one of the employees involved with the AVR program, in Office for Foreigners with a former policy writer, and with one of the employees at the Polish Migration Forum, an NGO that helps migrant families.
Szczecin is one of Poland’s main ports. Located by the Baltic Sea on the Western border of Poland and Germany, before 2007 it was one of the largest border crossing sites, with
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multiple Border Guard units and migrant detention centers. I was able to interview a former BG who used to work in one of Szczecin’s deportation units for almost two decades. Wrocław is West Poland’s largest city, located in Lower Silesia by the Oder river. Due to its large migrant and international student populations, it is a site of much multi-cultural interactions, as well as the scene of many ideological conflicts. It has one of the country’s largest Ukrainian communities. I was able to interview an owner of a ‘consulting firm’ that helps migrants, mostly Ukrainians, in legalization of their stay and work in Poland, as well as a few migrants, a state social worker, and a couple of police officers.
ACCESS: BORDER GUARDS, CONNECTIONS, AND HOW THE BEST GATE KEEPERS CAN COME IN THE UNFRIENDLIEST OF FORMS
After just a couple of weeks in the field it became clear that almost anything relating to deportation in Poland, and especially its implementation, lies in the hands of Border Guards. Border Guards are the state employees enacting the state policy, working directly with the foreigners from the moment of their crossing of the border, process of application for status adjustment, through legality controls, to the (potential) removal.
Initially taken state-sanctioned path of reaching BGs yielded little (and inconsistent) data, and I realized quite early on during my research that official ways of gaining information and contacts won’t get me very far. While I was still pursuing the legal paths outlined by bureaucratic structures of OFF, BGs, or IOM in trying to gain access, it became clear I had to find another way to find informants.
One of my interviewees, Marta (30), a young woman working for the Polish Migration Forum, had a cousin employed as a Border Guard at the Gdansk airport, one of northern Polish port cities. She was kind enough to put us in touch with each other. During our first conversation on the phone, Kasia (32) seemed open, almost enthusiastic to share some of her thoughts. Appearing liberal and positively predisposed towards foreigners and
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migration, she sounded very interested in my research topic. Even though, as she mentioned, she did not work as a part of the deportation unit, she would do her best to find some people she could recommend for me to speak with. Then something strange happened. During our following, extremely brief conversation Kasia seemed uncomfortable, and unwilling to discuss neither her own job, nor the BGs part in deportations in general. “I really don’t know anything about that” she responded to questions about the latter. She apologized for not being able to find anyone to talk to me, and advised me to follow the ‘official’ way, of reaching to the Main Command and requesting their permission to interview individual Border Guards.
I later confirmed that BGs are not allowed to speak with outsiders about their job without an explicit permission from the Main Command. Such permission has to be officially requested, presenting the topic and scope of research/interest, and well justified. The allowed interviews (if one is lucky to be granted the permission) are structured to only allow answering the questions already included in the request. Such interviews are always conducted with two officials present to assure that no information outside the agreed scope is shared. Any individual BG agreeing to speak with me outside of that formal path would be doing it at a great risk to his or her job – which explains why some of my informants were clearly concerned about their full anonymity, and refused to have our conversations recorded.
While undoubtedly knowledge of Polish language and culture was important during my fieldwork, having certain connections proved my main advantage. There can be no doubt my personal contacts, gained through family and close friends, was the true facilitator of my research, especially among Border Guards. I would not have been able to interview Piotr from OFF if a good friend of mine wasn’t dating him; the only reason the ‘big wig’ leader of Border Guard’s Labor Union Olek agreed to meet with me, was the fact him and my uncle were old vodka drinking buddies. At times these kinds of connections are the only
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shoe-ins in Poland, and no official way can yield the result that ‘coming with a back’ (as the Polish saying goes) does. I was very lucky to have been able to find people in my immediate surroundings with close relationships to my potential interlocutors. Still, even having these connections was no guarantee of success, or good treatment by my contacts.
