Feeling race: mapping emotions in policing Britain’s borders

Abstract

Collaboration between the police and immigration has expanded in Britain, following implementation of renewed legislative and policy imperatives to ensure swifter removal and deportation of foreign national criminals. The roles and powers of ordinary police and immigration officers have blurred, allowing both to play a greater part in enforcing migration control as part of their daily routine. Race-making practices are woven into immigration enforcement, policing and criminalization, and agents undertaking policing migration responsibilities animate and enact racial ideas as part of their work. This article considers the affective contours of race in policing migration and explores the consequences when agents from racialized and migratory backgrounds hold positions of power, thereby scrambling the binary of ‘us’ (citizens) and ‘them’ (foreigners).