Immigration and Freedom

by Chandran Kukathas

Questionable though these reasons for surveillance might be, however, they do also reveal something significant about the process of immigration management by the state and its agencies. This is the importance of controlling not only movement but also the narrative of immigration management. The story that has to be told is that immigration control is needed to protect the population, who are bound together by a shared identity, from threats posed by outsiders. The population ought therefore to be fearful of potential harm to them individually and to the society more generally. Those who are the source of harm are people whose actions are not law-abiding, and whose actions or even status are ‘illegal’. The narrative relies upon creating a hierarchy of acceptable people, while presenting the agencies of the state as operating with nothing but the interests of the population in mind, and in accordance with the values the community itself embraces—for it is the legitimate representative of the community. The idea that private security companies, IT providers, government agencies, and political leaders might have interests of their own that shape immigration management is not, and cannot be, a part of that narrative.