46 Introducing ‘unwanted’ noncitizens were not recorded in immigration detention. This can help us to explore whose presence the prescription of irregularity is intended to delegitimise and suggests that the way in which noncitizenship is experienced is not homogenous, not even amongst ‘unwanted’ noncitizens. Discourse about irregular migration can often be polarised, describing people either as victims or as villains, with those who support the rights of the individuals involved tending to place more individuals into the victim category.14 Bridget Anderson has warned that drawing such firm lines makes some persons seem villainous when they are more appropriately described, if anything, as victims, while characterising people as victims suggests they can only suffer or be helped, but cannot be angry or participate.15 This contributes to the dehumanisation which will be taken up in Chapter 5. Acknowledging the relationship of noncitizenship can help to provide a way in which to represent irregular immigrants as active agents in their own right. Noncitizens in general, and ‘unwanted’ noncitizens in particular, are vulnerable, but they are not only vulnerable and while this chapter focuses on vulnerability, later in this book the emphasis is on agency and the challenge of activated noncitizenship for States built upon liberal democratic principles. Irregular migration exists because it is defined into existence.16 While individuals choose to migrate, often knowing this is going to leave them in irregular situations, a person cannot be an irregular immigrant except by definition by a State – or by non-attribution of status by a State. In a liberal theory of justice there is no underlying moral reason to render the activity in which such persons engage (border-crossing, work, setting up a home) illegal or wrongful in itself. And it is not trivial to argue that an individual should be impeded in these basic activities. This is not to suggest that there are no good reasons to exclude, and no good reasons to define some forms of migration as irregular. It may be necessary, for example, to stop someone escaping justice, or causing disorder. This can be seen in one of two ways. Either it is a matter of social coordination (such as that which allocates on which side of the road we can drive), or it is a matter of administration, or a mix of the two. In any case, the construction of irregular immigration is bureaucratic. Yet, where (even mostly beneficial) bureaucratic rules end up harming the vulnerable, this provides a reason to override them – or at least a reason why their enforcement needs to be justified.17 The argument in this book so far has suggested that the vulnerability of many noncitizens within the current State system is a symptom of a deeper theoretical problem. The construction of irregularity not only makes such individuals more vulnerable. It also creates a new sort of vulnerability. Seen in this way, irregular migration is for the most part symptomatic of a failure of theoretical and policy 14 Bridget Anderson (2008) ‘ “Illegal immigrant”: Victim or Villain?’, ESRC Centre on Migration, Policy and Society Working Paper No. 64, University of Oxford. 15 Anderson 2008 ibid. 16 For example, argued in Dauvergne 2008 ibid., p. 15. 17 Robert Goodin (1986) Protecting the Vulnerable: A Reanalysis of Our Social Responsibilities, University of Chicago Press.