Contrary Crimmigration: Limitations to the Hypothesis for Policing Dubai

The term ‘crimmigration’ is currently being used by Stumpf as she develops a way of trying to explain the seemingly inevitable link between migrant groups and crime in their country of choice. Crimmigration focuses on the increasing merger of US and European criminal and immigration law. There is always a nexus between forms of crime, crime markets, and specific ethnic or national characteristics. To some extent, crimmigration marks a modern, more critical version of Iannini’s(1974) Ethnic Succession Theory of Involvement in crime. Crimmigration attempts to develop an explanation based on alienation and denial of full citizenship, but is less fulsome in relation to structural explanations that focus on poverty, discrimination, etc. that this necessarily entails. However, what is striking and radically different about our research findings from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), is the extent to which those who are the least privileged and most numerous section of the Dubai population; in example, those from the Indian subcontinent, have the lowest offending rates, despite the focus of police attention on them. The study is based on new official crime data and interviews with key Dubai police officers.