As border controls have spanned from the territorial border to the interior, outsourcing controls to non-state actors has become the integral
technology in everyday bordering. Whilst the racialized consequences
of deputizing controls have been illuminated, the governmentality and
biopolitical implications of these outsourcing processes have been overlooked. This paper argues that as the architecture of migration controls has evolved, the targets of control have widened; that migration controls
have transcended migrants and are also used as a way to control sovereign
subjects. Taking the genealogy of UK immigration control policy as a case
study, the paper shows how the processes of outsourcing immigration controls to corporations, public institutions, and the private sphere have inverted the target of control through a governmentality of coercive measures and incentive structures. I argue that in outsourcing controls to nonstate actors, the taken-for-granted boundaries between who is subject to
immigration control and who is not are blurred because as sovereign subjects become complicit in borderwork, they also become subject to state
violence. The implication is that all subjects become subject to immigration control, provoking the question of who immigration controls serve
and to what end.