Cracks in the UK imaginary of the strong and effective overseas border: disconnect, opportunism and flexibility in implementation

Nicole Ostrand is a postdoctoral research with the project Deporting Foreigners: Contested Norms in International Practice (NORMS), which is supported by the Research Council of Norway under the grant Research Programme UTENRIKS (Research on international relations, foreign and security policy and Norwegian interests. This is the second post in the Border Criminologies themed series on 'UK Borderscapes’, organised by Dr Karen Latricia Hough and Dr Kahina Le Louvier.

This blogpost, based on my chapter in the edited book UK Borderscapes: Sites of Enforcement and Resistance, maps the UK’s sprawling overseas network, Immigration Enforcement International (IEI), which is comprised of immigration liaison officers (ILOs), who are posted to foreign jurisdictions and “tasked with preventing illegal(ised) immigration and disrupting the organised immigration crime” outside of the country’s physical territory. Between 2015 and 2020, UK ILOs trained local police, immigration, security, and airline professionals in 83 foreign states, spanning nearly all regions of the globe.

Despite the expansive reach of the UK’s externalised migration control, I find cracks that call into question government narratives of its efficacy and targeted nature – even by UK immigration officers themselves. Rather than the strong, targeted, and coherent overseas border imagined by the government and Home Office, implementation is messy and characterised by happenchance, flexibility, and (in)effective working relationships.

Disconnect in UK imaginaries

From the UK government and Home Office perspective, ‘[t]he most effective – and efficient –way of addressing risks to the UK is […] to stop or control them before they reach the UK.’ The idea is to identify and prevent ‘unwanted’ and illegalised mobility prior to the UK’s jurisdictional border, where individuals have greater access to procedural and substantive rights. Such ‘upstream’ activities are often described by the Home Office as targeted at ‘key source and transit states,’ and perceived as ‘good value for money’ as resources are applied where most needed.

Home Office officials hold similar views of UK externalisation being targeted and risk based. Interviewee accounts emphasised how ILOs focus on areas with greater ‘immigration risk’ and ‘need’ for action. As one explained, ‘everything we do is always dependent on what the threat is to the UK […] we focus on the areas where there is more risk and need.’ Another said ‘[a]ll the key exit points toward the UK, we have got offices there. We operate where there is a need to operate.’

These imaginaries, however, often contrast realities of implementation, including where and what the UK does. For example, it seems implausible that training for officials in the tiny states of Guyana, St. Lucia, and Grenada (all with populations under 800,000) are based on Home Office assessments that they are ‘key sending or source states.’ Likewise, English language training for Sri Lankan judges, court staff, and immigration officers handling English speaking foreign nationals charged with immigration offences is unlikely to be an effective way of preventing ‘unwanted’ and illegalised migration to the UK. The same can be said about English language training to frontline immigration officials in Colombia. These activities diverge from idealised narratives of the UK’s externalisation being efficient, targeted, and effective.

Opportunities, negotiations, and flexibility

Rather than being driven primarily by (perceived) ‘immigration risk’ and ‘need,’ I find much of the UK’s overseas interventions are shaped by available opportunities and local actors’ interest (or not) in cooperation. This helps explain unexpected locations that are not major sending or transit, such as small states and territories like Antigua and Barbuda, Bruni, Cuba, Guyana, Panama and St. Helena. The ability to establish relationships and the willingness (or lack of) of local law enforcement agencies and airlines to engage with the UK is essential, and significantly influences what ILOs can do aboard.

In Sri Lanka, for example, ‘improved working relationships’ with the police ‘led to a more collaborative approach on investigations to tackle organised (immigration) crime’. In another case, a training trip on the land border between Panama and Costa Rica ‘cemented a new relationship’ with both the Panamanian and Costa Rican authorities allowing for future projects in the region.

On the other hand, an absence of motivation by law enforcement agencies and airlines to cooperate with the UK substantially limits what ILOs can do. In Egypt, ILOs were virtually unable to work with immigration or police on any migration control activities despite their efforts.

When relationships are established, ILOs and their foreign counterparts negotiate the training and support that is provided, highlighting the dynamic, two-way process of externalisation. As one interviewee described:

So, you know, you might get a shopping list of equipment and we say ‘actually we are not in position to fund that. But what we can do is provide the following which will give you the capability to do that without the equipment

In other words, ILOs do not simply tell local airlines, immigration, police, or security agencies what they need to do or ‘that they are inefficient in certain ways.’ It is about negotiating and co-producing interventions that reflect the wants and needs of local authorities.

Cracks in effectiveness    

Even in cases where there is cooperation, there are reasons to question claims of efficacy. Interviewees, for example, lamented Thai police’s unwillingness to pursue immigration cases, which they viewed as preventing their ability to ‘get anything solved’ as there is ‘no deterrent effect’ and ‘no accountability’. In Ghana, interviewees described follow through by police, but recounted delays in the courts and ‘corruption’ preventing prosecutions. Even airlines do not always cooperate as ILOs want:   

It depends on how much they [airlines] want to work with us […] if they have got problem cases would they refer [the passenger] to our teams overseas? […] Or, would they just take a chance and put them on the plane and hope all goes well?

Despite strong imaginaries of the UK overseas borderscape as effective, targeted and ‘risk-based’ the realities of implementation reveal messy and contradictory practices far removed from these visions. In many ways, UK border externalisation and its accompanying reliance on airlines and foreign immigration and police result in less control as uncontrollable circumstances – like the interests of local actors and their willingness to cooperate – significantly shape possibilities for ILOs to be ‘effective’ abroad[DV1] [NMO2] . These cracks challenge idealised narratives of overseas migration control even with the UK’s sprawling network of ILOs spanning nearly all regions of the globe. 

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