ABSTRACT
In the last decade themes of migration and border control have increasingly been incorporated in popular reality TV formats and franchises. Whether it concerns variations of existing genres, or widely distributed and glocalized formats, such as Border Wars, reality TV has become an important site in which socio-political concerns relating to migration are tackled. Not surprisingly, because these issues are entangled with institutional dynamics of state power, such programs have the potential to reproduce state-sanctioned discourses on border enforcement and further cement exclusionary discourses on citizenship. This chapter tackles Channel 4’s two-part miniseries Smuggled to elaborate on the different dimensions of border securitization and migrant criminalization reality TV can reproduce. In this context, Smuggled serves as a particularly interesting case study since it gamifies migrant experiences through the lens of the border security apparatus. Within the challenge-type structure of the show different British citizens are asked to re-enact popular migrations routes to “test the UK’s borders.” In the process, the program paradoxically opens a space to discuss the harsh living conditions and perilous journeys migrants are made to undertake, only to accommodate such emphatic engagement within hegemonic state logics.
