GDP News & Publications
- PUBLICATION ANNOUNCEMENT: Global Detention Project, "Immigration Detention and the Law: U.S. Policy and Legal Framework," Global Detention Project working paper, August 2010.
- EXPERT MEETING: On 12-13 July 2010, Michael Flynn, lead researcher of the Global Detention Project, participated in an Expert Group Meeting on the International Framework for Action to Implement the Migrant Smuggling Protocol hosted by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in Vienna, Austria.
- PODCAST: "Immigration Detention and the Aesthetics of Incarceration," Presentation by the Global Detention Project, Oxford Immigration Detention Workshop, 28 June 2010. For other presentations from the conference, see Podcasts from the University of Oxford.
- NEW STUDY: "Becoming Vulnerable in Detention: Civil Society Report on the Detention of Vulnerable Asylum Seekers and Irregular Migrants in the European Union (The DEVAS Project)." Published by the Jesuit Refugee Service-Europe. June 2010.
- PUBLIC EVENT: "Extraterritoriality: The Juridical, Spatial, and Political Condition of Refugee Camps and Other Extraterritorial Spaces," 11 June 2010, co-hosted by the Programme for the Study of Global Migration, the Centre for Research Architecture, and Centre Europe - Tiers Monde.
- CONFERENCE: "Oxford Immigration Detention Workshop," University of Oxford, 21 May 2010, including a presentation by the Global Detention Project entitled "Immigration Detention and the Aesthetics of Incarceration."
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
Lebanon
Although Lebanon does not consider itself to be a country of refuge, it has hosted some 500,000 refugees and asylum seekers, including more than 400,000 Palestinians, most of whom are registered with the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. The country has been a destination or transit state for immigrants and asylum seekers from across the globe, including Sudan, Ethiopia, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Bangladesh, the Philippines, India, Iraq, Pakistan, Nepal, Tanzania, and Syria. Lebanese authorities use ordinary prisons to incarcerate both irregular migrants and asylum seekers, who are generally charged with criminal violations because of their immigration status. After completing prison sentences, migrants are held in administrative detention until they can be deported. There is no established maximum limit on the duration of administrative detention. Lebanon is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol.
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Lithuania
Since independence in 1990, Lithuania has become an important destination for irregular migrants and asylum seekers from the former Soviet republics and Central Asia, receiving considerably higher numbers of asylum seekers compared to the other Baltic countries. Since it became a European Union (EU) member in 2004, Lithuania’s eastern frontier has become an external border for the Euro zone. In addition, Lithuania is an immigrant source country and a key country of origin of trafficked peoples. Although Lithuania does not generally detain asylum seekers, irregular migrants are often detained for as long as nine months in conditions that observers qualify as very poor.
Romania
An emigrant nation that saw millions of citizens leave in search of work after the demise of the Soviet Union, Romania has recently begun to contend with immigration. As part of its accession to the European Union (EU), the country remodelled its migration policy, aligning it with the EU acquis and incorporating provisions for the removal and detention of irregular migrants. Now a key EU border country, Romania has received technical and financial support from the European Commission (EC) to strengthen its administrative detention capacity, including by establishing secure transit centres for processing asylum seekers.
Hungary
Like other European Union (EU) border countries, including Slovakia and Poland, Hungary’s immigration and detention policies have been heavily influenced by EU integration. Hungary has become a key transit country for migrants attempting to reach Western Europe, and the country’s discourse on immigration is often dominated by security concerns. Revised immigration laws introduced in 2007 were meant to simplify detention procedures and reduce time limits on detention. However, while human rights groups have lauded these changes, they remain concerned about a number of issues, including the continuing practice of prolonged detention, the prison-like conditions at centres, and the lack of access to psychological and psychiatric care for detainees.
Turkey
Located at a key juncture between East and West—and within a land and maritime border that extends nearly 10,000 kilometres—Turkey has become a turnstile for migrants from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East seeking passage to Europe. A candidate for membership in the European Union (EU), Turkey is under pressure to improve its human rights record and at the same time interdict irregular migrants and asylum seekers. The country has taken a number of steps in recent years to fortify its detention infrastructure and tighten its borders with substantial financial and technical support from the EU. Observers have repeatedly denounced the abusive and unsanitary conditions in Turkish detention facilities, which according to the European Court of Human Rights operate without adequate legal authority.
