Juxtaposed Controls and Identification

My last essay introduced the example of ‘juxtaposed controls’ at locations in France such as Calais, Dunkerque, Coquelles and Lille as a means for the British state to extend the border controls and the operation of British border officials and private companies to French soil within established ‘control zones’ (Welander, 2019). It is important to mention that these controls are reciprocal, French police aux frontiers (PAF) officers have powers to operate in certain locations along the Eurostar route in the UK as well as in Dover (Bosworth, 2016). Although not directly equivalent, comparisons can be made between this extension of British control extra-territorially to other practices of border externalisation such as Australia’s offshore processing model (Davidson, 2020) and third-country coorperation agreements utilised by the European Union (Refugee Rights Europe, 2020). Those who have travelled across the UK-France border via the Eurotunnel, Eurostar or ferry will be no stranger to these ‘juxtaposed controls’ and indeed their future has also been the topic of hot debate in the face of Britain’s departure from the European Union. However, less experienced and documented are the British short-term holding facilities (STHFs) which have been established within the ‘control zones’ in France as a result of these ‘juxtaposed controls’.

Apart from a series of inspections between 2016 and 2019 by HM Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP) and the Contrôleur Général des Lieux de Privation de Liberté (CGLPL) and an article by Mary Bosworth (Bosworth, 2020) there has been little documentation of these sites. It is important to note the STHFs on French soil are governed by the 2003 Touquet Treaty between the United Kingdom and France, not the Home Office’s 2018 STHF Rules, which apply to the the short-term holding facilities on British soil. However, the STHFs in France operate reasonably similarly to those in the UK. All sites use Greenwich Mean Time and british telephone numbers, English is the predominant language used on signage and paperwork and the staff are majoritively British citizens employed by private firms, who commute across the Channel daily or are put up in hotels in Calais during weekdays. Even the document used to detain, the IS91 form, is the same as that used on British soil. Whilst Bosworth describes these sites as ‘mundane’ and markedly different to the concept of detension-as-spectacle described by Mainwearing and Silverman (2017), they are still part of a system that seeks to administer power and filter out certain groups of people attempting to enter the UK (Bosworth, 2020). These STHFs alongside other sites of migrant detention as well as sites of border control can be characterised as spaces of waiting and postponement and thus, spaces through which power is exercised over those held as described by Javier Auyero and Valeria Procupez (Das and Randeria, 2015).

The process of border enforcement through sites of border control acts as a filter between those who have the right to enter and those who do not. The distinction between entering a country legally or illegally is often dependent on the documentation one carries, which leads to the topic of passports and other forms of proof of identity. In many countries or territories in the Global North holding a passport can be seen as powerful tools for the facilitation of international movement. They could also be seen as a form of national(ist) expression as demonstrated by the politicisation of the design of the British passport following the Brexit referendum in 2016.

However, more often than not, passports and other forms of identification are used as instruments to limit, not enhance, freedom of travel as well as exert control on citizens. The digitisation of information and the collection of biometric and other data through identity documents has led to debate over the ethics of their introduction, an example of this being the introduction of identity cards by the UK government through the Identity Cards Act 2006, scrapped in 2010. The importance and impact of holding proof of identity is now not just limited to freedom to travel, but also the ability to access basic services. In the UK, the introduction of ‘hostile environment’ policies has led to identification checks by a myriad of service providers to determine one’s legality and eligibility. The introduction of online identification in lieu of physical cards for EU/EEA/Swiss citizens with settled or pre-settled status in the UK and subsequent backlash laid bare the complexities and limitations of digitalising identity and how the failure of such systems could lead to further marginalisation of certain groups (the3million, 2020). Countries such as France are characterised by frequent identity checks where the public is seen by the police to have a duty to carry identification on them at all times. Cases such as this illustrate state use of ID or lack of as a means through which to assert authority (de Maillard et al., 2016).

As illustrated by Karl E. Meyer in his article The Curious Life of the Lowly Passport (Meyer, 2009), this notion of control is deeply rooted in the history and origins of the passport. The attempted assassination of Napoleon III by Felice Orsini mentioned in my previous essay was made possible by the prevailing English attitude to individual liberty and the freedom to travel without disturbance. British passports in the 18th Century were merely sheets of paper costing around £10 (contemporary value) with no physical description of the bearer. Orsini was able to borrow someone else’s British passport and use it to enter France along with the explosives he intended to use (Meyer, 2009). British policies at the time contrasted heavily with those in France, where passports were used firstly by the pre-Revolution government to control and surveil the movements of peasants within the country and later by the post-Revolution government to identify and capture fleeing royalists. In both scenarios, the carrying of identity documents when travelling was a requirement (Meyer, 2009). Comparisons can be drawn between these historical attitudes to identification and those today in both the UK and France. In the former, prioritisation of personal privacy and liberty has blocked the introduction of national identification cards, whereas in France they are commonplace and complemented by routine stop and search practices. Meanwhile, the European Union’s asylum policies are enacted through the Common European Asylum System, whereby asylum seekers intercepted by Frontex or national border authorities are identified, recorded (via fingerprint) and logged on Eurodac. This data is accessible by all EU member states and is often used by Northern European states to return asylum seekers back to their first safe country of entry under the Dublin Regulation (European Commission, 2014). The risk of being creating this digital footprint and being returned to another country has led many asylum seekers to attempt avoid identification and reject institutional accommodation or reception centre.

All this said, the possibility for the use of identification documents as a tool for facilitating access and movement has previously tested with success. The refugee crisis following the Allied victory in the First World War led to the newly founded League of Nations to respond with an international resettlement scheme of an unprecedented scale. The introduction of the Nansen Passport, by the first High Commissioner for Refugees, Fridtjof Nansen allowed ‘recognised’ refugees to cross national borders and work as permanent residents without citizenship. Unfortunately, this programme was short lived, ended by the Great Depression and the rise of Hitler and Stalin (Meyer, 2009). Today, identity documents are provided to refugees by their host state or by the UNHCR. However, they do not provide the same flexibility and rights as the Nansen Passport did. In Britain, the application registration card (ARC) enables those who have made asylum claims to prove their status (GOV.UK, 2020), whereas the Biometric Residence Permit (BRP) is afforded to those who have been given indefinite leave to remain (GOV.UK, 2020b). In certain circumstances, Home Office travel documents are also afforded to those who are not British and are not able to acquire a passport from their own country (GOV.UK, 2020a). Similar documents such as the residence permit and the ADA card are issued in France, although this requires further investigation.

Pilot schemes in the UK such as ProxyAddress have been developed to overcome the barriers that the homeless face in not having a permanent address. In a world where addresses have become ‘de facto means of identification’, the scheme allows people on the move access to a ‘stable’ address regardless of how much they change location enabling to access support and other services (ProxyAddress, no date). These schemes give us hope that alternative forms of identification can be used to empower those in need. It remains to be seen whether concepts such as the ProxyAddress can be re-applied in the context of forced migration but perhaps they can serve to facilitate the imagination and realisation of an alternative, more humane, asylum system in the Global North.

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