Deportation and the micropolitics of exclusion: the rise of removals from the UK to Sri Lanka

The forced removal of foreign nationals has been a relatively uncommon occurrence in liberal democracies, at least since the 2nd World War. This can be explained by both the inherent violence of this process, which raises widespread public opposition, and by the geopolitical difficulties it raises, as there must be agreement of both countries concerned. In recent years these problems appear to have been partially overcome and since 2005 a ‘deportation turn’ is evident across the European Union as deportations increase. This paper focuses on the international dimension to this increase, following work investigating deportation as an essentially biopolitical process of international governance of populations. This approach is developed in an analysis of the geopolitical impacts of that management process. The paper uses empirical research with Sri Lankan migrants who left the UK either as a result of force or voluntary returns policies to explain this development. It identifies the changing strategy of the deportation process, particularly recent attention to the negotiation of bilateral and multilateral readmission agreements and the role of international organisations as mediators as key contributions to an explanation for the rise in deportations.