Universities in the UK directly profit from the border industry and the cruelty it inflicts on migrating people through investments in the companies that enthusiastically make border injustices possible.

Companies such as G4S, Accenture, Serco, Mitie, TUI Fly and many others have profited from the growing business of running detention centres and prisons, facilitating deportations, and surveilling racialised communities under the UK’s hostile environment policies.

Universities’ complicity in the border industry is twofold. First, many universities hold significant investments in these companies, spending tuition fees – a significant chunk of which are paid by migrant students – to help the border industry profit from the suffering of others. Second, university investments give border industry companies a ‘social license to operate’ – a sense of respectability that comes from association with universities.