Sudden rises in migration across the borders of the Global North have persistently attracted substantial media attention and fueled hostility toward “irregular migrants” and “bogus refugees.” While existing qualitative studies have extensively criticized the migrant-refugee distinction, we offer unique quantitative evidence of how migration numbers and labels construct impressions of increased irregular migration while in fact creating “fake illegals.” We conduct a two-stage mixed-method analysis, demonstrating first that data on “irregular/illegal border crossings” (IBCs) published by Frontex have become an authoritative source of information on migration flows cited in a corpus of mainstream news media articles. We then posit that, while persecutions and violence in countries of origin may trigger migration, it is policies in destination states that determine who “is” and “isn’t” a refugee. In turn, we develop a novel method to divide IBCs into those who would likely obtain asylum in 31 European destination states (“likely refugees”) and those who would not (“likely irregular migrants”) across time given asylum acceptance rates by nationality. We estimate that between 2009 and 2021 most border crossers labeled as “irregular/illegal” (55.4%) were actually “likely refugees,” a proportion we estimate to be 75.5% at the peak of arrivals in 2015. Thus, we find that sudden and large increases in border crossings concentrated in space likely concern forced rather than irregular migrants. Altogether, our constructivist approach reveals how migration data and categories both influence and are influenced by securitized border policies and that, in this respect, borders start with numbers.

中文翻译：

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边界从数字开始：移民数据如何创造“假非法移民”

跨越北半球边境的移民数量的突然增加持续吸引了媒体的大量关注，并加剧了对“非正规移民”和“假难民”的敌意。虽然现有的定性研究广泛批评了移民与难民的区别，但我们提供了独特的定量证据，说明移民数量和标签如何给人留下非正常移民增加的印象，同时实际上创造了“假非法移民”。我们进行了两阶段混合方法分析，首先证明了 Frontex 发布的“不规则/非法过境”（IBC）数据已成为主流新闻媒体文章语料库中引用的移民流动信息的权威来源。然后我们假设，虽然原籍国的迫害和暴力可能引发移民，但目的地国的政策决定了谁“是”和“不是”难民。反过来，我们开发了一种新颖的方法，根据不同国籍的庇护接受率，将 IBC 分为可能在 31 个欧洲目的地国获得庇护的人（“可能的难民”）和那些不会获得庇护的人（“可能的非正规移民”）。我们估计，2009 年至 2021 年间，大多数被贴上“非正规/非法”标签的过境者 (55.4%) 实际上是“可能的难民”，我们估计在 2015 年到达高峰时这一比例为 75.5%。因此，我们发现突然之间集中在太空的过境点大幅增加可能涉及强迫移民，而不是非正规移民。总而言之，我们的建构主义方法揭示了移民数据和类别如何影响安全化边境政策以及受安全化边境政策的影响，在这方面，边界始于数字。