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'How does the outsourcing of immigration governance, including border control,

immigration detention and related services, impact the nexus between
humanitarian, security and market dimensions of migration governance?

Immigration has long been a fraught issue, attempting, as it does, to reconcile competing, and
often contradictory priorities and ideals across humanitarian, security and market paradigms.
Humanitarian ideals insist that we should accept migrants, and especially refugees, from less
developed nations. Security consciousness, seen through the frame of nationalism, claims that we
must restrict entry to safeguard the security of citizens. Market logic alone is especially complex
on the issue of migration as free market thinking calls for increased movement of people to fill
flexible labour needs (move where the jobs are), whilst simultaneously warning of the financial
cost that can be incurred by the modern welfare state as a result of large influxes of migrants.
In this complex environment, with competing and contradictory paradigms, border security has
become a big business. It can influence the outcome of national elections, even make or break a
government, and garner immense profits for companies awarded contracts,
Recent decades have seen increased privatisation of what were previously public services,
including but not limited to: utilities, postal services, health care, education, the penal system,
national defence and immigration governance. This paper will identify some of the problematic
effects of privatisation on immigration governance, but, in order to unpack this it is first
necessary to analyse the extensive literature on privatisation of other public services, especially
prisons and the military.
Until recently, security, at a macro national, and international level has been seen as falling firmly
under the purview of the state. Even dyed-in-the-wool neoliberals have generally believed that
the governments should be broadly responsible for ensuring the security of the state. A
monopoly on force was a key basis of the Westphalian nation state system. Due to a complex
nexus between growing anxieties in the population of wealthy nations, weakening trust in
government, and monumental market pressures, the belief in nation states primacy regarding
public service provision has dramatically changed. As Flynn and Cannon put it, private security
companies are given a responsibility long considered a core function of the state (2009, p.2)
The US, with its huge private market for security (military, prisons and immigration/border
control), will be the primary focus for this discussion. This paper will argue that there has been a
dramatic, and likely irreversible shift in immigration governance due to the altered nexus
between security and market paradigms on the issue of immigration. It is my contention that the
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increasing privatisation of immigration governance, and security-related services in general,
previously seen as a sacrosanct duty of the states, is the result of complex, intertwined political,
social and economic forces which include increasing anxiety in our modern risk society,
decreasing trust in government, and increasing power and influence of private sector players.
Analysis of these forces leads to the contention that the existing situation is unacceptable as
institutional controls over private actors are inadequate and, as a result, human rights and other
principles are at risk.
If we are to understand a public problem, then we must understand how, why and by whom that
problem is created, and who benefits from it (Gusfield, 1984). There is need for ongoing
academic analysis of the issue because there are convincing arguments that powerful incentives
exist for the privatisation of the immigration system to perpetuate itself, regardless of merit
(Ackerman and Furman, 2013, p.259).

Risk Society
In many ways the military industrial complex, the prison industrial complex, and the
immigration industrial complex are all part of the same phenomenon, and connected to what
Ulrich Beck famously calls the world risk society (1992, 1999, 2002).
The concept of the risk society has been explored and interpreted in innumerable ways by
various theorists from diverse disciplines since the term was coined by Beck and Giddens in the
1980s. The concept centres around the idea that a major defining feature of our modern global
society is its obsession with risk (Beck, 1999, p.9). As Giddens argues, the complex
contemporary world leaves the individual feeling bereft and alone crying out for the sense of
security provided by more traditional settings (1991, p.33). Similarly, Kinnvall claims that
todays globalised world is one devoid of certainty and as such it causes individuals to feel
vulnerable and experience existential anxiety (2004, p.742).
