Abstract
This introductory chapter sets out how most accounts on migration, asylum and border control underplay the roles of individuals who embody state power at borders. Jubany convincingly argues that whilst immigration officers make initial decisions on asylum, most academic and policy debates are oblivious to how outcomes on the ‘right to seek asylum’ are reached at ports. The author explains how the relationship between migration and the social threat discourse has securitised asylum seekers that are no longer seen as being in need of protection but as a menace that officers must protect society against. It exposes the meta-message of denial and disbelief, which shapes the professional world of officers. The chapter introduces the complex methodology and unprecedented access gained to immigration officers’ worlds, by detailing the getting in and getting on of the ethnography that grounds the book.
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- 1.
DI/V-UK6-AR00-CIO: In this, and all subsequent quotes, there is a code that indicates that it is empirical material from immigration officers, expressed either as extracts from in-depth interviews (indicated as DI/V); from briefer interviews (indicated as I/V) or from notes from participant observation (indicated as P/O). Part of the code also indicates the category of the person interviewed: HMI: Her Majesty’s Inspector; CIO: Chief Immigration Officer; IO: Immigration Officer; AIO: Assistant Immigration Officer; TO: Training Officer; and NR: new recruit. The rest of the code is for data management purposes only. The codes do not follow a clear pattern so confidentiality and anonymity are assured.
- 2.
The concepts of liminality or liminal are understood here, and in later references within the book, in their anthropological sense of dynamic and dialectic processes of transition. These are grounded on Victor Turner’s work on liminality, drawing on Van-Gennep’s conception of the Rite of Passage. (see Turner 1969) ‘Liminality and Communitas’ in The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. New Brunswick: Aldine Transaction Press.
- 3.
The Interpretation of the Convention is discussed further in Chap. 2.
- 4.
The idea of the ‘spirit of the Convention’ is something contested but it does illustrate a prevailing perception despite much evidence to the contrary (Saunders 2014).
- 5.
For further debate see Van Houtum and Van Naerssen 2002.
- 6.
The Foreword to the government white paper on immigration, 2005.
- 7.
The National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) reported that in the week following the Brexit vote reported hate crimes increased by 500 per cent.
- 8.
The concept ‘Banality of evil’ is used here in Hanna Arendt’s terms (Arendt 1963) to refer to the thoughtless and unquestioned actions that hide behind the state of modern bureaucracies: ‘It is this pseudomysticism that is the stamp of bureaucracy when it becomes a form of government. Since the people it dominates never really know why something is happening, and a rational interpretation of law does not exist, there remains only one thing that counts the brutal naked event itself. What happens to one then becomes subject to an interpretation where possibilities are endless, unlimited by reason and unhampered by knowledge’ (Arendt 1968:125).
- 9.
Notes from the opening papers at the American Sociological Association Conference, 1981.
- 10.
Features such as the law, the essentialist ideas about borders and nationality that underpin everyday life, the ‘professional knowledge’ of experts, and other factors taken for granted and recognised as knowledge.
- 11.
Consider, for instance, the case of Brazilian, David Miranda who was held under anti-terrorism laws while in transit at London Heathrow in 2013, having been suspected of carrying files containing information obtained by Edward Snowden. Mr. Miranda was held for nine hours under the Terrorism Act of 2000, by the UK Border Force and this became a major diplomatic flashpoint between the UK and Brazil. Mr. Miranda was held under schedule 7 of the act, which allows border security forces to hold any passengers they might suspect of involvement in terrorism. Essentially no evidence is required, only suspicion and some 60,000 ‘stop and searches’ of this nature are carried out each year at UK ports. In January 2016 these powers were reviewed and found to be incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. This section of the law has previously been challenged by a number of NGOs such as The Federation of Islamic Student Societies (FOSIS) and Liberty UK.
- 12.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
- 13.
The Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND) has undergone a number of changes since the initial research was conducted. Responsibilities are now split between two agencies, UK Visas and Immigration and UK Border Force that deal with asylum in different ways; for further explanation, see Chap. 2.
- 14.
The immigration officers’ induction, which had never previously been observed for independent research purposes, remains the same to this day.
- 15.
All interviews were recorded and transcribed on an anonymous basis and commitment of guaranteed confidentiality. No officer expressed any concerns with being recorded whilst interviews were being conducted.
- 16.
The interview rooms from port to port could vary quite considerably, but invariably they were grey and ‘cold’ places. These perspectives were actually reproduced by some officers during the research, particularly in relation to Heathrow Terminal 3. ‘The arrivals hall at Heathrow Terminal 3, it’s completely dark, there’s no light, the way the place is run it’s very much a, I mean you work in prisons you know, what an old lag is, you know, the lag system, you know, if you have seniority you can get away with anything. So when you start there they absolutely treat you like shit, you know, excuse my French. But everything is built up that way and it’s a punishing place to work, you know’ Chief Immigration Officer.
- 17.
The observation of the training took place between March 2000 and July 2000.
- 18.
Aside from the training course, Participant Observation of the Training Unit was conducted at intervals during six months. Further Participant Observation was conducted at ports when leading the interviews: on arrival, in between interviews and after the interviews too. In both cases of Participant Observation, often the circumstances did not allow to take complete notes on site but brief references were written down and full notes were written up at the end of each day in chronological order to form a consistent research diary. This was transcribed, coded and classified at the end of the fieldwork. For the analysis of the data, variables and indicators were correlated to create family codes and connected so that subcategories emerged. Some of these were repeated at times for each relevant category depending on the context, as all categories were tailored and aimed to reflect the world of the respondents. Finally, these were integrated at a conceptual level of analysis to allow associations between attitudes, behaviours, motivations and experiences. Through the evaluation of plausibility of the associations, new connections between them were developed to acquire more abstract generalisations.
- 19.
For the research a full ethical consideration plan was developed and implemented adhering to the London School of Economics standards, including all aspects of confidentiality, anonymity, as well as data management and storage.
- 20.
The term ‘plastic’ is used in the vein Lazaridis’ defines as ‘plastic citizenship’. In this context ‘plastic’ refers to something that is fluid and mutable whilst maintaining a roughly defined shape. While it is something that changes and shifts, it never returns to its original form (Lazaridis 2015, 5).
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Jubany, O. (2017). Asylum Screening from Within. In: Screening Asylum in a Culture of Disbelief. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40748-7_1
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