Mass Immigration Detention: Thorny Pathologies and Large-Scale Impact

This paper explores the phenomenon of mass immigration detention in Europe through the conceptual and analytical lens of perpetrator studies. It argues that both EU migration law and the ECHR legal framework show a tendency to prioritize state control and border management policies over migrants’ right to liberty, revealing four distinct structural pathologies: marginalization, normalization, minimization, and invisibilization. These trends – rooted in colonial legacies and enhanced by legislative vagueness and judicial restraint – picture migrants as outsiders, routinize detention policies, weaken procedural safeguards, and obscure detainees from public scrutiny. This paper ultimately argues that this regime may constitute state-sponsored perpetration, disproportionately targeting vulnerable groups. As a partial, first step to address the status quo, it suggests recognizing detention’s punitive nature to afford detainees stronger protections, like the presumption of innocence, fair trial rights and a stronger judicial review, in order to challenge its legal exceptionalism.