Manufacturing Obedience: Coercion and Authority in Border Controls
| Author | Ana Aliverti |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14624745211051320 |
| Published date | 01 April 2023 |
| Date | 01 April 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Manufacturing Obedience:
Coercion and Authority in
Border Controls
Ana Aliverti
School of Law, University of Warwick, UK
Abstract
This article reassesses the relationship between state authority and violence in the con-
text of border controls. Drawing on empirical research conducted with immigration and
police officers in the UK, I show that the use of force in this context give rise to distinct-
ively complex ethical questions which shape institutional and individual practices, and is
entangled with the legally and politically fragile authority wielded by frontline staff. Faced
with a morally, socially and politically controversial mandate, these officers devise a
range of strategies to either minimize or conceal the use of violence. In doing so,
they sometimes fall into oxymorons and euphemisms that at once evidence the shady
line between coercion and consent, and shed light on the some of the profound
moral dilemmas they encounter in doing border work. These dilemmas, I conclude,
speak of broader challenges to the exercise of state coercive power, and the negotiated,
contingent and provisional nature of state authority in a globalized, postcolonial and pro-
foundly unequal world. I also argue for the social and intellectual urge to integrate the
study of immigration enforcement in contemporary debates of state penality.
Introduction
The death of Jimmy Mubenga in October 2010, following unreasonable force applied by
G4S staff during a British Airways flight bound to Angola to action his deportation order,
prompted fierce criticism over the use of force during immigration law enforcement
operations in the UK. The judicial inquest found that he was unlawfully killed after
being held down by the guards despite Mr Mubenga warning them that he was unable
to breathe (BBC News, 2013). In 2008, the charity Medical Justice documented instances
Corresponding author:
Ana Aliverti, School of Law, University of Warwick, Gibbet Hill Road, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK
Email: a.aliverti@warwick.ac.uk
Article
Punishment & Society
2023, Vol. 25(2) 343–362
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/14624745211051320
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of alleged ‘use of inappropriate and dangerous methods of force’, in some cases leading
to physical injuries, by custody and escort staff during deportation proceedings (Medical
Justice, 2008, 19). In response, in 2014, the UK government commissioned a review to
assess ‘the quality and safety to these incidents of systems of restraint’during deport-
ation, which endorsed the principle of restraint minimization (Shaw, 2014). Still, since
2018 the Inspector of Prisons repeatedly expressed concerns about the excessive and
unnecessary use of restraint, in the form of handcuffing, waist belts and leg shackles,
during detention and deportation flights (HMIP, 2019, 2018b, 2018a).
Despite these concerns, physical coercion is remarkably rare during immigration
enforcement operations as immigration officers rely on ‘consent’and ‘compliance’of
those subject to immigration powers. The preference for compliance, rather than force,
is illustrated by removal and deportation statistics. Since 2010, ‘voluntary returns’out-
number ‘enforced returns’, and 2019 reported the lowest annual number of ‘enforced
returns’since 2004–22 percent lower than in 2018 (Walsh, 2020, 5). Leaving aside for
a moment the problematic nature of this institutional nomenclatures -of which more
below, ‘voluntary returns’refer to ‘departures’where the person subject to enforcement
action has given informed consent and hence is not subject to an order of removal.
1
Even
during ‘enforced returns’, the use of force remained relatively rare with typically less than
10 percent of these operations reporting ‘use of force incidents’since 2015 (with the
exception of 2018–2019 were the figure reached 16 percent) (Home Office, 2021a).
Immigration enforcement operations have decreased since 2015, shrinking by 16
percent in 2019 (National Audit Office, 2020). Overall, this a picture of growing parsi-
mony in border and immigration enforcement in general (and in the use of force
within those proceedings specifically), drastically accelerated by the Covid pandemic,
which has been largely overlooked by scholars and practitioners. It offers an opportunity
to examine anew the place of coercion in immigration work (Phillips et al., 2006).
In this article, I focus on the moral and affective place of violence in everyday immi-
gration enforcement work, and the relationship between coercion and authority. The rela-
tionship between police and violence has been a key concern for sociologists of the
police. Violence and coercion have long been identified as the most distinctive aspect
of police’s work and culture (Bittner, 1980; Muir, 1977; Reiner, 2010). However, in
recent years, the centrality of force in policing has started to be questioned by many scho-
lars at normative and empirical levels. Normatively, the wielding of force to maintain
order and achieve compliance with legal rules has been problematized as inadequate
and counterproductive in modern democracies, for coercion is said to be a weak basis
for building compliance and legitimacy (Bradford, 2014; Lerman and Weaver, 2013;
Tyler et al., 2014). Accordingly, the Peelian principle of ‘policing by consent’has resur-
faced in police reforms (Loader, 2016). Empirically, policing scholars the world over
have questioned the centrality of coercion and of its crime fighting role in the everyday
work of frontline officers (Loftus, 2009, 66), dismantling one of the myths of the police
(Reiner, 2010). Although reliant on coercion, they argued, police authority is not reduc-
tive to it (Loader, 1997).
Here, I revisit these debates on the relationship between police and violence by placing
it in the context of the growing impetus to control mobility within policing. I reflect on the
344 Punishment & Society 25(2)
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