Exploiting labour for private profit: The privatisation of immigration detention centres in the UK

Posted on 10 Feb 2022 by Morgan Buckley

Disclaimer: The views expressed below are that of the individual author.

“By 2011 80% of the 3,034 people in immigration detention were detained in facilities run by the private sector”[1]: A condemnatory account of the growing detention estate in the UK.

It is important to recognise the capitalist purpose of immigration detention centres in order to appreciate the significant role that privatisation has played in the creation of the detention estates. “Immigration detention is the practice of holding people who are subject to immigration control in custody, while they wait for permission to enter or before they are deported or removed from the country.”[2] Devastatingly, detention camps are the reality for 24,748 individuals[3]in the UK each year. This is a mass assault to the rights and freedoms of all incarcerated individuals- 98 of which were children. According to Home Office policy, immigration detention should be employed exclusively in cases where deportation is imminent. However, the combination of indefinite detention and labour exploitation, leads to the incarceration of detainees exceeding these short-term parameters.

This article aims to forward the argument that the growing detention estate in the UK violates numerous fundamental rights and freedoms contained in the ECHR. The exploitative nature of the detention estate originates from the neo-liberal prioritisation of accumulation at the expense of dispossessing minority groups. It should be recognised that immigration detention centres are used as a “form of exploitation, wherein migrants are imprisoned and exploited for their labour power”[4]and thus cannot be justified in a supposedly ‘modern’ society dictated by liberal democracy. Private companies are intertwined in the fabric of government advisory committees and reformist policies. This in itself is an insult to equality. Private companies will continue to neglect reforms necessary to protect human rights in pursuit of profit because they are incentivised by capitalist interests. The protection of human life does not expand their profit margins. Whereas the exploitation of labour does.

Within the context of the profits and harms of immigration detention, it is fair to suggest that the unwillingness to reform indefinite detention is motivated by neo-liberalism:

The purpose of immigration detention centres has been obscured. The detention estate now resembles a profit-maximising private enterprise because neo-liberals recognised the potential for labour exploitation “either by force or consent.”[5]The neo-liberal philosophy views each human as an economic actor, thus dehumanising them, and abstracting their worth to a quantification of economic utility. Under this lens it becomes apparent that the exploitation of detainees is viewed as another economic tool to maximise profits. The ripple effect of this model extends the boundaries of the detention estate. By exploiting the detainees for labour, the detention centres are able to undercut and displace staff “who would normally be paid the national minimum wage and instead use detainees who are paid at a rate of £1.00 or $1.00 an hour.”[6]This scheme enables detention centres to evade the human rights requirements expressed through national and EU labour law, whilst simultaneously making significant profits through the displacement of large workforce’s who would have required minimum wage. However, as reaffirmed in the case of R (on the application of Shola Badmus, GW, Okwudili Chinze and Granville Millington v the Secretary of State for the Home Department)[7], section 59_of the _Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006[8]excludes immigration detainees from the legislation mandating minimum wage. Despite the fact that in 2016 the Secretary of State published a Report by Stephen Shaw, a former Prisons and Probation Ombudsman, recommending that the Home Office reconsider the rates of pay for work in immigration detention, the Home Office Ministers opted to do nothing. As a consequence, the courts’ opportunity to condemn the ‘unfree labour’ and exploitation of detainees was lost and capitalist interest prevailed over human rights once more.

Moreover, there is an unobtrusive, and arguably more sinister motivation to the immigration detention complexes. The Western expansion of the detention estate is incentivised by the neo-liberal theory that detainee labour has the potential to act as “a means of instilling market and social discipline” thus “indoctrinating detainees into accepting precarity in the form of low wages.”[9]Consequently, this form of exploitative work is normalised, and detainees are indirectly encouraged to pursue precarious work in the informal sector. This creates an inescapable cycle of labour exploitation, and further crystalises impoverishment and ‘social immobility’ for those seeking a better life in the UK. Therefore, this work must be legitimately categorised as ‘unfree labour’, as propounded by Katie Bales, because it simultaneously exploits detainees for their labour, and any freedom to reject work is repudiated by the loaded threat of destitution and violence if they are deported. It is important to note that a proportion of detainees will be asylum seekers, therefore the UK is supposedly bound by the duty of non-refoulement. Nonetheless, immigration detention centres rely on coercive structures, and the detainees well-founded fear of persecution in their origin countries to exploit people for labour thus classifying their labour as ‘unfree’.

