The System

The UK border regime is a name for the overall system that controls people’s ability to move and live in the UK, depending on their immigration status.

Though we often associate ‘borders’ with geographic boundaries, the UK border regime has become increasingly distributed - slowly infiltrating social institutions via their administrative systems and making unofficial border control guards out of frontline workers.

Between the Lines explores the administrative systems of the UK border control regime, focusing on the Student Sponsorship licence.

‘There are two jaws. The top jaw represents the professional specialists of the Home Office and its contractors, e.g. border guards, ICE raid officers, or private security guards. The bottom jaw represents collaboration in direct control by other actors. E.g. police or council wardens, but also airline or NHS staff carrying out document checks, or maybe informal enforcement by shopkeepers or vigilantes. The point of the two jaws is that one can’t work without the other. The state can’t operate effective immigration controls without help from “civil society”. But nor can a monster be all jaws and teeth. It needs other parts to inform and supply direct enforcement. So the diagram also includes a clumsy robot hand which identifies and sorts people; surveillance systems (a giant camera-eye); databases; and a pickled brain which processes all this information and sends out orders.’ - The UK Border Regime, Corporate Watch 2018

In the UK, Higher Education institutions are required by law to obtain a licence in order to sponsor international students. A full list of registered student sponsors can be found on the UK Government website here.

The UK Home Office requires UK universities to undertake a series of compliance measures to maintain their ‘privilege’ to sponsor students to study at their university. The compliance is underpinned by a strict set of rules outlining the duties and the responsibility each UK university has, requiring them “to act in accordance with the Immigration Rules” and to “fulfil certain duties, in order to ensure that immigration control is maintained.”

UK universities are required to report to UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) using an online tool: Sponsorship Management System (SMS). Reporting duties include (but are not limited to):

- Reporting on “all Students and Child Students that they are sponsoring.”(7.1)
- Reporting to UKVI if a student has “mistakenly been granted permission to work”.
- Reporting how the student’s English language ability was assessed. (3.11 a)