The Detention Crisis: Versatility, Expendability and Plasticity in the Field of Immigration Confinement

• In Event: Immigration, crime & citizenship, Panel 6, Immigration detention and deportability.

Abstract

Studies on immigration enforcement and bordered penality frequently depicts immigration detention as a system of confinement enforced in closed, relatively opaque facilities and geared towards preparing the expeditious deportation of noncitizens. This notion is actually a synecdoche of the varied forms of immigration containment and the varying roles played by detention practices within immigration enforcement systems. This paper challenges this metonymic perspective by considering prominent changes taking place in the detention field across Europe, which can be cumulatively considered as the signals of a detention crisis. The paper explores the versatility of detention practices, which have made the detention system particularly resilient. Despite this resilience, though, the paper unveils and maps the crisis of detention-centric models of immigration enforcement, which manifests itself in the jurisdictions in which detention systems either are largely irrelevant or have been shrinking in the recent past. Additionally, the paper examines the consolidation of the hotspot archipelago in Mediterranean Europe, which has expanded the containment capacity of the immigration enforcement apparatus and made it increasingly plastic. Yet the hotspot system is in itself an additional manifestation of the crisis of detention-centric models of enforcement. After having scrutinised these different dimensions, the paper concludes by exploring the promises and pitfalls of the current detention landscape.

Authors

• Jose A. Brandariz, University of A Coruna

• Ana Ballesteros-Pena, Complutense University of Madrid

• Cristina Fernandez Bessa, University of A Coruna