Externalization Beyond “Immigration Risk”? UK Borderwork Creep in Africa and its Cumulative Rippling Effects

Abstract

This article examines UK “borderwork creep” into ever more sites in states across Africa and considers how it is transformed and produced by practitioners on the ground. The aim is to go beyond research focusing on the EU and Northern and Western Africa to show the more expansive and, in some cases, unexpected reach of UK borderwork. Drawing on interviews, documentary research, and freedom of information requests, I find UK-funded “training” and “capacity building” in 17 African states. This creep, in many cases, is driven less by the UK perceptions of “immigration risk” and more by opportunism based on African counterparts’ interests and the ability of UK immigration liaison officers to establish relationships on the ground. This complicates conventional narratives, and government claims, where externalization is largely seen as a response to perceived “migration crises” and increases in “unwanted” and illegalized mobility. The paper adds to the rich and growing body of research on externalization in Africa by attuning specifically to the productive role of relationships and cumulative dimensions, which have received limited attention to-date. It does so by proposing the metaphor of rippling to better highlight how previous actions and interactions build on each other and spread outward, generating new actions. The result is UK borderwork diffused and distanced from the original goals of externalized migration control.

Introduction

Over the last two decades, a large cross-disciplinary body of literature has emerged on the European Union (EU) and individual states’ efforts to externalize migration and border control into Africa, especially since 2015 (e.g., Pacciardi and Berndtsson 2022; Vammen, Cold-Ravnkilde and Lucht 2022; Zanker and Altrogge 2022). Externalization refers to “the process through which states directly or indirectly operate activities related to border control outside their sovereign territories, namely in other countries or on the high seas” (Cobarrubias et al. 2023). This literature has largely taken a critical perspective, interrogating unequal power dynamics and harsh conditionalities placed on “partnership” countries (Adepoju, Van Noorloos and Zoomers 2010; Lavenex and Stucky 2011; Mouthaan 2019). It has also exposed the complexities and multi-directionality of the process, analyzing, for example, the agency, adaptation, and resistance of African state actors and civil society groups — who, as El Qadim (2014, 242) notes, are constitutive “subjects” in their own right “rather than mere objects of policies from the Global North” (e.g., Frowd 2018; Adam et al. 2020; Cold-Ravnkilde 2022; Gazzotti, Mouthaan and Natter 2022; Zanker and Altrogge 2022).

Much of the focus, however, remains on the EU and states in Northern and Western Africa which are portrayed by European actors as key “sending” or “transit” locations, such as Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Senegal and Tunisia (e.g., Bialasiewicz 2012; Cold-Ravnkilde 2022; Frowd 2022; Richter 2022). Few studies, in contrast, look further afield to examine less well-known cases and routine practices outside formal readmission agreements and European policy instruments like the EU Trust Fund for Africa and Mobility Partnerships. This gives the impression that European states and the EU primarily target these states and overlooks the more pervasive nature and reach of externalization.

This paper aims to fill this gap by going beyond common sites and EU policy tools to interrogate the everyday work of the United Kingdom's overseas immigration liaison network, Immigration Enforcement International (IEI) in Africa. The IEI comprises immigration liaison officers (ILOs) posted to foreign jurisdictions who are tasked with stemming “unwanted” and illegalized mobility in advance of the UK's territorial border. They attempt to do so by supporting UK visa implementation (Ostrand and Statham 2022), collecting and distributing intelligence, and working with local immigration, police, and airlines, providing them with advice, training, and capacity building. Between 2015 and 2021, the IEI delivered training and capacity building in 17 African states, including those far removed from the UK's geographic border (see Figure 1). This exposes important sites of borderwork that have received little attention to date, such as in Angola, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. It also complicates conventional narratives, and government claims, where externalization is largely seen as a response to perceived “migration crises” and increases in “unwanted” and illegalized flows (e.g., Vives 2017; Spijkerboer 2022; Moreno-Lax 2023).

Figure 1.

African states where the UK immigration liaison network (IEI) provided training and capacity building, between 2015 and 2021.

Drawing on documentary research, interviews with mid-level Home Office officials, and freedom of information requests, this paper explores other drivers contributing to the spread of UK-funded borderwork into more geographic sites, policy areas and partnerships in states across Africa. Building on Frowd's (2022) development of “borderwork creep,” I find IEI's presence in Africa — and its efforts to influence how borders are governed and by who — has led to new and sometimes-unanticipated sites. In many cases, these are driven less by the UK perceptions of “immigration risk” (Ostrand 2023) and more by opportunism based on African counterparts’ interests and the ability of ILOs to establish relationships on the ground. Using the lens of rippling, this paper also goes a step further by drawing attention to important cumulative dynamics, where previous interactions and activities build on each other propagating new actions, and so on. Such cumulative dimensions help inform an understanding on how externalization can spread and transform in ways far removed from initial policy goals, including ways that are not necessarily part of a coherent or thought through strategy. In this way, IEI's overseas borderwork has become distinct and distanced from the decisions and migration control objectives of policymakers and senior Home Office officials in the United Kingdom. The metaphor of rippling also helps emphasize the ongoing and dynamic processes of implementation, or borderwork, which continue to be (re)produced through actions and interactions in the social world. While important research has examined how local and global drivers shape externalization policy and borderwork in Africa (e.g., El Qadim 2014; Frowd 2018, 2022; Adam et al. 2020), little attention has been paid to cumulative effects or the productive role of relationships over time. Here this paper contributes to previous research by arguing that these are also significant aspects deserving more focus as they can inform the trajectory of borderwork and, by definition, are not part of policy design.