The level of anxiety around immigration is not simply a natural reaction to forces of globalisation
though. As Ackerman and Furman contend, immigration has been variably problematized,
depending on the social and economic context of the time (2013, p.252). In response to the
uncertainty, and consequent anxiety, engendered by an unfamiliar, complex global world, leaders
have sought to rally people around simple rather than complex causes and to capitalise on this
anxiety, primarily through the rhetoric of nationalism (Kinnvall, 2004, p.742). Nationalism is
inherently a process of in-group versus out-group thinking, which acts to reconstruct the
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previously harmless other into the stranger-enemy (ibid, p.751). Whilst this process may
reduce existential anxiety by providing a target for feelings of anxiety, it can also serve to
crystallise anxiety into fear.
Nationalism doesnt resolve the causes of the anxiety, or help with solutions to the real risks
because the risks of modern society are, as a matter of their internal logic, transnational (Beck,
2006, p.61-2). Ever increasing levels of globalisation and the emergence of new ways of building
movements and networks has resulted in a fundamental shift in the international security
environment, a shift which has blurred the distinction between internal and external security
(Adamson, 2005, p.31).
Becks hypothesis on this phenomenon is that it will eventually lead to calls for cosmopolitan
governance, as the global nature of our shared risks becomes increasingly apparent (2006,
2001). He claims that risks explode national and international political agendas producing
practical interconnections among mutually indifferent or hostile parties and camps (2006, p.35-
36).
That governments capitalise on, and even intentionally construct, risks is without question. This
has been convincingly demonstrated by numerous studies (Mythen and Walklate, 2006, Altheide,
2004, Franklin, 2006). In fact, it has even been claimed that risk may be understood as a
government strategy of regulatory power by which populations and individuals are monitored
and managed through the goals of neo-liberalism (Lupton, 1999, p.5). The problem for
governments is that creating and capitalising on risks can be a double edged sword because it
can undermine the electoral trust in governments if the risks prove unfounded or if
governments fail to appear to restore order and security (Krahmann, 2011, p.12).

Neoliberal Risk Society
In a time when risks are increasing, and the perception of risks is increasing even more
dramatically than the reality, why have security concerns shifted away from the purview of the
state? Why have governments outsourced these basic functions when they are most valuable, and
valued? The answer is neoliberal ideology.
Neoliberalism is an ideology which has increasingly dominated global politics and economics in
recent decades. At its heart is a deification of the individual and the free market, and a demand
that governments must be small, that they must cede control of the economy to the market.
Many claim that neoliberal ideology, and the policies based around it, benefit wealthy elites and
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'the core' to the detriment of workers and 'the periphery' (Dumnil and Lvy, 2005). It can be
thought of as market fundamentalism (Heywood, 2007, p.52).
Neoliberal thinkers, such as Milton Friedman (2009) and Friedrich von Hayek (1965) took early
liberal ideas, especially the work of Adam Smith and his invisible hand of the market (Smith,
1845) and extended it (depending on your view this was either a logical conclusion or reductio ad
absurdum) to make the claim that all government was inherently incompetent, corrupt and/or
inefficient. Simultaneously they attributed near-miraculous qualities to the market (Heywood,
2007, p. 52-53).
Under neoliberal ideology, states are expected to provide high quality core services (the list of
what these services are varies depending on the theorist), beneath the yoke of small government
dogma. This means bargain basement costs and low staffing levels, something that is wholly
incompatible with providing high quality results in many areas.
Privatisation is a basic function of neoliberal ideology, as explored by Kaseke (1998). Aside from
the inherent deregulatory zeal of neoliberalism, there is clear incentive for governments to palm
off public services under the guise of neoliberal market dividends. In this way the privatisation
itself is used as proof of the governments commitment to improving the service. Results
are irrelevant. The mere act of privatising any service is touted as a whole-hearted attempt to
produce the best possible outcome.
The overriding neoliberal ideology behind the model society advocated by the sole remaining
superpower has skewed the playing field, perhaps irretrievably, by automatically assuming that
the private sector offers better quality, value and efficiency. Under neoliberalism, the supposed
benefits of privatisation are sold as basic, inarguable logic. Money talks, and as the wealth of
companies has grown exponentially under lax regulation which allows market failures and anti-
competitive behaviour, the power and influence of private players has also increased.
