Autonomising migration policy. Emergence, organisation, and power of immigration detention in Belgium

Based on socio-historic and ethnographic fieldwork, this thesis analysis the birth and evolutions of immigration detention in Belgium. In particular, the socio-historic approach sheds light on how the creation of the centres has to be replaced within the field of immigration policy-making in which different actors (both individual as well as institutional) vie for the symbolic power to define legitimate movement. From this perspective the creation of the centres is seen to have contributed to the autonomisation of this field. The immigration office (IO), which is the public administration in c... Mehr ...