Patrolling the ‘Thin Blue Line’ in a World in Motion: An Exploration of the Crime–Migration Nexus in UK Policing
| Date | 01 February 2020 |
| Author | Ana Aliverti |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480619841905 |
| Published date | 01 February 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
841905TCR0010.1177/1362480619841905Theoretical CriminologyAliverti
research-article2019
Article
Theoretical Criminology
2020, Vol. 24(1) 8 –27
Patrolling the ‘Thin Blue Line’
© The Author(s) 2019
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in a world in motion: An
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exploration of the crime–
migration nexus in UK Policing
Ana Aliverti
University of Warwick, UK
Abstract
This article examines the contemporary role of the police in patrolling the nation’s
territorial and social borders. The police play an important role in framing ideas and
perceptions of order and disorder. By selecting when and against whom to apply
coercion, the police not only constitute crime and criminals. They shape the boundaries
of civility and patrol the margins of citizenship. Such role has been revitalized lately
as they are tasked with immigration enforcement functions. Drawing on an empirical
examination of immigration–police cooperation in England, I explore how police and
immigration officers define the remits of their job and work alongside each other in
everyday policing. I argue that the reliance on immigration enforcement by the police
evinces the limitations of modern policing to decipher the new geographies of crime
and disorder, and their difficulties in offering a reassuring response to public anxieties
and ultimately in producing social order.
Keywords
High harm, immigration enforcement, Operation Nexus, police, social order
Introduction
Policing scholars and criminologists have long debated the boundaries of policing
(Fassin, 2013; Garriott, 2013; Loader and Mulcahy, 2003; Zedner, 2006). Such debate
has further problematized the assumption that the business of the police concerns or even
focuses on crime prevention and control. Historians of the English police have showed
corresponding author:
Ana Aliverti, School of Law, University of Warwick, Gibbet Hill Road, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK.
Email: a.aliverti@warwick.ac.uk
Aliverti
9
how the question of social order, rather than crime, was the main driver for the institu-
tionalization of police in the mid-19th century (Anderson and Killingray, 1991; Brogden,
1987; Sinclair, 2006). Its origins are linked to the rise of industrialization and the expan-
sion of Empire, and thus an impetus to control vast territorial domains and populations
efficiently. As Randall Williams (2003: 325) explains, ‘we need to think the question of
modern policing as a critical strategic maneuver in the transformation of national tech-
niques of governance into an international network of centralized state powers’. As a
modern technique of governance, policing contributes to frame ideas and perceptions of
order and disorder. By selecting when and against whom to apply coercion, the police not
only constitute crime and criminals; they shape the boundaries of civility and patrol the
margins of citizenship (Waddington, 1999: 41).
Thinking about the police and policing more generally in relation to social order
might offer important insights into the contemporary role of the police in patrolling the
nation’s social and territorial borders. In this article, I explore this novel dimension of the
police as arbiters of national belonging and producers of social order (Bradford, 2014;
Loader, 2006; Loader and Mulcahy, 2003) at a time when they are tasked with immigra-
tion enforcement functions, in the UK as elsewhere (Aas and Gundhus, 2016). I focus on
the policies and practices under the remit of Operation Nexus in the UK. Nexus was
originally justified through crime control objectives and as an indispensable tool for
policing in the context of mass migration. Embedding immigration enforcement into the
criminal justice system to better identify and deal with foreign national criminals would
bring efficiencies to policing, guarantee equality of treatment between citizens and non-
citizens and offer public safety.
Consistent with its crime control remit, one of the main streams of the joint operation
was identifying and removing ‘high harm’ individuals. Although the definition of ‘high
harm’ remains vague and varies considerably by regional force, it refers to individuals
who are prioritized for immigration enforcement action due to the significant adverse
impact their conduct had on individuals and communities. The vagueness of the policy
statement, a lax regulation of criminal deportations and the pressure to increase removal
figures in practice led to a less than tidy enforcement strategy. While the policy was pre-
sented and legitimized on the grounds that it will target the ‘worst of the worst’, in prac-
tice immigration–police cooperation has surpassed the narrow crime reduction agenda to
encompass a range of populations caught up by immigration enforcement.