The next section of this paper situates the study within recent literature on European externalization and capacity building in Africa that has informed my analysis. It also unpacks my conceptualization of externalization, borderwork creep, and rippling, explicating why ripples matter. This is followed by a discussion of the relatively hidden nature of IEI's work and the methods I used for uncovering relevant information exposing it. The first empirical section traces the evolution and creep of the IEI, since the late-1990s, into more geographic sites and policy areas in Africa. It focuses especially on the incorporation of policing, security, and development into the UK overseas borderwork, as well as the substantial increase in states where the United Kingdom has operated. The second empirical section zooms in on the importance of working relationships, which are seen by UK practitioners as essential and necessary for creating opportunities for future engagement and borderwork. It highlights how the IEI deliberately attempts to build relationships to expand its work and the significant role played by African counterparts in defining where and what the IEI does. This section also shows important rippling effects where the IEI's initial contact and training generate new activities that become thinkable because of previous work and engagement. The last empirical section briefly explores other ripples where the IEI's borderwork and partnerships, in some cases, has helped facilitate increased connections between various actors and organizations, including cross border cooperation between the IEI-supported immigration and police units in Nigeria and Ghana, as well as between NGOs, airlines and law enforcement. I conclude by reflecting on how my findings relate to previous literature.

Externalization, Borderwork Creep, and Rippling Effects in Africa

While Europe has a long colonial history of involvement in African borders, objectives related to restricting mobility from the continent has increasingly become a focus since the 1990s (Andersson 2014). One way the EU and European states like the United Kingdom have sought to do this is through policies of externalization that directly or indirectly attempt to control the mobility of individuals beyond their jurisdictional borders (FitzGerald 2020). It is a spatial and institutional “stretching” of migration control domains into areas such as the high seas and sovereign territories of other states (Casas, Cobarrubias and Pickles 2011, 2015). While there has been significant attention to these practices in the literature and by policymakers over the last two decades, externalization has a much longer history, including visa policies and carrier sanctions that date back to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Zolberg 1997; FitzGerald 2020). There has, however, been considerable proliferation in the frequency and means through which states attempt to control mobility beyond their physical territories, including through new policy instruments like the EU Trust Fund for Africa, which is a financial tool aimed at contributing to “better migration management” and “addressing the root causes” related to irregular migration in Africa (Spijkerboer 2022).

“Capacity building” programs, in particular, have seen renewed emphasis by the United Kingdom and other European states since the mid-2010s, especially following the so-called 2015 “migration crisis” (Jegen 2023). The claimed goal of these initiatives is to “strengthen” other countries’ ability to manage migration and borders through the provision of equipment, training, “expertise transfer,” and infrastructure development (Immigration Enforcement 2019a). As Robinson (2024) and Jegen (2023) clearly demonstrate, the notion of migration capacity building stems from technocratic and depoliticized language that obscure its highly political nature — namely, an attempt to introduce and reproduce Western-centric understandings of migration and how it should be “managed” (see also Dini 2018). In practice, these initiatives are messy and uneven (Frowd 2018; Edmunds and Juncos 2020). Focusing on EU funded migration capacity programs in Niger, for example, Jegen (2023, 146) finds “negotiated misalignment,” where diverging mobility understandings exist in “asymmetric yet often strategically negotiated power relationship, in which both Nigerien and EUropean actors pursue their own interests.” In doing so, she shows “pluriversal knowledge systems (…) co-exist in the Nigerien context” despite continued efforts to promote specific (Eurocentric) understandings of migration reproduced through initiatives like EU-funded migration capacity programs.

Other important research has also analyzed the power, adaptation, and resistance by African state actors and civil society groups to European externalization efforts (e.g., Frowd 2018; Zanker 2023; Talleraas 2024). Focusing on Mali, Cold-Ravnkilde (2022) finds EU interventions aimed at restricting and confining mobility are shaped and challenged by Malian state officials’ “subtle forms of resistance,” including negotiations, “foot-dragging” and “strategic cooperation” (Cold-Ravnkilde 2022, 1451–1452). Analyzing elected officials, administrators and civil society actors in Senegal and Ghana, Adam et al. (2020, 3102) argue that policymaking in West Africa should be studied as an “intermestic” issue to better “elaborate on how international and domestic drivers come to mutually reinforce the development of each other's preferences.”

These and other studies provide rich analyses on the interconnection between global and domestic dynamics shaping policy design and implementation, taking into consideration historical contexts and the contradictory interests of state and non-state actors at local, national, and transnational levels (e.g., Frowd 2018; Gazzotti, Mouthaan and Natter 2022; Zanker 2023). Or, as Vammen, Cold-Ravnkilde and Lucht (2022, 1320) aptly put it, “EU-driven borderwork and the local African responses it generates are interrelated and constitutive of each other.” In this way, “externalization is neither an exclusive matter of states nor a smooth top-down process” with “externalizing” states unidirectionally assigning control to other state and non-state actors (Cobarrubias et al. 2023, 6). It comprises heterogeneous processes and interests that can run in both directions, “turning the purported ‘inside’ of the externalizing states into the ‘outside’ of an inverse process” (Cobarrubias et al. 2023, 7).

Specifically, I see externalization as a government strategy or policy approach that is enacted and transformed on the ground through “borderwork” (Rumford 2006, 2008) — “the literal work” of the actors involved in producing (and contesting) borders though their daily activities (Frowd 2022, 1334). The notion of borderwork was developed, in part, to highlight the way borders are not spatially or temporally fixed but socially constructed and thus “require various forms of work to be put into place” (Frowd 2018, 25; Rumford 2006). This conceptualization is part of the “practice turn” in border studies shifting focus toward the processes of doing and performing borders (Mountz 2004; Salter 2011; van Houtum and van Naerssen 2002). From this view, the decisions and actions of actors responsible for implementation are as important as processes of international and national policymaking and the geopolitical and postcolonial power relations structuring them. While borderwork was initially used by Rumford to emphasizes the neglected “role of citizens (and non-citizens) in envisioning, constructing, maintaining, and erasing borders” (Rumford 2008, 2), it has also been used to show the productive role of state and non-state actors who enact (and challenge) bordering practices (Bialasiewicz 2012; Cold-Ravnkilde 2022; Frowd 2018, 2022).

