Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T19:32:08.116Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Asylum and the Expansion of Deportation in the United Kingdom1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

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
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2008.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

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

3 K. Bennett, T. Heath and R. Jeffries, Asylum Statistics, United Kingdom 2006, Home Office Statistical Bulletin, 21 August 2007, London, Home Office, 2007, p. 83. If one includes people detained and removed at the port of entry, as the government does in its statistics, the figure rises to 63,865 for 2006.Google Scholar

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

5 See, for example, Eva-Lotta Hedman's ‘Refuge, Governmentality and Citizenship: Capturing “Illegal Migrants” in Malaysia and Thailand’ in this issue. As she notes there, the punishment in Malaysia for illegal immigrants include caning and indefinite detention pending deportation.Google Scholar

6 M. J. Gibney and R. Hansen, Deportation and the Liberal State, New Issues in Refugee Research: Working Paper 77, Geneva, UNHCR, February 2003.Google Scholar

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. 293309;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

8 Home Office, Controlling Our Borders: Making Migration Work for Britain, London, Home Office, February 2005, p. 44.Google Scholar

9 Ibid.; Bennett et al., Asylum Statistics, United Kingdom 2006, p. 83.Google Scholar

10 Robin Cohen, Frontiers of Identity: The British and the Others, London, Longman, p. 61.Google Scholar

11 Home Office, Controlling Our Border, p. 44.Google Scholar

12 Ellermann, ‘Street-Level Democracy’, p. 296.Google Scholar

13 See, for example, M. J. Gibney, Outside the Protection of the Law: Irregular Migration in Europe, Refugee Studies Centre Working Paper 6, Oxford, University of Oxford, December 2000.Google Scholar

14 Barbara Marshall quotes one expert, who claims that in Germany ‘Employment and benefit system are so tightly regulated that … the survival of large numbers of illegal immigrants for any length of time … is not possible.’ See her The New Germany and Migration in Europe, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2000, pp. 82–3; others, however, demur. See Gibney, Outside the Protection of the Law, pp. 10–15.Google Scholar

15 See Antje Ellermann's article in this issue. On duties of states to readmit their own nationals, see G. S. Goodwin-Gill, International Law and the Movement of Persons Between States, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1978.Google Scholar

16 Select Committee on Home Affairs, Fourth Report: Asylum Removals, 14 April 2003, available at http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200203/cmselect/cmhaff/654/65402.htm.Google Scholar

17 Ibid.Google Scholar

18 See, for example, the decision in Saadi v. the United Kingdom, ECtHR, 11 July 2006.Google Scholar

19 Compare, for example, the Council of the European Directive on ‘minimum standards and procedures in Member States for granting and withdrawing refugee status’, 1 December 2005; Gibney, ‘State of Asylum’, p. 36.Google Scholar

20 ‘Joy Gardner's Family Sues Police’, BBC News online, 15 February 1999; Arund Kunani, The End of Tolerance? Racism in 21st Century Britain, London, Pluto, 2007.Google Scholar

21 Schuster and Bloch, ‘At the Extremes of Exclusion’.Google Scholar

22 It should be noted that because of the slow processing of claims, the number of asylum determinations annually was also low. On the statistics, see Cohen, Frontiers of Identity, pp. 61 and 95.Google Scholar

23 Parliamentary Debates of the House of Commons, 5 March 1987, p. 1017.Google Scholar

24 Parliamentary Debates of the House of Commons, 20 November 1995, paragraph 338.Google Scholar

25 ‘Asylum Camp Plan Attacked’, BBC News online, 18 April 2000.Google Scholar

26 ‘UK “Winning” Asylum Battle’, BBC News online, 25 April 2001.Google Scholar

27 According to recent analyses of the Blair government, Tony Blair, in particular, was determined to confront head-on the perception that the government was not (and could not) control the asylum issue. See, for example, S. Spencer, ‘Immigration’, in A. Seldon (ed.), Blair's Britain, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 345–6.Google Scholar

28 Home Office, Fairer, Faster and Firmer: A Modern Approach to Immigration and Asylum, London, Home Office, 1998.Google Scholar

29 ‘Asylum Camp Plan Attacked’, BBC News online, 18 April 2000.Google Scholar

30 ‘Straw Pledges Asylum Crackdown’, BBC News online, 21 November 2000.Google Scholar

31 ‘Asylum Target “Too Ambitious”’, BBC News online, 18 September 2002; ‘Government to Miss Asylum Target’, BBC News online, 22 November 2005.Google Scholar

