Societies of immigration control: The transactional subject of British borders after Brexit

Digital immigration status was implemented in Britain after Brexit, and it soon became a central component of the “hostile environment” system of deputised border management. This paper argues that, in the presented case, digital technology reconfigured immigration status by shifting its operational logic from inscription towards computation. It thus produced trabnsactional subjects of border control. In paper-based systems, bordering practices slot individuals into relatively stable socio-legal categories when their status is documented. In contrast, the online-only system analysed here computes identity and status in real-time to enact legible subjects of border control. Its algorithmic logic computes biographic, biometric and immigration data – such as pending applications, grants of status, refusals, and rejections – to resolve records drawn from separate casework platforms and data stores into a singular identity and thus enact the subject of border control. These findings contribute to scholarship on digital borders, which shows that digitisation enables novel modes of immigration governance. However, the paper contests the notion that computation of personal attributes generates “data doubles” as “traceable and sortable objects” of border enforcement. Instead, it develops the notion of the transactional subject to show that ongoing computation of identity and acess becomes the overriding logic of border governance.