Building on in-depth fieldwork in West Africa's Sahel, Frowd (2022) develops the notion of “borderwork creep” to better conceptualize the expansive nature of bordering practices and the multiple sources and interests driving it in transnational environments. His conceptualization questions (uni-)directional assumptions where Senegalese, Mauritania, and Nigerien actors are subjects of externalization rather than agents of it. Without disregarding that strategies of European externalization are a factor shaping activities in these states, Frowd situates and emphasizes “endogenous dynamics and pre-existing security and governance practices” that also propel it (Frowd 2022, 1347). His analysis of borderwork creep thus foregrounds the “expansive and territorially complex dynamics of border security and migration management within these Sahel states that often owe little to the EU's externalization” (2022, 1334, emphasis in original).

Given methodological limitations and the scope of the research (discussed below), this paper primarily centers on the UK side rather than endogenic factors in specific African states. Frowd's conceptualization of borderwork creep is nevertheless useful for several reasons. It attunes to the way international and local actors collectively contribute to expanding bordering practices, leading to new and sometimes unanticipated sites of governance. His use of “creep,” drawn from surveillance studies ¹ , also draws important attention to mismatches between the design and purpose of a policy or technology and its eventual uses. This helps make visible disconnect between the initial aims of UK externalization and what it is used for in practice and over time. In other words, creep is about an expansion of purpose and use into new and broader directions. Following from this, I see UK borderwork creep as the process through which the state's externalization approach becomes extended and reconstituted on the ground and over time. Specifically, Frowd (2022, 1332) finds “creep” along three axes: (1) a cartographic one where borderwork has crept inland, away from territorial lines, (2) a policy one where distinct policy areas become merged and provide justification for borderwork, and (3) a digital one where new digital technologies create more reliance on data processing and sharing.

Against this backdrop, this paper adds to scholarship on externalization in two ways. First, it speaks to and compliments preceding research on the importance of relationships between actors on the ground, as well as broader interdependencies from postcolonial, political, and economic relations that inform borderwork (e.g., El Qadim 2014; Ostrand and Statham 2021; Jegen 2023; Roos, Trauner and Adam 2023; Zanker 2023). Second, by introducing the metaphor of rippling, it underscores the importance of cumulative dynamics and the productive role of relationships, where previous activities and interactions build on each other producing new outcomes. In other words, rippling effects occur when an initial action, or UK external intervention, propagates outward, generating new decisions, behaviors, and actions. The key aspect, and what distinguishes it from “creep,” is its emphasis on aggregate and contingent dimensions. Not only are the outcomes of rippling effects often removed from the original ideas and aims of policymakers, but they can also develop in ways that are detached from a coherent strategy. They are similar to waves rippling outward from a dropped pebble, building off each other yet becoming more diffused as the travel outward.

Methods: Uncovering Hidden Documents and Sites of Borderwork

UK overseas borderwork, which is often referred to as “upstream” activity by government officials (Foreign Affairs Committee 2019, 11), is a central part of the state's migration control strategy and portrayed as logical and efficient: “(m)maximizing activity ‘upstream’ is a key element to effective border management. The most effective — and efficient — way of addressing risks to the United Kingdom” (Cabinet Office 2007, 56). The government and Home Office view the IEI and its ILOs as “essential” and “valuable” to stemming “unwanted” and illegalized migration in advance of the state's jurisdictional borders (Cabinet Office 2007; HO and FCO 2010; Thorpe and Toms 2012). In particular, the Home Office sees IEI training and capacity building work as “reduc(ing) the threat from illegal goods and people entering the UK” — providing “improved value for money” (Home Office 2020, 8 and 10). Despite the importance given to this network, its existence and activities are largely unknown. This contrasts many of the UK's more publicized and controversial migration control efforts, such as those aimed at “stopping the boats” from crossing the English Chanel and its attempts to outsource responsibility toward asylum seekers by deporting them to Rwanda (Johnson 2022).

The secrecy around IEI's borderwork makes it challenging to study. In fact, luck and persistence played important roles in uncovering the United Kingdom's expansive and evolving activities, which are largely concealed from public view and extend well-beyond previously known sites. ² The crux for finding information, and where the role of “luck” comes in (Kalir 2019), is that to study this network one needs to know it exists and its name, something not straightforward. While several Home Office documents and reports between 1998 and the early 2010s mention IEI's predecessors, Airline Liaison Officers and the Risk and Liaison Overseas Network (RALON), references after this are rare. There is almost no mention of IEI in government policy papers, statements, or reports. In fact, interviewees were surprised I knew anything about the network, let alone that it was called IEI. The only reason I knew this was by noticing a change in an interviewee's email signature when RALON was transitioning into the IEI. This knowledge, gained through happenstance and luck, allowed me to carry out keyword searches, ask relevant questions, and discover relatively hidden information.

Overall, the study draws on documentary research, freedom of information (FOI) requests and 20 semi-structured interviews with UK Home Office officials. Interviews were conducted between July 2016 and Oct 2017 and primarily comprised mid-level officers with operational experience working in one or more foreign state. Access to interviewees was obtained through emails to different Home Office sections, British consulates and embassies, and by referral. All interviewees had experience working with non-UK colleagues, including from Africa, as well as Asia, Europe, North America, and Australasia. While I attempted to access state actors in Africa, I was unsuccessful, due in large part to financial and time constraints. The paper thus focuses on the experiences and perceptions of UK officials. This project received ethical approval by the University of Sussex, ER/NO90/3, and all interviewees agreed to participate on the condition of anonymity after I explained the purpose of my research. Given these commitments to interviewees, I am limited in the information I can provide. Some information on the sample, namely the civil service rank and operational experience overseas, is listed in the Appendix. I cite the letter corresponding to an interviewee to indicate a source.

