A vital and comprehensive resource for anyone trying understand the border regime, and ask how we can fight it effectively has been produced by Corporate Watch. The book The UK Border Regime: a critical guide is now out.

Discuss The UK Border Regime: a critical guide with Corporate Watch on Tuesday 6th November 6.30-8.30 at The Sanctuary, 37-39 Chapel Walk Sheffield

This is how Corporate Watch describe their work:

This book brings together Corporate Watch’s recent research on the “hostile environment” against migrants in the UK, and the companies that profit from it. It also includes a lot of new research and analysis, and looks at the history of recent migration struggles in the UK, asking what has been effective.

You can download it for free here. And you can order paper copies here in our online shop. (It will be in bookshops soon too).

We will be glad to send copies for free to asylum seekers and other people without papers. For other people and groups fighting the border regime, we can send at cost price or whatever you can afford to donate. Email us on contact[AT]corporatewatch.org.

The UK Border Regime

Throughout history, human beings have migrated. To escape war, oppression and poverty, to make a better life, to follow their own dreams. But since the start of the 20^th century, modern governments have found ever more vicious ways to stop people moving freely.

The UK border regime includes the razor wire fences at Calais, the limbo of the asylum system, and the open violence of raids and deportations. Alongside the Home Office, it includes the companies running databases and detention centres, the media pushing hate speech, and the politicians posturing to win votes. It keeps on escalating, through Tony Blair’s war on refugees to Theresa May’s “hostile environment”, spreading fear and division.

This book describes and analyses the UK’s system of immigration controls. It looks at how it has developed through recent history, the different actors involved, and how people resist. The aim is to help understand the border regime, and ask how we can fight it effectively.

You can read the introduction and summary of the book here.

And see the full table of contents below.

Table of Contents

Introduction, Acknowledgements, Summary

Part One: Background
1. A brief history of the UK border regime
2. The Home Office: an overview
3. Sorting people
4. What is the border regime?

Part Two: Control
5. In limbo: reporting, dispersal, destitution
6. Immigration raids
7. Detention
8. Deportation
9. Calais (the ultimate “hostile environment”)
10. The “hostile environment”: making a nation of border cops
11. Hostile data
12. The logic of hostility: how collaboration works
13. Does immigration control work? The deterrent dogma

Part Three: Consent
14. Public opinion: target publics
15. Media: communication power
16. Politicians
17. Corporate power
18. Agitators
19. Anxiety engine

Part Four: How can we fight it?
20. Fighting the border regime

Annexes

Annex 1. Border profiteers: list of major Home Office immigration contracts
Annex 2. Border profiteers: company mini-profiles (G4S, Serco, Mitie, GEO, Carlson Wagonlit, Titan Airways)
Further reading