The border security economy in the English Channel: Small boats, racism and late imperialism

The movement of people in small boats across the English Channel to claim asylum has created a policy and media spectacle in the UK. This article examines the bordering regime along the Northern French Coast and in the UK which have shaped the criminalised journeys. Contributing to debates on the fragmentation of state power, we interrogate the political economy of bordering and the wider global and social interests that shape the border security economy in the English Channel. Whilst it is well documented that coercive policing, surveillance, and the fortification of ports such as Calais have directed people towards maritime routes to enter the UK, what is less developed is an understanding of whose interests are served by these strategies. We thus ask: In whose material and symbolic interests do borders such as this operate? Drawing on conceptualisations of racial capitalism and historical materialist state theory, we identify three overlapping dynamics: 1) Global dynamics of labour, dispossession and accumulation under racial capitalism and imperialism; 2) Neoliberal hegemony and the reproduction of consent; 3) The investment in private border security and state contracting as a mechanism of elite wealth extraction. In this way, we explore how the ‘small boats’ phenomenon, in a continuum with other border zones, reveals how borders operate as both sites of crisis management and capital accumulation under neoliberalism.