Interviews are supported by FOI requests and documentary research on primary and secondary legislation, impact assessments, Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration (ICIBI) reports, policy papers, press releases and job advertisements. Documentary data were collected between 2016 and 2023. The limited information available in UK legislation, policy documents, and reports made alternative sources like FOI requests and job advertisements especially useful and important sources. For example, I had to issue FOI requests to the Home Office to discover how many officials IEI employed and what countries they worked in (Ostrand FOI 40413, Ostrand FOI 46475, Ostrand FOR 63698). Still, the Home Office withheld basic information, such as the number of personnel per country, including historical data from nearly 10 years ago, and where they have agreements with local police on data sharing (Ostrand FOI 45995; Ostrand Internal Review FOI 45995; Ostrand FOI 42049). The Home Office justified its secrecy by claiming the information was “operationally sensitive” and could “prejudice the prevention and detection of crime and/or (…) immigration control” (ibid.). FOI requests were made using the free, volunteer-run website Whatdotheyknow.com. Response time varied, ranging from one to ten months. In one case, I even had to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office to receive a reply from the Home Office (see Ostrand FOI 42825).

Another important source of data comes from a subset of IEI activities funded by UK official development assistance (ODA) between 2016 and 2021, and which is available on the UK's Development Tracker website (Devtracker). ³ The 12 documents provide a rare, though incomplete, view into IEI's ODA-funded initiatives, including what it has done, where, and the justifications used. This is something not public for most of IEI's work, which is not funded by ODA. The ODA information is available because UK development aid has higher standards for reporting and transparency compared to normal Home Office activities. It is noteworthy, however, that even this limited transparency was hard to find and partial. The IEI is not mentioned anywhere on the Home Office website, let alone any reference to the Devtracker website. Furthermore, information reported on Devtracker is inconsistent and incomplete. Some pages only provide a summary paragraph while others provide some documentation but not all. For example, only three newsletters are available for the IEI ODA program despite commitments to provide them on a quarterly basis during the 5-year project. There is also virtually no information on the extension of the IEI ODA program, which operated between 2021 and 2022. ⁴

Given secrecy and the incomplete and inconsistent data, there are notable asymmetries in the empirical material available for each state, with countries like Egypt, Ghana and Nigeria having much more data than Ethiopia, Kenya, Namibia, and Zimbabwe, for example. Consequently, the main aim is not to explain differences (or similarities) between states. While acknowledging the importance of context-specific factors structuring conditions of inter-state relations and implementation, such as postcolonial legacies, political and economic ties, and domestic interests (e.g., Adam et al. 2020; Frowd 2022; Zanker and Altrogge 2022; Jegen 2023; Zanker 2023), the focus centers instead on the broader trend and cumulative dimensions of UK borderwork over time and across the continent.

It is also noteworthy that Brexit, the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the EU, is relatively absent in both documentary and interview material. In fact, I found no reference in any documentary material discussing the IEI despite my documentary research extending into 2023. Interviewees also rarely mentioned it, and when they did, appeared to think Brexit would not have substantial change to their daily work in Africa. Of course, this could be due to the interviews taking place early in the Brexit process (between 2016 and 2017), and it is possible views have changed in the intervening years. The limited public information on the IEI, especially its relative absence in government statements and reports, combined with the timing of my interviews makes it impossible to know with any certainty how processes like Brexit effected it. Nevertheless, as the United Kingdom's overseas network has largely operated outside of the EU and its externalization initiatives, ⁵ I suspect it had limited impact in practice. While it is certainly feasible Brexit provided political impetus to further extend the United Kingdom's overseas borderwork, as we will see, many of the expansive dynamics pre-date Brexit and the vote to leave in June 2016. In the remaining sections, I piece together the available data I have collected to illustrate, albeit partially, how the network has expanded over time and the role of relationships and cumulative dimensions shaping this.

IEI Operations in Africa: UK Borderwork Creep Since the 1990s

• I. Policing and security creep

The United Kingdom first posted ILOs to five African states in the late 1990s: Ghana (Accra), Kenya (Nairobi), Egypt (Cairo), Nigeria (Lagos), and South Africa (Pretoria) (Home Affairs Committee 2001). In the succeeding decades, the scope of activities and sites of intervention greatly expanded (Foreign Affairs Committee 2019, 11). Initially, the United Kingdom's network of ILOs was established to work with airlines, and to a smaller degree local authorities, to reduce the number of people arriving at UK ports with inadequate or fraudulent travel documents (FCO 1998; Home Affairs Committee 2001, annex 23; A, D). The objective was overseas migration control — preventing “unwanted” and illegalized mobility in advance of the UK's physical border. In the mid-2000s, the network's goals broadened to encompass activities like collecting intelligence on “threats to the UK border,” supporting UK visa staff in preventing “visa abuse” and investigating individuals and groups involved in facilitating, or participating in illegalized migration, which the Home Office labels “organized immigration crime” (Vine 2010; HM Government 2016a, 2016b).

The incorporation of these new and vague policing and security goals like “identifying threats to the UK Border (…) and developing criminal investigations against individuals and organizations which cause harm to the United Kingdom” opened space for more kinds of activities and partnerships to be considered appropriate (HM Government 2016a). For example, in addition to training airline staff on UK visa rules and identifying fraudulent documents, IEI's activities started including training for partner countries’ police, security, and immigration agencies in criminal investigations, intelligence gathering, handcuffing techniques, and escorting detainees (Immigration Enforcement 2019b, 4). The United Kingdom also established agreements with at least 15 police agencies allowing UK officers to share intelligence on individuals suspected of participating in, or facilitating, illegalized migration (Vine 2010), though the Home Office refuses to disclose where (Ostrand FOI 42049; Ostrand FOI 40413). ⁶

Home Office officials similarly recounted transformations in IEI's prioritization during the early- and mid-2010s, from supporting airlines and stopping individuals to concentrating more on the “crime groups” (D, Q, T). They framed this as being “intelligence-based and enforcement focused” and saw it as a more effective approach. As one interviewee who had two decades of experience working with the Home Office put it:

Ten years ago, we would be very much focused on just stopping the individual. That is still a focus, but actually it is much more about understanding how they obtained the documents to get on the plane, where did they get those documents from. So, it is the criminal networks (…) tackling the individual doesn’t make much difference; tackling the criminal networks can make a difference (…) That will actually be much more effective. (originally cited in Ostrand 2023)

The UK's borderwork creep into more policing and security goals mirrored a larger trend in Europe that increasingly sought to securitize and criminalize migration toward the continent, including in its relations with African states (Stambøl 2019). This trend brought with it a flexibility and expansion of concepts associated to migration and its perceived problems and solutions.