Simultaneously to the meteoric rise of neoliberal ideology, has come a shift in the way we
understand and discuss risks. In the post-Cold War era, and since 9/11 particularly, the risk
dialogue has shifted to the concept of unknown and unknown-unknown risks. As Krahmann
argues, management of security has expanded from personally known threats and calculable
unknown risks, to risks that exist only in our imagination (2011, p.11). The potential range of
imaginable risks is, as Krahmann says, infinite and these risks require permanent surveillance,
analysis, assessment and mitigation (ibid, p.11). As Ewald claimed, anything can be a risk, it all
depends on how one analyzes the danger, considers the event (1991, p.199).
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In this new global environment it has become apparent that the world risk society is not solely
the result of unintentional modernization dangers, but also a creation of private companies,
which have profited from the commodification of risk (Krahmann, 2011, p.3). Private
companies can, and do, make huge profits from managing, but never resolving, the risks that
they themselves, or others have created. As Beck stated, risks are no longer the dark side of
opportunities, they are also market opportunities (1992, p.46). He argues that by manipulation
of the definition of risk, and of the demand for risk avoidance, markets of a completely new type
are causally designable and infinitely reproducible (ibid, p.56).
Krahmann elucidates a frightening vision of the future (or is it the present?) in which, far from
bringing about cosmopolitan governance to resolve global risks, a risk society under the sway
of neoliberal doctrine could create an increasingly atomised global society in which wealthy
nations, and particularly wealthy individuals within those societies, manage their risk through
individual consumer choices (2011, p.4). Gated communities are already relatively common
and the market for individual security is booming, is Krahmann right?
Koulish discusses the brutality of the neoliberal agenda under which security is a commodity,
and policing and controlling borders no longer count as a public service (2007, p.3). He offers
Blackwater as an example of a leading symbol of the neoliberal regime and its brutality, in that
it replaces public with private resources, and ranks the value of human life so that the lives of
propertied Anglo Americans have value; and the impoverished people of color simply do not
matter (ibid, p.3).
Blackwater (since renamed Academi), was the primary private security firm engaged in the Iraq
war, making gargantuan profits from US government contracts, whilst being universally
condemned for their behaviour, and eventually expelled from the country for shooting and
killing Iraqi civilians (Scahill and Weiner, 2007, Scahill, 2008, Welch, 2009, Koulish, 2007).
Unsurprisingly, in 2007 Blackwater was bringing its private war on terror home to the US and
intertwining it with immigration control (Koulish, 2007, p.2).
In the contemporary environment of increasingly global risks, and increasingly anxious
populations, is trusting the management of those risks to the hands of private corporations, with
an inherent incentive to maximise their profits, a viable solution? The security industrys ability
to sustain huge profits is dependent on the maintenance of risk and perception of risk.
Furthermore, their ability to grow (the core goal of private enterprise in a neoliberal free market)
is dependent on growing at least the perception of risk, and list of perceived risks, if not the
actual reality of the risks.
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As Krahmann warns, the world risk society may become differentiated between those who
profit from the production and management of risks and those who suffer the consequences
(2011, p.7).

So, Whats Wrong With Privatisation?
Various scholars have raised serious questions about the consequences of the privatisation of
public services. Privatisation of security, and broadly of all social services, is generally done under
the rationale of competition-based savings and improvements in efficiency and quality, but these
assumed benefits are doubted by many. Markusen claims that the current enthusiasm for
privatization is driven largely by commercial concerns and lobbying rather than real gains to the
nation and citizens (Markusen, 2003, p.471).
Markusen argues that, due to the sensitive, sometimes even classified, nature of national security
issues, truly fair, arms-length contracting is impossible. Close relationships almost always exist
between governments and contractors, stifling, or completely negating, market-based
competition and creating great potential for corruption and capture of government (ibid,
p.471). The adverse effects of monopolization, undue political influence, and distortion of
military and foreign policy have not been taken into account in weighing the benefits of
privatisation, and the unpopularity of regulation, combined with an unwillingness to spend on it,
means that efficiency claims are untested (ibid, p.471-472).
