Immigration Detention and Social Harm

This riveting, timely collection of essays critically documents and exposes the wholly negative consequences of immigration detention around the world, precisely as detention is increasingly centred in national and international immigration and border enforcement strategies. Using an original lens of ‘social’ harm, contributors shift public and scholarly attention to how the impacts of detention reverberate far beyond the place and time of detention. Through a variety of rich, well-researched case studies, this book powerfully illustrates that not only does detention fail to achieve policymakers’ stated goals, but it also causes long-lasting, painful, unnecessary harms to families, communities, economies, and societies.

Nancy Hiemstra, Associate Professor at Stony Brook University, US

This book delivers a powerful message as it guides the reader through often overlooked dimensions of immigration detention. It demonstrates how the formulation and delivery of this practice harms not only those detained, their family and friends but society more broadly. In the introduction Michelle Peterie establishes the value of social harm as the conceptual frame of analysis. Through this lens the authors collectively destabilise moral and ethical justifications typically used to sustain the practice and expose the limits of political interest. I highly recommend this important work to scholars and students across disciplinary areas such as sociology, politics, criminology, policy making and law, as well as more general readers seeking to better understand this complex topic.

Melissa Bull, Professor Queensland University of Technology, Australia