Policing the intimate borders of the nation: a review of recent trends in family-related forms of immigration control

The chapter critically reviews some themes arising from different streams of literature having tackled, in recent years, states’ efforts to reproduce their national identities regulating the cross-border intimate lives of their aspiring citizens and residents. Family migration management reflects the tensions brought by the dangers of culturally problematized immigrant social reproduction: excessive fertilities, backward marriages and gender relationships, low-quality human capital and welfare dependency. The chapter explores how different aspects of social reproduction—love and marriage; parenthood, fertility and childbearing; care and dependency among adult relatives—are implicated in issues of migration control, showing how matters of legitimacy and veracity have triggered an emerging set of controls centred on the intimate and bodily life of citizens. As the intimate delineates a porous zone between insiders and outsiders, defining the family proves critical for understanding what immigration means for the nation, calling for a deeper exploration of the nexus between the governance of national reproduction, citizenship and mobility.