Control Infrastructures and Ignorance

In our concluding chapter, we review the evolution of state infrastructures of control. Such infrastructures embody state beliefs about how best to steer migrants, and also provide maps with which states ‘see’ their unauthorised populations. We chart changes in infrastructures since the 1960s across three dimensions: styles, sites and temporalities of control. The analysis highlights the continued reliance on centralised command and control approaches in Germany, despite niggling concerns that they are not capturing the full picture. In France, patchy implementation of work and welfare restrictions, and a sharp left-right divide on the issue, has repeatedly led governments back to the tool of regularisation. In the UK, lack of internal control infrastructure has been compensated for by outsourcing to external organisations, meaning that migrants get ‘caught’ at later stages in their lives when they are most reliant on social and economic support. We explore the implications of these different infrastructures on state knowledge and ignorance.