Across the world, people are moving in unprecedented numbers, prompted by numerous reasons to migrate from one country to another. But their ability to actually make the move is powerfully constrained by the gates that may be opened or closed to them. As they move, migrants are constantly made aware of their vulnerability to state practices of inclusion and exclusion. Unless they are embarking on an existence as an undocumented migrant, which merely lays out another set of fences to be crossed and negotiated, the ultimate decision about their entry and residence is made by the state apparatus of the intended destination and not by the individual migrants. Whatever the reasons, dreams or desires of the immigrants, it is held that every sovereign nation state has the right to determine who it will allow to cross its borders, who will be allowed to stay and for how long.

Immigration policies and practices demarcate the points of designated entry to the territory of the nation state and define who will be allowed in and who will be kept out. But within the probing and invasive questions of their application procedures, nation states also reveal the overt and hidden classifications of the immigrant selection process, as well as the racial and national prejudices that inform the requirements that such states use to determine who to include and who to exclude. The filters and gates are designed to allow in only those seen to be potentially useful members of the nation (or recruits to the nation, if migrants), or those that will ‘fit’ the nation. While immigrant selection may be tied to productivity, class, wealth and skills, the process conveys powerful ideas about the self-image of the destination state, about race and national origins, and about the stereotyping of other peoples and territories.