Excluding illegal migrants in The Netherlands: Between national policies and local implementation

National immigration controls are no longer carried out solely by specialised ‘gate-keepers’ at external borders. Internal controls have partly shifted to human service workers who have to fence off public services in practice. Little attention in the field of migration studies has gone to the relationship between formal policies and practices of implementation. Based on interviews with human service workers before and after the enactment of the Linking Act in the Netherlands in 1998, which aimed at excluding illegal or undocumented immigrants from public services, the essay examines the tensions between different levels of policy making. These tensions are particularly visible in an era of ‘shifting down’ immigration controls. At the local level concrete dilemmas come to the fore. Norms and ideologies of professionals sometimes lead them to make decisions that contradict the aim of the official policy. A comparison between different sectors suggests that sectors with a high level of professionalisation are most likely to transform policy goals during the process of implementation.