GDP News & Publications
- IN THE PRESS: In late November 2011, L'Hebdo, a popular weekly magazine of Suisse Romande, and the daily Le Courrier both published articles discussing the findings of the Global Detention Project's October 2011 special report on immigration detention practices in Switzerland. This press coverage follows previous media reports by Le Temps, World Radio Switzerland, and the Graduate Institute.
- AMERICAS REGIONAL WORKSHOP: On 7-9 November, Mariette Grange of the Global Detention Project participated in a regional detention workshop in Mexico City that was hosted by the International Detention Coalition and Sin Fronteras. Attending the workshop were some 60 immigration and refugee advocates from 17 countries. Grange gave a presentation on the GDP's efforts to systematically develop data on immigration detention regimes.
- NEW BOOK: In October 2011, Cambridge University Press released a new book on immigration-related detention authored by Daniel Wilsher of City University-London and entitled Immigration Detention: Law, History, Politics.
- MENA REGIONAL WORKSHOP: On 26-28 September, Michael Flynn of the Global Detention Project participated in a regional detention workshop in Beirut, Lebanon, that was hosted by the International Detention Coalition and the Middle East Council of Churches. Attending the workshop were immigration and refugee advocates from several countries in the Middle East and North Africa region. Flynn gave a presentation on methods for developing systematic data on immigration detention regimes.
- AFRICA REGIONAL WORKSHOP: On 12-14 July, Michael Flynn of the Global Detention Project participated in a regional detention workshop in Johannesburg, South Africa, that was hosted by the International Detention Coalition and Lawyers for Human Rights. Attending the workshop were immigration and refugee advocates from several countries in the region. The GDP gave a presentation on methods for developing systematic data on immigration detention regimes.
- PRESENTATION: The GDP presented a paper on “Europe’s Role in Expanding Detention Regimes” at a workshop held on 16-17 June at the University of Neuchatel (UNINE) titled “The Europeanization of Exclusion Policies and Practices.” The workshop was co-hosted by the IMISCOE Research Network, the Swiss Forum for Migration and Population Studies, and UNINE’s Faculty of Humanities.
- RECENT EVENTS: In early 2011, the GDP was invited to participate in a series of conferences and organizing initiatives in various cities around the globe, including at the annual conference of the American Association of Geographers in Seattle, Washington (12-16 April); a workshop hosted by the University of California-Berkeley Law School titled “Cutting Off the Flow: Extra-territorial Controls to Prevent Migration” (21-22 April); the annual conference of the Canadian Association for Refugees and Forced Migration Studies in Montreal (11-13 May); and a joint UNHCR-NGO “Immigration Detention Advocacy Planning Meeting” held in Geneva on 13 May.
- GDP INTERNSHIPS: In May, Kelsey Jost-Creegan, a student at the University of North Carolina, began a three-month internship at the Global Detention Project during which she will investigate detention practices in various countries around the world and undertake research on an independent study on West African asylum seekers in Latin America’s Southern Cone. Kelsey's internship is supported by the Morehead-Cain Scholars Program.
- NEW PUBLICATION: “Immigration Detention and Proportionality,” Global Detention Project Working Paper No. 4, February 2011.
- NEW PUBLICATION: "Detention at the Borders of Europe: Report on the Joint Global Detention Project - International Detention Coalition Workshop in Geneva, Switzerland," Global Detention Project report, November 2010.
Apropos
“The modern prison is assigned the task of administering its inmates’ lives to foster ‘docile and useful bodies.’ … The immigration detention center, by contrast, is a pre-modern prison--nothing more than a site for the punishment and permanent removal of ‘wasted’ bodies.”
Shahran Khasravi, 'Illegal Traveller: An Ethnography of Border (Palgrave 2010)
"Allowing the private sector to run immigration detention will mean ... an ever increasing number of people coming into the system and staying there longer ... as companies seek to maintain and expand their markets."
Stephen Nathan, Presentation at the Graduate Institute, Geneva, 2 March 2010
"Justice [Sonia] Sotomayor’s opinion in the [2009 U.S. Supreme Court] case, Mohawk Industries v. Carpenter, No. 08-678, marked the first use of the term 'undocumented immigrant,' according to a legal database. The term 'illegal immigrant' has appeared in a dozen decisions."