My uncle turned out to have a few BGs among close friends and offered to put me in touch with them. From the entire group only one person agreed to meet and speak ‘off the books’: Olek (50), previously part of a deportation unit in Warsaw, who by the time we met has become the chief of the Polish BG Labor Union. Our meeting was definitely among one of the most unpleasant experiences during my fieldwork. Olek met with me begrudgingly, after multiple phone calls and many hours of waiting, in a little café near the Polish Sejm (House of Representatives). Out of uniform, there was something about Olek’s posture and mannerism that still strongly suggested military background. He started off by saying he had very little time for me, and throughout our 15 minute conversation (ended abruptly by him just getting up, and with a brief “I have to go” leaving the café) he made sure to several times mention his frequent meetings with the President, and his involvement in policy making. Cutting me off when I tried to explain my project, he seemed irritated and unsure about what it was I needed from him, or why he was even talking to me. Between patronizing comments about my studies and condescending remarks about refugees and “Arabs flooding Poland” (as inaccurate of a statement as it is racist), there was little new information he shared about the actual procedures or policy. When I asked for possible contacts with other BGs he knew, Olek admitted to knowing a couple that would be perfect informants for my research topic (Bartek, a BG at the airport deportation unit, and Andrzej, a former BG from Szczecin), but wasn’t willing to share those with me at the time. My meeting with Olek ended right after that. It actually took three more follow up phone calls to Olek (also from my uncle) to get the names and phone numbers of the two men, who later turned out to be my most important points of entrance, and yielded some of the crucial and most informative interviews. Ironically Olek, despite his unpleasant demeanor,
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lack of interest, and rude behavior, turned out to be the most valuable gate keeper I could have hoped for in order to learn about Polish BGs, their role in the Polish Deportation Regime, and their daily routines.
At times I had to be persistent to the point of being rude when it came to ‘making meetings happen’, emailing, calling, and sending messages to elicit any response. Andrzej, the retired Border Guard from Szczecin, an important source that became a crucial reference in my chapter on the role and conduct of the Polish Border Guards, rescheduled three times (twice in the very last moment) before finally being able to meet. He set up our interview for an hour and a half on an afternoon of August 15th, a national church holiday in Poland,
widely observed in all-day closing of almost all businesses, stores, and institutions. That also meant all public communication is limited to bare minimum. The round trip between Warsaw and Szczecin that day took me over 16 hours, with multiple train, metro, and bus trips each way: a 5am wake-up call preceded a restless and exhausting day that ended back in Warsaw after 11pm. Many of my friends at the time strongly advised me against spending so much time and money on this one, fairly short interview. Yet now, validated by the memory of the trip back when on a train I covered dozens of pages noting details more beneficial to the research than almost any other single-source data I gathered, I have no doubt insisting on that meeting was the right call. Andrzej was willing to share much more than any of the still employed Border Guards, and for the first time during my fieldwork I felt a genuine connection and true empathy for aspects of his job I have not previously considered, broadening my understanding, and adding an additional layer of ethnographic detail to the picture of Border Guards and deportation policy I was attempting to put together.
In the end I was able to speak with a total of 7 Border Guards currently employed and one retired. Total of interviews with Border Guards came to 17. All the guards I spoke with worked for the Foreigner division except for one, who was a head for the BG Labor Union.
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Three were employed by the ‘Airport’ unit, one in Gdańsk, two by the Main Command in Warsaw, and the retired BG was from Szczecin. All, with an exception of the one from Gdańsk, worked at some point as a part of deportation unit.
METHODS: RESTRICTIONS, CHALLENGES, AND ETHICAL DILEMMAS
Almost all of the meetings took forms of a semi-formal interviews, in a total number of 30, with length ranging anywhere from 15 minutes to three hours.
Familiar with Polish institutions, I realized some complications, or at least difficulties, were likely to appear when entering official settings of state institutions. Challenges indeed soon started to surface, from small things, such as lack of freedom of mobility (I was not allowed to even walk to a bathroom, or walk out of certain buildings on my own) or what seemed like at times unreasonable identification requirements (two official Polish state issued IDs to enter certain places within BG units), to the mentioned previously issues surrounding record keeping. All these are clearly linked to the issue of security, and the observed trends of securitization and militarization of migration (Bigo 2002; Di Giorgi 2010).
