TY - JOUR

T1 - Policing the Enforcers

T2 - The Governmentality of Immigration Controls

AU - Consterdine, Erica

PY - 2024/6/30

Y1 - 2024/6/30

N2 - As border controls have spanned from the territorial border to the interior, outsourcing controls to non-state actors has become the integraltechnology in everyday bordering. Whilst the racialized consequencesof deputizing controls have been illuminated, the governmentality andbiopolitical 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 controlshave transcended migrants and are also used as a way to control sovereignsubjects. Taking the genealogy of UK immigration control policy as a casestudy, 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 toimmigration control and who is not are blurred because as sovereign subjects become complicit in borderwork, they also become subject to stateviolence. The implication is that all subjects become subject to immigration control, provoking the question of who immigration controls serveand to what end.

AB - As border controls have spanned from the territorial border to the interior, outsourcing controls to non-state actors has become the integraltechnology in everyday bordering. Whilst the racialized consequencesof deputizing controls have been illuminated, the governmentality andbiopolitical 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 controlshave transcended migrants and are also used as a way to control sovereignsubjects. Taking the genealogy of UK immigration control policy as a casestudy, 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 toimmigration control and who is not are blurred because as sovereign subjects become complicit in borderwork, they also become subject to stateviolence. The implication is that all subjects become subject to immigration control, provoking the question of who immigration controls serveand to what end.

U2 - 10.1093/ips/olae008

DO - 10.1093/ips/olae008

M3 - Journal article

VL - 18

JO - International Political Sociology

JF - International Political Sociology

SN - 1749-5679

IS - 2

M1 - olae008

ER -