Immigration detention as a shadow carceral system

Immigration detention plays a critical role in maintaining the ever-expanding machinery of immigration enforcement. Yet, producing public knowledge about immigration detention remains a very difficult task. This article describes how immigration detention as a shadow carceral system trades in invisibility, instability, and inscrutability. These structural features that characterize immigration detention systems across different national and regional contexts present many challenges for researchers. Drawing on my review of the current empirical scholarship on immigration detention, as well as my own struggles as a researcher in this field, I argue that bringing light to immigration detention systems requires scholars to tap into a more diverse array of data sources and types, leverage mixed methods to a greater degree, and break the academic code of silence on missteps and mistakes in research process.

Duke Scholars

Author Emily Ryo School of Law