This finding goes to the heart of the relationship between policing and social order
in an era of mass migration. A vestige of vagrancy statutes, immigration laws are a
crucial tool of contemporary urban policing (Crocitti and Selmini, 2017; O’Brassill-
Kulfan, 2019). They bestow the police with wide legal powers to remove sources of
nuance—from wife beaters, gangsters and petty thieves to rough sleepers, uninsured
drivers and junkies—through a one-fits-all intervention. This amorphous, open-ended,
unregulated power aims to restore the social boundaries (Dubber, 2005) unsettled by
globalization. Reminiscent of the quasi-paternal power studied by Markus Dubber, the
task of policing the border within evidences the role of the police in creating a sense of
a reliable, orderly and scrutable social world at a time when ‘the line between order and
unruliness, civility and chaos, has come to look very thin indeed. And it is perpetually
rendered more so, by the perception, factually grounded or not, of rising lawlessness’
10
Theoretical Criminology 24(1)
(Comaroff and Comaroff, 2017: xi, emphasis in original). It pledges to deliver security
and certainty to a populace that is increasingly spoken about in terms of their vulner-
ability to abuse and harm (Ramsay, 2012; Zedner, 2003, 2019), and to closely patrol
the conditionality of migration status upon sticking to the rules. For some foreigners,
lawbreaking, no matter its entity, trumps their civic status and confirms their unruli-
ness and otherness (Aliverti, 2018).
In the first part, I place migration policing in historical context and detail the rationale
behind Operation Nexus and its policy remit. The remaining part explores Nexus in
action. The data on which this article draws were obtained during a study which investi-
gated the nature of immigration–police cooperation in one of the major UK police forces
where Nexus was first implemented. It examined three aspects: (1) institutional and legal
implications of interagency cooperation; (2) identification processes of individuals under
arrest for further checks; and (3) the exercise of discretion and decision making. The
project lasted for 12 months, and involved observations within two large police custodies
where immigration officers (IOs) were embedded. Observations were conducted between
September and December 2017, four full days per week between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m.
(approximately 340 hours). The project also involved 26 formal interviews with police
and immigration staff at various ranks (lasting for 45 minutes on average), and quantita-
tive analysis of custody data covering individuals arrested by the force between January
and December 2017.
I shadowed IOs throughout their daily shifts in custody. Embedded IOs had a shift
rota to cover custody between approximately 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. Monday to Friday. Staffed
from the local Immigration Compliance and Enforcement (ICE) team, they were perma-
nently deployed to police custody. They were allocated office space where they had
access to immigration databases and police custody systems and were responsible for
monitoring individuals arrested, checking individuals who declared or were suspected to
be foreigners against immigration databases, interviewing them, serving immigration
papers, assisting police investigators with queries, advising them about the eligibility of
suspects to removal or deportation and so on. The population under scrutiny was vast:
from adults and children who reached out to the police to claim asylum and, sometimes,
crime victims, to crime suspects (including ‘immigration offenders’).
In custody, I observed custody bookings, police and immigration interviews with
arrested individuals and informal interactions between police and immigration staff
and between them and prisoners. I occasionally accompanied staff to immigration
court hearings and other venues outside custody. Observations were collated through
extensive, reflexive fieldnotes after each shift. They capture some of these interactions
and informal conversations I had with staff as faithfully as possible (when it was fea-
sible and appropriate, I took notes of certain phrases and expressions), and my reflec-
tions on them. Fieldnotes were then transcribed and analysed along with interview
transcriptions to identify common themes. Interviews were audio recorded and tran-
scribed fragments are quoted verbatim. Unless otherwise stated, transcribed fragments
relate to interviews. When reproducing interviews and fieldnotes, participants are
identified by their institutional affiliation, rank and pseudonyms to...
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