The Spectacle of Invisibility: Vanishing Points and the Spatialised Legal Violence of the UK’s Expanding Quasi-Carceral Geography of Immigration Control

Increasingly, irregularized migrants are pushed to rely on more and more clandestine means in attempts to reach so-called safe havens in Europe and elsewhere. Often, these actions are necessitated by governments instituting ever-more hostile and violent mechanisms of immigration control. Taking as its focus key developments in the UK’s morphing and expanding ‘quasi-carceral geography’ of immigration control, this paper considers some of these developments alongside Derek Gregory’s incisive essay titled analysis of ‘vanishing points’. The paper examines how the spectacular and invisible are instrumentalized simultaneously to produce spatialised legal vanishing points in the UK and beyond by scrutinising three distinct yet interconnected sites where vanishing points materialise, each successively more proximate to UK geographical terrain. Specifically, I examine the multi-scalar legal contestations that surrounded the UK-Rwanda Agreement; the invisibility and tactical ambiguities of juxtaposed border controls in Northern France; and the downgrading of rights, responsibilities, and accountability in amended rules for the accommodation of irregular migrant arrivals, focusing on the former military barracks of Manston, Kent, UK. Drawing on Gregory’s analysis as a framework, the paper traces the significance not only of law’s presence or suspension but also its application, morphing, and contestation within these sites – and more generally – for the emergence and functioning of a continuum of extra-territorial, ambiguous, discretionary, violent spaces where possibilities for sanctuary, safe haven, or security are continually deferred or denied amidst the spectacular invisibility and persistent spatialised legal vanishing points.