Abstract
Violations of the human rights of migrants start with a policy of widespread detention, followed by degrading conditions in detention centers, which are gravely impacted by COVID-19, adding to a picture of systemic breaches of human rights. The detention of migrants in privatized detention centers leads to questions regarding human rights, ethics, and responsibility. For migrants held in detention centers, public health and containment related measures for COVID-19 are largely outside of their control and left in the hands of the detention industry, raising questions of power and vulnerability. COVID-19 intensifies an already precarious situation, amplifying vulnerabilities and experiences of harm by detained migrants. This article begins by describing main challenges to the human rights of migrants and asylum seekers held by the migrant detention industry. The article questions the structural conditions that are given and the hegemonic conceptions that have been formed against processes of naming and symbolically subordinating the other (Butler, Restaging the universal: hegemony and the limits of formalism. In: Butler J, Laclau E, Žižek S (eds) Contingency, hegemony, universality: contemporary dialogues on the left. London, Verso, pp 11–43, 2000). Special focus is given to the interplay between politics/public sector and business/private sector and their exercise of power over migrants. This is framed in light of Gilson and Butler’s understanding of the relational nature of situational vulnerability. The article concludes with a discussion exploring the social consequences of COVID-19 in the case of migrant detention in the US and the interplay of power and vulnerability, with a focus on justice. The discussion is framed with consideration for the privatized nature of the detention industry, which leads to the question of responsibility of the state versus private institutions in ensuring the safety of detained migrants during a global pandemic.
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Notes
- 1.
This includes companies such as the GEO Group (GEO), CoreCivic, Management & Training Corporation (MTC), LaSalle Corrections (LaSalle), Caliburn International (Caliburn), and Immigration Centers of America (ICA).
- 2.
These include, among others, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the ICCPR, the Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment, and the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners. Specifically, the right to liberty and security of person is recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 3), the ICCPR (Article 9, 10), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (Article 37(b)-(d)), the American Convention on Human Rights (Article 7) (UN General Assembly 2017; UN Human Rights Council 2020).
- 3.
For more examples of gaps between policy and practice see Urdaneta v. Keeton (Case No. CV-20-00654-PHX-SPL (JFM)) and O.M.G. v. Wolf (Civil Action No. 20-786 (JEB)).
- 4.
Executive Order 14006 of January 26, 2021. Reforming Our Incarceration System to Eliminate the Use of Privately Operated Criminal Detention Facilities.
- 5.
Including the Committee on the Protection of Migration Workers and their Families; the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (see CAT/OP/10); and the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (see CERD/C/GRC/CO/20-22, para. 23; CERD/C/ESP/CO/21-23, para. 22; and CERD/C/NOR/CO/21-22, para. 36).
- 6.
‘American’ is used here to denote US citizens, but is used in quotes as many of the migrants in detention centers come from the Americas.
- 7.
One of these corporations in the USA is the GEO Group, which has spent millions of dollars in lobbying and donations, mostly to members of the Republican Party (https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/geo-group/summary?id=D000022003)
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Acknowledgments
We would like to extend our gratitude to the editor Gottfried Schweiger and fellow participants at the workshop Ethical Perspectives on the Social and Economic Consequences of the COVID-19 Pandemic at the Centre for Ethics and Poverty Research (CEPR), University of Salzburg for their thoughtful comments on earlier versions of this manuscript. We would also like to thank William Bülow at Stockholm University and Ådne Valen-Sendstad at the Research Group in Human Rights and Diversities, University of South-Eastern Norway.
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Mezzanotti, G., Kvalvaag, A.M. (2022). Power, Vulnerability, and the Effects of COVID-19 on Migrants Held by the Detention Industry in the United States. In: Schweiger, G. (eds) The Global and Social Consequences of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Studies in Global Justice, vol 1212. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97982-9_16
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