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When writing qualitative case study research, most of us find that the very stuff of analysis—that is, the qualitative data—is lengthy and nuanced. Additionally, qualitative methods are often used in situations where “theories are underdeveloped and concepts are vague” (Ragin, Berg-Schlosser, and de Meur 1998, 750). To be robust and compelling, the data we use may require lengthy explanation, precisely because we wish to capture complexity. Overall, qualitative research relies on words—often lots of them—to get our point across.

The “everyday bordering” concept has provided key insights into the effects of diverse bordering practices upon social life, placing the bordering of the welfare state among wider state interventions in an autochthonous politics of belonging. Sociological contributions have also introduced new explanations as to why states pursue such measures, positing that neoliberal states seek legitimacy through increasing activities to (re)affirm borders within this politics of belonging, compensating for a failure to govern the economy in the interests of citizens. To what extent is this visible in the state-led emergence of (everyday) borders around welfare in the United Kingdom, often cited as a key national case? This article draws from 20 elite interviews to contribute to genealogical accounts of the emergence of everyday bordering through identifying the developing “problematizations” connected to this kind of bordering activity, as the British state began to distinctly involve welfare-state actors in bordering policies in the 1990s and early 2000s. This evidence underlines how these policies were tied to a “pull factor” problematization of control failure, where the state needed to reduce various “pull factors” purportedly attracting unwanted migrants in order to control immigration per se, with little evidence that legitimacy issues tied to perceived declining economic governability informed these developments in this period. These findings can inform future genealogical analyses that trace the emergence of everyday bordering.

It has frequently been observed that irregular migration is a common object of symbolic policy-making: the use of cosmetic adjustments to signal action, rather than substantive measures that achieve stated goals. Yet there is little research analysing the considerations driving policy actors to adopt such approaches. Drawing on existing literature, we distinguish three theoretical accounts of symbolic policy-making: manipulation, compensation, and adaptation. We explore these accounts through examining the emergence of symbolic policies in UK immigration control in the 1960s. Through detailed archival research, we reconstruct the deliberations leading to a series of Home Office decisions to crack down on irregular entry – decisions which officials felt were not operationally sensible, but which were based on popular political narratives of the problem. We conclude that the UK’s adoption of symbolic policy was a clear case of adaptation: a series of concessions to simplistic notions of control that did not chime with official views of what would work, and which were reluctantly embraced for reasons of political expediency. In conclusion, we suggest the need for more fine-grained analysis of the deliberations underpinning decision-making in bureaucracies, in order to produce more nuanced accounts of political rationalities in the area of immigration policy.

Western European states have increasingly linked immigration and welfare policy. This trend has important implications for European welfare-state trajectories, but accounts of the policy reasoning behind it have diverged. Are policymakers attempting to delimit social citizenship to secure welfare-state legitimacy? Pursuing new, market-oriented welfare-state goals? Symbolically communicating immigration control intentions to voters? Or attempting to instrumentally steer immigration flows? These accounts have rarely been tested empirically against each other. Redressing this, we employ 83 elite interviews in a comparative process-tracing study of policies linking welfare provision and immigration status in Germany, France, and the UK during the 1990s. We find little evidence suggesting welfare-guided policy reasonings. Rather, this policy linkage appears “immigration-guided:” meant to control "unwanted" immigration or resonate symbolically in immigration politics. Different exclusions from welfare support for migrants grew from existing national differences in welfare-state design and politicizations of immigration, not from policy intentions, which were largely shared.

This chapter briefly overviews how scholarship has tracked social developments since around 1990 toward understandings of a concept of “Fortress Europe” – contestation around which reflects the polysemous and destabilised meanings surrounding Europe in the post-Cold War context. “Fortress Europe” occurs at the intersection of several policy areas which have shifted toward more prominently addressing threats or challenges coming from outside Europe, particularly from the Global South: European integration, European security, and European immigration policy. Several scholarly vantage points have opened which have helped to evaluate or envision Fortress Europe, of which this chapter discusses (EUropeanised) immigration policy failure, securitization, and bordering (aligning crudely to political science, IR, and sociology). All have increasingly seen Fortress Europe not as simply about external walls, but proliferating internal barriers and divisions. This chapter concludes by synthesising three main normative accounts of Fortress Europe: a chauvinistic conservative one, defending supposed European identity, patrimony, and superiority; an ambivalent liberal one, anxiously managing the encounter with the southern Other out of fear the experience will cause Europe to regress; and a radical, critical one, rejecting images of the idealized European, and seeking the dismantling of Fortress Europe in all its forms as part of broader social transformation.

Mike Slaven points to structural factors that help explain why the UK’s immigration system has been unable to welcome large numbers of Ukrainian refugees with any sense of urgency, despite government rhetoric and public opinion on the matter.