On the effects and implications of UK Border Agency involvement in higher education

Abstract

This Commentary outlines the requirements that the UK Border Agency (UKBA) makes of universities if they wish to be permitted to teach non-EU students. It argues that these requirements amount to a devolution of responsibility for border control from the UKBA to the university. The classroom is made a border site, and the border-crossing student is subjected to continual monitoring. This has far-reaching consequences for the character, ethos and life of the institution. These consequences are considered in light of research around the everyday spaces of neoliberal border control. It is argued that changes in the university mirror those found outside it and that resistance to such changes at the level of our institutions connect with resistance to border policies more generally.

Polymorphic borders

“…They include those formally employed by border control agencies and contracted partners such as airport liaison officers, passport controllers, air and sea port personnel, backroom government employees, interviewers, security officers of various hues, elite immigration system designers and immigration judges. What is more, networks of immigration controllers extend well beyond these groups, as more individuals who have no formal connection with immigration control have been required to check and verify immigration status including social workers, hospital staff, real estate agents, university lecturers (Jenkins, 2014) and schoolteachers. Thinking in terms of networks brings into focus the set of new nodes, including schools, churches, hospitals and businesses that have been made to do border work in recent years.…”

UK policy discourses and international student mobility: the deterrence and subjectification of international students

“…International students may be internalising narratives from policy which construct them as 'not good enough', establishing a binary category which opposes 'the brightest and the best' against undesirable, risky immigrants. They become objects of regulation and surveillance (Jenkins 2014), continuously under interrogation (King and Raghuram 2013). They are formally categorised as immigrants for statistical purposes, which highlights their mobility across borders as a defining characteristic and documents them as different from home students by virtue of their nationality.…”

“…Although presented in policy discourse as a natural distinction, this is premised on nationalistic assumptions. Consequences of this categorisation include intensified monitoring and surveillance through attendance monitoring, record keeping and follow-through at institutional levels (Jenkins 2014), and police registration and biometric data collection on a national level. Although not all migrants object to these procedures, others find them invasive and alienating (UKCISA 2011).…”

“…Although not all migrants object to these procedures, others find them invasive and alienating (UKCISA 2011). The subject position of student as migrant defines them in terms of their border-crossing and imposes on them and on institutions a securitised regime of surveillance where academics and universities become extensions of the border agency in the eyes of the state (Jenkins 2014). In negotiating and creating their own subject position, students must engage with, resist, or opt out from this structural framing of their legitimacy and identity, in an enactment of 'bounded agency'.…”

Signalling the ‘Multi-Local’ University? The Place of the City in the Growth of London-Based Satellite Campuses, and the Implications for Social Stratification

“…New student accommodation led to them congregating in the central business district and particular places in the suburbs, rather than in less prominent locations as had been the case previously. In the UK, international students have faced severe curbs on taking up a job during or after their degree since restrictions were introduced in 2012 (when the post-study work visa was scrapped), and have been closely monitored throughout their time in the UK-through regular checks on both their attendance at university and commitment to their studies (Jenkins 2014;Mavroudi and Warren 2013). Alongside this, UK policy documents have suggested that some international students are responsible for propping up 'bogus' higher education institutions (Brooks 2018;Lomer 2017), while fees remain substantially higher for such students than for their domestic counterparts (this is not, however, unique to the UK).…”