Covert Borderwork: Managing Borders and Migration through Secrecy

Journal article

In this article, we analyse secretive practices of border and migration management we term covert borderwork. Covert borderwork comprises techniques of border and migration management which adopt varying forms and temporalities of secrecy in their design, implementation, and/or performance. Through primary source documents and interviews, we detail and analyse the European Commission, EU member states, and the Australian government's use of fronts such as the UNHCR, the International Organization for Migration, and private firms, as well as the use of incentivised agents and unbranded materials to obscure or conceal their involvement in their own migration information campaigns. We describe and analyse secretive forms of direct engagement with potential migrants and their communities to spread anti‐migration sentiment in Africa and the Asia‐Pacific. We show this covert borderwork to be facilitated through various astroturfing techniques designed to obscure and conceal the involvement of states in these campaigns.

Authors: Watkins, J; Van Dessel, J

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Wiley
• Journal: Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography
• Publication date: 2025-10-26
• Acceptance date: 2025-09-14
• DOI: 10.1111/anti.70089
• EISSN: 1467-8330
• ISSN: 0066-4812
• Language: English
• Keywords: migration information campaigns; covert borderwork; migration management; ignorance studies; astroturfing; secrecy