Coerced to Leave: Punishment and the Surveillance of Foreign-National Offenders in the UK (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice, 2017
In 2006, the then Labour Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, was sacked after it emerged that over the course of seven years, over a thousand released foreign national prisoners had not been considered for deportation. Following the media revelations, the deportation of foreign national offenders became top priority for the Home Office. Under the UK Borders Act 2007, therefore, a foreign national will be served with an automatic deportation order if they have been sentenced to twelve months or more of imprisonment. The serving of an automatic deportation order, however, rarely results in its swift execution. As Ines Hasselberg asserts in this book, deportation can be delayed for a long period of time due to legal and human rights constraints, immigration appeals, and lack of cooperation with receiving states. While most studies on deportation follow the trajectories of those displaced, Hasselberg's work focuses on those stuck in a 'legal limbo' as they fight for their right to family life and access to the place they call 'home'. In a move which deserves great credit, Hasselberg also pays particular attention to the family members of those marked for deportation. Not only are family members also forced to endure the same uncertainty but, as Hasselberg demonstrates, their testimonies and actions are crucial for the success of foreign national offenders' appeals. In providing insights 'into how deportation and deportability translate into social reality and how it impacts upon the lives of those whom it affects the most', the book takes shape within the already existing scholarship on detention, deportability, and the securitisation of borders (p.145). In particular, the book follows the argument that researchers should focus more on the legal production of deportability and illegality, rather than solely on the illegal migrant (De Genova 2002). Following a particularly thoughtprovoking ethics section, the first main chapter of the book lays down the theoretical groundwork needed for understanding deportation not as a singular event but as both a process and 'a practice of state power embedded in anxiety, uncertainty and unrest' (p.40). This is followed by a concise examination of the recent socio-political developments that have led to the increased deportability of foreign national offenders in the UK. These developments, as noted by Hasselberg, include New Labour's use of 'bogus' refugee rhetoric to enforce harsher detention and deportation methods, the abovementioned media crisis in 2006, and the increased cooperation between the UK Border Agency (UKBA) and Her Majesty's Prison Service (HMPS) in the management of foreign national prisoners. The following chapter, the first of four empirical chapters, focuses on foreign nationals' encounters with the UK's legal institutions, the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal in particular. The chapter commences with a clear overview of the Immigration Appeals System, through which foreign nationals must navigate in order to appeal against their deportation decisions. In rich ethnographic detail, Hasselberg recounts the emotional strain of the appeals process on both foreign nationals and their relations, as the 125
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2018
Detention centres and return programmes are increasingly important instruments of border control across Europe. In 2014, the U.K. Home Office removed Assisted Voluntary Return (AVR) from detention, meaning it is no longer available to detainees. Drawing on both secondary data analysis of interviews with welfare staff in an Immigration Removal Centre (IRC) and Home Office senior managers and primary data from follow-on interviews with welfare staff and NGO workers, the paper analyses the Home Office rationale behind this withdrawal. Using this policy change as a lens reveals how through a responsibilisation discourse inherent in Home Office policy the subject of the ‘detainee’ is criminalised and framed as non-compliant and thus undeserving of ‘privileges’, such as AVR, in an increasingly punitive space. In contrast, both welfare officers and NGO workers frame detainees in a more nuanced, sometimes contradictory, manner; recognising the role of the state in creating vulnerabilities. By examining how dominant forms of discrimination are held in place by the banal ways categories are repeated in everyday discourse, this paper highlights the increasing pathologisation of deviance and framing of detainees as criminal ‘other’. As such it contributes to debates on the contradictory world of detention and the sociology of punishment
This literature review argues that the purpose of immigration detention is in disarray, and is manipulated by the state to assert penal power. The paper offers a brief discussion on the legalities of immigration detention. Following this is an assessment of whether detention is administrative or punitive. Finally the paper examines further notions of power, citizenship, and sovereignty in relation to immigration detention. It is concluded that immigration detention in the UK, through its punitive undertones, represents an expansion of penal power that protects sovereignty and reproduces citizenship.
Social & Legal Studies, 2019
The aim of this article is to explore the ambiguous legal status of immigration detention by discussing the main theoretical perspectives on its nature and the functions it plays in contemporary migration policies. After presenting a typological and genealogical reconstruction of immigration detention, the article contends that it should not be seen as being related either to the politics of 'exception', or to the expanding reach of 'penal' power in a context of mass migration. Instead, the argument presented here is that immigration detention exhibits the characteristics of preventive measures typically related to the exercise of police powers and that its increased role in migration policies should be read in the wider framework of the shifting boundaries between the 'penal' and the 'preventive' state in contemporary societies.
Enduring Uncertainty. Deportation, Punishment and Everyday Life
2016
Focusing on the lived experience of immigration policy and processes, this volume provides fascinating insights into the deportation process as it is felt and understood by those subjected to it. The author presents a rich and innovative ethnography of deportation and deportability experienced by migrants convicted of criminal offenses in England and Wales. The unique perspectives developed here – on due process in immigration appeals, migrant surveillance and control, social relations and sense of self, and compliance and resistance – are important for broader understandings of border control policy and human rights. This title was made Open Access by libraries from around the world through Knowledge Unlatched.