Even where there are cost savings, it is important to ask the extent to which savings are gained
at the expense of pay and working conditions for employees (Markusen, 2003). As Blakely and
Bumphus explain, cost control often comes at the expense of quality, as staff are paid less and
receive on average, fifty-eight fewer hours in training (2004). Koulish explores this same idea,
saying that the employees of private security firms can be paid less than half the wages of
unionized workers, receive minimal training (even in firearm use) and are not subjected to the
necessary background checks. The subsequent absence of professionalism leads to immigrant
populations being placed at a great deal of risk (2007, p.14).
These staff, often underpaid and undertrained, have vast power over almost every aspect of the
lives of immigrants; from control over access to phones, food and toilets; to their access to
lawyers, and even their eligibility for political asylum (ibid, p.19). Koulish decries that these
private-sector staff make such decisions with virtually no oversight (ibid, p.20).
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So, while companies often gain efficiency dividends (in large part by giving less training and
lower wages to their staff, and by limiting important services) lack of transparency and
accountability means that immigrants have a hard time seeking redress for abuses, and even
the government can have difficulty finding information regarding alleged mistreatment and
human-rights abuses (ibid, p.13).
Because, in the US, even the evidence used by decision makers is gathered by private companies
like Boeing, Anteon and Accenture, private companies have, as Koulish states, nearly
unchecked discretion to decide the fate of asylum applicants and immigrants (Koulish, 2007,
p.14).
Reports from government, advocacy groups and various NGOs have repeatedly criticised private
detention facilities for serious infractions such as routine abuse of basic prisoner rights, denial
of attorney access, mental and physical abuse, denial of health and medical treatment, prison
overcrowding, and a lack of showers and toilets (Koulish, 2007, p.13). These privately run
detention centres often refuse access to the public, journalists, advocacy groups and NGOs, such
as is the case in Australian detention centres.
This refusal of access to interested third parties is especially concerning in light of research
indicating that individuals held in private prisons are subject to more violence than their publicly
held counterparts and are more likely to receive inadequate healthcare (Mason, 2012, Blakely and
Bumphus, 2004, Camp and Gaes, 2002, Lundahl et al., 2009).
Immigrants in general, and asylum seekers especially, are particularly vulnerable peoples who are
already at increased risk of psychosocial disorders. Accordingly, the criminalisation of their status
and their subsequent incarceration (often indefinite) means that their needs require the sort of
psychological care, and cultural and linguistic expertise that is largely only possessed by
professional specialists. Such specialists do not come cheap!
While many claim that the assumed value, efficiency and quality dividends brought by
privatisation are often overestimated, or entirely fictional, there is one way in which privatisation
does benefit the state. This is the matter of where the buck stops, who is responsible for the
service and thus who takes the blame if something fails. This transfer of liability is a strong
incentive for governments to outsource (Koulish, 2007, p.14).
This transfer of liability ends up often being a negative for citizens, immigrants and even
governments, as it acts to limit congressional oversight on immigration policy (ibid, p.13-14).
Once a company is awarded a contract it can be difficult for anyone, including sometimes the
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government who awarded the contract, to obtain information regarding the facility because
private companies need not divulge information with congress or the public; they are less rule-
bound than public entities and make decisions behind closed doors (ibid, p.13-14).
Even when incidents of wrongful practise are unearthed, resolutions can be difficult to achieve
because many norms of accountability and redress do not apply to private companies. The
representatives of these private security firms (wearing badges and uniforms, carrying guns, and
driving cars with sirens) behave in a manner that, as far as the individual is concerned, is
indistinguishable from the coercive power of the state. They wield as much power as any state
actor but are not held nearly as accountable (Koulish, 2007, p.20). As Dow claims, The buck
stops nowhere (Dow, 2004).
