Immigration Detention

Immigration Detention

Governments increasingly rely upon detention to control the movement of undocumented migrants and asylum seekers.

The right to personal liberty is one of the oldest recognized rights in liberal democracies, which raises fundamental constitutional questions about the use of detention as an immigration measure. However, in common law countries (and in many civil law system countries as well), lengthy immigration detention on a large scale has become the norm and is largely regarded as constitutional.

The Historical Development of Immigration Detention

Understanding Detention

Recognition and Belonging in an Age of Deportation

The Detention Community

Uncertainty, Identity, and Power in Detention

Further Reading

  • Ackerman, A. R., & Furman, R. (2013). The criminalization of immigration and the privatization of the immigration detention: Implications for justice. Contemporary Justice Review, 16(2), 251-263.
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  • Alberti, G. (2010). Across the borders of Lesvos: The gendering of migrants’ detention in the Aegean. Feminist Review, 94(1), 138-147.
  • Amit, R. (2015). The expansion of illegality: Immigration detention in South Africa. In A. Nethery & S. J. Silverman (Eds.), Immigration detention: The migration of a policy and its human impact (pp. 145-153). Abingdon, U.K.: Routledge.
  • Bosworth, M. (2014). Inside immigration detention. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Arbel, E. (2015). Between protection and punishment: The irregular arrival regime in Canadian refugee law. In K. Reiter & A. Koenig (Eds.), Extreme punishment: Comparative studies in detention, incarceration, and solitary confinement (pp. 197-219). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Athwal, H. (2015). “I don’t have a life to live” : Deaths and U.K. detention. Race & Class, 56(3), 50-68.
  • Athwal, H., & Bourne, J. (2007). Driven to despair: Asylum deaths in the U.K. Race & Class, 48(4), 106-114.
  • Bacon, C. (2005). The evolution of immigration detention in the U.K.: The involvement of private prison companies (RSC Working Paper No. 27). Retrieved from University of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre Working Paper Series website: https://www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/files/publications/working-paper-series/wp27-evolution-immigration-detention-uk-2005.pdf.
  • Baird, T. (2016). Who is responsible for harm in immigration detention? Models of accountability for private corporations (GDP Working Paper No. 11). Geneva, Switzerland: Global Detention Project.
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  • Bosworth, M. (2014). Inside immigration detention. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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  • Bosworth, M., & Fili, A. (2016). Immigration detention in Greece and the U.K. In R. Furman, D. Epps, & G. Lamphear (Eds.), Detaining the immigration other: Global and transnational issues (pp. 79-90). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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  • Bosworth, M., & Turnbull, S. (2015a). Immigration detention and the expansion of penal power in the United Kingdom. In K. Reiter & A. Koenig (Eds.), Extreme punishment: Comparative studies in detention, incarceration, and solitary confinement (pp. 50-67). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Bosworth, M., & Turnbull, S. (2015b). Immigration detention, punishment, and the criminalization of migration. In S. Pickering & J. Ham (Eds.), The Routledge handbook on crime and international migration (pp. 91-106). Abingdon, U.K.: Routledge.
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  • Bosworth, M., & Turnbull, S. (2015a). Immigration detention and the expansion of penal power in the United Kingdom. In K. Reiter & A. Koenig (Eds.), Extreme punishment: Comparative studies in detention, incarceration, and solitary confinement (pp. 50-67). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Broeders, D. (2010). Return to sender: Administrative detention of irregular migrants in Germany and the Netherlands. Punishment & Society, 12(2), 169-186.
  • Campesi, G. (2015). Hindering the deportation machine: An ethnography of power and resistance in immigration detention. Punishment & Society, 17(4), 427-453.
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  • Flynn, M. (2014a). How and why immigration detention crossed the globe (GDP Working Paper No. 8). Geneva, Switzerland: Global Detention Project.
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  • Flynn, M. (2015). Bureaucratic capitalism and the immigration detention complex (GDP Working Paper No. 9). Geneva, Switzerland: Global Detention Project.
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  • Grewcock, M. (2009). Detention, punishment, and children’s rights: An Australian snapshot. Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, 48(4), 388-400.
  • Griffiths, M. (2013). Living with uncertainty: Indefinite immigration detention. Journal of Legal Anthropology, 1(3), 263-286.
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