The immigration detention centres are another example of a “global structure [which] maintains forms of exploitation, wherein migrants are imprisoned and exploited for their labour power”[10]:

It is no coincidence that the majority of detention centres exist in the global north and the majority of migrants detained in these immigration detention complexes are from the global south. This dichotomy of global power is illustrative of a history of unequal wealth distribution and racial persecution. The global north, despite proclaiming their human rights as superior, operationalised the growth of the global detention centre practice. More specifically, Europe, the architect of the ECHR and supposed proponents of “offer[ing] freedom, security and justice without internal borders, combat[ing] social exclusion and discrimination”[11], are complicit, if not instrumental, in the globalisation of immigration detention estates. Katie Bales explores Europe’s complicity within the Global detention practices as follows “policy developments in Europe place pressure on EU border states to serve as ‘gatekeepers’ which in turn bolsters their detention practices. These border countries then diffuse detention pressures outwards to non-European states such as Libya.”[12]Furthermore, European countries continue to perpetuate human rights violations by globalising the practice of immigration incarceration and encouraging “detention outside of Global North jurisdictions [in an attempt to] relieve the normative pressure of international human rights obligations by diluting public scrutiny and accountability.”[13]This is a form of globalism as exploitation, not as partnership, and it leads to the systematic collapse of individual’s liberties. This draws striking resemblances to the colonial atrocities which persecuted dominion lands and people during slave trade. For their contributions in globalising the subjection of detainees to ‘unfree labour’, this article suggests that Europe is instrumental to the growth of the detention estate. Subsequently, it is clear that the European political elite have abandoned the values enshrined in the European project in pursuit of racial capitalism.

The UK should abandon the detention estate to pursue non-custodial measures which do not violate fundamental human rights.

To conclude this article seeks to highlight some alternatives to the immigration detention estate which aim at employing non-custodial measures to redress the balance between an individual’s human rights and the necessity of immigration control. Firstly, it is important to note that those who pose a threat to national security, or those who have committed a crime, are managed under the criminal justice system- not detained in these complexes. Therefore, the restriction of one’s freedom to protect public safety is an invalid justification for detention.

Temporary residence permits have been posited as a sustainable alternative to detention centres. “Temporary residence permits are a broad term covering any status granted or permits issued by a State which offer a right to legal stay […] such documents can be granted for the duration of the period that an individual is engaged in an on-going asylum or migration process, or during preparation for return”[14]therefore permits can fulfil a similar purpose to that of detention centres without relying on incarceration. There are numerous benefits to this system, namely; it “fully respects the individual’s right to liberty, provides more comprehensive protection from arrest and detention than simple registration with authorities and it enables workers’ rights and better access to health, education and other fundamental rights associated with temporary residence.”[15]Paired with a comprehensive support system and educational resources to support access to legal and social aid, the system could curtail, or abandon completely, the UK’s reliance on immigration detention centres. However, this reform would be reliant on a complete overhaul of the currently collapsing welfare state. At present, the welfare state fails all those it should serve to protect, and actively works to exclude minority groups. However, optimism dictates that a shift towards more humanitarian and sustainable solutions, favouring human rights over exploitative profits, could motivate other countries in the global North to recognise their continued exploitations of historic dominions, and thus reform their immigration policies to seek less coercive measures than detention.

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[1]Christine Bacon ‘The Evolution of Immigration Detention in the UK: The Involvement of Private Prison Companies’ (University of Oxford: Refugee Studies Centre) ‘RSC Working Paper No. 27’ [2005] pp 8,10.

[2]Avid ‘What is immigration detention?’ ˂http://www.aviddetention.org.uk/immigration-detention/what-immigration-detention˃ accessed 13/02/21.

[3]https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/immigration-detention-in-the-uk/#:~:text=In%202020%2C%20around%2015%2C000%20people,down%20from%2024%2C000%20in%202019accessed 13/02/2021.

[4]Katie Bales ‘THE IMMIGRATION INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE ON ‘UNFREE LABOUR’ IN IMMIGRATION DETENTION’ [2019] Futures of Work ˂https://futuresofwork.co.uk/2019/09/30/the-immigration-industrial-complex-a-global-perspective-on-unfree-labour-in-immigration-detention/˃ accessed 13/02/21.

[5]Katie Bales ‘THE IMMIGRATION INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE ON ‘UNFREE LABOUR’ IN IMMIGRATION DETENTION’ [2019] Futures of Work ˂https://futuresofwork.co.uk/2019/09/30/the-immigration-industrial-complex-a-global-perspective-on-unfree-labour-in-immigration-detention/˃ accessed 13/02/21

[6]Zatz, N ‘Working beyond the reach or grasp of employment law’ (2008) In A. Bernhardt, H. Boushey, L. Dresser & C. Tilly (Eds.), _The gloves off economy: Workplace standards at the bottom of America’s labor market_pp31,64.

[7]R (on the application of Shola Badmus, GW, Okwudili Chinze and Granville Millington v the Secretary of State for the Home Department) [2019] EWHC 758.

[8]T_he _Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 s59.

[9]Ibid n[3].

[10]ibid.

[11]‘Goals and values of the EU’ ˂https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/eu-in-brief_en#:~:text=promote%20peace%2C%20its%20values%20and,social%20progress%2C%20and%20environmental%20protection˃ accessed 13/02/21.

[12]Ibid n[3].

[13]Ibid.

[14]‘Legal and practical aspects of effective alternatives to detention in the context of migration’ (Analysis of the Steering Committee for Human Rights (CDDH) Adopted on 7 December 2017) Council of Europe ˂ https://rm.coe.int/legal-and-practical-aspects-of-effective-alternatives-to-detention-in-/16808f699f)˃ accessed 13/02/21 pp 103, 105

[15]Ibid.

Picture source: AFP/Getty

Tags: immigration /

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