New project: The Business of Bordering

In September I will be starting a new project, funded by the ESRC.

This project, supported by a £713,000 grant, focuses on the border security economy. That is, the wide range of companies, contracted directly or indirectly by governments, to contribute to border control. This includes the provision of technologies such as IT platforms, scanners, watchtowers and drones; infrastructure such as detention and holding facilities; and services such as private security, escorting, and consultancy.

In response to the ‘crisis’ of movement of people to Europe and North America, border security is becoming big business. Tech companies, arms firms, and private security contractors promise to facilitate control over international borders and police the boundaries between wanted and unwanted mobility. Globally this market is projected to grow from US$377billion in 2023 to US$679billion by 2032. Driven by rising anti-immigration politics, business is booming for companies involved in border-security in Europe.

Highly controlled borders actively produce irregularised migration and smuggling. But this does not mean that bordering does not serve other projects -the politics of nationalism and sovereignty, for example, and the business of border security.

This project focuses on the roles of the UK and Denmark in experimenting with, propagating and normalising border security business in their national contexts, in Europe and beyond.

We will:
1. Build a database of border security tenders and contracts in the UK and Denmark
2. Identify the institutional mechanisms of democratic scrutiny and accountability in each country
3. Undertake critical discourse analysis of a corpus of policy texts pertaining to the contracting of private companies to deliver components of border security
4. Map stakeholders across industry, policy, and government, in the border security economy
5. Conduct qualitative field research entailing elite and civil society interviews and participatory observation during border security sector events in the UK and Denmark
6. Disseminate the empirical and theoretical project findings to inform and impact various publics on the need for a political economic perspective on border control technologies, and their societal and humanitarian consequences.

The project includes co-investigators Martin Lemberg-Pedersen and Joe Turner, partners Corporate Watch and DanWatch, and an advisory group including Tim Naor Hilton from Refugee Action, Deidre Conlon from Leeds University, Olivia Sundberg Diez from Amnesty International, Chris Jones from Statewatch, and Emelie Ekeberg from the Danish Investigative Journalism Association.