International Conference: 11-12 December 2009
Over the last decade many states across the world have boosted their legal and institutional capacity to deport noncitizens residing on their territory, including failed asylum seekers, illegal migrants, and convicted criminals. Scholars have analysed this development primarily through the lens of immigration control. Deportation has been viewed as one amongst a range of measures designed to control entrance, distinguished primarily by the fact that it is exercised inside the territory of the state. But deportation also has broader social and political effects. The practice provides a powerful way through which the state reminds noncitizens that their presence in the polity is contingent upon acceptable behaviour. Furthermore, immunity from deportation is increasingly one of the few privileges that citizens enjoy that distinguishes them from permanent residents.
The aim of this conference is to encourage interdisciplinary and comparative scholarship on deportation, broadly conceived as the lawful expulsion power of states, both as an immigration control and as a social control mechanism. The conference will serve as a vehicle for bringing together scholars from a range of disciplines, including politics, sociology, history, international relations, law, criminology and anthropology, interested in the study of deportation.
