ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I theorise the relationship between law, space and the subject in the context of electronic surveillance tags and the Immigration Acts of 2014 and 2016 (UK). Engaging with a variety of approaches including legal geography, critical race theory and critical disability studies, I suggest the concept of ‘taking space with you’ as a way to understand the complex, intimate and dynamic relationships that legal subjects have with the spaces in and through which they move. This concept suggests that subjects not only exist in but are also constituted by space – combining with space such that they cannot be easily separated from it, conceptually or materially. Who subjects are, what is materially within their reach, and their vulnerability to violence is therefore constantly (re)determined by where they have been and what has happened around them. I explore how those subject to electronic surveillance tags effectively take prison walls with them wherever they go, and how those subject to the ‘right to rent’ requirements of the Immigration Acts of 2014 and 2016 take border walls with them wherever they go. These examples illustrate how the process of being an embodied legal subject means combining and connecting with, and being enabled, obstructed, and to an extent defined by, the heterogeneous multiplicity beyond the skin of our bodies.
