The link between the crime rate and immigration

Background

In the recent times, the hypothesis that immigration causes crime or that higher immigration rate is linked to higher crime rate has come to be challenged in the scholarship and empirical literature. Studies have demonstrated that higher crime rates are not necessarily explained by higher immigration; for instance, a study based in the United States demonstrated that the drop in crime beginning in the early 1990s is partially explained by increased immigration. Another research study presented findings suggesting that immigrants are more law-abiding than the native born. These findings are supported by other studies. Interestingly, a study also presents evidence that immigrants are less likely to engage in crime when they reside in neighbourhoods that are largely populated by other immigrants. Despite these research studies, there is a general or popular perception that increased immigration leads to increased crime. This begs further research in the context of Australian immigration in order to explore why a link between crime and immigration is drawn despite there being credible challenges to the theory that immigration leads to crime. One of the explanations that can be used to explore this further is to be found in the moral panic theory.

Australia has seen increased immigration from Asian countries in the recent past, with the category of migrants increasingly seen to be as unwelcome. Increasingly, immigrants and refugees from Asian and African countries have been portrayed as “unwanted invaders” who must be deported from the country. The fear of immigrants has led to the use of security language in the national discourse in Australia where the government and the mainstream media uses a language of threat and possible crime from the immigrants to garner public support for strict immigration laws. There is increased negative reporting in the media related to ethnicity and crime and one study suggests that the perceptions around crime in Australia increasingly take ethnic connotations, with general perceptions on criminality of youth belonging to Asian, African or Arab ethnicities. The impact of the negative media reporting on crime and ethnicity has also had impact on the way Australia responds to refugees. Therefore, this area deserves to be explored further to assess how far moral panic may play a role in this conceptualisaiton of ethnic criminality in the national discourse.

1. Scot Wortley, ‘Introduction: The immigration-crime connection: Competing theoretical perspectives’ (2009) 10(4) Journal of International Migration and Integration/Revue de l'integration et de la migration internationale 349.
2. R Sampson, ‘Open doors don't invite criminals: Is increased immigration behind the drop in crime?’ The New York Times (March 11, 2006), A27.
3. R Martinez, ‘Immigration, crime and recidivism: Editorial introduction’ (2008) 7(1)Criminology and Public Policy 53.
4. R Martinez and A Valenzuela, Coming to America: Immigration, ethnicity and crime (New York: New York University Press 2006); R Rumbaut and W Ewing, The myth of immigrant criminality (2007), retrieved from https://borderbattles.ssrc.org/Rumbaut_Ewing/index.html.
5. Sampson, above n 2.
6. Jackie Hogan and Kristin Haltinner, ‘Floods, invaders, and parasites: Immigration threat narratives and right-wing populism in the USA, UK and Australia’ (2015) 36(5) Journal of Intercultural Studies 520.
7. Renee Luthra and Lucinda Platt, ‘Elite or middling? International students and migrant diversification’ (2016) 16(2) Ethnicities 316.
8. Samuel Parker, ‘Unwanted invaders’: The representation of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK and Australian print media (2015) Myth and Nation, issue 23.
9. Richard Devetak, ‘In fear of refugees: the politics of Border Protection in Australia’ (2004) 8(1) The International Journal of Human Rights 101.
10. Jock Collins and Carol Reid, ‘Minority youth, crime, conflict, and belonging in Australia’ (2009) 10 (4) Journal of International Migration and Integration/Revue de l'integration et de la migration internationale 377.
11. Scott Poynting, Greg Noble and Paul Tabar, ‘Middle Eastern appearances:“Ethnic gangs", moral panic and media framing’ (2001) 34 (1) Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 67.

With regard to Muslim immigrants in particular, there is a portrayal in media with implication in terrorism related crimes where an entire community may be seen as a ‘suspect community’ because of the negative media reporting or the formation of a general public perception of Muslims as terrorists. In Australia, as in other western countries, there is a more generalised perception of Muslims as terrorists which has led to creation of measures such as immigration detention which is used as social control mechanisms to deal with immigrants.

This research study will use the theory of moral panic to explore this issue of link between crime and immigration further. The theory of moral panic explains how moral panic may be created due to the media and the popular discourse emphasising on the perception of threat posed by a particular event or the group of people involved in the event. Mass media and Social Media have allow the creation of narrative and images that can lead to the negative perceptions about a community without actually reflecting the truth about the community. This research study will explore how far the perception of link between crime and immigration is impacted by moral panic created through media reporting on crimes committed by immigrants and whether the actual incidence of crime is accurately represented by such reporting.

Research questions

The overarching research question in this research is related to whether moral panic theory explains the perception of link between crime and immigration in the Australian context. The research questions are framed as follows:

RQ1. How does literature explain the link between crime and immigration?

RQ2. Is the perception of higher crime due to higher immigration justified by the actual state of crime by immigrants?

RQ3. What is the role played by media and political discourse in creating perceptions around the link between increased crime rate due to increased immigration?

Research methodology

This research is proposed to be a qualitative research design, because of its ability to conduct insightful and analytical research in research areas involve complexity or multi-layered data. The link of crime with immigration is a complex area with multiple narratives within the scholarship which can be adequately considered and represented in a qualitative research study. This makes the research amenable to a qualitative research design.

