Introducing ‘unwanted’ noncitizens 47 frameworks to take full account of reality.18 In becoming irregular immigrants, some individuals become vulnerable to the State and to individuals with regard to their access to the most basic goods. For some of those, as with the Americans in Australia, discussed above, the vulnerability is mitigated by other factors, such as citizenship elsewhere. For others, the vulnerability might be extreme – and indeed recent self-immolations in Australian immigration detention facilities are testament to the impact that it has had on individuals.19 There is another aspect to this. When irregular migration is constructed as criminal in itself, this also needs to be seen as a criminalisation of asylum-seeking.20 Efforts to prevent irregular migration, including mobilisations against smuggling, make it difficult for people fleeing humanitarian calamities to find somewhere safe to be.21 This is because such persons are most often moving irregularly. This means that even if you take a very narrow view on entitlement to move, including only the principle of asylum, then efforts to criminalise and to prevent irregular movement also impede asylum. In addition, by constructing irregular migration as criminal and irregular migrants as villainous means that people in these situations are more easily dehumanised. This also leads to a secondary form of criminalisation and another aspect of dehumanisation. Often without access to legal work or welfare, living undercover, sometimes in debt to people smugglers, ‘unwanted’ noncitizens may have to participate in criminal activity such as theft, for example, in order to survive. This further excludes such individuals from the State system. It removes from affected individuals the moral choice to be law-abiding and constrains their freedom to avoid activities that they consider to be wrong. Some irregular migrants are seeking asylum, others may be fleeing conditions such as famine or State collapse. There are many other reasons, and combinations of reasons, why people move. They may move in order to be better located within the international system to which they are vulnerable. This movement in turn may put people into a situation of further vulnerability. However, it should also be seen as active and as challenging to that system. The movement is challenging because it demonstrates illiberal realities of States built upon liberal 18 Lea Ypi (2008) ‘Justice in Migration: A Closed Borders Utopia?’ pp. 391–418 in Journal of Political Philosophy 16(4), p. 395. 19 For example, 23-year-old Iranian detainee Omid Masoumali died in May 2016 after setting himself on fire on camera at the Nauru detention facility, declaring that he was ‘exhausted’, adding ‘I cannot take it any more’, referring to his life in the camp; see Ben Doherty and Helen Davidson (2016) ‘Self-immolation: desperate protests against Australia’s detention regime’, in the Guardian, 3 May 2016. The August 2016 release of the Nauru Papers shows the devastating extent of suicide attempts and self-harm in the detention facility on the island. This is also discussed in Chapter 3. 20 For example, see Matthew Gibney (2004) The Ethics and Politics of Asylum: Liberal Democracy and the Response to Refugees, Cambridge University Press; Vicki Squire (2009) The Exclusionary Politics of Asylum, Palgrave Macmillan. 21 Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen (2011) Access to Asylum: International Refugee Law and the Globalisation of Migration Control, Cambridge University Press; Valsamis Mitsilegas (2015) The Criminalisation of Migration in Europe: Challenges for Human Rights and the Rule of Law, Springer.