Constrained agency and everyday borderworkers in public sector institutions

Abstract

Borderwork has often been defined expansively to reveal the multiple actors, processes and practices engaged in bordering. However, not all borderwork is engaged in evenly and the agency to determine involvement in state borderwork is constrained. State borderwork and public sector workers’ agency are being dialogically constructed as assistential state institutions have been increasingly incorporated into bordering regimes. In this paper, we analyse how workers in two parts of the UK’s public sector – higher education and healthcare – undertake borderwork. In doing so, we bring together wider debates on borderwork with those from labour and economic geographies on labour agency and the role of the state, particularly in relation to Cindy Katz’s work, to elucidate how the small-scale struggles that state borderwork precipitates can advance conceptualisations of workers’ capacities to manoeuvre against oppressive or exploitative forces.