Urgent Appeal: The Case of Egypt and Eritrea

Working in coordination with journalists and NGO partners in North Africa, we launched a multi-pronged awareness campaign about the plight of Eritrean refugees—including children and families—detained in Egypt’s abysmal police detention centres.  Egypt has repeatedly deported refugees back to Eritrea despite the fact that many have disappeared upon arrival or suffered severe abuses or torture. […]

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Immigration Detention in Germany: From Open Arms to Public Backlash

During the height of Europe’s migration “crisis,” Germany was one of the few EU countries to openly embrace assisting refugees, registering more than a million arrivals in less than two years. However, this stance spurred a public backlash, which led to the adoption of a host of restrictive measures, including policies intended to increase removals, limit family reunifications, and expand the range of facilities that can be used to detain migrants. […]

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Critiquing Zones of Exception: Actor-Oriented Approaches Explaining the Rise of Immigration Detention

Immigration policy has catapulted to the forefront of public debate around the world as governments resort to increasingly restrictive measures to block migrants and refugees. While severe border policies are by no means new, this surge in migration control raises questions about the forces driving national policies. This chapter in the new book Immigration Policy in the Age of Punishment advances an actor-oriented analysis that views detention systems as complex organisations that rely on deeply rooted institutional structures to buttress their existence, multiple sources of financing to grow operations, and support from a broad array of social actors. […]

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Detention, Deportation, and Waiting: Toward a Theory of Migrant Detainability: GDP Working Paper No. 18

The global expansion of deportation regimes has spurred an analogous expansion of migrant detention. This GDP Working Paper situates the analysis of immigration detention in the framework of contemporary critical theory, interrogating the economy of different conditionalities that undergird the distinct categories of migrants who are subjected to detention power. […]

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