What Becks hypothesis, regarding an inevitable cosmopolitan awakening caused by the world
risk society, fails to sufficiently take into account is the influence that market forces can have on
responses to the risk society.
Krahmann points out that there is a mismatch between the expectations of the community
regarding public and private risk-management. He argues that the community expects that their
government address and eliminate risks at a macro-level through developing permanent and
collective responses to new risks, whilst accepting that private solutions are temporary and
individual (2011, p.13). He also points out that consumers would never expect a private
company to provide security services for free, but appear to believe that tax cuts and increased
national and international security are compatible (ibid, p.13).
This means that, while governments have always had an incentive to find durable solutions for
security concerns, real or imagined, the private sector does not. In fact, the private security
industry has billions of dollars in profit motive to maintain, and expand security concerns whilst
being paid to manage them. On issues of immigration the phenomenon of privatization
creates a powerful opportunity for social construction of the undocumented immigrant into a
powerful potential source of revenue for the for-profit corporations (Ackerman and Furman,
2013, p.253).
While governments in search of durable solutions might previously have invested considerable
effort into addressing the causes of global risks (whether through hard or soft power), the risk
industry profits through focussing solely on managing their consequences (Krahmann, 2011,
p.7). As Koulish damningly observes:
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Privatisation creates huge incentives to ensure arrests are high, detention centres are full and the
revolving door of deportation keeps spinning Under these conditions, the struggle for rights gets buried
beneath the fact that undocumented immigrants are the meal ticket for a burgeoning control industry"
(Koulish, 2007, p.6-7)
Until recently the issue of immigration was premised on the idea that non-citizens should not be
incarcerated, but the logic of private prisons is to keep beds full and immigrants locked up
(Koulish, 2007, p.19). Once the state grants private contractors entry to the realm of national
security, it is a door that is difficult to close because those contractors naturally endeavour to
maximise their profits and expand their businesses (Flynn and Cannon, 2009, p.2), in whatever
way they can. As O claims, the private companies in this sector are simultaneously
contributing to social insecurity, defining risks and supplying expensive means to address them
(2002, p.178).
This profiteering is a serious issue because, not only does it divert public money to private gain
and pervert humanitarian goals, but it can jeopardize peacemaking and broader confidence in
government (Minow, 2004, p.1022) because, as Koulish states, Ironically enough, the anti-
immigrant campaign also demonizes the federal government for its failure to protect
communities against illegal alien invaders (Koulish, 2007, p.5), further entrenching the
neoliberal logic of privatisation and small government.
According to Bauman, the fact that neoliberal policies of deregulation and privatisation often act
to further jeopardize confidence in government is no accident. He claims that:
weak states are precisely what the new world order needs to sustain itself. Quasi states can be easily
reduced to the (useful) role of local police precincts, securing a modicum of order required for the conduct of
business, but need not be feared as effective brakes on the global companies freedom
(Bauman, 1998, p.42)

Why Does Privatisation Occur?
If benefits to the nation and citizens are questionable, and the shift to privatisation is mainly a
result of profit seeking by the private sector, it is important to ask: how much profit is there?
And how much influence does the sector have? These questions are more complex than they
might initially appear, as most analyses focus on security in quite siloed ways. Firstly, separating
individual security from security at the national level, and secondly, within national security
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analysis, the military industrial complex, the prison industrial complex and the immigration
industrial complex are usually treated as separate.
This group is, by my reasoning, bound together by the fact that all of them benefit from
increasing risk, both real and perceived, giving them broadly similar motives and incentives and
thought perhaps be referred to broadly as the security industrial complex, or the risk industrial
complex.

Trends in Growth & Privatisation across the Security Industrial Complex
The privatisation of immigration detention is not new, nor are private prisons more broadly.
