The Politics of Exhaustion and the Externalization of British Border Control. An Articulation of a Strategy Designed to Deter, Control and Exclude

Bibliographic Data

ID9954487
AuthorsMarta Welander (University of Westminster London, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume59
Issue3
Pages29-46
Publication date2020-10-12
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Migration (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-7985 • E-ISSN: 1468-2435
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/imig.12778
OpenAlexW3093220025
LanguageEN
Citations received23
References cited38

In response to contemporary forms of human mobility, there has been a continued hardening of borders seeking to deter, control and exclude certain groups of people from entering nation states in Europe, North America and Australasia. Within this context, a disconcerting evolution of new and increasingly sophisticated forms of border control measures have emerged, which often play out within bilateral arrangements of “externalised” or “offshore” border controls. Drawing on extensive first‐hand field research among displaced people in Calais, Paris and Brussels in 2016–2019, this paper argues that the externalization of the British border to France is contingent upon a harmful strategy, which can be understood as the “politics of exhaustion.” This is a raft of (micro) practices and methods strategically aimed to deter, control and exclude certain groups of people on the move who have been profiled as “undesirable,” with a detrimental (un)intended impact on human lives

Articulation (sociology · Context (archaeology · Control (management · Economics · Ethnology · Externalization · Irregular migration · Management · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Cross-Border Cooperation and Integration · History · Law · Migration and Exile Studies · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Psychology · Social Psychology

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