Border/Control

Abstract

This chapter explores the contribution that Foucauldian political sociology offers for our understanding of borders within the governance of migration. Foucauldian political sociology does not provide us with a theory of borders but rather an open-ended set of analytics of power and government. These analytics allow for a diagnosis of the changing forms of programmatic and political reason, techniques of power and subjectivity that are at play in our attempts to understand and control migration. In arguing that Deleuze’s idea of ‘control’ offers an important contribution to this aspect of political sociology – one that is especially pertinent to debates about neoliberalism – this chapter gives new meaning to the concept of ‘border control’.