Theorizing Control Gaps in Extraterritorial Immigration Controls

For several decades now, major destination countries have been shifting their immigration controls to new locations: up to transnational organisations, down to local authorities, and out to non-state actors. These developments have been explained in terms of venue-shopping: governments seeking institutional venues that enable them to achieve their policy objectives by increasing capacity and circumventing domestic constraints. But intention is not effect, and there are reasons why institutional and spatial relocation, as well as co-option of non-state actors, may create new implementation deficits. This paper considers the potential for ‘control gaps’ in extraterritorial immigration controls, and theorises about the conditions affecting the width of these gaps. Shifting immigration controls beyond a territorial border, often involving third country as well as non-state actors, creates the potential for principal-agent problems, where the objectives of a (government) principal may be subverted by (non- or third-country government) agents acting in their own interests. These dynamics have previously been observed in the case of co-opted public service professionals and local authorities (shifting down), but relatively little work to date examines extraterritorial controls (shifting out), where physical remove, asymmetric information, and conflicting interests might be expected to create significant policy gaps. The paper theorizes about the conditions under which extraterritorial control gaps are likely to emerge, and considers which forms of extraterritorialization are most susceptible to subversion. The theoretical ideas are then examined through an exploratory case study of UK extraterritorial controls in France.