Privatising Border Control

In recent years, many breaches of immigration law have been criminalised. Foreign nationals are now routinely identified in court and in prison as subjects for deportation. Police at the border and within the territory refer foreign suspects to immigration authorities for expulsion. Within the immigration system, new institutions and practices rely on criminal justice logic and methods. In these examples, it is not the state that controls the national border: instead, it is often privately contracted companies. This collection of essays explores the growing use of the private sector and private actors in border control and its implications for our understanding of state sovereignty and citizenship. Privatising Border Control is an important empirical and theoretical contribution to the growing, interdisciplinary body of scholarship on border control. It also contributes to the academic inquiry into the growing privatisation of policing and punishment. These domains, once regarded as central to the state's police power and its monopoly on violence, are increasingly outsourced to private providers. With contributions from scholars across a range of jurisdictions and disciplines, including Criminology, Law, and Political Science, Privatising Border Control provides a novel and comparative account of contemporary border control policy and practice. This is a must-read for academics, practitioners, and policymakers interested in immigration law and the growing use of the private sector and private actors in border control.

In recent years, many breaches of immigration law have been criminalised. Foreign nationals are now routinely identified in court and in prison as subjects for deportation. Police at the border and within the territory refer foreign suspects to immigration authorities for expulsion. Within the immigration system, new institutions and practices rely on criminal justice logic and methods. In these examples, it is not the state that controls the national border: instead, it is often privately contracted companies. This collection of essays explores the growing use of the private sector and private actors in border control and its implications for our understanding of state sovereignty and citizenship. Privatising Border Control is an important empirical and theoretical contribution to the growing, interdisciplinary body of scholarship on border control. It also contributes to the academic inquiry into the growing privatisation of policing and punishment. These domains, once regarded as central to the state's police power and its monopoly on violence, are increasingly outsourced to private providers. With contributions from scholars across a range of jurisdictions and disciplines, including Criminology, Law, and Political Science, Privatising Border Control provides a novel and comparative account of contemporary border control policy and practice. This is a must-read for academics, practitioners, and policymakers interested in immigration law and the growing use of the private sector and private actors in border control.

This special issue is the second of a two-part edited collection on the privatisation of migration. The central thrust of the special issue is a critical analysis of modern day manifestations of private participation in immigration control.

Sophie Scholten describes the development of carrier sanctions regimes in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, from the 1980s and assesses the effects of carrier sanctions policies on relationships between the actors involved: immigration authorities, private carriers and passengers.

Although service outsourcing has spread throughout Canada’s prisons and jails, into its police, courts, and national security institutions, and along the border in recent decades, the expanding scope and pace of corporate involvement in criminal justice functions has not yet been closely investigated. Changing of the Guards provides a detailed assessment of privatization and private influence across the twenty-first-century Canadian criminal justice system. It illuminates the many consequences of public–private arrangements for law and policy, transparency, accountability, the administration of justice, equity, and the public. This trenchant analysis raises issues that are relevant in Canada and abroad.

The book concludes with an assessment of the complexities surrounding responses to security privatization - and an exploration of when, and whether, it should be promoted rather than prevented."--BOOK JACKET.

In this groundbreaking new study, Nick Gill provides a conceptually innovative account of the ways in which indifference to the desperation and hardship faced by thousands of migrants fleeing persecution and exploitation comes about. Features original, unpublished empirical material from four Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded projects Challenges the consensus that border controls are necessary or desirable in contemporary society Demonstrates how immigration decision makers are immersed in a suffocating web of institutionalized processes that greatly hinder their objectivity and limit their access to alternative perspectives Theoretically informed throughout, drawing on the work of a range of social theorists, including Max Weber, Zygmunt Bauman, Emmanuel Levinas, and Georg Simmel