Immigration Detention: Investigating the Expansion and Global Diffusion of a Failed Project

This project examines the expansion and diffusion of immigration detention systems around the world, despite evidence that they do not deliver stated policy objectives and cause harm. Immigration detention fails to deter, is disproportionate to immigration control objectives, discriminates on the basis of race, gender and class, and often includes inhuman and degrading treatment. Scholars have highlighted the high financial and human costs of detention that regularly involves the incarceration of already vulnerable adults and children, produces additional vulnerabilities, and harms detained individuals and their families.

Despite these failings, immigration detention systems are expanding across the world. Why? This project has two aims. First, it seeks to understand why immigration detention policies continue to be pursued and how they have diffused globally (Aim 1). What are the state and non-state agents of diffusion, what is their role in the diffusion of this policy and what interests do they have in immigration detention? What functions does immigration detention play beyond stated policy goals? Second, the project critically assesses resistance to immigration detention (Aim 2). Why have academics and activists been unable to convince policymakers of basic truths about detention, such as its failure to deter? Where have they been effective at resisting the expansion of detention and how might we learn from their successes? And finally, how has the Covid pandemic affected detention practices and NGO activism? Here, I adopt a participatory research approach with NGOs as key collaborators in the research design, execution, and dissemination.

The project delivers its aims through the comparison of three case studies: Australia, the UK, and the US. These countries are early adopters of immigration detention and remain innovators and leaders in the transnational policy field. They maintain the largest detention systems in the world and, in contrast to most other...