The Border Industry: how companies are profiting from human rights abuse

By Natasha Ion

Borders – physical, intangible and imagined – are at the heart of the workings of many modern states. Migration as a ‘threat’ is increasingly presented as dogma by nations in the Global North across the world. Human rights abuses at borders in regions and states such as the US, Europe and Australia receive growing media attention but see little change.

The rights implications of the UK’s hostile environment policies are well-documented, as are human rights abuses at Australia’s offshore detention centres. Trump’s violent border policies received global media coverage, yet were a continuation of increasingly brutal US border enforcement that the Obama administration helped to build, and which President Biden continues.

Less visible on the global media stage is the insidious network of corporations that profit from the human rights infringements and suffering that are inseparable from the worldwide hardening of borders.

These companies, whose products and services enable the functioning and violence of borders – both literal and non-physical – are increasingly being categorised as ‘the Border Industry’.

The Border Industry: how companies are profiting from human rights abuse

By Natasha Ion