Shaping Borders: Migrants’ Agency, Time Commodification, and Anticipatory Detention Strategies

• Published date: 01 September 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00027162241250232
• Author: Federica Infantino
• Date: 01 September 2023

184 ANNALS, AAPSS, 709, September 2023

DOI: 10.1177/00027162241250232

Shaping

Borders:

Migrants’

Agency, Time

Commodifi-

cation, and

Anticipatory

Detention

Strategies

By

FEDERICA INFANTINO

1250232ANN THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMYSHAPING BORDERS

research-article2024

This article shows how the organizational activities that

filter people through borders are shaped by anticipa-

tion of migrants’ agency. Through ethnographic

research in the United Kingdom’s two largest immigra-

tion detention centers, I analyze implementation prac-

tices carried out by frontline workers of the Home

Office. I question the underexamined relationship

between time and organizational action. I find that

implementation practices are systematized, in part, by

assessments of the future, and are aimed at anticipating

and countering detainees’ responses to the possibility

of deportation, even before these responses surface.

Detainees’ responses can slow the ideal progression of

the bureaucratic processes of detention and expulsion,

even as speeding up those processes remains a crucial

concern of the Home Office organization, largely

because of a political fantasy of cost-effectiveness. I

argue that more knowledge about these sorts of imple-

mentation dynamics allows for reappraisals of policies

that remain salient, despite their failures and costs.

Keywords: implementation; time; immigration deten-

tion; deportation; United Kingdom; eth-

nography; bordering

Study of the practices that put migration and

border control policies into action is an

expanding field of scholarly research, and

deservedly so. Some studies have analyzed

cross-national variations in policy implementa-

tion, most notably in the European Union

(Eule et al. 2019; Infantino 2019). Others have

tackled the role of nonstate actors (Darling

2016; Infantino 2016; Vogl 2022) and specific

Correspondence: federica.infantino@univ-cotedazur.fr

Federica Infantino holds a junior chair in migration at

the French Research Institute for Sustainable

Development and the University Côte d’Azur (URMIS).

Building on ethnographic methodologies and compara-

tive perspectives, her research investigates the actors,

organizations, and processes that put migration and

border control policies into practice.

SHAPING BORDERS 185

policy areas, such as visas (Dupont 2022; Infantino 2019; Ostrand and Statham

2022; Scheel 2018), asylum (Miaz and Achermann 2022; Tomkinson 2018), and

immigration detention and deportation (Bosworth 2014; Ellermann 2009;

Fischer 2013; Hall 2010). Analyses that focus on how policies are experienced

and contested by migrants also offer insights into implementation practices

(Gaibazzi 2014; Sánchez-Barrueco 2018). Studies of the effects of control poli-

cies typically focus on the circumvention of borders and restrictive policies

(Achilli and Kyle 2023; Ayalew Mengiste 2018; Hernández-León 2021), on the

production of illegality (Andersson 2014; Coutin 2000), and on the ways in which

migrants themselves are “illegalized” (Bauder 2014).

This article examines the “black box” of migration control policy implementa-

tion in a way that also considers whether the responses of the recipients of con-

trol hold sway over detention or expulsion practices. Specifically, I look at

frontline border control practice in the United Kingdom (UK), shedding light on

the ways in which bordering practices—the array of organizational activities used

in the filtering work of borders—are shaped by the anticipation of migrants’

responses. Further, I tackle the less-documented relationship between time,

everyday organizational action, and responses of migrants. To investigate that

relationship, I take the case of immigration detention, a policy instrument of

migration and border control that has expanded in the past decades (De Genova

and Peutz 2010; Majcher, Flynn, and Grange 2020). Rather than deportation, its

main impact has been more aptly conceptualized as “deportability,” understood

as the legal production of the possibility of being removed from the territory of a

nation-state, a condition that potentially applies to all foreigners (De Genova

2002). Immigration detention for the purpose of expulsion is a coercive policy

that often normalizes failure of its stated objective (Bosworth and Singler 2022).

Research on detention and deportation has shown people’s agency in resisting

and challenging state decisions (Coutin 2015). These policy areas are excellent

cases to question the ways in which implementation practices are shaped by the

anticipation of migrants’ responses and resistances. In these policy areas, a huge

gap exists between the “political dream” of migrants putting themselves on the

planes and the reality of “targets of expulsion who do not go quietly” (Walters

2016, 438). Day-to-day implementation bridges that gap, and the anticipation of

migrants’ responses is a means to address the reality of migrants who are not

going to put themselves on a plane.

Anticipation is a way to handle the future, premised on attempts at predicting,

responding to, and shaping behaviors. The dimension of time is central to inter-

national migration governance (Jacobsen, Karlsen, and Khosravi 2021; Robertson

2015; Tazzioli 2018), most notably when it comes to predict and shape migration

futures (Griffiths 2021). The organizations involved in the governance of interna-

tional migration focus their activities on forecasting the future, to assess and

manage “risks,” and to preempt and/or respond to potential behaviors (such as

migratory decisions) before they surface. For example, organizations like the

European Border and Coast Guard Agency (usually referred to as Frontex) or the

European Asylum Agency carry out analyses to predict the direction of migratory

movements and of asylum applications. The strategy of remote control, which