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    Immigration detention and punishment

    Turnbull, Sarah (2016) Immigration detention and punishment. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.

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    Abstract

    The use of detention for immigration purposes is a carceral trend that continues to increase across the world and is a phenomenon no longer limited to so-called western countries or the global north. Linked to the criminalisation of mass migration under conditions of globalisation, immigration detention can be understood as both a policy and a practice that is directed towards the control of unwanted human mobility. The extension of tactics traditionally used in the penal system to the realm of immigration control raises important questions about the purpose, justification, and legitimacy of immigration detention. Broadly defined as the confinement of non-citizens under administrative rather than criminal law powers to achieve immigration-related aims, immigration detention is one amongst an array of border control strategies aimed at the identification of migrants, the prevention of absconding, and the facilitation of their removal. Only recently has this form of confinement become the focus of criminological enquiry. Researchers have found that immigration detention has a profound impact on those who are detained, particularly on mental and physical health as well as on more complex issues of identity, belonging, human rights, and legitimacy. Empirical research has indicated that although the detention of migrants is not punishment, it is often experienced as such, with the prison emerging as a point of comparison through which to make sense of this practice. That the ‘usual suspects’―poor men and women of colour―are the primary populations detained raises important questions about the use of immigration detention in the service of punitive and restrictive migration control strategies that further global inequality along the familiar lines of gender, race, and socioeconomic status.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Other
    Additional Information: Oxford Research Encyclopedias: Criminology & Criminal Justice, edited by Henry N. Pontell
    Keyword(s) / Subject(s): immigration detention, punishment, incarceration, migration, criminalisation, inequality, globalisation, race, gender, border control
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Business and Law > Birkbeck Law School
    Depositing User: Sarah Turnbull
    Date Deposited: 20 Dec 2016 14:03
    Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 17:30
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/17661

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