Migrant justice campaigns are gaining traction on university campuses in the UK, with the number of universities committed to divesting from the violent border industry more than doubling in the past year, according to research by People & Planet’s University League, which ranks UK higher education institutes on their environmental and ethical performance.
The border industry refers to the private corporations entangled in the efforts to ‘securitise’ borders in the Global North. These companies are at the centre of migrants’ suffering, profiting from – and lobbying for – increasingly hostile immigration policies in ‘Fortress Europe’ and the United States. The industry has seen astronomical global growth and is projected to rise from $377bn in 2023 to $679bn by 2032, according to research by academics at several UK universities.
By continuing to channel investments into these border security companies, universities send a clear message: we condone this abhorrent industry and will facilitate its growth. No matter what progressive narratives these universities espouse, as long as these material ties to violence exist, they expose themselves as hypocrites.
So far, 13 universities have committed to divesting from this industry, with seven pledging to do so last year. They are Bath Spa University, Birmingham City University, the University of Bradford, Edge Hill University, SOAS University of London, the University of the Arts London and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. The University of Bradford’s commitment is especially significant, potentially amounting to nearly £2.5m in investment reallocation.
These commitments are clear victories. But the vast majority of universities have still not divested and remain complicit in the growing cruelty towards migrants in Europe and beyond. They must do more. The political climate is urgent, and the border industry is growing. Delaying divestment will only deepen the many crises facing British higher education and further damage the already fragile progressive credentials of universities.
The border industry
Universities’ recent commitments to divest have largely been forced by students and staff working under the Divest Borders banner, a nationwide campaign targeting university investments in the border industry coordinated by us at People & Planet, a student campaign network.
Companies involved in the border industry facilitate different forms of violence. At the most visible end of this spectrum are the likes of Mitie and Serco, which make vast profits through government contracts to run immigration detention and removal centres, as well as ‘temporary accommodation’ for asylum seekers.
Others prop up border violence more discreetly. Corporate giants such as Amazon and Microsoft provide cloud services and other computing technologies for immigration authorities, including the US’s ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), whose ruthlessly racist and violent actions have been the target of mass protests.
Other companies that have been complicit include airline operators British Airways and Omni Air, which provide deportation services for governments, Big Tech firms such as Palantir and Accenture, which facilitate the surveillance of migrants, and arms companies such as Airbus and Thales, which provide drones, security and other physical infrastructure for borders.
The migrant justice movement
In the context of the border industry’s rapid growth, the rise in divestment commitments poses a serious challenge to its largely unhindered social licence to profit from violent practices.
Universities are often reluctant to lead the way in denouncing industries, and the ‘border industry’ remains lesser known than the fossil fuel industry, which has now seen near-universal divestment across UK higher education institutions. But the border divestment victories of recent years should provide the impetus needed to make these commitments common institutional practice and offer an important way to nurture the migrant justice ecosystem on campuses.
This is a critical moment for migrant solidarity across all our institutions. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, which leads the polls, has publicly espoused ethnic nationalism and pledged to introduce an ICE-style ‘UK Deportation Command’ taskforce. Meanwhile, the Labour government is overseeing record-high numbers of immigration raids and continues to tighten visa requirements. All the while, the border industry grows largely unhindered.
Our communities have recognised the severity of this political climate. Anti-raids networks have grown, and anti-fascist demonstrations have challenged far-right mobilisations outside temporary accommodation housing asylum seekers, even in the sleepiest of small British towns. Migrant solidarity groups such as Migrants Organise and Refugee Action have also offered a frontline counter-narrative to growing racism in the UK. Across the Atlantic, in Minneapolis, strikes and demonstrations have challenged ICE’s murderous violence.
Universities’ complicity runs deeper than investments. They have also enforced increasingly strict hostile environment policies on their campuses, including the use of court orders to ban demonstrations and the arrests of student protesters, some of whom have allegedly had their data shared with private firms and their student visas stripped. All of this has created fear and resentment among both domestic and international students, the latter of whom many universities heavily rely on for income.
This is a fundamental contradiction. By strengthening the border industry, universities are charging headlong into an existential threat. Will they continue to bankroll the very companies that profit not only from migrant abuse, but from the same hostile environment that threatens their ability to survive?
Follow the money
Within the migrant justice movement, Divest Borders has helped popularise a focus on corporate complicity in migrant abuse. This has shaped interventions in wider migrant justice campaigns.
Oxford Student Action for Refugees, for example, has been part of the coalition campaigning to shut the city’s Campsfield immigration detention centre, which was reopened in December. A recent investigation by the group and Cherwell, Oxford’s student paper, revealed the university’s links with Mitie, the contractor that won a £170m government contract to run the Campsfield centre. These links include the university’s partnership with asset manager BlackRock – whose shares in Mitie give it 3.2% of voting rights at the firm – and Oxford colleges’ use of investment managers, such as Vanguard, BlackRock, Henderson and Rathbones, which invest in Mitie.
This ‘follow the money’ strategy has allowed student movements to expose the links between borders, imperialism and capitalism, which together underlie many of the world’s injustices. Borders were constructed as instruments of racial segregation and are intensified to create a global hierarchy of race and protect the wealth of the Global North at the expense of empire’s former colonies.
Often, the companies that profit from bordering also profit from the occupation and genocide in Palestine, a monstrosity resulting directly from imperial domination.
Students who point out that these intersecting forms of violence place universities firmly within the nexus of global injustice have often been patronised, penalised or ignored, while those at the top of university governance have buried their heads in the sand. But universities must earn their self-conception as bastions of social responsibility. They should take the current political moment as an opportunity for reflection.
Instead, the suggestion that their ‘progressive’ credentials may be hypocritical sends universities into incoherent meltdowns and defensive posturing, often citing the need to cover funding deficits. British higher education does indeed face a financial crisis, overseeing cuts to arts and humanities departments, wage freezes, redundancies and the proliferation of insecure contracts, all while executive salaries soar. So to these universities, we ask: how well has the marketisation of higher education served you so far?
This crisis cannot be addressed through tweaks to the system, whether marginally higher returns on investments or small cuts to expenditure. It is time for universities to address the root causes of the crisis and ditch their ideological commitment to neoliberalism. They should take the divestment movement as an opportunity to begin that shift, cutting ties with companies that are both the principal proponents and beneficiaries of global marketisation.
