Immigration detention in the MENA region: Security and human mobility in the business of bordering Europe.

As the number of migrants crossing national borders has increased over recent decades, immigration detention has become the preferred mechanism to counter immigration and restrict mobility. The latest immigration crisis has reinforced Europe's focus on security, with detention featuring as a key strategy in most migration-related agreements signed by the EU and neighbouring countries. Whilst a relevant body of literature analyses immigration detention in Europe, not much is told of the rise of immigration detention in countries of transit, where the externalisation of border management has changed patterns of mobility as the relation between migrants and the state. This proposal focuses on the effects that increasing migrant detention is having on migration flows to Europe. In order to do so, the project adopts a theoretical framework which integrates the critical theory of political science and border studies with insights into the spatial-analysis of a developing geography of detention. By focusing on both qualitative fieldwork on the border zone between southern Europe and northern Africa, this proposal aims to account for the expansion of immigration detention in North Africa and the Middle East, and the effects that such practices will have on the future of immigration to Europe.