ABSTRACT
The focus of the chapter is on the tensions between current policies for controlling immigrants and what we can think of as new elements in the immigration reality. The particular policies that stand out involve the weaponizing of border control in a variety of situations. The particular changes in the immigration reality can be thought of as bits, as in digital bits, that are being assembled into a somewhat novel reality constituted through both well-established conditions and emergent bits whose status is often unclear – they may or may not support that longstanding reality. Here I confine myself to certain bits in a multi-bit reality in-the-making which are unsettling basic alignments on which immigration policy rests. They also reveal the limits of even the most powerful state in the world to get its way, and they show that in certain settings powerlessness becomes complex.
