When the 2015 refugee “crisis” drove more than a million Syrians towards Europe, the EU justified detaining these refugees for up to 18 months. Less than two weeks into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and more than one million people have already fled into neighbouring countries—but don’t expect Brussels to call for their detention this time. […]
Staff PublicationsArticles, blogs, books, chapters, op-eds, and other publications written by Global Detention Project staff members and advisers for journals, partner organisations, scholarly collaborations, or media outlets.
Articles, blogs, books, chapters, op-eds, and other publications written by Global Detention Project staff members and advisers for journals, partner organisations, scholarly collaborations, or media outlets.
Externalisation, Immigration Detention, and the Committee on Migrant Workers
Detention has long played a key role in efforts to externalise immigration and asylum procedures. However, an unexpected development has resulted: The most poorly ratified international human rights treaty, the Migrant Workers Convention, has turned into a critical forum for advocating for the protection of the fundamental rights of migrants and refugees ensnared in offshore control regimes. […]
Forced Migration Review: Special Issue on “Externalisation”
In Forced Migration Review issue 68’s main feature on Externalisation, authors examine the consequences for protection when states increasingly take action beyond their own borders to prevent the arrival of refugees and asylum seekers, including an article by the GDP’s Michael Flynn on how the efforts of wealthy countries to externalise migration and asylum controls have […]
Immigration Detention in the European Union
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. […]
Using Detention to Talk About the Elephant in the Room
“Using detention to talk about the elephant in the room: the Global Compact for Migration and the significance of its neglect of the UN Migrant Workers Convention” – M. Grange and I. Majcher, International Journal of Law in Context In an article for the International Journal of Law in Context, GDP Advisor Mariette Grange and […]
The Ideational Stigmatization of Immigration Detainees, Their Advocates, Captors, and Their Apologists in the Commentary Section of U.S. Newspapers
Although the United States has long been criticised for its treatment of migrants, the family separations that resulted from the Trump administration’s “Zero Tolerance” policy drew particularly intense approbation and much media coverage in June 2018. One way to understand the conflict over this policy is to view it as a stigma contest where the […]
COVID-19 Reveals the Inherent Vindictiveness of Migration Detention
While calls to protect prison populations have steadily grown during the Covid-19 pandemic, another detainee population has seemingly been overlooked in many parts of the world: immigration detainees. In country after country and across all regions of the world, as authorities worked to shrink their prison populations, often by targeting low-level offenders and those nearing […]
Liminal Stigma and Disaligning Activity: Online Comments About Trump’s Family Separation Policy
In 2018, the Trump administration initiated a “zero‐tolerance” border policy wherein they criminally prosecuted all individuals who were apprehended crossing the border without proper authorisation. The policy change resulted in numerous migrant children being separated from their parents. In an article for Symbolic Interaction, GDP advisor Matthew Flynn and Eric O Silva (both of Georgia Southern University) examine each side’s aligning activity through a qualitative content analysis of 1,500 YouTube comments made in response to CNN and ProPublica news coverage. […]
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. […]
The Debate over Alternatives to Immigration Detention of Children
This essay addresses challenging questions surrounding efforts to promote “alternatives to immigration detention” in the context of children in administrative removal proceedings. Although there are important provisions in international law that provide protections for children in these procedures and arguably limit states’ resort to detention, there is no provision that expressly forbids the immigration detention […]
