ABSTRACT
This chapter maps the UK’s sprawling network of immigration liaison officers (ILOs), who are posted to foreign jurisdictions and responsible for providing training and ‘capacity building’ to frontline actors incorporated in the UK’s overseas borderscape. It reveals how the borderscape, as it travels abroad, is transformed from the imaginary of a targeted, ‘risk-based’, and effective system of extraterritorial control to one characterised by happenchance, flexibility, and (in)effective working relationships. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with Home Office officials, freedom of information requests, and documentary research, I find the UK’s immigration liaison network, between 2015 and 2020, trained local police, immigration, security, and airline professionals in more than 80 foreign states, spanning nearly all regions of the globe. Despite this sprawling network, I also find cracks that call into question official state narratives of its efficacy and targeted nature – even by UK immigration officers themselves. Instead, realities of implementing migration controls in foreign jurisdictions mean the UK is often subject to uncontrollable local conditions and diverse interests by multiple actors. This chapter exposes these cracks by highlighting contradictions, challenges, and fluidity in the UK’s overseas borderscape as it travels from official statements, policy goals, and imaginaries to the level of implementation abroad.
