Firm and fair? Bureaucracy, asylum policy, and everyday border work in the English Channel

'Small boat' crossings of the English Channel have attracted significant British political/media attention in recent years. In summer 2020, the Home Office launched a renewed campaign against these attempts at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, laying the groundwork for both unprecedented further spending on border militarisation, and the proposed asylum policy' overhaul' under the rubric 'firm and fair'. To date, there has been limited empirical engagement with the British role in governing the Anglo-Franco borderland, including developments in the Channel. Further academic work is needed to improve understandings not just of how asylum seekers using this route are constructed in policy, and why, but how this relates to their everyday treatment on the ground.

This proposed research asks how politicians, policymakers and operational staff within the Home Office construct, justify and enact, both the 'problem' and their own actions, in this space. It asks: How are contemporary Home Office interventions in the Channel presented and understood by its politicians, policymakers, and operational staff? How are border policies enacted on the South Coast? In what ways does this contemporary border work relate to the longue durée of British Immigration 'management'? Three qualitative methods will be used in an interdisciplinary approach. Firstly, contemporary discourse analysis will track official Channel policies and discourse over time, and comparative historical case-studies identified and explored. Secondly, elite semi-structured interviews will probe how policymakers make sense of their own work and negotiate competing interests/logics surrounding 'small boats'. Thirdly, ethnography with Border Force will explore how policies are translated, understood and enacted on the ground.

This research will contribute to three main bodies of literature. Firstly, cross-disciplinary literature on the administrative and social practices at work within bureaucratic institutions of power. Secondly, literature on border work, both discursive and enacted. And thirdly, scholarship which examines links between contemporary border work and colonial/racialized histories of British migration management.
The task of understanding bureaucratic institutions is not an easy one given issues of access, complexity, and sheer size. It is, however, necessary that as scholars we seek to advance knowledge of the processes at work within these 'black boxes' of power. This research seeks to add a timely contribution to knowledge about migration management in the UK, through the understudied lens of the Home Office and its actors. As such, it will be of interest both to actors within the Home Office, and to NGOs and advocacy organisations.