Territorial exclusion is a multi-scalar phenomenon. However, research has tended to focus on exclusion at separate scales. This paper develops a conversation between research on the territorial exclusion of international migrants at the national scale and the territorial exclusion of lower- and working-class residents at the urban scale. Both strands of research have encountered a common empirical puzzle: territorially exclusive practices rarely comport with official government policies. The paper argues that these apparent “policy gaps”—and efforts to overcome them—can be more fruitfully studied as outcomes of the scalar structuration of legitimate violence, which shapes the way that policy-makers seek to achieve exclusionary goals. The paper suggests that this approach may be used as the platform for richer inter-disciplinary conversations between Human Geography and International Relations (IR) about territorial exclusion and the historical scaling and rescaling of legitimate violence over time.