Potter Jessica L, Meier Isabel
University College London, UK.
Northumbria University, UK.
Crit Soc Policy. 2024 May;44(2):263-284. doi: 10.1177/02610183231223952. Epub 2024 Mar 18.
This article considers how distanciation, understood as the active production of different forms of distance as a method of control, is used to manage people racialised and criminalised as migrants within the UK's hostile environment. Analysing different policies introduced under the hostile environment agenda, as well as the more recent New Plan for Immigration, we argue distanciation is a key tactic that shapes these policies and their implementation as well as offers us insight into changing forms of governing migration. Drawing on the analysis of a wide range of policy documents, the paper attends to different forms of distanciation used as a method of control within the UK's wider hostile environment and then presents the results of a case-study of how distanciation is mobilised within the English National Health Service, under the Migrant and Visitor Cost Recovery Programme in particular, which was introduced in 2014 to ensure the NHS receives 'a fair contribution' from people racialised as migrants. Addressing different forms of distanciation such as - spatial, legal and emotional - we argue that the lens of distance can offer insights into how detachment - increasing distance between different agents in immigration law and border enforcement is an intentional design to control empathy, solidarity and resistance. Tracing ways these forms of distanciation are designed into legislative and administrative measures helps us better understand how hostile environment policies work as well as locating agencies and possibilities of resistance within different spaces, agents and subjects of bordering.
本文探讨了“疏离化”（被理解为作为一种控制手段主动制造不同形式的距离）如何被用于管理在英国“敌对环境”中被种族化并被定罪为移民的人群。通过分析在“敌对环境”议程下出台的不同政策以及最近的《新移民计划》，我们认为疏离化是一种关键策略，它塑造了这些政策及其实施方式，还让我们得以洞察治理移民的不断变化的形式。基于对一系列政策文件的分析，本文关注在英国更广泛的“敌对环境”中用作控制手段的不同形式的疏离化，然后呈现了一个案例研究的结果，该研究涉及疏离化如何在英国国家医疗服务体系（NHS）中被调动起来，特别是在2014年推出的“移民和访客成本回收计划”之下，该计划旨在确保NHS从被种族化的移民那里获得“公平贡献”。通过探讨不同形式的疏离化，如空间、法律和情感方面的疏离化，我们认为距离这一视角能够让我们深入了解疏离——在移民法和边境执法中增加不同主体之间的距离——是如何被蓄意设计以控制同理心、团结和抵抗的。追踪这些疏离化形式如何被设计到立法和行政措施之中，有助于我们更好地理解“敌对环境”政策是如何运作的，以及在不同的边境空间、主体和对象中确定抵抗的机构和可能性。