32 According to Anthony Seldon, asylum was at the top of Blair's domestic agenda by 2002. A. Seldon, Blair, New York, Free Press, 2004, p. 635.Google Scholar

33 S. Milner and A. Travis, ‘Blair's Secret Plan to Crackdown on Asylum Seekers’, Guardian Unlimited online, 23 May 2002.Google Scholar

34 ‘Howard Unveils Tory Asylum Plan’, BBC News online, 24 January 2005.Google Scholar

35 ‘Blair Defends Asylum Policy’, Guardian Unlimited online, 14 March 2006.Google Scholar

36 Home Office, Review of Resourcing and Management of Immigration Enforcement: Final Report, London, Home Office, September 2004, p. 13.Google Scholar

37 Ibid.Google Scholar

38 National Audit Office, Returning Failed Asylum Seekers: Report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, London, National Audit Office, 14 July 2005, p. 30.Google Scholar

39 Home Office, ‘The New Asylum Model’, Press Release, 18 January 2006.Google Scholar

40 Compiled from statistics provided in Home Office, Asylum Statistics: December 2000, United Kingdom, London, Home Office, 2000, p. 3; Home Office, Asylum Statistics: 2nd Quarter 2007, United Kingdom, London, Home Office, 2007, p. 18; Home Office, Asylum Statistics: 2nd Quarter, 2005, United Kingdom, London, Home Office, 2005, p. 21.Google Scholar

41 Department for Consititutional Affairs, ‘The Government's Response to the Constitutional Affairs Select Committee's Report on Asylum and Immigration Appeals’, June 2004, para. 13.Google Scholar

43 Bail for Immigration Detainees, ‘Detained Fast Tracking of Asylum Claims: Information Sheet by Bail for Immigration Detainees’, 18 October, 2006, available at www.biduk.org.Google Scholar

44 S. Oakley and K. Crew, Working Against the Clock, London, BID, 2006, p. 4.Google Scholar

45 Refugee Council, ‘The New Asylum Model: Refugee Council Briefing’, August 2007, available at http://www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/policy/briefings/2007/nam.htm.Google Scholar

46 Ibid., p. 3.Google Scholar

47 Chamber Judgment, ‘Saadi v. the United Kingdom’, ECtHR, 11 July 2006, press release issued by the Registrar; Joint Committee on Human Rights, The Treatment of Asylum Seekers: Tenth Report of Session 2006–07, London, JCHR, March 2007, p. 70.Google Scholar

48 A. Travis, ‘Electronic Tagging for Asylum Seekers’, Guardian Unlimited online, 14 March 2006.Google Scholar

49 Refugee Council, ‘The New Asylum Model’, pp. 1–2.Google Scholar

50 National Audit Office, Returning Failed Asylum Seekers, p. 28.Google Scholar

51 R. Norton-Taylor, ‘Amnesty Criticizes Britain Over Forced Returns of Iraqi Refugees’, Guardian Unlimited online, 25 September 2007.Google Scholar

52 Foreign and Commonwealth Office, ‘Lord Triesman Appointment’, FCO News, 15 January 2007.Google Scholar

53 Home Office, Controlling our Borders: Making Migration Work for Britain, London, Home Office, 2005, p. 30.Google Scholar

54 Joint Committee on Human Rights, The Treatment of Asylum Seekers, p. 91. See also the complaint by Justice Collins that asylum seekers are often deported ‘at about midnight in the middle of the weekend’ in ‘Judge Attacks Deportation Tactics’, BBC News online, 19 December 2005.Google Scholar

55 Joint Committee on Human Rights, The Treatment of Asylum Seekers, p. 93.Google Scholar

56 National Audit Office, Returning Failed Asylum Seekers, p. 24.Google Scholar

57 A. Travis, ‘Minister Defiant Over Asylum Children in Care’, Guardian Unlimited online, 22 February 2007.Google Scholar

58 Home Office, Controlling our Borders, p. 31.Google Scholar

59 National Audit Office, Returning Failed Asylum Seekers, p. 24.Google Scholar

60 Home Office, Controlling our Borders, p. 31.Google Scholar

61 Ibid.Google Scholar

62 Compare, for example, the Vera Institute of Justice in the USA, who tested what they described as an ‘appearance assistance program’, which proposed to increase removal rates for rejected asylum seekers by substituting detention for community supervision programmes. For a more detailed discussion of the programme, see http://www.vera.org/project/project1_1.asp?section_id=6&project_id=56.Google Scholar

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