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Immigration, Location Tracking and Control

In Britain today, thousands of migrants are being tracked around the clock by GPS technology. After leaving confinement, migrants, people seeking asylum, and those whose claims have been rejected, are fitted with electronic tags that record their location in real time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Britain is the only country in Europe to use this technology in immigration control.

This project investigates what that actually means for the people living under it.

Electronic monitoring is presented by the government as a humane alternative to detention, a way of managing migrants in the community rather than behind bars. But is it? The technology tracks where people go, who they meet, and how they move. That data is stored by private security companies for up to six years and can be used in immigration case decisions. Breaching bail conditions, including those tied to the tag, is a criminal offence carrying a prison sentence of up to six months.

This research asks hard questions about what GPS surveillance really is, and who it is really for.

What the project explores

Through fieldwork with migrants living under electronic monitoring, alongside lawyers, clinicians, and charity workers, the project examines the lived reality of being tracked. It also draws on freedom of information requests, policy documents, parliamentary debates, and legal judgements to map how this system operates and who it targets.

The project is guided by three core questions: What does GPS monitoring actually do to people – to their health, their relationships, their sense of self? To what extent does it function as a tool of surveillance and control rather than a genuine alternative to detention? And does a technology presented as race-neutral in fact deepen racial inequality?

Why it matters

The UK immigration and asylum system is under enormous pressure. Detention is harmful, expensive, and increasingly contested. Electronic monitoring is rapidly expanding to fill the gap, but with very little scrutiny, almost no public debate and virtually no research into its consequences on migrants.

This project aims to change that. Its findings will be shared with third sector organisations, legal practitioners, and policymakers and made freely available to the public through reports, articles, and public events.

No Release — A Film

One of the most powerful outcomes of this research is No Release, a film that brings its findings out of the academic sphere and into direct human view.

After prison, there is supposed to be release and reintegration into community. For many migrants in Britain, there is not. No Release follows two men navigating life under continuous GPS surveillance enforced by the UK immigration system. Fitted with electronic tags after leaving prison, they face an open-ended regime of monitoring, mandatory sign-ins, curfews, and exclusion zones, with no fixed end date, and no clear path forward.

The film traces what this does to a person over time. To the body, worn down by the weight of constant scrutiny. To the mind, kept in a state of chronic uncertainty. To identity and dignity, eroded by a system that treats them not as people rebuilding their lives, but as (racialised) risks to be managed.

Where the research maps the system, No Release makes it felt. It shows how poverty, displacement, and the absence of citizenship combine with racialised ideas of danger and criminality to trap people in a cycle of punishment without end — and exposes the human cost of a machinery of surveillance and exclusion that makes rebuilding one's life nearly impossible.
The film stands in solidarity with those caught between the interlocking systems of immigration control and criminal justice in Britain today.

No Release is produced by BÉZNĂ Theatre, an international political theatre company whose work confronts social violence in all its forms and was written and directed by Sînziana Cojocărescu. More information can be found on the website.

Immigration, Location Tracking and Control is funded by a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship and led by Dr Monish Bhatia, Lecturer in Sociology at the University of York. No Release is based on research and interviews conducted as part of this project.

Recent Publication

  • Bhatia, M., and Audibert, L. (2026). Tagging, privacy intrusion and racial injustice: The case of GPS monitoring and migrant rights in the United Kingdom. In: Anthony, Thalia, Bhatia, Monish, Pillay, Kathryn and Williams, Jason M., (eds.) Palgrave Handbook of Racial Injustice and Resistance. Palgrave Macmillan.

Further readings

Media Presence