What is also notable is that the UK's reprioritization away from the individual toward the so-called “crime groups” behind illegalized migration effectively increased its dependency on partner states’ immigration and police agencies. As ILOs lack enforcement power abroad, they rely on local authorities to prevent, arrest, and prosecute people they suspect of participating in, or facilitating, illegalized migration (Ostrand 2022, 52–53). This means that the United Kingdom has relatively limited control over “outcomes” on the ground as they largely depend on the willingness of non-UK actors to follow through on enforcement (Ostrand and Statham 2021).

In Egypt, for instance, law enforcement agencies refused to engage with the United Kingdom on migration or crime control, restricting the United Kingdom's ability “to get anything done” when it comes to “crime groups” (U). In Ghana, on the other hand, Home Office officials saw considerable “buy in” by senior government officials and good working relationships with immigration and police, who they saw as generally interested in cooperation as it meant more resources for their agencies, as well as being good for trade and development relations (I, L). The specific postcolonial relationships and level of economic and political ties Ghana and Egypt have with the United Kingdom are also important factors structuring the varying degrees of their engagement with the United Kingdom on migration control, with Ghana having more positive relations and stronger dependencies related to development aid (Ostrand and Statham 2021).

As El Qadim and İşleyen (Cobarrubias et al. 2023) have persuasively shown, migration and border practices are not determined only by the “center” (i.e., the externalizing state), but also from the “margins,” those in so-called “sending” and “transit” states like Ghana and Egypt (see also, Cold-Ravnkilde 2022; El Qadim 2014; Zanker 2023; Zanker and Altrogge 2022). Authorities from Ghanaian immigration and police, for example, have played key roles in producing and shaping the United Kingdom's overseas borderwork by negotiating with ILOs and requesting specific types of support (L, T). This has led to “tailormade” training in areas like “human-trafficking,” profiling, investigative skills, and forgery detection (I).

II. ODA funding and development creep

Starting in the mid-2010s, development objectives became increasingly be tied to IEI's work. This was related to the UK government's political goal of intensifying the mobilization of development aid to deter migration from Africa (Collyer 2019, 173). The UK government in its 2015 Aid Strategy, for instance, pledged to use aid to address “the root causes of mass migration,” including through increased spending in conflict-affected states in the Middle East and North Africa (UK Treasury and DFID 2015, 3 and 10). This strategy, combined with the 2015 National Security Council Strategy, mandated UK aid-spending departments to increase their focus on migration, particularly related to reducing illegalized mobility to the United Kingdom (ICAI 2017). In this context, IEI applied for and received ODA funding for the first time for a five-year program of “upstream border capacity building activity in ODA eligible countries” (Immigration Enforcement 2019c, 3). The stated justification is that many “key irregular source and transit countries” have “low” ability to “tackle (organized immigration crime) and manage their borders” and this program will improve their capacities to do so (Home Office 2020, 3).

The ODA funding further entangled migration control rationales with policing, security, and development. In order to receive funding, for example, IEI's activities needed to be linked, at least rhetorically, to development goals. As such, the programmed claimed to do things like “promote improved security system management and reform, including through projects designed to tackle the corruption that both enables irregular/illegal migration and adversely impacts development” (Devtracker website). Even the traditional role of ILOs — namely, working with airlines to prevent travel by individuals with inadequate documentation — was reframed through a development lens, claiming training for airlines:

supports the countries’ development and welfare by raising overall standards of aviation security through expertise transfer; (…) supporting economic development by creating an environment in which local carriers can maintain a network of international air routes – including direct flights to the UK/EU. (Home Office 2020, 2)

The incorporation of development goals and ODA-funding into IEI's work once again broadened the scope of activities perceived as appropriate, including corruption within government agencies and protecting vulnerable people from the negative impacts of crime — goals only tangentially related to migration control, if at all. Perhaps more importantly, the funding greatly expanded IEI's reach, enabling the network to offer training and equipment to many more partners, and to enter new locations where they previously had no, or “very limited” contact, such as Angola, Botswana, Gambia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Namibia, Rwanda, Sierra Leon, South Africa, and Zimbabwe (Immigration Enforcement 2019a). While there is no clear record of where IEI provided capacity building prior to its ODA program, ⁷ documents and interviews make clear that the network's efforts in Africa primarily focused on Nigeria and Ghana, and to a smaller degree Egypt, Kenya, and South Africa (Immigration Enforcement 2019a; I, L).

As with other capacity building and training programs (Jegen 2023; Robinson 2024), the United Kingdom's interventions are framed in ostensibly neutral and technocratic, albeit paternalistic, ways. They are described as helping “improve other countries” through “expertise transfer” and by “deliver(ing) specialist training and equipment” (Home Office 2020, 1). These initiatives however seek to promote UK understandings of migration and its problems and solutions. As one officer bluntly put it:

It is not just stopping people, and particularly people in transit, you know, they (local officials) don’t see the problem to their own country (…) So, we try to teach them what we did in Heathrow in the UK (…) and basically try to change their minds so they work like we do (O).

Another similarly explained that capacity building is not only about “improving their security, improving their infrastructure,” but also “allowing them to understand the kind of challenges they face” (T).

