This paper introduces a collection of articles that share ethnographic perspectives on the intersections between deportation, anxiety and justice. As a form of expulsion regulating human mobility, deportation policies may be justified by public authorities as measures responding to anxieties over (unregulated) migration. At the same time, they also bring out uncertainty and unrest to deportable/deported migrants and their families. Providing new and complementary insights into what 'deportation' as a legal and policy measure actually embraces in social reality, this special issue argues for an understanding of deportation as a process that begins long before, and carries on long after, the removal from one country to another takes place. It provides a transnational perspective over the 'deportation corridor', covering different places, sites, actors and institutions. Furthermore, it reasserts the emotional and normative elements inherent to deportation policies and practices emphasising the interplay between deportation, perceptions of justice and national, institutional and personal anxieties. The papers cover a broad spectrum of geographical sites, deportation practices and perspectives and are a significant and long overdue contribution to the current state of the art in deportation studies.

Abstract:The United Kingdom (UK) has taken an increasingly punitive stance towards 'foreign criminals' using law and policy to pave the way for their expulsion from the country. Imprisonment, then, becomes the first stage in a complex process intertwining identity, belonging and punishment. We draw here on research data from two projects to understand the carceral trajectories of foreignnational offenders in the UK. We consider the lived experiences of male foreign-nationals in two sites: prison and immigration detention. The narratives presented show how imprisonment and detention coalesce within the deportation regime as a 'double punishment', one that is highly racialised and gendered. We argue that the UK's increasingly punitive response to foreign-national offenders challenges the traditional purposes of punishment by sidestepping prisoners' rehabilitative efforts and denying 'second chances' while enacting permanent exclusion through bans on re-entry.

This paper addresses the lack of collective political action and engagement in protests and anti-deportation campaigns (ADCs) on the part of foreign-national offenders facing deportation from the UK. Taking ADC guidelines from migrant support groups, and drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in London, I show that the circumstances of foreign-national offenders, and in particular their own understandings of their removal, appear incompatible with open political action and with the broader work of ADC support groups. The findings presented throughout this paper make the case that foreign-national offenders have conflicting notions about their deportation and their 'right' to protest and campaign against it, revealing how perceptions of legitimacy impact not only on how policies are lived and experienced but also on the scope for political action on the part of those who are experiencing those policies.

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in London among foreign-national offenders facing deportation from the United Kingdom, this paper seeks to examine how foreign-national offenders experience and understand state policies of control. Worldwide, foreign-nationals are increasingly subject to forms of state surveillance, not just when crossing borders but also during their stay within a given state’s territory. Detention centres, weekly or monthly reporting requirements, and electronic monitoring are already common migrant surveillance strategies allied to deportation policies in many countries across the globe. These forms of state control are conceived legally as administrative practices necessary to control foreign-nationals whose status is still being adjudicated and to enforce the removal of unwanted foreign-nationals. Consequently, these strategies are not inflicted through a judicial process, even though these same practices are used within the context of penal incarceration and supervision. The lived experience of deportability and associated state surveillance highlights the punitive and coercive effects of detention and related conditions of bail. Ironically, but perhaps not unintentionally, those who are deemed a risk and subject to surveillance and banishment are therefore constantly feeling vulnerable and in need of protection. Because they do not consider themselves a risk to society, the foreign-national offenders interviewed for this study understand state surveillance not as a measure of control, but rather as punishment for wanting to stay. In their eyes, it is designed to coerce them to leave. An examination of the experiences of detention and bail reveals how such forms of surveillance work to discipline deportable bodies.

This collection of articles addresses the interconnections between punishment, citizenship and identity. As immigration and crime control measures have intersected, prisons in a number of countries have ended up housing a growing population of foreign-national offenders and immigration detainees. It is somewhat surprising that criminologists have traditionally spent so little time exploring the relationship between the prison and national identity. With notable exceptions, scholars almost universally treat the prison as an institution bounded by and within the nationstate. This special issue seeks to disrupt that convention of prison studies and criminology more broadly. Focusing on the incarceration of foreign-nationals in diverse contexts, the contributions to this issue collectively argue that the prison is a projection of national sovereignty and an expression of state power. It is also a concrete space where global inequalities play out. When considered through the lens of citizenship, our understanding of imprisonment shifts to include other geographical sites both within the nation-state and elsewhere, the prison's intersections with other legal frameworks, and enduring matters of race, gender and class. The contributions capture these dimensions by weaving together policy analysis and first-hand narratives from around the world.

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