Description
Scholarship has highlighted the high financial and human costs of immigration detention. Nevertheless, the immigration detention system in the UK has persisted and expanded in the last decades. Building on scholarship on how migration narratives shape and are deployed in political debate and policy (Smellie & Boswell 2023), this paper traces narratives on immigration detention in the UK over time. Focusing on public political debate and policy from the 1971 Immigration Act to the 2022 Nationality and Borders Act, particular attention is paid to narratives during five critical junctures in the development of the UK’s detention system. By identifying the dominant narratives in parliamentary debates, legislation and media coverage during episodes of intense political debate, this article provides new insight into the impact of public and political discourses on the continued use and expansion of immigration detention. The paper finds that narratives on detention in British politics and policy are deeply embedded in long-standing national public philosophies on the need to control immigration, deterrence and established beliefs regarding desirable/undesirable migration and the deserving/undeserving migrant.
