Privatising Border Control Law at the Limits of the Sovereign State

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.

Mary Bosworth, Professor of Criminology, Centre for Criminology, Faculty of Law, University of Oxford., University of Oxford,Lucia Zedner, Senior Research Fellow, All Souls College, Oxford, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Oxford. Conjoint Professor, Faculty of Law, University of New South Wales., University of Oxford

Mary Bosworth is a Professor of Criminology at the University of Oxford, where she is a Fellow at St Cross College. Alongside this, she is a Professor of Criminology at Monash University, Australia. Mary is also Founder and Director of the research network and website, Border Criminologies. Her work examines the interconnections between border control and criminal justice, with a particular focus on immigration detention and deportation.


Lucia Zedner is a Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College and Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Oxford. She took her DPhil and held a Prize Research Fellowship at Nuffield College, Oxford. From 1989-1994, she was a Lecturer in Law at the London School of Economics and, from 1994-2016, she was a Law Fellow at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where she became a professor in 2005. She is a Fellow of The British Academy, a Conjoint Professor at University of New South Wales, and an Overseas Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law.

Introduction, Lucia Zedner and Mary Bosworth
PART 1: THE LIMITS OF STATE SOVEREIGNTY
1. Same as It Ever Was? Race, Capital, and Privatized Immigration Enforcement, Jennifer Chacón
2. Contested Sovereignty in Preventive Border Control: Civil Society, the 'Hostile Environment' and the Rule of Law, Valsamis Mitsilegas
3. The Borders of Sovereignty, Peter Ramsay
PART 2: LEGITIMACY AND THE RULE OF THE LAW AT THE BORDER
4. Roles and Offices at the Border: Is Privatizing Border Control Intrinsically Illegitimate?, Malcolm Thorburn
5. Towards Legitimacy at the Border, Ashwini Vasanthakumar
6. Privatized Immigration Detention: Morality, Economics and Transparency, Emily Ryo and Ian Peacock
PART 3: OUTSOURCING OR UNDERMINING STATE AUTHORITY
7. "Because We Are Deportable People": Privatization, Citizenship, and Race in US All-Foreign Prisons, Hallam Tuck
8. The Marketization of 'Legitimate' Violence: Inducing Deportation through Public-Private Cooperation, Federica Infantino
9. A Mundane Spectacle? (In)visibility, Normalisation and State Power in the UK's Migrant Escorting Contract, Mary Bosworth and Samuel Singler
PART 4: PRACTICES OF PRIVATISATION AT THE BORDER
10. Outsourcing Deterrence: The Humanitarian Border, Asylum Seekers and Non-Government Organizations in Australia, Anthea Vogl
11. Outsourcing the Border Within: Private Citizens as Border Guards, State Sovereignty and Civil Peace, Lucia Zedner
12. The Digitalisation of Border Controls and Their Corporate Actors, Didier Bigo
Afterword, Ana Aliverti