Coordinating internal immigration control in the UK

The UK Government has recently introduced measures to intensify the internal migration control regime by improving coordination between immigration authorities and third-party enforcement agents. The following paper describes the internal migration control regime in the UK, focusing on measures developed to impede irregular migrants’ access to work, justice, healthcare, education and housing. It also explores the ways in which coordination between actors comprising the ‘immigration policing family’ is hampered by administrative difficulties and, more fundamentally, by a lack of common goals. In response to these issues, successive UK Governments have introduced sanctions for non-compliant enforcement agents. Despite the fact that these types of sanctions are often discursively linked by immigration authorities to the notion of preventing third parties’ exploitation of irregular migrants, ultimately it is the irregular migrants’ survival which is threatened by the developing control regime.