Disposing the unwanted: The UK-Rwanda deal and the resurgence of deportations to third countries

The UK-Rwanda Deal sought to overhaul the UK’s migration policy by outsourcing the asylum process to Rwanda, a move that would have dissolved the state’s international protection for refugees. Whilst the incoming Labour Prime Minister scrapped the policy upon taking office, the question remains: Why did the UK-Rwanda Deal endure through two years of court injunctions and widespread criticism? A question that remains salient as Italy, the Netherlands, and the European Union attempt to pursue similar externalisation policies. Far from a failed experiment, we argue that the UK-Rwanda Deal was a calculated attempt to enact the historically enduring border politics of distancing. Physical distancing creates a spatial buffer to skirt legal obligations while isolating asylum seekers from support systems. Symbolic distancing functions as a deterrence, presenting the illusion that safety is unreachable while easing populist anxieties by framing the constructed ‘problem’ as resolved. Mental distancing normalises the violence of deportation by reducing asylum seekers to bureaucratic items. In practice, the externalisation of asylum functions both as a mechanism of control (physical) and the desire for racialised exclusion (symbolic and mental). By situating our critique within the historical context of deportations to third countries, we argue that the UK-Rwanda Deal is less a novel development than a resurgence of a longer standing practice. The cancellation of the UK-Rwanda Deal is therefore not the end of the story, but a chapter in the ongoing border politics of distancing, as former colonial powers in Europe, the USA and Australia eagerly seek to enact this practice of racialised exclusion.