The control, restriction and overall management of migration and cross-border mobility are no longer the exclusive domain of national governments. Private firms, many of them large corporations, are now involved in the screening and tracking of migrants, the development and operation of border surveillance technologies and the detention and deportation of unauthorized migrants to home or third countries. The construction of unauthorized migration as a threat to national security, the massive increase of state budgets dedicated to prevent and restrict cross-border mobility, and the devolution of governmental functions to private actors, justified under the ‘new management’ ideology, account for the rise of a growing industry of migration control.
To be sure, states have long devolved some functions of migration control to private actors. During the 19th century, governments began to charge transportation companies with the task of registering passengers with the purpose of sorting out desirable from undesirable migrants. These early efforts evolved into the current system in which states charge air carriers with screening travelers, checking their documentation (and belongings) and preventing anybody without a proper visa from getting on board. States have also long entrusted labor recruiters and contractors with regulatory and control functions, selecting able-bodied migrants and keeping out those who challenge unjust treatment and bad working conditions. Governmental efforts to fully turn transporters and recruiters into instruments of control produced mixed results because these actors are, above all, facilitators of migration, which profit from cross-border mobility.
Today, private actors, big and small, realize handsome profits assisting states in the management, control and restriction of migration. Sociologist Tanya Golash-Boza argues that these private contractors, which “profit from massive enforcement expenditures,” form part of an immigration industrial complex functioning with a logic and dynamics similar to the prison and military industrial complexes.[i] Private detention centers and deportation services, biometric information systems to control entry and exit, drones and helicopters, infrared cameras and sensors, geographic information systems fed with satellite images and fences equipped with telescopic video cameras, are all part of the arsenal these firms deploy at land and coastal borders and ports of entry. Social scientists, artists and activists have taken note of these actors and have begun to conceptualize their activities, their relations with states and the impact that the privatization of migration management and enforcement functions have on the human and civil rights of international migrants.
Why do destination states devolve migration management and control functions to these actors? Is this a process of ‘marketization’ of migration control or simply one of limited devolution of enforcement through subcontracting? What is exactly the relationship between private firms and national and supra-national state institutions? Should we think of these firms as an industry of migration control or, to quote Gregory Feldman, as part and parcel of “a decentralized apparatus of migration management?”[ii] How does this industry of migration control intersect with other migration industries, such as traditional profit-driven facilitators, not-for-profit actors invested in the rescue and rehabilitation of vulnerable mobile populations and organized and common criminals who victimize migrants? Although we might think of the combination of state and private corporations as bringing ever increasing capabilities to migration and border control, their actions and technological knowhow are neither unbeatable nor infallible. To state the obvious, contractors and other private actors invested in migration control do not operate in a vacuum but in a larger sociopolitical context, which includes migrants and their advocacy organizations, sending state institutions, traditional profit-seeking migration facilitators, and others.
In a recent publication I have begun to chart the position of the actors that make up the migration industry of migration control and their relations with other stakeholders of the social and political process of international migration.[iii] I use a familiar construct in the study of immigration, Zolberg’s “Strange Bedfellows of American Immigration Politics” scheme.[iv] Briefly, Zolberg charts the unusual alliances of the actors that favor and oppose immigration on either economic or cultural-political terms. While his scheme recognizes migration facilitators (positioned in close proximity to employers of immigrants), it does not identify the migration industry of migration control.
Locating the actors profiting from migration control in Zolberg’s field of unusual allies yields paradoxical but perhaps not surprising observations. While these actors benefit from the continuation of migration (an interest they share with the facilitation and ‘rescue’ industries), they publicly coalesce with politicians that push an agenda to restrict immigration. In the United States, for example, private prison corporations make cash contributions to the electoral campaigns and causes of conservative politicians. These politicians, in turn, pass tougher immigration laws and enact measures devolving enforcement to state and local governmental actors. Private prison firms then strike deals with city and county governments to lease and manage local jails where their growing ‘clientele’ will be detained before deportation.
Needless to say, the migration industry of migration control is not only involved in the deterrence and control of unauthorized migration. This industry is also present in the management and regulation of legal migration and other forms of cross-border mobility. While the connections between the control industry and restrictionist politicians have invited public scrutiny, the involvement of private firms in managing legal migration tends to be normalized. Visa processing, document verification and the construction of vast data sets containing biographic and biometric information are now in the hands of private actors. The technologies developed by private firms are not only deployed at the ports of entry of countries of immigration but also utilized at the borders of transit states. A relatively new frontier in the use of these technologies is the detection and detention of individuals who overstayed or violated the terms of their visa as they leave a given country.
[i]Tanya Golash Boza, “The Immigration Industrial Complex: Why We Enforce Immigration Policies Destined to Fail,” Sociology Compass 3 (2009): 1-15. Tanya Golash Boza, “A Confluence of Interests in Immigration Enforcement: How Politicians, the Media and Corporations Profit from Immigration Policies Destined to Fail,” Sociology Compass 3(2009): 1-12.
[ii] Gregory Feldman, The Migration Apparatus: Security, Labor, and Policy Making in the European Union, (Stanford University Press: Palo Alto, CA, 2012).
[iii] Rubén Hernández-León. “Conceptualizing the Migration Industry,” in The Migration Industry and the Commercialization of International Migration, ed. T. Gammeltoft-Hansen and N. Nyberg Sorensen (London: Routledge, 2012), 25-45.
[iv] Aristide R. Zolberg, “Matters of State: Theorizing Immigration Policy,” in The Handbook of International Migration: The American Experience, ed. Charles Hirschman, P. Kasinitz, and J. DeWind (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1999), 71-93.
Rubén Hernández-León is Associate Professor of Sociology at UCLA and Director of the UCLA Center for Mexican Studies. He is the author of Metropolitan Migrants: the Migration of Urban Mexicans to the United States (UC Press, 2008), which received the Thomas and Znaniecki best book award from the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association in 2010. He is also co-editor of New Destinations: Mexican Immigration in the United States (Russell Sage Foundation, 2005). His research focuses on new developments of Mexico-U.S. migration and the role of the migration industry in international migration. He is currently working on a book based on a 15 year study of a new destination of Mexican immigration in the U.S. South and an edited volume on the migration industry in comparative perspective. His papers have been published in Social Forces, Work and Occupations, Social Science Quarterly, International Migration Review, Hommes & Migrations, Southern Rural Sociology, Revue Géographie et Cultures, Ciudades, Vetas, Estudios Sociológicos, Trayectorias, and several edited volumes in Spanish, English, Chinese and Japanese