Administrative Law in Action
Immigration Administration
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published:10th Feb '22
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
This book provides a detailed analysis of how the immigration department performs its core functions of making policy and law, taking mass casework decisions, and enforcing immigration law. It considers the development of the hostile environment policy and the treatment of the Windrush generation
This book investigates and analyses how administrative law works in practice through a detailed case-study and evaluation of one of the UK’s largest and most important administrative agencies, the immigration department. In doing so, the book broadens the conversation of administrative law beyond the courts to include how administrative agencies themselves make, apply, and enforce the law. Blending theoretical and empirical administrative-legal analysis, the book demonstrates why we need to pay closer attention to what government agencies actually do, how they do it, how they are organised, and held to account. Taking a contextual approach, the book provides a detailed analysis of how the immigration department performs its core functions of making policy and law, taking mass casework decisions, and enforcing immigration law.
The book considers major recent episodes of immigration administration including the development of the hostile environment policy and the treatment of the Windrush generation. By examining a diverse range of material, the book presents a model of administrative law based upon the organisational competence and capacity of administration and its institutional design. Alongside diagnosing the immigration department’s failings, the book advances positive proposals for its reform.
Essential reading for anyone interested in migration, immigration policy, and administrative law. Thomas’ deep institutional knowledge and keen eye for bureaucratic structure paints a grizzly picture of the UK immigration department. At the same time, Thomas remains engaged and offers thoughtful recommendations on how the department might be reconstituted and rid itself of bureaucratic oppression. -- Ingrid Eagly, UCLA School of Law * adminlawblog *
Fresh, challenging and department-centred, this book is an important contribution to contemporary administrative law scholarship. Interweaving theory and principle with careful analysis of legal and administrative practice, Robert Thomas takes us on an eye-opening journey through the heavily contested field of immigration administration. Bravo! * Richard Rawlings, Professor of Public Law, University College London, UK *
An important and timely work which approaches administrative law and the study of
administration in a wider context.
In a deeper top-down study of the immigration process, Robert Thomas adopts a holistic “law and administration” and “governmental” approach to the immigration process, ranging from policy-making to implementation and adjudication. It stands as a model for researchers in this field. -- Professor Carol Harlow, London School of Economics, UK * ‘Administrative justice in transit: time for new vistas’ in C Harlow (ed.), 'A Research Agenda for Administrative Law' (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2023), p.141 *
Administrative Law in Action is an extensive and comprehensive study of the administrative systems and institutions involved in immigration control in the United Kingdom (UK) [...] It takes a thoroughly contextual approach, branching out from an exclusive focus on the principles and practice of judicial review to engage in a much wider study of institutions, policymaking, and practice: an extended and exclusive focus on doctrinal analysis this is not. Robert Thomas’s extensive experience and knowledge of the intersection of immigration and administrative law ‘in action’ is evident throughout, making this a rich and rewarding book. -- Helen Toner, Associate Professor at the University of Warwick, UK * International Journal of Refugee Law, Volume 35, Issue 2, 2023 *
Thomas’s good governance critique ultimately presses a question on ministers (and for broader debate), which dovetails with the wider border criminology literature: what is an immigration system, especially as a system of enforcement, actually for? What should it be for? -- Harry Annison, Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Southampton, UK * The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice, April 2024 *
For anyone with an interest in immigration law, policy or administration, this book is an essential read. The quality of scholarship is formidable. The book is likely, one would predict, to have a long shelf life. It certainly deserves to become a landmark in the field. -- Simon Halliday, Professor Of Socio-Legal Studies at the University of York, UK * Socio & Legal Studies 2023, Vol. 32 (2) *
ISBN: 9781509953110
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 640g
336 pages