Border control and immigration

A nation's sovereign status is predicated on securing and preserving its territorial spaces and political autonomy. The practices of border control play a crucial role in realizing these goals; they are deployed in order to surveil, identify, and screen prospective immigrants that wish to enter a particular nation. In the contemporary context, a complex array of border technologies are being deployed in order to control the flow of immigrants well before they reach the border. These electronic, networked systems of border control are effectively working to situate a nation's border in extra‐territorial spaces that can be termed the “pre‐frontier.”