To my initial surprise, retrospectively quite naïve given specifics of the Polish political history or the recent changes in the government, most state employees, as well as IOM employee and the retired border guard, did not allow me to record our conversations. I presented my research in a non-threatening manner, offering all interlocutors full anonymity, my exclusive access to the recordings, or even promising to destroy the recordings upon transcription, but my insisting only made my interviewees more uncomfortable and suspicious. Apprehension was present also in the face of taking notes. This made for a lot of awkward moments, writing notes on my knee at bus stops as soon as I left the interview site to include all the things I missed writing down during the conversation. I do regret not having exact recordings and precise quotes of so many of my informants, but ethically I was obligated to respect their wishes. Additionally, anonymity
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seemed to be of utmost importance to informants currently employed by state organizations, sentiment most severely expressed among Border Guards – understandable given how many of my meetings, whilst still felt very official, were not actually sanctioned by the Border Guard Chief Commander.
Notably, the one word summarizing the strongest emotion towards me during the interviews was ‘mistrust’. According to the retired BG most state employees function in a permanent state of insecurity, and even accidental oversharing might prove having harsh consequences. At times I could tell that people who agreed to the interviews were very careful and constantly censored everything before they said it. It took time and effort to show my interest was purely intellectual and academic, without journalistic desire for revealing a scandal, or legal ability to help (or hurt) anyone. Throughout my fieldwork I had to learn to strategize everything about my interactions, including general appearance, body language, and vocabulary used, to present myself in the most un-intimidating fashion. This clearly brings up several ethical dilemmas. Does fully conscious selection of strategies implemented in order to gain the informant’s trust constitute manipulating, or is it just an aspect of interpersonal intelligence of anthropologists in the field, and a natural process of building trust (Iphof 2011:53-54)? I tend to agree with the latter view, even though at times my interactions definitely forced me to hide certain aspects of my knowledge or personality in order to appear least threatening, censoring and filtering my words, or paying a particular attention to the dress code expectations. In the end I believe these strategies are used not only regularly by social scientists in the field, but generally by people in any social interaction, and since they can often facilitate trust and genuine building of rapport, the initial degree of distortion in self-presentation is both natural and compensated in the end.
Another important ethical consideration was that of disclosure in regards to the full context and meaning of this research. While some organizations were likely to support
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notions of problematic nature of deportation, a large part of the research relied on interviewing and analyzing state policy, as well as institutions and organizations (such as OFF or Border Guards) that were likely to represent more permissive approach to deportation politics. Because the project was likely to appear to them as a pro-immigration or anti-deportation, I was concerned they would likely refuse interviews, or share highly politicized and official views, yielding little usable data.
I believed in order to connect with these subject, a degree of neutralization of the more contestable ideological angles of my research topic were necessary. While honesty is of utmost importance when presenting my general interest (decreasing deportation numbers in Poland), it was of crucial significance to not allow my personal views and ideas bias my approach towards people I was interviewing. The issue of confronting fundamentalist and right wing views by anthropologists doing their research has been problematic, and encountered numerous times before. Some social scientists point out it presents more of a challenge for ethnographers, as somehow their strive for the academic objectivity seems to favor certain ‘others’ over other ones (Harding 1991; Blee 2007). As a researcher I was attempting to find out why and how deportation is used the way it is, what are the deportation practices, and what they signify. A political stance on my part would be not only unnecessary, but actually inappropriate, and I believe sharing only the general concept of the study was a much better approach for all involved.
Because certain views and details of interactions might present risk to the persons sharing them, all names in this paper have been replaced with pseudonyms, and story details allowing for identifications of any person were altered to preserve their privacy.
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THREELEVELS OFCONFLICTSANDCONTRADICTIONS:FROMPOLICYDESIGN TOITS IMPLEMENTATION
POLISH STATE AND POLICY MAKING
As I entered the fieldwork stage of research, my focus was on finding out why the numbers of deportations in Poland have been decreasing over the last 10 years. The statistics published by the Polish Office for Foreigners showed an unprecedented decrease in expulsions, an anomalous finding, given the exact opposite trends all over the world (‘deportation turn’).
