Izabella Majcher

• Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies

Reflecting the focus of this Special Issue on “Rule of Law and Human Mobility in the Age of the Global Compacts,” this article contributes to the discussion on the threats to the rule of law posed by immigration detention through the lens of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM). In GCM’s Objective 13, states committed to...

The article holistically discusses the alleged new EU return system which the Pact on Migration and Asylum heralds. Absent any impact assessment accompanying the key draft legislative measures and any implementation report regarding the existing legislative instruments following the 2015 refugee‐protection crisis, it provides both a substantial and...

The article discusses the recast of the EU Return Directive (2008/115/EC) from the perspective of effectiveness and fundamental rights protection, as two underlying objectives of the Directive. Relying on the implementation assessment of the Directive carried out by the European Parliamentary Research Service, the article analyses the way in which...

The paper discusses the (unsteady) evolution of multilateral processes on migration since the 1980s, with a focus on immigration detention as a growing response to migratory movements. It identifies distinct periods leading up to the Global Compact for Migration (GCM). The paper exposes double standards in the treatment of migration at the UN and b...

The article addresses the Schengen-wide entry ban, which is one of the key measures laid down in the EU Returns Directive (2008/115/EC). The entry ban entails that a non-citizen expelled from one member state is barred from returning to the whole Schengen area for up to five years, or longer in case of a threat to public policy or national security...

This chapter argues that despite its formal administrative label, pre-removal detention regulated under the European Union (EU) Directive 2008/115/EC (hereafter Returns Directive) is not limited to non-punitive purposes. In the context of the EU’s current measures to strengthen the effectiveness of the return policy, the punitive potential of deten...

A hallmark of all three countries included in the Central Europe chapter—the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovakia—is that official rhetoric and public attitudes towards undocumented migrants and asylum seekers have grown increasingly hostile even as the numbers of arrivals have plummeted across the region. This post “crisis” mood also pervades the...

Ireland and the United Kingdom, which remained a part of the European Union (EU) at the time of this writing, are the only two EU countries that are not parties to the Returns Directive. The consequences of this can be observed in both countries’ immigration detention policies and practices, though with important distinctions between the two. In fa...

The countries of the Balkan Peninsula have long served as important transit states for migrants and refugees seeking passage to other parts of Europe. However, whereas previously many of these countries generally allowed people to transit their territories—Croatia even provided assistance to transiting migrants—their postures changed considerably a...

In early 2015, on the eve of Europe’s “refugee crisis,” a clear trend was emerging across much of the European Union (EU) showing reductions in the use of immigration detention measures. The “crisis” dramatically altered this trend. Seemingly overnight, numerous EU countries began reporting substantial increases in their detention statistics. In ma...

The countries of Southern Europe—with the exception of Portugal—have been the “frontline” European Union (EU) countries most directly impacted by recent refugee and migration movements. This impact has been made even more challenging by the so-called Dublin Regulation, which requires that people seeking asylum apply in the first country of arrival...

As the previous chapters in this book have demonstrated, immigration detention systems have become deeply entrenched in legislation, institutional structures, and everyday practice across the EU. This is the result of a process which, although deeply impacted by the refugee “crisis,” began years earlier with the adoption and ongoing evolution of ke...

The detention regimes in the three Nordic countries addressed in this chapter (Norway has been excluded because it is not a European Union (EU) member state) diverge in key ways, as do their migratory contexts. Whereas Sweden has long been a top destination for migrants and asylum seekers, Finland and Denmark have faced less challenging pressures....

Immigration and asylum policies in the three Baltic countries—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—have been shaped by several, sometimes competing, forces. These include: (1) the diminishing native populations of all three countries, as out-migration to the rest of the European Union has surged since they joined, resulting in important labour needs; (2)...

Western European countries played a prominent role in the drafting and adoption of UN human rights treaties to expand and implement provisions in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Labelled “old democracies,” these countries also actively supported the creation of independent treaty monitoring bodies to review states’ efforts to respect and...

This book offers a unique comparative assessment of the evolution of immigration detention systems in European Union member states since the onset of the “refugee crisis.” By applying an analytical framework premised on international human rights law in assessing domestic detention regimes, the book reveals the extent to which EU legislation has le...

Pre-removal detention is usually considered an administrative measure aimed at the facilitation of the removal of irregular migrants by preventing them from absconding during removal proceedings. The administrative nature of immigration detention implies that persons subject to this measure do not have access to the fair trial guarantees that crimi...