National borders are recent political inventions rather than timeless or natural features of the world, and the systems that enforce them (passports, visas, checkpoints) were built to control labour and populations. Because they were made, they can be questioned and remade rather than treated as inevitable.
Migration rhetoric sorts people into 'good' migrants (economically useful, grateful, high-skilled) and 'bad' ones (dependent, criminalised, fraudulent), a binary that validates the border rather than challenging it. Defending migration on the grounds that migrants are useful or deserving concedes the premise that their right to move must be earned.
Current UK immigration restrictions should be read as a continuation of colonial power rather than a break from it: the same nation that extracted wealth and people across the globe now polices who may enter. This lens reframes 'they come here' as a response to 'we went there', locating migration flows in prior histories of conquest and resource extraction.
Immigration control is pushed outward from state agents to landlords, employers, doctors, teachers, and banks, who are enlisted to check documents and deny services. This makes border enforcement ambient and everyday, so that the threat of deportation shapes daily life far from any physical border.
Immigration detention holds people indefinitely, without a crime, trial, or fixed end date, treating administrative status as grounds for incarceration. The book argues this exposes detention as a tool of control and deterrence rather than a response to any wrongdoing.
Private companies profit from running detention centres, deportation flights, and surveillance contracts, giving commercial actors a financial stake in expanding and sustaining border enforcement. This means migration policy is shaped partly by an industry that benefits from more detention and removal, not less.