The qualitative research method will be used in this research to gather qualitative data from secondary sources and existing empirical studies that can explore the ways in which moral panics can be used to explain the linking of crime to immigration and how this relates or represents the crime data.

1. C Pantazis and S Pemberton, ‘From the ‘old’to the ‘new’suspect community examining the impacts of recent UK counter-terrorist legislation’ (2009) 49(5) British Journal of Criminology 646.
2. Janet Phillips and Harriet Spinks, Immigration detention in Australia (Department of Parliamentary Services, Parliamentary Library, 2013).
3. Stanley Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The creation of the Mods and Rockers (London: Routledge Classics, 2011).
4. Alan France, Understanding Youth In Late Modernity (Berkshire: McGraw-Hill, 2007).
5. John W. Creswell, Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing Among Five Approaches (Los Angeles: Sage, 2013).

The method chosen to collect data in this research is literature review. The literature review method is used to explore the major themes in existing research around the area of research. The literature review method for collection of data is used to identify and collect all the existing quality literature and empirical data on the subject of research. Bettany-Saltikov provides a method that can be systematically utilised for conducting a literature review. Such a process would “collate all empirical evidence that fits pre-specified eligibility criteria in order to answer a specific research question”. The systematic review method will be used in this study to locate and collate all the recent literature on crime and immigration in Australia in the period between 2010-2020 so that the researcher can eliminate bias by referring to all relevant literature that comes within the scope of inclusion criteria.

A systematic review method helps the researcher in limiting the scope of research by systematically identifying the sources of data. Bias can also be eliminated by the researcher by applying a process that moving from the identification and selection of the high quality literature to the appraisal, synthesis and collation of this literature. Systematic review is also useful in that it helps the researcher to identify grey literature, such as PhD theses or conference papers that can provide empirical data for the research (Bettany-Saltikov, 2012, p. 68).

Articles/Books/Reports

1. Josette Bettany-Saltikov, How To Do A Systematic Literature Review In Nursing: A Step-By-Step Guide: A Step by Step Guide (London: Mc Graw and Hill, 2012).
2. Ibid.
3. S Green, JPT Higgins, P Alderson, M Clarke, CD Mulrow and AD Oxman, Introduction in Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions (London: John Wiley and Sons, 2011) 6.
4. Bettany-Saltikov, above n 17, 5.

Bettany-Saltikov, Josette, How To Do A Systematic Literature Review In Nursing: A Step-By-Step Guide: A Step by Step Guide (London: Mc Graw and Hill, 2012).

Cohen, Stanley, Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The creation of the Mods and Rockers (London: Routledge Classics, 2011).

Collins, Jock and Carol Reid, ‘Minority youth, crime, conflict, and belonging in Australia’ (2009) 10 (4) Journal of International Migration and Integration/Revue de l'integration et de la migration internationale 377.

Creswell, John W., Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing Among Five Approaches (Los Angeles: Sage, 2013).

Devetak, Richard, ‘In fear of refugees: the politics of Border Protection in Australia’ (2004) 8(1) The International Journal of Human Rights 101.

France, Alan, Understanding Youth In Late Modernity (Berkshire: McGraw-Hill, 2007).

Green, S, JPT Higgins, P Alderson, M Clarke, CD Mulrow and AD Oxman, Introduction in Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions (London: John Wiley and Sons, 2011).

Hogan, Jackie and Kristin Haltinner, ‘Floods, invaders, and parasites: Immigration threat narratives and right-wing populism in the USA, UK and Australia’ (2015) 36(5) Journal of Intercultural Studies 520.

Luthra, Renee and Lucinda Platt, ‘Elite or middling? International students and migrant diversification’ (2016) 16(2) Ethnicities 316.

Martinez, R and A Valenzuela, Coming to America: Immigration, ethnicity and crime (New York: New York University Press, 2006).

Martinez, R, ‘Immigration, crime and recidivism: Editorial introduction’ (2008) 7(1)Criminology and Public Policy 53.

Pantazis, C and S Pemberton, ‘From the ‘old’ to the ‘new’ suspect community examining the impacts of recent UK counter-terrorist legislation’ (2009) 49(5) British Journal of Criminology 646.

Parker, Samuel, ‘Unwanted invaders’: The representation of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK and Australian print media (2015) Myth and Nation, issue 23.

Poynting, Scott, Greg Noble and Paul Tabar, ‘Middle Eastern appearances: “Ethnic gangs", moral panic and media framing’ (2001) 34 (1) Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 67.

Wortley, Scot, ‘Introduction: The immigration-crime connection: Competing theoretical perspectives’ (2009) 10(4) Journal of International Migration and Integration/Revue de l'integration et de la migration internationale 349.

Other

Phillips, Janet and Harriet Spinks, Immigration detention in Australia (Department of Parliamentary Services, Parliamentary Library, 2013).

Rumbaut, R, and W Ewing, The myth of immigrant criminality (2007), retrieved from https://borderbattles.ssrc.org/Rumbaut_Ewing/index.html.

Sampson, R, ‘Open doors don't invite criminals: Is increased immigration behind the drop in crime?’ The New York Times (March 11, 2006).

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