Dispersal as Abjectification: The Diffusion of Punitive ‘Internal’ Controls

Abstract

In the last chapter we saw how the articulation of asylum as a ‘threat’ associated with unauthorised entrance entails an extension of interdictive ‘external’ controls in terms that feed into an exclusionary cycle of securitisation and criminalisation. This process, it was argued, effectively extends migration controls in terms that shrink the political space of asylum through pre-emptive refoulement. Indeed, this process is reflected in the analysis of ‘reception’ provisions in this chapter, which are better approached as ‘internal’ migration controls. The development of criminalising and securitising interdictive technologies at the ‘external’ level has important implications when it comes to a consideration of the position of those who enter the territory of the UK to claim asylum. While the 1951 Convention legally permits asylum seekers to enter a ‘host’ country without authorisation, the interdictive state is less permissive. New arrivals that apply for asylum either ‘in-country’ or ‘at port’ are already discursively inscribed as ‘threatening’ transgressors who are in cohorts with criminal smugglers, despite their having committed a crime against nobody (see Chapter 5). Where exclusionary managerial assumptions regarding the culpability of asylum seekers are entrenched across the political, popular and technical levels, ‘internal’ migration controls thus move in a punitive direction.