‘Externalisation through Privatisation: The Role of Non-State Actors in Border Enforcement and Asylum Exclusion’

Wednesday 15 June 2022 at 9am BST/10am CEST/6pm AEST.

This event is co-organised by the Migration Policy Centre (MPC) and (B)OrderS: Centre for the Legal Study of Borders and Migration.

With the growing movement of asylum seekers and refugees to wealthy Western countries, states have progressively hardened their migration control strategies. States now employ a number of measures beyond their territorial borders to obstruct or deter the arrival of unwanted migrants and shirk the protection obligations that they owe. States have externalised migration control by shifting the locus of border enforcement to third countries, while also contracting out border control duties to private actors. Prominent examples include the delegation of responsibility for visa and documents checks to airlines and other carriers at the point of departure; the secondment of immigration liaison officers (ILOs) to third countries to assist with clearance checks; and the contracting of security companies to operate detention centres and assist with deportations and removals. Migration control now involves complex relationships between public and private actors. The delegation of authority from government to private companies and corporations raises serious implications for the role and function of the state, state accountability, and the enforcement of international law and the protection of human rights.

Given the spread of privatisation logics and proliferation of public-private partnerships at both state and international level, a deeper examination of the role of non-state actors in migration control is both timely and necessary. This seminar seeks to advance our understanding of how, when, and why states privatise migration control, how we might conceptualise the role of private actors, the nature of their relationship with the state, and the degree of autonomy that they have in the enforcement of border controls. The seminar seeks to reveal the often violent and coercive dynamics that underpin these practices. There has been widespread documentation of abuses against refugees by private actors. It is essential to examine the human rights impacts of such policies, and how we might hold private actors, and governments, accountable. By bringing together scholars working across law, politics, and ethics, this seminar offers a unique multidisciplinary perspective on the privatisation of migration control.

The panel speakers are:

• Dr Federica Infantino (Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow, Migration Policy Centre at the EUI)
• Professor Violeta Moreno-Lax (Founding Director, (B)OrderS Centre, Queen Mary University of London)
• Dr Martin Lemberg-Pedersen (Honorary Associate Professor, University of Warwick & Amnesty International Denmark)
• Dr Amy Nethery (Senior Lecturer in Politics and Policy, Deakin University)

The panel will be chaired by Dr Tamara Tubakovic (Teaching Fellow in Public Policy and European Studies, University of Warwick).

To register for the event, please visit the MPC event page: https://migrationpolicycentre.eu/events/externalisation-through-privatisation-the-role-of-non-state-actors-in-border-enforcement-and-asylum-exclusion/

This event will be recorded and livestreamed on the MPC YouTube channel.