Deserving or undeserving? Governing ‘migrant irregularity’ and squatting in Amsterdam

This paper documents the initial phase of the "National Alien Services" program (LVV in its Dutch acronym), intended to shelter undocumented people in the Netherlands from 2019 to 2022. The programme established a national network of guidance and reception facilities for undocumented migrants in five major Dutch cities to put previous urban-level initiatives on a more uniform basis. This paper analyzes the implementation of the LVV in Amsterdam, shedding light on the emergence of a new hierarchy among irregular migrants based on whether they are regarded as deserving or undeserving to access these facilities. As we show through the voices of civil society, migrants, and local policy makers, this new "hierarchy of deservingness" has de facto shrunk the spaces for autonomy of local reception practices – thus reducing the number of undocumented migrants who can access shelter – and those spaces created by migrants' squatting movement in the city. By addressing the intersection of migration, reception, and urban policies through the lens of "deservingness", this paper supplements the theoretical debate by providing insights into how different actors negotiate hierarchies of deservingness at the crossroads of local and national governance levels, and how these dynamics interact with migrants' claimmaking.