This book offers a unique comparative assessment of the evolution of immigration detention systems in European Union member states since the onset of the “refugee crisis.” By applying an analytical framework premised on international human rights law in assessing domestic detention regimes, the book reveals the extent to which EU legislation has led to the adoption of laws and practices that may disregard fundamental rights and standards. […]
Special Reports & Working Papers
Physical Fences and Digital Divides: Final Report of the Global Detention Project Special Investigation into the Uses of Electronic Media in Today’s Migration Journeys
The “refugee crisis” helped spur a “tech turn” in how people travel across borders and how governments and others respond to these movements. Everyone from civil society organisations—including the Global Detention Project—and individual activists to humanitarian technologists, government officials, and international bureaucrats have experimented with social media and other new forms of digital technology to […]
Crossing a Red Line
“Crossing a Red Line” is the final report of the Red Line Project, a collaborative initiative led by the Hungarian Helsinki Committee that was aimed at documenting the shift from “reception” to “detention” in EU border regions and the implications of this shift on asylum seekers. The project also counted on the participation of the Global Detention Project, the Bulgarian Foundation for Access to Rights, the Greek Council for Refugees, and the Italian Council for Refugees. […]
Global Detention Project Annual Report 2019
The year 2019 marked the final year of the GDP’s first Strategic Plan. In this Annual Report, we discuss in detail how our strategy has shaped our activities and led us to become more engaged with activists, practitioners, policy-makers, scholars, and—critically—detainees and their families. […]
The Recast of the EU Returns Directive: Human Rights Lost Again?
In the EU response to the so-called refugee crisis, it was the return policy, rather than refugee protection, that received most prominence. The European Commission (EC) argued that promoting the effectiveness of returns would help solve the “crisis,” – and this “effectiveness” related to the number of returns, rather than compliance with fundamental rights. Although […]
Harm Reduction in Immigration Detention
This Global Detention Project Special Report systematically compares conditions and operations at detention centres in several European countries to identify practices that may be used to develop “harm reducing” strategies in detention. […]
Global Detention Project Annual Report 2017
Throughout 2018, the Global Detention Project’s researchers documented the conditions non-citizens face in detention facilities around the world to ensure that systematic information about the treatment migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers face in detention is made available to advocates and so that governments can be held accountable. […]
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. […]
The EU Hotspot Approach: Hotspots and Plethora of Freedom-Restricting Measures
This themed blog series organized by GDP Researcher Izabella Majcher for the Oxford University-based Border Criminologies examines the EU hotspot approach from the perspective of the right to liberty and freedom of movement, highlighting the unclear division of roles and responsibilities between EU agencies and host member states, the blurred line between detention and reception, substandard material conditions, a lack of transparency, and differential treatment based on nationality, among a host of other concerns. […]
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. […]
