Balancing Legitimacy, Exceptionality and Accountability: On Foreign-national Offenders' Reluctance to Engage in Anti-deportation Campaigns in the UK

This paper addresses the lack of collective political action and engagement in protests and anti-deportation campaigns (ADCs) on the part of foreign-national offenders facing deportation from the UK. Taking ADC guidelines from migrant support groups, and drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in London, I show that the circumstances of foreign-national offenders, and in particular their own understandings of their removal, appear incompatible with open political action and with the broader work of ADC support groups. The findings presented throughout this paper make the case that foreign-national offenders have conflicting notions about their deportation and their ‘right’ to protest and campaign against it, revealing how perceptions of legitimacy impact not only on how policies are lived and experienced but also on the scope for political action on the part of those who are experiencing those policies.