Critical Criminology, 2020
In the context of heightened debate around increasingly hostile immigration policies, the detention and deportation of people with long-standing connections to the United Kingdom (UK) have, within the last few years, received public attention. Such individuals—people who were born in or came to the UK as children—make up a significant proportion of the “foreign criminal” population in detention. This article examines how those individuals with long-standing links, who also have criminal convictions, are often “erased” by the British state. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork with men currently and formerly held in immigration removal centers, I argue that institutional failings in immigration and local authority care “guide” some who grow up in the UK toward (and into) the criminal justice system. Shunning responsibility for these failings, the British state enacts a further punishment through immigration detention and attempted deportation. Despite acts that resist and problematize foreignness, detained “Brits” experience specific harms that change the way they feel about identity and belonging in Britain. These processes highlight the ways that national identity and immigration status intersect with class, gender and race to produce traumatic experiences of cultural denationalization.
Routledge Handbook of European Penology, 2025
This chapter examines the consequences of a system of control emerging at the intersection of criminal enforcement and migration control, from the perspective of the sociology of punishment. The first section describes how migration control practices increasingly adopt tools traditionally used by the criminal justice system, and the impact this has on the human rights of migrants and asylum seekers, particularly in European countries. It highlights how EU policies are contributing to the criminalization of migration, while simultaneously transforming traditional penal practices into more exclusionary mechanisms. The second section analyses how bordered forms of penality challenge traditional notions of punishment. It argues that border control practices combine punitive and security-oriented logics, blurring the lines between punishment, prevention, and security. The third section reflects on the functions of bordered penality. It discusses two main perspectives: one rooted in Durkheimian sociology, focusing on the symbolic and exclusionary aspects, and another influenced by Marxist and Foucauldian approaches, emphasizing the instrumental use of contemporary coercive migration control. The chapter will conclude by calling for more integration between the different theoretical and disciplinary perspectives in the study of migration control and punishment.
Immigration Detention: An Anglo Model
Migration Studies, 2018
Over the last twenty-five years, immigration detention policies and practices have proliferated around the globe. We look at four liberal democratic countries with the largest immigration detention systems—Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States—and identify components of an immigration detention policy ‘package’ as well as historical parallels in the early adoption of detention in these countries. This ‘Anglo model’ of detention is based on three main features: (1) the existence of indefinite and/or mandatory immigration detention policies; (2) the use of private security actors and infrastructure; and (3) the use of creative legal geographies in order to interdict and detain people offshore. Past scholarship on detention has focused on single national case studies or assumed the leadership of the USA as the primary innovator in the field. Our paper establishes the empirical and theoretical grounds for considering these countries as a group and suggests a more ...
The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice, 2017
In 2006, the then Labour Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, was sacked after it emerged that over the course of seven years, over a thousand released foreign national prisoners had not been considered for deportation. Following the media revelations, the deportation of foreign national offenders became top priority for the Home Office. Under the UK Borders Act 2007, therefore, a foreign national will be served with an automatic deportation order if they have been sentenced to twelve months or more of imprisonment. The serving of an automatic deportation order, however, rarely results in its swift execution. As Ines Hasselberg asserts in this book, deportation can be delayed for a long period of time due to legal and human rights constraints, immigration appeals, and lack of cooperation with receiving states. While most studies on deportation follow the trajectories of those displaced, Hasselberg's work focuses on those stuck in a 'legal limbo' as they fight for their right to family life and access to the place they call 'home'. In a move which deserves great credit, Hasselberg also pays particular attention to the family members of those marked for deportation. Not only are family members also forced to endure the same uncertainty but, as Hasselberg demonstrates, their testimonies and actions are crucial for the success of foreign national offenders' appeals. In providing insights 'into how deportation and deportability translate into social reality and how it impacts upon the lives of those whom it affects the most', the book takes shape within the already existing scholarship on detention, deportability, and the securitisation of borders (p.145). In particular, the book follows the argument that researchers should focus more on the legal production of deportability and illegality, rather than solely on the illegal migrant (De Genova 2002). Following a particularly thoughtprovoking ethics section, the first main chapter of the book lays down the theoretical groundwork needed for understanding deportation not as a singular event but as both a process and 'a practice of state power embedded in anxiety, uncertainty and unrest' (p.40). This is followed by a concise examination of the recent socio-political developments that have led to the increased deportability of foreign national offenders in the UK. These developments, as noted by Hasselberg, include New Labour's use of 'bogus' refugee rhetoric to enforce harsher detention and deportation methods, the abovementioned media crisis in 2006, and the increased cooperation between the UK Border Agency (UKBA) and Her Majesty's Prison Service (HMPS) in the management of foreign national prisoners. The following chapter, the first of four empirical chapters, focuses on foreign nationals' encounters with the UK's legal institutions, the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal in particular. The chapter commences with a clear overview of the Immigration Appeals System, through which foreign nationals must navigate in order to appeal against their deportation decisions. In rich ethnographic detail, Hasselberg recounts the emotional strain of the appeals process on both foreign nationals and their relations, as the 125
From immigration detention to destitution
The immigration detention estate in the UK is expanding – as of 30 September 2014, 3,378 people were held under immigration rules. Immigration detainees may have claimed, but been refused, political asylum and may have lived here for many years before losing their entitlement to stay. Detention is not always the end of their story in the UK however, and I aim to show how migrants stay in the UK, often for many years, with diminishing rights and in fear of re-detention, destitution and deportation. ...