The Threat of Detention for Myanmar Refugees in India 

Authorities in Uttar Pradesh have launched a crackdown on Rohingya refugees, leading to the arrest and detention of dozens of people apprehended during raids at camps. The arrests are part of a wider, nationwide policy targeting refugees from Myanmar. With no legal limits on detention, refugees can be held indefinitely. Recently, when a group who […]

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UN Experts Call on Ethiopia to Halt Mass Deportations and Detentions of Eritreans 

Ethiopian authorities must halt the mass deportation of Eritrean refugees, UN experts say. The country, which has hosted thousands of Eritreans for years, has also been accused of arbitrarily detaining large numbers of Eritreans, often on the ground that they lack documentation–despite the fact that the country’s Refugee and Returnee Service (RSS) stopped registering newly […]

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Lebanon Steps Up Forceful Removals of Syrian Refugees

Amidst festering economic crisis and political stalemate, Lebanese authorities have stepped up their efforts to remove Syrian refugees from the country. In recent weeks, hundreds have been arrested, detained, and summarily deported by Lebanon’s army intelligence unit. Since early April, the Lebanese army has conducted multiple raids across the country, arresting hundreds of Syrians who […]

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PERU: Submission to the Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families

In their joint submission to the UN Committee on Migrant Workers concerning the upcoming report on Peru, the Global Detention Project and the Grupo de Movilidad Humana de la Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos highlight concerns regarding Peru’s militarisation of border controls, which have become more severe since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and point […]

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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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