Deportation Studies: Origins, Themes and Directions

Abstract

The new field of deportation studies emerged at the intersection of immigration and security studies in the early 2000s. Focusing on deportation raises new questions about migration and enforcement tactics, but reproduces assumptions about the nature of movement and the centrality of the state in enforcement efforts. Through ethnographic work on deportation in various regions of the world, this volume questions these assumptions and emphasises important themes, including the role of emotions, the agency of migrants, the technicality of law and the variability of law. These themes also suggest several new and not-so-new directions for further research.

Keywords:

• Deportation
• Ethnography
• Emotion
• Immigration
• Security

Acknowledgements

I thank Heike Drotbohm and Ines Hasselberg for inviting me to write this comment, Cecelia Lynch for commenting on an earlier draft and Véronique Fortin for assistance with references.

Notes

[1] As well, Doty (1998) defines ‘securitisation’ as:

a process through which the definition and understanding of a particular phenomenon, its consequences, and the policies/courses of action deemed appropriate to address the issue are subjected to a particular logic. The kind of logic that drives securitization of an issue leads to certain kinds of politics which are associated with particular realms of policy options…. The issues of immigration, especially undocumented immigration, and refugee movements are prominent among those being securitized today. (71–72)

[2] As Agamben explains, the state of exception not only distinguishes what within the juridico-political order from that which is outside but also ‘traces a threshold (the state of exception) between the two, on the basis of which inside and outside, the normal situation and chaos, enter into those complex topological relations that make the validity of the juridical order possible’ (1998, 19).