In the UK, ‘migrant securitisation’ has significantly impacted the way the
immigration system works, with the focus predominantly on law enforcement and surveillance (Waite, 2011). Ideas of security feed heavily into the management of borders through the bureaucratic processing of applications for visas, leave to remain and citizenship. This was apparent in the headquarters of the former UKBA,
with civil servants often viewing one of the roles of their job as protecting national security. As I observed in my field notes:
Security was paramount, both to get into the HQ but also in the processing of applications. There was a locked room where sensitive cases were processed, and there were many security checks done on applicants. The language used by civil servants reflected these concerns, they legitimated the checks as making absolutely sure they were letting the right people through.
(Observational field notes, 16/8/13)
The use of physical space to create a notion of security was interesting here. Entry into the headquarters was heavily policed, meaning that only authorised people were allowed in this space. This is reminiscent of the national borders which the agency are controlling, with only those with the correct legal documentation permitted to enter domestic space. Dealing with sensitive cases in a locked room meanwhile has parallels with a detention centre, where immigrants are physically confined until the state can expel them, legitimately or not.
Admitting only the ‘right people’ was associated with perspectives viewing the potential of applicants to be criminals or terrorists, demonstrating how
immigration policy has increasingly been connected with anti-terrorism legislation (Sivanandan, 2006, Burnett, 2007). The initial process of sorting separated out migrants as potentially ‘good’ or ‘bad’ before they had even had a chance to prove their credentials. This is part of an impulse that now extends extraterritorially into offshore border controls (Vaughan-Williams, 2010). As an extract from my field diary shows:
The treatment of a person often depended on their nationality, with all of the nationals of a particular country (e.g. Pakistan, Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia) screened for war crimes and terrorism.
This continues the principle of affording faster, more efficient treatment to those from ‘safe’ countries (Bloch, 2000a), whilst immigrants of other nationalities are considered guilty until proven innocent. It also highlights how certain ethnicities are discriminated against in anti-terrorism legislation in the name of state security (Bourne, 2001). Immigrants from countries considered ‘unsafe’ were often fleeing conflict, and therefore also more likely to be asylum seekers. Sivanandan (2006) has described the discrimination resulting from combining fears of asylum seekers and terrorism as ‘a racism of global capital’. He argues this has been brought about by diverting attention away from the real threat to western values – global market fundamentalism – and deflecting the blame onto another globalised phenomena – migration. A countertopographical analysis can ground abstract accounts of the nation-state, by materialising its borders in the bureaucratic practices of
immigration officers (cf. Mountz, 2003). National legislation designed to respond to a global issue positions individual bureaucrats as custodians of immigration
regimes, yet their actions are also conditioned by their own backgrounds and motivations. State ideologies operate through personal decisions accepting particular identities whilst excluding others, having real implications for the granting or withholding of immigration status, and eventually the attribution of British citizenship. All prospective new citizens are subject to this process, but their treatment differs due to global and national geopolitical factors which are beyond their control.
State control of immigrants can be considered in the light of Foucault’s work on governmentality. Tyler (2010) has adopted his notion of biopolitics, managing human populations within their environment, to show how immigrants are controlled through legal, moral and social strategies. Viewing this through a
geographical lens is particularly relevant, as spatial boundaries are recreated by the state by demarcating ‘same’ and ‘other’ (Huxley, 2008). For participants, this had material consequences, with many finding that their rights were limited or removed altogether due to their immigration status. This was particularly true of refugees such as Maryam, who was left destitute whilst appealing her asylum case:
When I came first, you ask asylum you know if the Home Office refuse you first time you have to scared because they’re gonna take you home you know, they’re gonna stop give you, they’re gonna stop your support you know and if you don’t have any family here it’s gonna be difficult for you.
(Maryam, refugee, Guinea)
Having had her initial asylum application refused, Maryam found herself in a ‘space of exception’ (Agamben, 1998), subjected to the power of the state and its ability to mark out individuals who are excluded from the nation whilst residing within its boundaries. This reflects the state-imposed hierarchy which has divided ‘deserving’ migrants from ‘undeserving’ asylum seekers who are unable to access the most basic social support (Sales, 2002). By marking out exceptions to national laws, the state is able to reassert its sovereignty (Agamben, 1998), resisting the infiltration of universal human rights laws.
Whilst not subject to the same degree of control and deprivation as asylum
seekers, other participants nonetheless found that their immigration status limited their life chances. As Moses conveyed when talking of the challenges of living in Britain as an immigrant:
Previously it was quite difficult because you can’t really get anything done before getting your stay, you know what I mean? And obviously with that you have your permanent job and all of that umm. That doesn’t mean before I was living here illegally… But if you have your stay then you can actually plan what you want to do in life.
(Moses, student/economic migrant, Ghana)
Moses expressed a sense of liminality while holding an immigrant status, an in- between-ness during which all he could focus on was overcoming the next hurdle to ensure that he could remain in the country. Without British citizenship he was unable to take a professional position in the armed forces, and could not apply for
the postgraduate course he wished to study due to the high rate of international student fees. This time was characterised by uncertainty and impermanency, with Moses feeling that he could not move forward with his life, but at the same time could not go back to the country he had come from where he was still a legal citizen. He was also quick to point out that he was not an ‘illegal immigrant’, highlighting both the stigma associated with this term but also the restriction of opportunities for even those with a legitimate immigration status. This contradicts studies which attribute liminality solely to undocumented migrants (Menjívar, 2006, Sigona, 2012, Bloch, 2014). As Sargent and Larchanché-Kim (2006) have found, state immigration policies have affected the everyday lives of migrants to the point where they are permanently in a state of transition. This connected the experiences of participants, who found that the uncertainty of their status hampered their ability to create a settled life for themselves in Britain.
The narratives of new citizens challenge theories of post-national citizenship, which assert that states have expanded formal inclusion, with most civil, social and
economic rights based on residency rather than citizenship (Soysal, 1995, Sassen, 2002). Although asylum seekers do not have official residency rights until their case is decided, immigrants who had been granted residency such as Moses similarly felt that they were unable to access sufficient opportunities to lead a comfortable life in the UK. As is evidenced in Coalition government attempts to restrict access to benefits and healthcare for immigrants (Powell, 2013, Wintour, 2014), social rights are becoming more, rather than less, contingent on national citizenship. Whilst dividing immigrants into categories based on deservingness, the government is simultaneously rolling out blanket legislation that is harmful for even the most privileged of migrants. The Conservative Party have overtly expressed their desire to create a ‘hostile environment’ for undocumented migrants (Travis, 2013b), the implications of which filter into the lives of other migrants. For Moses and Maryam, as well as the majority of other participants, the guarantee of the permanent right to remain along with the opportunities it brought were major motivations for applying for British citizenship. However, the granting of citizenship is also heavily controlled by the state, as is examined next.