The Plastic Police: Professional Identity, Authority, and Legitimacy

Abstract

This chapter explores the history and professional culture of the operational arm of the immigration department, the Immigration Compliance and Enforcement teams (ICE). It examines this vernacular agency called upon to manage and control global mobility, and its ambivalent relationship with the police, attending to matters of authority and legitimacy, professional presentation and politics, morality and identity. It argues that while the police are recurrently referred as a comparator, the composition, institutional rules and practices, and the nature of the work of ICE set them apart. The chapter relies on first-hand accounts of long-term front-line officers to reconstruct and chart institutional changes to immigration enforcement in the UK. Their accounts offer insights into the mysterious world of immigration enforcement, its genesis, short turbulent history, and its fast-changing contours through the lens of those tasked with its making. The second part of the chapter explores what it is like to be an immigration officer: who are these people? Why have they chosen this career path? What are their aspirations and frustrations? What are their worldviews? How do they perceive themselves vis-à-vis their police colleagues? And what is it like to work in a highly controversial and sensitive area of public policy? Thus, the purpose of this chapter is to understand immigration enforcement, and its employees, through their own words and worlds.