Despite rhetorical links to development goals, nearly all IEI ODA training and capacity-building activities in Africa centered on policing, border control, and security. This reflects the securitization of development trend (Nyberg-Sørensen 2012), where aid activities are diverging from those traditionally associated with development. As Collyer has shown, rather than using development to provide an alternative to migration, the United Kingdom has increasingly used it to actively restrict and penalize mobility that may involve any form of illegalized movement (Collyer 2019). IEI's ODA program is no different, using aid to provide training, equipment, and infrastructure intended to help identify, investigate, arrest, detain, and prosecute individuals involved in facilitating, or participating in, illegalized migration.

For example, Kenyan immigration officers were provided “digital forensics training” with the aim of assisting investigations and the prosecution of “organized immigration crime” by enabling the extraction of data in mobile phones and laptops that can then be used to link inadequately documented passengers to “criminal groups” (Immigration Enforcement 2020b, 2). IEI staff also “provide(d) training and share(d) experiences on immigration control” with Angolan officials from the Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Justice and Human Rights (British Embassy Luanda 2018). In Ghana, vehicles were provided to the Immigration Service “to locate, interview and arrest subjects to disrupt Organized Immigration Crime Groups (sic) that operate in Ghana” (Immigration Enforcement 2019b, 4). Notwithstanding several larger infrastructure projects, capacity building through training and “expertise transfer” is the most common and viewed by the Home Office as “more cost effective than large scale programming and/or equipment investment” (Home Office 2020, 1). Officers in Botswana, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mail, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa and Zimbabwe, for instance, all received training, or “upskilling (…) on human trafficking, passenger profiling, advanced forgery and imposters” (Immigration Enforcement 2020a, 5; 2019a).

Throughout this section, we have seen how IEI's activities and geographic reach have greatly expanded in Africa over the past two decades. This borderwork creep has been enabled by the flexible and vague conceptualizations of migration and border management (Frowd 2022) that increasingly mobilized policing, security, and development logics, as well as development resources. The specific training and activities in each state, however, are largely co-determined by ILOs posted abroad in cooperation with their African counterparts (A, E, M, O, T, and U). Together they make decisions about what training and capacity building is needed based on their various interests, including the wants of local immigration and police and the available funding and expertise of IEI. Interviewees also explained that police, immigration, and airport security agencies actively request training and support, such as “basic frauds, passenger profiling, intelligence development” (O), “human trafficking” and “investigative skills” (I).

These findings align with previous research emphasizing the importance of local and global dynamics shaping borderwork (e.g., El Qadim 2014; Frowd 2018, 2022). While there is nothing especially new about it being influenced by multiple interest and creeping into more policy areas and sites of governance (Frowd 2022), the expansion into new states that are not portrayed as “sending” or “transit” locations is significant and under researched. It belies the idea that the United Kingdom and its ILOs’ target “immigration risk” and “need,” as is continually claimed (Immigration Enforcement 2019a, 2020a; D, E, M, O, U; Home Office 2020). As the next section will show, relationships are especially important and can help explain how borderwork spreads into these new and sometimes unusual sites.

Relationships as Drivers of Borderwork Creep and Rippling Effects

Home Office officials repeatedly described their ability to develop working relationships with African counterparts as “critical,” “essential,” and “very important” to IEI's work (A, E, F, L, M). It is even a standard feature in job advertisements. A UK ILO position in Nigeria, for example, requires “the ILO to have excellent interpersonal skills that they can use strategically to build relationships with key partners” (HM Government 2022). Another one for South Africa listed “build(ing) effective working relationships with host authorities” and “using collaborative working with overseas and UK law enforcement partners to develop intelligence and investigations” as key responsibilities (HM Government 2023). From the Home Office and its officials’ perspective, developing relationships with police, immigration, and airlines improves their ability to pursue migration control goals (Home Office 2020, 4 and 8):

(t)hose relationships enable us to have the opportunity to have an infrastructure we can work with, to provide them (local officials) with the information that allows them to have prosecution (on individuals involved in irregular migration) (T).

Home Office officials also recounted how relationships require “compromises and sharing,” “give and take” and meeting your partner “halfway” (E, F, L). They are about listening, adapting, and negotiating with local partners: “(w)e work and build relationships (…) but they also work with us” (T); you do not just tell the police or immigration they are “inefficient in certain ways” but ask “what would they want from us?” (U). Again, this highlights the ongoing and co-productive processes shaping where and what the United Kingdom does abroad.

Notably, strengthening and developing relationships, including in countries where IEI did not have previous engagement, was a stated aim of its ODA program (Immigration Enforcement 2019a, 2020a). Despite regular assertions that the ODA program targets “key source and transit states” (Immigration Enforcement 2019a, 2020a; Home Office 2020), there are no clear or specific justifications for why individual states were selected. In practice, it seems to be more about an institutional drive to simply expand IEI's geographic reach and work with new partners. For example, according to the 2020 program assessment, two of the “high-level” deliverables listed were simply that the program had “(w)ork carried out in 22 countries across six regions” and “(e)stablished new relationships with countries which IEI previously didn’t have a reach to” (Immigration Enforcement 2020a, 3). The expansion itself rather than the specific states appear to be the more important achievement.

In fact, IEI's ODA program did not even have pre-defined states where it would attempt carry out training and capacity building (Immigration Enforcement 2019c; Immigration Enforcement 2020d). Instead, this was left open and largely decided by ILOs’ ability to develop relationships and find partners willing and interested in cooperating (ibid.). As the Home Office put it, “(e)ngagement with stakeholders and partners (…) drives the strategy as to where IEI will deliver projects” (Immigration Enforcement 2019c, 4). In this way, IEI's creep, in many cases, is informed more by opportunism — i.e., who is interested and willing to engage — than any top-down steer from the Home Office or policymakers. This helps explain disconnect between the United Kingdom's claims that it targets “immigration risk” (Immigration Enforcement 2019a, 2020a; Home Office 2020; see also Ostrand 2023) and IEI's activities in places like Angola, Botswana, the DRC, Gambia, Namibia, and Zimbabwe which are not seen as significant “source” or “transit” locations for migration to the United Kingdom (ONS 2019).

