The Fine Art of Camouflage: Migrant-Drug Distributors Negotiating Police Interactions in Switzerland

• Published date: 01 September 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00027162241248998
• Author: Louis Vuilleumier
• Date: 01 September 2023

ANNALS, AAPSS, 709, September 2023 165

DOI: 10.1177/00027162241248998

The Fine Art of

Camouflage:

Migrant-Drug

Distributors

Negotiating

Police

Interactions in

Switzerland

By

LOUIS VUILLEUMIER

1248998ANN THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMYTHE FINE ART OF CAMOUFLAGE

research-article2024

Bogged down in exploitative jobs or unemployment,

some migrants mitigate their precarious condition and

forced idleness through involvement in petty crime,

including low-level drug distribution. This article

explores the daily lives of migrants who navigate asym-

metrical interactions and relationships with police in

ways that avoid detection of their illicit activities.

Drawing from extensive ethnographic fieldwork and 18

biographical interviews with sub-Saharan male migrants

active in low-level drug retail, I scrutinize how migrants

negotiate the rules that are supposed to govern them. I

am particularly interested in the ways in which migrants

negotiate their legal status with the police, whose view

of them is often heavily influenced by race. I demon-

strate that relationships between police officers and

migrants can be influenced by migrants’ deliberate

mimicry of local norms, calculated conformity with

informal policing practices, and influence over police

officers’ moral judgment of whether they are deserving

of police’s discretionary power to look the other way.

Keywords: drug trafficking; migration; racial profil-

ing; discretion; cop wisdom; illegibility;

Switzerland

On a sunny afternoon, I went window-shop-

ping in the city center of Beauregard, an

anonymous Swiss city.1 Along the way, I met

three acquaintances who had just finished

lunch at a local African restaurant, taking a

break from their work as street drug distribu-

tors. They invited me for a drink, and since I

had free time, I happily joined them. We

opened some beers in front of a supermarket

and started to chitchat. Suddenly, two police

Correspondence: louis.vuilleumier@unifr.ch

Louis Vuilleumier is a PhD candidate in the Institute of

Social Anthropology at the University of Fribourg

(Switzerland). His research focuses on the temporal,

material, and moral dimensions of European mobility

regimes, the effects of migratory policies on the trajec-

tories of illegalized migrants, and their ways of negoti-

ating the rules that are supposed to govern them.

166 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

officers on bicycles appeared and asked everyone but me for identification docu-

ments (ID). The three of them were Black male migrants; I and the two officers

were white male citizens. When I asked what the purpose of this police check

was, one of the police officers replied, “You obviously know who those guys are,

they are not tourists.” Noticing the silence and docility of my three acquaint-

ances, I did not insist, despite the legal obligation for the police to provide a clear

explanation for such a measure. After checking their documents, the officers

instructed us to move on, despite the fact that one of the police officers explained

that Issa, a 30-year-old sub-Saharan migrant, had overstayed his visa and was now

considered “illegal.” Before we separated, Issa disclosed to me, “One of those

cops, we call him Mepton. He doesn’t care much about your documents. You just

have to play it regular, play it square and he [will] let you be.”2 Apparently, they

seemed to know each other.

This kind of humiliating experience is a recurrent one for “illegalized”

migrants.3 What is striking about this scene is how it captures not only the entan-

glement of mobility regimes and everyday policing, public disorder, and social

ordering, but also the subtle strategies migrants use to manage face-to-face

encounters with state representatives. Reinforcing discriminatory power dynam-

ics, European mobility regimes facilitate the mobility of some—the so-called

global citizens and highly skilled migrants—while fettering the movement of

others (Glick Schiller and Salazar 2013). This perpetuates a (post)colonial and

racialized filtering process (van Houtum 2010). Representations of the “deviant

immigrant” (Melossi 2003), both criminal and alien, frame them as putting

unbearable pressure on welfare systems and posing a threat to the ostensible

national order. This sorting mechanism creates different groupings of migrants

assigned varying degrees of status that translate into differential access to labor

markets and mobility within Europe.

For the migrants, illegalization translates into a constant threat of detention

and deportation (De Genova 2002; Khosravi 2010), which can upend their rela-

tionship to time, space, and self (Andersson 2014; Willen 2007). Fear becomes a

part of the everyday life of these migrants, instilling in them a deep sense of

discretion and a need to seek refuge in hiding (Bjørneseth 2017; Le Courant

2022; Madsen 2004). Moreover, the racialization of migrants plays a crucial role

in shaping the experiences and treatment of individuals labeled as “illegal aliens.”

Since the perception of migrants as illegal is not based solely on legal status but

is deeply rooted in racial and ethnic categorizations (De Genova 2002), racial

profiling is seen as an effective tool for detecting those who have violated a state’s

sovereignty and subjects them to increased forms of surveillance, scrutiny, and

potential deportation. Indeed, racial profiling exacerbated the racialization pro-

cess by disproportionately targeting individuals based on their perceived and

ascribed race, ethnicity, or religion (Harris 2002), which leads to the overrepre-

sentation of certain racial and ethnic groups in migration raids, detentions, and

deportations, as well as in drug law enforcement actions.

Trapped in seemingly endless periods of unemployment or exploitative work,

some migrants mitigate their precarious condition and forced idleness through

their involvement in petty crime, including low-level drug distribution.4 However,