According to Koulish, during the 1980s, the US federal government began experimenting with
incarcerating people for profit and used the detention of immigrants as a canary in the coal
mine to pave the way for broader prison privatisation (Koulish, 2007, p.17). What is new,
according to Koulish, is the expansiveness of privatisation since 9/11 and its use in establishing
a social control apparatus for non-citizens but which is applicable to citizens (ibid, p.18).
This shift since 9/11 is perfectly in step with neoliberal ideology as explained by Naomi Klein in
her work The Shock Doctrine (2010). In this seminal work, Klein explores the history of the
radical neoliberal agenda and how its proponents use shocks caused by wars, natural disasters,
and other traumatic events, to push through policy that would otherwise be rejected by the
population of states.
The privatization of immigration-related security doesnt stop at incarceration. It includes,
among other things, intelligence gathering, threat assessment and border control. In the US the
military role in border-policing has evolved quickly and dramatically and it is claimed that the
Department of Homeland Security now acts as a high-level public relations firm whose role is
to orchestrate a branding campaign about having secured our borders and flash it upon the
map, all the while out-sourcing border control to private corporations (Koulish, 2007, p.4).
Markusen states that national security is now one of the most outsourced services in the US
Private contractors share of all defense-related jobs climbed from 36 percent in 1972 to 50% in
2000 and, the private-sector share climbed both during the 1980s defense buildup and during
the 1990s downsizing (Markusen, 2003, p.474).

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Border security initiatives have been increasingly extended to include registrations, requirements
to submit biographical information, enduring records of entrances and exits, photographs, finger
printing and more, including the tracking non-citizens long after they have passed through the
border (ibid, p.24). The information collected by these new measures and programs is housed in
an information sharing system (itself designed by a private contractor), of which over 90% of the
users are from the private sector (ibid, p.29). Not only does this raise concerns for privacy, but
all users are able to add information to the database, which remains on there for five years, and
once someones name is added to the list they remain on the list regardless of the reason for
putting them their (ibid, p.29).
Despite these initiatives having netted no terror related convictions (ibid, p.25), one of the
companies contracted to implement these new border security measures, Accenture, was given
so much discretion with which to shape the program that the nonpartisan group Taxpayers
for Common Sense likened it to a blank check (ibid, p.28).
The security industry is a multi-billion dollar market. In the US, the business of incarceration
has become a boom industry and for some time, the US has incarcerated more of its citizens
than any other nation (Simon, 1998). The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) is a huge
private prison and detention company and, in 2011, the company was woth over $1.4 billion,
with a net income of roughly $162 million (Ackerman and Furman, 2013, p.254). They are not
alone, the private prison industry in the US is gargantuan and, according to Simon, the current
focus on detention of asylum seekers and immigrants comes about because they represent a
new population for mass incarceration (1998); a view backed up by Bosworth and Kaufman
(2011)n who identify their detention as a market to be opened up and exploited.
In order for the private sector to realise the potentially huge profits that this market represents,
the immigrant needs to be criminalised. In the US, according to federal law, the undocumented
crossing of the border, and living in country, has always been an administrative violation, in the
same category of offense as filing taxes late, but states have shifted the issue of
undocumented immigration to a criminal matter by criminalizing essential aspects of the lives of
undocumented immigrants (Ackerman and Furman, 2013, p.253).
Far from being a matter of the market responding to a need, it is clear that a close nexus
exists between government policy and the booming immigration security market (Koulish,
2007, p.18). Brancaccio (Cited in Ackerman and Furman, 2013, p.256) says that there is
mounting evidence that US private prison contractors are involved in lobbying state legislatures
and the US congress for changed in criminal justice legislation. They are very much involved in
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making sure bills related to decrease in prison population fail and spend millions on lobbying to
this end (Ackerman and Furman, 2013, p.256). As Koulish claims, the private prison industry is
increasingly in a position to direct immigration detention policy (2007, p.19)
In order to appreciate the significance of this relationship, one must explore the influence over
government held by the security industrial complex more broadly. The so called military
industrial complex (which includes both public and private entities) has been castigated by its
critics since the 1960s. Contemporary critics (see, for example, Duncan and Coyne, 2013, Bove
and Nistic, 2014, Godfrey et al., 2014, BACEVICH and Bacevich, 2009, Bacevich, 2010,
Friedman and Preble, 2012) continue to articulate the ways in which the military influences
election outcomes and budgetary allocations to ensure that there is a state of permanent war
and that military spending is continuously increasing.
