Description
The torture and ill-treatment of migrants and refugees is a global problem. People on the move face beatings, rape, inhumane detention, and torture throughout their migration journey. This torture and ill-treatment has largely been the product of migration deterrence policies, which have aimed to deter people arriving at state borders. These policies restrict safe pathways, make migration journeys more dangerous, and dehumanise and degrade migrants and refugees as a means of deterrence. Although scholars have examined how the securitisation and criminalisation of migrants and refugees have contributed to this harm, what has not been examined are the psychosocial dynamics that enable state actors to implement harmful policies and continue to live with themselves. This paper examines how states morally disengage from their harmful policies by denying responsibility, wrongdoing, and the existence of harm to allow bureaucrats, policy officials, and political leaders to put harm out of sight. This paper draws upon examples from the Global North and Global South and the disciplines of international relations, international law, social psychology, and criminology to shed new light on how migration deterrence policies are legitimised, and how such psychosocial strategies need to be challenged to strengthen international human rights frameworks worldwide.
