‘Approved Pending Revisions’ – Reflections on State Categories and Bordering Through Bureaucracy 

Steph Hanlon is a programme director and lecturer in Carlow College St Patrick’s Ireland, and a doctoral researcher in the College of Social Sciences and Law, University College Dublin, Ireland. Her research focuses on the regulation and pre-emptive criminalisation of ‘marriages of convenience’ in Ireland. The reflections presented in this blog are part of her PhD research in University College, Dublin. 

While much attention has been paid to the problems encountered regarding access to border control agencies, less has been said about the gatekeeping role of research ethics panels in shaping what knowledge can be produced, particularly in relation to conflicting interpretations of criminalisation in the context of migration. This blog post reflects on the challenges encountered during the ethics review process for doctoral research. My research critically examines the regulation of marriage migration in Ireland, with a specific focus on the criminalising and punitive practices surrounding so-called ‘marriages of convenience’—which, notably, are not criminal offences. This experience revealed not only the institutional barriers to conducting critical migration research, but also how those very institutions often reproduce the criminalising assumptions that such research aims to challenge.  

The ‘Marriage of Convenience’ Construct  

A growing body of literature analyses how the ‘marriage of convenience’ construct operates as a critical site for the profiling, securitization and politicisation of cross-border couples. This produces (non)acceptable forms of marriage and intimacy, where racialised assumptions about credibility and authenticity render certain populations as inherently suspect. It also facilitates the convergence of immigration and criminal law ("crimmigration"), enabling the state to impose coercive measures without the procedural safeguards of the criminal justice system. In this way, the regulation of intimate relationships becomes a key mechanism through which national borders and hierarchies of belonging are defended and reproduced. 

Criminalisation Techniques 

In most EU states, marriages for immigration purposes are not formally criminalised – a model Ireland follows. However, immigration authorities increasingly blur civil and criminal boundaries. Criminalisation occurs through two mechanisms: civil registrars are granted broad discretion to investigate suspected cases, and suspicion of intent—rather than evidence of wrongdoing—can trigger intervention, reflecting a pre-crime logic (see McCulloch and Wilson). While the marriage itself remains lawful, authorities pursue related offences such as conspiracy, deception, or document fraud (see Aliverti), effectively criminalising immigration behaviour. Operation Vantage exemplifies this approach by targeting 'sham marriages' under criminal investigation frameworks. Consequently, transnational and racialised couples face intense surveillance, and punitive administrative actions, despite the absence of formal charges. This is reinforced by criminalising rhetoric in political and public discourse, contributing to a climate of suspicion around transnational couples. 

The Ethics Review Process 

Following approval of the research design and ethical reflections, the project entered its preparation phase. An ethics application was submitted in October 2024 to conduct interviews with transnational couples and immigration solicitors, focusing on the challenges and implications of navigating marriage migration regulations. The decision of the chair of ethics committee was that the application would be ‘approved pending revisions’. The committee raised ethical concerns that were grounded in the assumption that researching ‘marriages of convenience’ inherently involved engagement with criminality. The application was subjected to several separate requests for revisions over four months, with a particular focus on removing references to criminalisation from the study, and eventually, removing ‘criminalisation’ from the thesis title. This illustrates how deeply the convergence of criminal and immigration law has permeated even formal research evaluation processes. This blurring of lines — where administrative or civil breaches are presumed criminal — mirrors the wider dynamics of restrictive migration regimes, where suspicion and policing increasingly shape how mobility is governed. Reflecting on this, I realised that my experience points not only to barriers in conducting critical migration research, but also to how institutional perceptions reinforce the very criminalising logic that such research seeks to interrogate. 

Reflections 

This experience illustrated how deeply embedded assumptions about criminality can shape even the most mundane institutional processes. Concern over potential engagement with individuals perceived—implicitly—as a legal or ethical risk generated heightened scrutiny in decision-making. Most strikingly, these concerns were not based on any evidence of criminal activity - and indeed were explicitly articulated as not a criminal offence - but as if they were criminal simply because of punitive practices targeting ’marriages of convenience’. What happens when the assumption of criminality becomes embedded at the level of everyday governance, such as a research ethics board? It reveals how the border does not only operate at the edge of the state but is reproduced in institutional practices and knowledge production. In this moment, ethical safeguards meant to protect vulnerable populations instead reproduced the very suspicion that marks them as ‘risky’ subjects—reinforcing a logic that equates irregularity with illegality, and illegality with potential danger. 

By imposing these conceptual limitations, the ethics review process itself mirrored the restrictive logic of migration governance, reflecting how state-defined categories shape knowledge, discourses, and regulatory prescriptions around migration and the ‘genuine’ marriage. Given the sway of the criminalising discourse in shaping public perception of migrant legality, this filtered to university ethics committees, where what constitutes ‘ethical research’ can become a complex site of competing discourses. While this was frustrating and time-consuming, it was a valuable opportunity to experience how the state categories that academics seek to destabilise, can be reified and reinforced through assumptions about migration and criminalisation by bureaucratic systems.  

Reflexivity in Border Criminology Research 

In this sense, the barriers to receiving ethical approval was not just a bureaucratic hurdle—it was an encounter with the very criminalising logic I had set out to study. First, it reminds us that the boundaries between criminal law and immigration policy are increasingly indistinct and unquestioningly accepted and carry multiple interpretations, while emphasising certain relationships and frequently obscuring others. 

Second, it illustrates how categories employed by state institutions shape assumptions on legal categories which are reproduced through moral, institutional, and bureaucratic judgements that often escape scrutiny. The consequence is that state categories can set out the boundaries of thought, which is further complicated when researchers navigate intricate power dynamics with gatekeepers – such as university ethics committees – who can exert significant influence over how the research is conducted.  

Finally, it reveals the necessity of reflexivity in our own roles as researchers who wish to contest exclusionary practices and challenge racialised narratives in a politicised field: our access, methods, and very ability to produce knowledge are shaped by the same forces we seek to critique.  

 
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