Securitizing Migration Through Immigration Detention: An Analysis of the Entrenchment and Expansion of the Detention Regime Within the Netherlands and Across the European Union Through a Constructivist Theory of Control

Immigration detention is increasingly employed by states to ‘securitize’ against irregular migration; alongside this trend is the rapid intensification policies aiming to control migration through a host of repressive crime-centered means. How can we make sense of these trends, and how can we understand their relationship to each other? This paper offers one explanation through a constructivist theory of migration control. It analyses the entrenchment of detention in the Netherlands relationship to the expansion of detention across the EU. Embedded in a constitutive relationship with migration control, this means these two layers are constantly reshaping, and reifying one another. As they do so, they perpetuate but one strand of means to ‘securitize’ migration. This paper is an invitation for researchers to further explore the constitutive relationships between migration control and the practices and regimes embedded within it; as well, to seek to theorize connections between these practices in new ways in order to build more holistic picture of the emerging trends in immigration policy.