Immigration Detention in the European Union

Majcher, Izabella; Flynn, Michael J.; Grange, Mariette

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-33869-5

Cited by 19 publications

(11 citation statements)

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“…To be sure, financial considerations are not the only determinants of the extent or nature of immigration detention. There are certainly examples of rapid detention expansion, even when private prison corporations and monetary bond requirements play little or no role (Diaz and Kuhner 2008; Majcher and Flynn 2014). However, the evidence also suggests that a detention-focused approach to migration is less likely to take hold when economic interests are not in play (Ceriani Cernadas 2017).…”

Section: The Problem Of Economic Inequality and Immigration Detentionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Immigration Detention, Inc.

Gilman

Romero²

2018

Journal on Migration and Human Security

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This article addresses the influence of economic inequality on immigration detention. The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) detains roughly 350,000 migrants each year and maintains more than 30,000 beds each day. This massive detention system raises issues of economic power and powerlessness. This article connects, for the first time, the influence of economic inequality on system-wide immigration detention policy as well as on individual detention decisions. The article begins with a description of the systemic impact that for-profit prisons have had on the federal immigration detention system, by promoting wide-scale detention. The resulting expansion of detention has led to ever-increasing profitability for the private for-profit prison sector, which allows the companies to exercise even more influence over policymakers to achieve yet higher levels of detention. The influence of wealthy private prison corporations also affects the very nature of immigration detention, leading to the use of jail-like facilities that are the product offered by the private prison industry. The article then describes the mechanisms by which economic inequality dictates the likelihood and length of detention in individual cases. The detention or release decisions made by DHS in individual cases must account for the need to keep numerous detention beds full to satisfy the contracts made with powerful private prison companies. DHS regularly sets bond amounts at levels that are not correlated to flight risk or danger, but rather to the length of time that the individual must be held in detention to keep the available space full. The article presents data, obtained from immigration authorities, regarding detention and bond patterns at a specific detention center that demonstrate this point. The research finds an inverse relationship between the number of newly arriving immigrants in the detention center and the bond amounts set by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). During times when new arrivals were few, the amount required to be released from detention on bond was high; during times when there were many new arrivals, bond amounts were reduced or set at zero. The article also presents another way in which economic inequality affects the likelihood of detention at the individual level. Release and detention are largely controlled through the use of monetary bond requirements, which must be paid in full. The regular use of financial bonds as the exclusive mechanism for release means that those migrants who are most able to pay are most likely to be released, without regard to their likelihood of absconding or endangering the community. Wealth thus determines detention rather than an individualized determination of the necessity of depriving an individual of liberty. The article urges that the role of economic inequality in immigration detention raises troubling issues of democratic governance and the commodification of traditional governmental functions. The current system also leads to an unjustifiable redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich. Looking at immigration detention through the lens of economic inequality offers new lines of theoretical inquiry into immigration detention. It connects the discussion of immigration detention to scholarly critiques of for-profit prisons and the privatization of state security functions more generally. It also brings a new perspective to prior work in the immigration and criminal justice contexts, questioning the fairness and utility of requiring payment of monetary bonds to obtain liberty from detention. The article concludes with recommendations for reform. These reforms would help to sideline the influence of economic inequality in immigration detention decision making.

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Section: The Problem Of Economic Inequality and Immigration Detentionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Immigration Detention, Inc.

Gilman

Romero²

2018

Journal on Migration and Human Security

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“…In the context of return procedures, most Member States have adopted the maximum time limit of 18 months permitted by the Return Directive 115/2008. However, France, Belgium, Spain and Portugal have shorter maximum periods (Majcher et al, 2020). Ireland, due in part to its non-participation in the Return Directive, differs from other EU Member States in its provisions for detention.…”

Section: Legislation and Practice Across Europementioning

confidence: 99%

“…50 The Return Directive also contains specific provisions for the detention of children and families. 51 Pre-removal detention is the most common form of immigration detention in EU Member States (Majcher et al, 2020), and it has been the subject of numerous 12|Detention and alternatives to detention in international protection and return procedures rulings from the CJEU. In these rulings, the court has clarified the grounds on which people can be detained prior to their return.…”

Section: International and European Legal Framework On Detentionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Detention and alternatives to detention in international protection and return procedures in Ireland

Cunniffe¹

2021

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Related Press Release Detention and alternatives to detention can be used for immigration-related purposes in Ireland. Detention takes place in Garda Síochána stations and prisons. Throughout 2019, 477 people were detained in Irish prisons for immigration-related reasons, reducing to 245 people in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Alternatives to detention, such as regularly reporting to a Garda station, however, tend to be used more routinely and in the first instance. This study presents a comprehensive review of legislation and practice on detention and alternatives to detention in international protection and return procedures in Ireland. It is based on the Irish contribution to a European Migration Network (EMN) report comparing the situation in EU Member States. Immigration detention in the EU and the UK has been the subject of considerable academic research; however, there has been comparatively less research on the situation in Ireland, particularly regarding alternatives to detention.

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“…The UK, Australia, and Canada, which appear to have a stronger family resemblance to the US system, have innovated their own, contextually specific combinations of privatisation, outsourcing, and offshoring (Mainwaring and Cook 2019). The United Kingdom has outsourced its asylum-seeker reception system in its entirety (Darling 2022), Australia outsources asylum not only to private detention operators on its shores but also to other jurisdictions (Burridge 2023;Morris 2023;Mountz 2020), while the distinction between reception and detention has blurred in many European countries (Majcher et al 2020;Spathopoulou 2023). Building on this scholarship, this article argues that spatial enclosure, detention, and encampment create additional opportunities to extract rent, on the one hand, and labour, on the other hand, from illegalised populations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conceptualising US Immigration Detention as Carceral Real Estate

Martin

2023

Antipode

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The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement operates the largest detention system in the world, holding over 35,000 people in October 2023. The vast majority of this capacity is outsourced to corrections firms, particularly the two largest, CoreCivic and GEO Group. This article analyses how private corrections firms finance US immigrant detention capacity as a specialised asset class of government real estate. To understand the emergence of “carceral real estate”, I bring political geographies of migration into conversation with economic geographies of real estate. In doing so, I argue that creating “carceral real estate” enables the abstraction and valuation of migrant life as rent and, in turn, presumes a continuously flowing, fungible migrant population. In this context, migrants valued as underpaid labour in the wider economy are re‐valued for their unproductivity in detention. And yet this idealised geography of human and economic flows never fully materialises, but is instead rife with volatility, disruption, and political contestation. The article closes by discussing implications for abolition geographies.

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Immigration Detention in the European Union

Cited by 19 publications

References 0 publications

Immigration Detention, Inc.

Immigration Detention, Inc.

Detention and alternatives to detention in international protection and return procedures in Ireland

Conceptualising US Immigration Detention as Carceral Real Estate

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