We are a student movement demanding that our universities divest from companies profiting from the surveillance, persecution and abuse of migrating people in the UK and across the globe. Now more than ever is time to fight back and build a world without borders where all have the right to move, stay and thrive.
Our universities are invested in the border industry and complicit in the cruelty it inflicts on migrating people. Companies such as Accenture, British Airways, Microsoft, Mitie and Elbit have been more than willing to cash in on the growing business of running detention centres and prisons, of ripping families and friends apart through deportations, and of surveilling racialised communities under the UK's hostile environment policies.
Under the banner of People & Planet’s Divest Borders campaign, students and staff across the UK are organising to force their institutions to cut ties with this abusive industry. We are calling upon all UK universities to:
Our vision is a world free from borders, where arbitrary characteristics have no impact whatsoever on opportunities and outcomes. A no borders world is currently distant and fuzzy, but no vision of justice can include violence enacted upon vulnerable, racialised people in order to control, monitor and prevent their movement. If we are able to bring about a world free from border violence, the onward path to a world free from borders will be much shorter and clearer.
To achieve this we are targeting the network of private companies who enact and profit from the countless injustices relating to detention, deportation, use of force and surveillance of migrants. UK universities are deeply entangled in this industry, with their investments, research and partnerships forming a crucial link in the production and legitimation of border violence. While university investment in the border industry can be seen as explicit approval of such cruelty, a commitment from such institutions to divest from these practices would be a huge statement delegitimising the industry and stigmatising those who participate in and profit from it.
We need liberated institutions that allow us the space and freedom to imagine and build a more just society. Divestment from the border industry is one piece of that puzzle. In solidarity with the struggles of staff, migrants, anti-arms, anti-racist and BDS campaigners at universities, we can work together towards truly liberated, revolutionary futures.
We will build power to abolish detention and deportations for good.
This starts with dismantling the border industry.
To uphold racist borders, the UK government is highly dependent on companies who detain and deport people at massive profit margins. Thus the border regime relies on a vast network of hundreds of companies to provide and develop the technologies and labour required to make the hostile environment a reality. Some of the companies most deeply entangled in the UK Border Regime include Accenture, Microsoft, British Airways, Mitie, Palantir and BAE.
Frontline communities have been resisting border violence in a plethora of ways, and there are a number of strategies we can take. One method is to reduce the willingness and ability of the companies to continue enacting border violence on behalf of the home office. We cannot demolish the companies, but we can destroy their reputations and their relationships with the state.
We are demanding that all universities withdraw all investments from companies engaged in or supporting violence relating to detention, deportation, surveillance or the use of force in border control. Our Border Divestment List (BDL) details the 70 companies from which all universities must divest and is publicly available along with the accompanying methodology!
