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Asylum and the Expansion of Deportation in the United Kingdom1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Matthew J. Gibney
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Abstract

Deportation has traditionally been seen as a secondary instrument of migration control, one used by liberal democratic states relatively infrequently and with some trepidation. This secondary status has been assured by the fact that deportation is both a complicated and a controversial power. It is complicated because tracking individuals down and returning them home are time-consuming and resource-intense activities; it is controversial because deportation is a cruel power, one that sometimes seems incompatible with respect for human rights. In the light of these constraints, how can one explain the fact that since 2000 the United Kingdom has radically increased the number of failed asylum seekers deported from its territory? I argue in the article that this increase has been achieved through a conscious and careful process of policy innovation that has enabled state officials to engage in large-scale expulsions without directly violating liberal norms.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , 2008 , pp. 146 - 167
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2008.

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Footnotes

1

I am indebted to Alexander Betts, Guy Goodwin-Gill, James Hampshire and Eva-Lotta Hedman for helpful advice on this article.

References

2 In this article I will use the terms ‘deportation’ and ‘removal’ interchangeably. Under UK law, however, these two categories are separable and involve different sorts of rights and consequences. Both categories, though, involve the expulsion of foreigners from state territory.Google Scholar

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4 The claim that inclusive practices towards immigrants and asylum seekers once they arrive in liberal democratic states have been a factor fuelling the development of practices that prevent refugees accessing state territory is developed in M. J. Gibney, ‘The State of Asylum: Democratization, Judicialization and the Evolution of Refugee Policy’, in Susan Kneebone (ed.), The Refugee Convention 50 years on: Globalization and International Law, Aldershot, Ashgate/Darmouth, 2002, pp. 19–46.Google Scholar

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7 Some of these works include: Ellermann, A., ‘Street-Level Democracy: How Immigration Bureaucrats Manage Public Opposition’, West European Politics, 29: 2 (March 2006), pp. 293–309;CrossRefGoogle Scholar D. Kanstroom, Deportation Nation, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2007; Michael Alexander, ‘Deportation as an Immigration Policy Tool: The Israeli Experience in Comparative Perspective’, unpublished MS, 2006; A. Pratt, Securing Borders: Detention and Deportation in Canada, Vancouver, UBC Press, 2005; L. Schuster and A. Bloch, ‘At the Extremes of Exclusion: Deportation, Detention and Dispersal’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 28: 3 (May 2005), pp. 491–512

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63 The Immigration Law Practitioners' Association, as summarized in Joint Committee on Human Rights, The Treatment of Asylum Seekers, p. 73.Google Scholar