I. Ripples from relationships and previous activities

Importantly, relationships also have cumulative rippling effects: if there are good working relationships, “then one thing leads to another,” there are more opportunities for cooperation, sharing practices and developing new activities (M). This is also visible in IEI-ODA documents: “the relationships built since the start of the program now feeds the program of activity” (Immigration Enforcement 2019a, 4); they enable “engagement and the gathering of capability and capacity requirements, which are then built upon to provide specialist and technical training” (Immigration Enforcement 2020d). They are ripples in the sense that they generate and drive new actions.

In this context, IEI “scoping visits” during its ODA program — where ILOs travelled to different states to try to establish networks and provide initial training — serve as important foundations for future engagement. Between 2018/19 IEI conducted visits in Angola, Botswana, the Gambia, Mali, Namibia, and Sierra Leone. They included “relationship building” with law enforcement officers in the Gambia, leading to training on forgeries and imposters, and visits to Mali, Namibia, and Sierra Leone “to assess future requirements whilst (…) providing some training” (Immigration Enforcement 2019a, 3, 5). IEI also highlighted the “(n)ew relationships” it established with Angola and Botswana and their subsequent ability to “develop training packages for them to improve their border security” (Immigration Enforcement 2019a, 6).

These initial interactions and training often generated foundations for producing more initiatives and sites of engagement (ripples). For example, IEIs’ contact and training in Botswana in 2018/2019 led to an “anti-trafficking” conference with Ministry of Justice and police the following year. The multiple day conference involved “examining anti trafficking methods and exploring the Botswanan approach,” as well building on IEI's previous training by providing “advanced training” and “upskilling” on “forgery skills (…) and developing (officers’) skills in creating secure documents” (Immigration Enforcement 2020c, 8). The conference also resulted in discussions between IEI, the British High Commission, and the Botswanan government on the “next stage” in developing “Botswanan anti trafficking policy.” This is especially notable as IEI rarely takes part in policy discussions and is not an objective of the network. Interactions during the conference, however, created interlinkages and opportunities where this type of activity became thinkable — a clear rippling effect. As this example shows, IEI's activities in Botswana built on each other leading to new opportunities and actions, including things not initially envisaged by UK officials, let alone in policy documents.

Despite the significance of relationships to the expansion of the UK's overseas borderwork, they are far from assured. As previously mentioned, a clear example of this is Egypt. It is striking that there are no IEI ODA-funded training and capacity-building activities in the country despite the United Kingdom having ILOs posted in Cairo since 2000. In fact, I found virtually no mention of Egypt in any documents discussing the network. Home Office officials explained this by saying the Egyptian government and local authorities “didn’t want to engage” on migration, policing, or border control (I, L, P). They attributed this to a lack of “political will” or “buy in” by senior officials, which “reflects down to the (local) authorities.” Egypt's more strained postcolonial relations with the United Kingdom likely inform this (Ostrand and Statham 2021) as well as divergent political goals and feelings of mutual mistrust (Ostrand and Statham 2022, 4003).

It is also noteworthy that even though IEI had ILOs posted in Ethiopia since 2017, the only record of cooperation is with Ethiopian airline carriers who received training and document scanners to aid in identifying forged documents (Immigration Enforcement 2020a, 4). The absence of other training and capacity building activities suggests a lack of “buy in” by Ethiopian police and immigration when it comes to cooperation.

Creep and Ripples into Unexpected Partnerships

Though not a stated goal of the UK's overseas network, IEI's borderwork and engagement in Africa also appears to have contribute to more collaboration among various agencies and actors who the network had worked with. This has included, for example, cross border cooperation between IEI-supported immigration and police units in Nigeria and Ghana, as well as greater cooperation between an NGO, airlines, and law enforcement in Namibia and Rwanda. These connections stem, in part, from IEI's different partnerships. They are ripples in the sense that they are generated and influenced by the network's previous activities and engagement.

Starting in 2019, IEI developed a new partnership with a Namibian NGO “specializing in anti-human trafficking” (Immigration Enforcement 2020b, 3). Specifically, the network funded two staff from the NGO, Love Justice International, to work as “monitors” at the main airport in Windhoek, Namibia. The aim was for the NGO workers to help “identify passengers suspected of being (potential victims of trafficking), prior to their travel and potential exploitation” (Immigration Enforcement 2020b, 3). They are then supposed to refer suspected individuals to the Namibian immigration and police. While there is a larger trend in states incorporating NGOs and civil society organization in externalization strategies (Cuttitta 2020), IEI's activities in Africa have predominantly involved police, immigration, and airlines. In fact, this was the only case I found where they worked with an NGO at all. While it is not clear from documents or interviews why IEI's activities crept into cooperation with this NGO, in other contexts interviewees talked about needing “to get creative and look for other ways of working with various people” when state authorities are not very interested in cooperation on policing and migration control (I, P). As ILOs have a relatively high degree of autonomy and discretion in how to purse migration control strategies abroad (Ostrand and Statham 2021), “creativity” by officers could help explain this unusual partnership. It is also possible that the NGO sought out IEI support. Regardless, the extra funding available through the ODA program likely enabled this initiative.