Featured Countries
Switzerland
From its 2005 adoption of a controversial asylum measure—“one of the strictest pieces of legislation in Europe,” according to UNHCR—to its 2009 referendum banning the construction of minarets on mosques, Switzerland’s reaction to immigration has become increasingly antagonistic in recent years. Swiss detention and deporation practices have been duly impacted by this situation. This Global Detention Project special report provides a first-of-its-kind view of the Swiss immigration detention estate. When compared to detention facilities elsewhere in Europe, some Swiss detention sites—like its Frambois facility, located just outside Geneva—have decidedly good reputations for their humane conditions. On the other hand, many Swiss detention practices and policies have been heavily criticized. These include imposing detention regimes on administrative detainees that can be more punitive than those for criminal detainees; the excessive use of force during deportation proceedings, which has led to several deaths in the past decade; and the routine imposition of criminal sanctions for violations of the federal law on foreigners.
Bahamas
Located to the east of the straights separating Cuba and the U.S. state of Florida, the numerous islands that make up the British Commonwealth of the Bahamas have become an important transit area for migrants from Cuba and Haiti, as well as increasingly from African countries. The country's strict immigration laws provide criminal sanctions for status-related violations. Although a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, the country has yet to approve legislation providing for asylum. Watchdog groups have reported appalling conditions at the country’s sole dedicated migrant detention facility—the Carmichael Road Detention Centre—and there have been numerous reports of abuse at the facility. Undocumented children are detained pending their removal from the country, as are asylum seekers while their claims are being processed.
United Kingdom
In December 2010, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg announced that the United Kingdom was eliminating its policy of long-term immigration detention of children, claiming that there had a been "a big culture shift within our immigration system," one which places "values above paranoia over our borders.” Many observers in the UK, however, contest this claim, arguing that much remains to be done to reform the UK immigration detention estate, which has grown exponentially in the last two decades. In 1993, the country had an immigration detention capacity of some 250. By 2003, it was operating seven immigration removal centres with a capacity of approximately 1,600. By 2011, the estate had grown to 15 dedicated facilities with a total estimated capacity of 3,500.
Egypt
Long a lightening rod for criticism because of its treatment of migrants, Egypt is undergoing historic political change, the ramifications of which with respect to the rights of immigrants and asylum seekers remains unclear. Egypt’s policy during the last few decades has been to charge unauthorized migrants with criminal violations stemming from their irregular status and then detain them in prisons alongside hardened criminals and in poor and overcrowded conditions. Among the issues that have spurred international condemnation of the country have been its “shoot-to-stop” policy targeting migrants crossing from Egypt to Israel; denying detained migrants access to appeal; mass forced returns of Eritreans, who face persecution in their country; preventing UNHCR and other rights bodies access to detainees; and the indefinite detention of stateless persons and unregistered asylum seekers.
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Israel
In recent years, Israel has experienced a wave of immigration comprised largely of asylum seekers from Eritrea and Sudan. This influx has fueled alarmist discourse in the country regarding purported socio-economic problems and threats to the Jewish character of the state. The rightwing Likud-led government has responded with a number of increasingly restrictive measures, including: the creation of a specialized immigration force called the Oz Unit, which is tasked with deporting all of the country’s more than 200,000 irregular residents; plans to build a wall along Israel’s border with Egypt because, according to Prime Minister Netanyahu, the country “cannot let tens of thousands of illegal workers infiltrate into Israel through the southern border and inundate our country with illegal aliens"; a proposal to build a massive new detention facility to confine up to 10,000 so-called infiltrators (unauthorized non-citizens) in order to “significantly reduce the economic incentive for them to arrive in Israel”; and the introduction in the Knesset of a new “infiltration” law whose draconian measures regarding detention and deportation of asylum seekers led a coalition of Israeli human rights groups to describe it as “one of the most dangerous bills ever presented.”
Spain
Although Spain receives a disproportionate number of undocumented migrants and asylum seekers compared to many of its European Union neighbours, the country is generally considered an exception to broader European trends on immigration, showing increased tolerance, a greater enthusiasm with regard to immigration, and a stronger acceptance of multiculturalism in opinion polls. This reputation, however, has been challenged in recent years as the country has seen increasingly larger waves of sub-Saharan Africans attempting to reach the country. Responding to this situation, Spain introduced in 2009 several amendments to its Organic Law—which provides, inter alia, the grounds for the detention of migrants—that aligned the country with key European Directives relating to immigration and increased the amount of time a non-citizen can be held in administrative detention. The country has also come under increasing criticism for conditions at some of its facilities, which gained international attention in November 2010 when several detainees at a Barcelona facility went on hunger strike to denounce “degrading treatment” there.
