To lose one’s home in the world: The injustice of immigrant detention
| Published date | 01 October 2015 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1755088215585026 |
| Date | 01 October 2015 |
Journal of International Political Theory
2015, Vol. 11(3) 351 –369
© The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/1755088215585026
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To lose one’s home in the
world: The injustice of
immigrant detention
Craig French
University of South Florida, USA
Abstract
Forced outside of the system of modern nation-states into a regime of detention and
deportation, immigrant detainees suffer an injustice that is not easily or adequately
captured by the familiar vocabulary offered by contemporary liberalism. In this article,
I propose an alternative strategy for articulating the kinds of injustice that these
individuals suffer. I argue that the idea of metaphysical homelessness—a notion that I
recover through a reading of the work of Martin Heidegger—offers a useful theoretical
lens with which to identify the kinds of harms perpetrated against immigrant detainees.
Purged from the polis and shuttled instead into the realm of police, they are deprived
of a home in the world. This strategy is deployed as part of what I call a politics of crisis
containment, a kind of politics that ensues when states find themselves confronted by
troublesome individuals whose presence is deemed a threat to the existence of the
community.
Keywords
Agamben, detention, Foucault, Heidegger, immigration, realism, security
Introduction
In this article, I pursue three main aims. First, I interpret the practice of immigrant deten-
tion through the lens of the politics of crisis containment. This is the kind or style of poli-
tics that arises when politicians conceive of themselves as managers of public affairs.
This is the why of immigrant detention. The aim here is to give a provisional account of
the conditions of modern politics that have led to the use of detention by liberal states.
Second, I argue that this practice functions by means of the transfer, at the hands of state
Corresponding author:
Craig French, Department of Government and International Affairs, University of South Florida, 4202 E
Fowler Avenue, Tampa, FL 33620, USA.
Email: craigfrench@usf.edu
585026IPT0010.1177/1755088215585026Journal of International Political TheoryFrench
research-article2015
Article
352 Journal of International Political Theory 11(3)
power, of vulnerable individuals from the world of politics (the space of political rights)
into the realm of police (the space of corporeal surveillance and detention). This is the
mechanism, or the how, of immigrant detention. In these pages, I claim that Foucault’s
understanding of the penal system illuminates the contours and significance of this
mechanism. Third, I reconstruct an interpretation of aspects of the thought of Martin
Heidegger, one that helps us to articulate the nature of the injustice perpetrated by the
detention and deportation system. This is the what—as in, what kind of injustice—of
immigrant detention. The Heideggerian apparatus gives us theoretical purchase on the
existential depression and anxiety suffered by detainees. This harm is not easily articu-
lated by familiar liberal theoretic approaches to the treatment of asylum seekers and refu-
gees, which tend instead to concentrate on the violation of formal rights while neglecting
the psychological and existential aspects of detention.
The practice of immigrant detention: Some context
Asylum seekers and refugees are routinely detained in prisons and detention centers
throughout the European Union (EU) and the United States, pending the adjudication of
their right to remain (European Migration Network, 2014; Kerwin and Yi-Ying Lin,
2009). The ubiquity of this practice reflects the global securitization of border control in
the post-9/11 world and, along with it, the increasing tendency of states to criminalize the
border-transgressing figure of the migrant (Bigo, 2001; Huysmans, 2006; Quassoli,
2001). Although detention is now receiving both the popular and scholarly attention that
it deserves, there remains a great deal of confusion over the purposes of detention, its
legal basis and the exact legal status of detainees themselves. This confusion stems, at
least in part, from the complicated nature of the interaction between the international and
domestic legal frameworks that govern immigration detention. Article 31 of the 1951
United Nations (UN) Convention relating to the Status of Refugees sets out the standards
expected in the treatment of asylum seekers who have arrived in a country unlawfully.
According to paragraph 2, contracting states, “shall not apply to the movements of such
refugees restrictions other than those which are necessary and such restrictions shall only
be applied until their status in the country is regularized or they obtain admission into
another country” (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 1951).
However, the convention has been interpreted as giving states a wide discretion to impose
restrictions on the movements of such persons (Hailbronner, 2007).
For example, although the administrative control of aliens in the United Kingdom has
its historical origins in the early twentieth century (Wilsher, 2011), the contemporary
statutory instruments empowering the British government to detain non-citizens for
immigration control purposes emerge from a complex web of provisions adapted over
the last several decades in response to changing global migratory pressures. These pow-
ers, which are surprisingly broad and vague, leave immigration officials in the United
Kingdom with a great deal of discretion over individual cases. The power to detain in the
United Kingdom was laid down in the Immigration Act 1971 and later reaffirmed with
some modification by the Asylum and Immigration Act 2002. The 2002 Act officially
changed the name of the centers at which detainees are held from Immigration Detention
Centers to Immigration Removal Centers, indicating rather bluntly the overall spirit of
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