A number of civil society groups in the United States have recently published highly critical reports alleging abusive and inhuman conditions at privately operated immigration detention centres. These include reports of abuse and mistreatment of vulnerable people, medical neglect, and failure to provide access to legal assistance. Private prison operators are nevertheless planning important extensions […]
Privatisation
Documenting Detention: Part 1 – Photographing the US Detention System. A Conversation with Greg Constantine
As part of the GDP’s “Documenting Detention” series, we speak to the acclaimed independent documentary photographer, Greg Constantine, about his work photographing the United States’ vast detention estate. […]
Immigration Detention in Australia: Turning Arbitrary Detention into a Global Brand
Australia’s migration detention system is uniquely severe, arbitrary, and punitive. It includes a range of extreme and controversial policies–mandatory, indefinite, offshore, fully privatised detention–which are given blanket legal cover, are vigorously defended in the face of growing global opprobrium, and are spreading to countries near and far. […]
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. […]
Spatial Control: Geographical Approaches to the Study of Immigration Detention – Global Detention Project Working Paper No. 24
This paper surveys research on immigration detention conducted using geographical methods, highlighting how geography’s conceptualization of detention as a form of spatial control offers tools to scholars and activists working to contest this form of immigration control. […]
Kidnapped, Trafficked, Detained? The Implications of Non-state Actor Involvement in Immigration Detention
This article critically assesses a range of new non-state actors who have become involved in the deprivation of liberty of migrants and asylum seekers, describes the various forces that appear to be driving their engagement, and makes a series of recommendations concerning the role of non-state actors and detention in global efforts to manage international migration. […]
Statement to the Working Group on the Use of Mercenaries Panel on “PMSCs in places of deprivation of liberty and their impact on human rights”
Statement to the Working Group on the Use of Mercenaries Panel on “PMSCs in places of deprivation of liberty and their impact on human rights” Michael Flynn, Global Detention Project 27 April 2017 I am the Director of the Global Detention Project, a research center based in Geneva that documents the use of detention […]
Briefing on Multi-national Companies that Provide Immigration Detention Services
The UN Working Group on the Use of Mercenaries plans to include an assessment of human rights challenges posed by the operations of private security companies in detention centres and prisons in its 2017 report to the UN General Assembly. To assist in the Working Group’s preparatory work, the GDP provided a briefing on various […]
GDP Briefing to UN Working Group on the Use of Mercenaries
The GDP’s executive director gave a briefing to the UN Working Group on the Use of Mercenaries on the key multinational corporations that operate immigration detention centres around. The Working Group intends to include this issue in its 2017 report to the UN General Assembly report. Information about the list of companies discussed during the […]
Detained Beyond the Sovereign: Conceptualising Non-State Actor Involvement in Immigration Detention
In this chapter for the recent book Intimate Economies of Immigration Detention (Routledge, 2016), Michael Flynn discusses the emergence of new actors in immigration detention systems across the globe and the challenges this poses in efforts to hold states accountable. […]
