The Exceptional Becomes Everyday: Border Control, Attrition and Exclusion from Within

Abstract

This article examines processes of migration and border control, illustrating the ways by which everyday housing and welfare services function as mechanisms of exclusion in both direct and indirect ways. Using the thesis of crimmigration, the article demonstrates how border controls have become deeply implicated in systems claiming to offer welfare support—and how a global public health emergency has intensified exclusionary processes and normalised restrictive practices. The article compares border controls in two localities—under the UK government’s coercive ‘hostile environment’ policies (based on technologies of surveillance) and a more indirect ‘programme of discouragement’ in The Netherlands (based on technologies of attrition). The study demonstrates the role of contemporary welfare states in entrenching inequality and social exclusion (from within), arguing that the exceptional circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic have facilitated the differential everyday treatment of migrants, revealing a hierarchy of human worth through strategies of surveillance and attrition.