In 2010, US military spending was higher than at any point during the cold war and the concept
of defence is now one of constant preparation for future wars and foreign interventions rather
than an exercise in response to one-off threats (Duncan and Coyne, 2013, p.3). According to
many critics, resources are being diverted from the wants of the people to a bloated,
privileged, anticompetitive procurement complex (Higgs, 1995, p.34).
This security industrial complex, and the influence it wields over policy, is a threat, not just to
immigrants, but to peace and prosperity.

The New Nexus
While privatisation of public services is not new, and while border security and issues of
immigration in our risk society have long been created and capitalised on by governments, there
is something new in the tangled web of private security interests and immigration governance.
There has always existed an interestingly complex relationship between market and security
paradigms on issues of immigration. Security rhetoric calls for closed and secured borders to deal
with the risks of a globalised world, whilst free-market doctrine calls for the free movement of
workers to service a global economy.
As Sassen elucidates, the loosening of national borders, and increased transnational flows of
people is a natural response to the socio-political, and technological changes inherent in
globalisation and the placement of the immigrant as a criminal acts as a counterforce to this
(Sassen, 2002). Particularly in the US, this criminalisation pits the needs of for-profit
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correctional conglomerates against the needs of the construction and agriculture industries that
rely on undocumented immigrant labor (Ackerman and Furman, 2013, p.260).
The discussion of these competing pressures surrounding the issue of immigration are not new,
and neither are they reserved to the US. In 1998, Lahav discussed the debate around these
contradictory pressures (1998, p.676) in relation to member states of the European Union.
Claiming that they are increasingly caught between pressures to curtail immigration and efforts
to promote free borders, open markets and liberal standards (ibid, p.675).
It is my contention that, only whilst market and security paradigms were in competition, was
there room for serious consideration of a third paradigm, the humanitarian one. The dramatic
expansion of privatisation in immigration governance has shifted this balance and created a new
nexus whereby there is huge, and growing market incentives for enacting security policy. With
the coincidence of market incentives, and security discourse on the issue, there is little room left
for the humanitarian discussion of the implications of detaining a vulnerable population whose
only crime is seeking a better life from themselves and their families (Ackerman and Furman,
2013, p.260)

Conclusion
Privatisation of immigration governance has expanded rapidly in recent decades. This situation
raises urgent questions regarding our commitment to humanitarian ideals, and our ability to
achieve humanitarian outcomes (Carbonnier, 2006). In a privatised system actors engaged in
immigration governance are less accountable for mistakes and outright abuse and less likely
to have the training required to avoid such undesirable outcomes (Koulish, 2007, p.30).
Simultaneously, in an environment where immigration governance is privatised, market
incentives to maximise profits pervert efforts to find durable solutions. The wheel must be
turned back on privatisation if we wish to find long-term solutions to issues of immigration, and
if we wish to pay even lip-service to humanitarian goals. How can we ensure that immigration
governance is fair and humane when those running the show are not well trained and not
accountable?
We must remember that these people are generally not convicted criminals Rather they are
administrative detainees, people who are not charged with a crime but whom the state has
decided to detain in order to carry out administrative procedures, like deportations or decisions
on asylum claims (Flynn and Cannon, 2009, p.3).
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The security industrial complex is busy doing what private industry does, maximising profits.
They are capitalising on the risk society and, through their wealth and influence, creating an
increasingly tyrannical system that is fuelled by turning taxpayer revenue into corporate profits
(Koulish, 2007, p.31). In this they are proving highly successful and it is quickly becoming
apparent that everyone loses, except the security industrial complex.


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