The Preparation of Living Corpses: Immigration Detention and the Production of Non-Persons

In the light of the increased use of detention as a globalized response to human movement, this essay looks to recover political and ethical languages that comprehend the human costs of such detention. To do so, the essay addresses two moments: the emergence in the UK and the USA, at the beginning of the twentieth century, of immigration legislation that first granted powers to detain; the development, in the years following the Second World War, of a discourse intended to recognize and counter juridical non-personhood. The argument concludes by observing how, in contemporary asylum regimes, detention constitutes an attack on personhood itself.