One of my hypotheses linked the drop in deportation to an increase in VRs, and even more specifically, AVRs. I presupposed a foreigner, once his or her stay is deemed ‘illegal’ by the state and an OTR is issued, if given the chance would prefer to comply rather than be removed by a deportation squad, especially if there are additional incentives involved. I was able to contact IOM Warsaw employee in charge of the AVRs and arrange a meeting in the IOM Warsaw office. Tomek (43) kept putting off finalizing our meeting until the last moment: “I just never know what is going to come up, and it’s hard for me to plan more than one day or sometimes even just a few hours ahead”. As I found out, he is one of only four people running the AVR program for IOM Warsaw, and due to the diverse nature of things involved in each case, quiet time in the office is a rarity. Originally apprehensive about our meeting altogether (“I don’t know if I can help you with anything”), Tomek specified 30min as our ‘allocated’ time to talk. From behind a large desk he looked at me suspiciously, and seemed put off when I asked his permission to record our conversation. “I really would rather you didn’t” was said in a way that implied even asking itself was a faux pas. With permission to take notes, in a somewhat cool atmosphere, I started by asking broad questions about IOM Warsaw in general, their history, programs, involvement with OFF and policy making, AVRs, and specifics of the migrant groups that they work with. I
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was surprised that Tomek had no data about how many AVRs yearly were performed, and for most answers in regards to deportations or statistics he referred me to the Polish Border Guards. Still, he was certain that there has not been a noticeable increase in AVRs performed over the last years that could support my hypothesis (later I acquired the statistics of IOM Warsaw’s AVRs in the context of OTRs, and there actually has been a significant decline in their number over the last five years).
As our conversation focused more on Tomek’s personal stories and experiences, the dynamic changed slightly. The 30-minute point has come and gone, as Tomek went into detail about AVR outreach program, his interactions with migrants, or dealing with certain controversies in public opinion: apparently there was an opposition to AVR program that saw it as “rewarding illegals for breaking our law, and with our government’s money”. This well illustrates the cultural tendencies in Poland that call for the ‘Border Spectacle’ (De Genova 2007): Polish society wants to see the law-breaking foreigners punished, and the outsiders excluded. Deportation, albeit more costly and often morally dubious, would be a preferred method to that of a more humane way of a voluntary departure, with the assistance offered in reality barely facilitating most basic functioning. In fact Polish tax payers have a minute contribution to AVR program: the funding for it is supplied in about 80% by EU, and only 20% by Polish state – that is, at least until summer of last year, when the grant ran out and the sole AVR funding responsibility rested on the state. That shift resulted in severe cuts in performed auxiliary AVR services (such as reintegration part of the program), and a significant decrease in the number of AVRs performed. Tomek mentioned the competition for another grant coming up that will essentially determine the quality, or even the very future of the Polish AVR program. Clearly “running AVR is a profit-making activity for civil society organizations that often struggle to secure budgets for their activities” (Kalir 2017:66), and IOM Warsaw appears as a cog in the ‘state-making machine’, where the blurred borders between state and society, public and private, allow for relinquishing state duties to non-state organizations, perpetuating their (and its own)
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goal (Mitchell 2006). It is clear how IOM Warsaw, expanding on the discussed phenomenon of ‘state effect’ (Mitchell 2006) and ‘deportation continuum’ (Kalir and Wissink 2015), fits into the model of NGOs (or private sector organizations) working towards the policy implementation alongside the state-imposed directives. Deeper analysis shows that AVR program is in fact part of the infrastructure that validates the rhetoric of removal of ‘illegals’ and “fashioning of a morality that legitimizes states’ immigration regimes, which include coercive practices of forced removal and violent deportations” (Kalir 2017:58). It would appear IOM’s AVRs, just as another policy-embedded program of ‘third party return monitoring’ (presence of an unspecified in policy third party representatives during FRs to assure that deportee’s human rights are not violated) are an interesting, if not disillusioning example of how the policy and reality can prove incompatible. AVRs and ‘return monitoring’ have to be guaranteed by law per EU standards; however, often are seen as a nuisance or at best a meaningless detail that has to be observed for legal reasons. In fact both programs are underused and underfunded, and both due to financial restrictions and lack of truly successful outreach, continue to vegetate without appropriately serving their function.
When I shared my research question (dropping deportation numbers) with Tomek, he seemed slightly surprised, but not shocked. In his opinion this could be easily explained by state-supported shift towards VRs. As he stated, even AVRs are cheaper than deportations, and VRs require essentially no government funding, so it only makes sense economically for the policy to push towards VRs and away from FRs, offering deportable migrants mentioned earlier incentives. Noteworthy, AVR program is oriented towards groups in Poland that are not the major communities of immigrants, but due to geographical location require more assistance, which constitutes a very small portion of OTRs: as Tomek correctly pointed out, most OTRs are issued to people with Ukrainian citizenship, while that particular group is almost non-existent among individuals applying for AVR with IOM
