Coerced to Leave: Punishment and the Surveillance of Foreign-National Offenders in the UK

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in London among foreign-national offenders facing deportation from the United Kingdom, this paper seeks to examine how foreign-national offenders experience and understand state policies of control. Worldwide, foreign-nationals are increasingly subject to forms of state surveillance, not just when crossing borders but also during their stay within a given state’s territory. Detention centres, weekly or monthly reporting requirements, and electronic monitoring are already common migrant surveillance strategies allied to deportation policies in many countries across the globe. These forms of state control are conceived legally as administrative practices necessary to control foreign-nationals whose status is still being adjudicated and to enforce the removal of unwanted foreign-nationals. Consequently, these strategies are not inflicted through a judicial process, even though these same practices are used within the context of penal incarceration and supervision. The lived experience of deportability and associated state surveillance highlights the punitive and coercive effects of detention and related conditions of bail. Ironically, but perhaps not unintentionally, those who are deemed a risk and subject to surveillance and banishment are therefore constantly feeling vulnerable and in need of protection. Because they do not consider themselves a risk to society, the foreign-national offenders interviewed for this study understand state surveillance not as a measure of control, but rather as punishment for wanting to stay. In their eyes, it is designed to coerce them to leave. An examination of the experiences of detention and bail reveals how such forms of surveillance work to discipline deportable bodies.