What is more notable for the purpose of this paper, however, is that IEI's involvement seems to have encouraged greater cooperation between the NGO and immigration and police in Namibia. Though IEI's relationships with the Namibian police and immigration are not nearly as strong as in other countries, like Ghana and Nigeria, they have worked with them to some degree in the context of human trafficking (Immigration Enforcement 2020a, 2020b). This has included helping the police and immigration establish a “more robust and effective referral mechanism” and giving them “additional capacity (…) to identify victims of trafficking, obtain relevant intel, provide support to the victim, and successfully prosecute the traffickers” (Immigration Enforcement 2020a, 5). According to the Home Office's account, their support for Love Justice and Namibian authorities has resulted in closer working relationships between them to ensure “victims are referred into the system and offenders are prosecuted” (Immigration Enforcement 2020b, 3). In other words, there are ripples where IEI's work with its different partners promoted increased cooperation (Immigration Enforcement 2019a, 2020b).

Rwanda is another example where IEI brought together staff from different agencies, namely the government owned airline, Rwandair, and the Immigration Service. Specifically, IEI organized a joint training for officers from both the airline and immigration agency “on document examination, imposter detection, profiling and Modern Slavery Human Trafficking(sic) awareness” (Immigration Enforcement 2020b, 2). Again, this activity and the relationships developed between airline and immigration staff during the joint training appear to have increased cooperation and referrals between them when it comes to identifying inadequate travel documents and “potential victims of trafficking” at airports (Immigration Enforcement 2020a).

The joint training with airline and immigration staff from Rwanda on things like “modern slavery and human trafficking” is also representative of a larger creep in IEI's work. While training and supporting airlines was part of the network's original purpose, the aim was preventing individuals from reaching the United Kingdom with inadequate travel documents, not preventing trafficking. Against this backdrop, it is noteworthy that the type of training airlines receive has become increasingly similar to that provided for immigration and police, and, in this case, even merged. Initially focusing on UK visa requirements and basic techniques for identifying fraudulent documents, it has spread into things like “profiling techniques” and “trafficking awareness” (Immigration Enforcement 2020a). ILOs also provide airline staff with “(risk) profiles to look for” and issue “alerts” on emerging trends in “immigration abuse” and “frauds” (Q). In this way, through ostensibly neutral capacity building and training, Home Office practices and perceptions of “immigration risk” are not only permeating immigration and police agencies but also airlines.

A last example of IEI borderwork helping increase collaboration among its different partners is its role in initiating “cross border working between IEI's ODA funded (and) vetted units” in Lagos, Nigeria and Accra, Ghana (Immigration Enforcement 2020b, 3). In this case, IEI facilitated two “introductory meetings” between senior Ghanaian immigration officers and those from the Nigerian Joint Border Task Force and the Independent Corrupt Practitioners Committee in Lagos (Immigration Enforcement 2020b, 3). According to the Home Office, this contributed to relationships being developed between the three units “with a view to sharing intelligence on future cases” (Immigration Enforcement 2020b, 3). It is a clear ripple where IEI's partnerships and actions encouraged and facilitated more interactions and activities, something not envisioned or planned by policymakers or senior Home Office officials. Based on Home Office reports, this networking also helped promote collaboration between Ghana's Immigration Service and the Nigerian Joint Border Task Force on what the Home Office called a “high-profile baby factory investigation,” where Nigerian officials visited Accra to interview suspects (Immigration Enforcement 2020b, 3–4). It is unclear from Home Office documents what the so-called “baby factory investigation” refers to. News reports suggest that it relates to allegations of “criminal groups” abducting women “for the purpose of getting them pregnant and selling the babies” (BBC 2019, 2021). What is clear, however, is that this work extends far beyond IEI's original goals of stemming “unwanted” and illegalized migration to the United Kingdom.

Conclusions

This paper has highlighted relatively hidden sites of UK-funded borderwork in Africa, focusing especially on its creep and ripples into new locations, policy areas, and partnerships. In going beyond research focusing on the EU and states in Northern and Western Africa, it shows the more expansive and pervasive reach of UK externalization efforts. Importantly, this expansion is not only driven by perceived (and constructed) “migration crises” or increases in “unwanted” and illegalized mobility. Rather, as we have seen, IEI's borderwork is also driven by mundane and opportunistic factors like extra resources through ODA funding, an institutional drive to expand the network, and the ability of ILOs to establish cooperative relationships (or not). In this way, the interests and willingness of African counterparts matter a great deal in shaping where and what the United Kingdom does abroad. These findings support important research showing externalization is not a smooth top-down process, static, or unidirectional (e.g., El Qadim 2014; Cassarino 2018; Cold-Ravnkilde 2022; Cobarrubias et al. 2023). It is ongoing and has significant bottom-up dynamics, where power and ideas can run in both directions. These findings also complicate conventional narratives and government claims that new and increased efforts are largely driven by concerns over increases in illegalized mobility toward Europe.

Specifically, this paper contributes to the rich and growing body of work analyzing international and local drivers shaping borderwork in different African states (Frowd 2018, 2022; Adam et al. 2020; Cold-Ravnkilde 2022) by taking a step back to highlight rippling effects across the continent. Rather than focusing on the “complexities” and historically rooted dynamics in different states — though very important (Gazzotti, Mouthaan and Natter 2022; Vammen, Cold-Ravnkilde and Lucht 2022; Jegen 2023) — it attuned to the productive role of relationships and previous activities in generating new actions and sites of governance. In doing so, it offers insight into how externalization can evolve and transform over time, including in ways seemingly detached from coherent policy goals and plans. As Walters (2006, 145) argues, “(i)f borders are multiplicities then we need a plurality of concepts to think (through) their different dimensions and changing functions.” This paper proposed rippling as one such concept to help capture important cumulative and relational dimensions contributing to borderwork. It is, however, an initial exploration and further research is needed. In particular, empirically grounded analyses that include the perspectives of relevant state and non-state actors in Africa would be valuable. How, for example, do these actors perceive relationships and the role of UK (or other European) officials, and how have relationships evolved over time? In what ways have African state and non-state actors’ shaped understandings and practices of the United Kingdom and other European officers, and how has this contributed to ripples where new and unexpected sites of borderwork are shaped by these interactions? These are but a few possible avenues for further inquiry.