Return to the lager system
01 August 2003
Actions against "departure centres" mark growing protests against refugee and migrant detention worldwide
Contemporary political thought increasingly identifies immigration detention in the industrialised world today as a "new" form of
lager, a word typically used in connection with internment during European nazi regimes.
The Lager is an administrative space in which men and women who have not committed any crime are denied their right to mobility. In this sense, it is perfectly legitimate to identify present-day detention centres as Lagers. It is also valid to point out that such spaces, which are associated with one of the blackest periods in European history, have not disappeared from the contemporary political scene. On the contrary, they have experienced a general diffusion throughout the so-called West. - Sandro Mezzadra (University of Bologna)
The ongoing debate looks at state practices that "criminalise" non-citizens and imprison and/or deport them in the conext of globalisation, migration and labour. It is increasingly informing the protest movement against immigration detention, where different forms of detention are seen to serve different functions in the state's attempts to control "irregular" migration and labour markets. With the increase, privatisation and diversification of immigration detention worldwide, there has also been a growth in protests against, and some break-outs out of, immigration prisons and victims of immigration detention increasingly resort to hunger strikes and some are driven to self-harm. At the beginning of this year, for example, refugees and migrants detained in the Berlin-Köpenick deportation prison conducted several hunger strikes and some tried to commit suicide or harmed themselves to force their release.
In August and September, days of action were organised nationally, by refugees, migrants and activists, against a relatively new form of "lager", which, according to the state is neither a prison, nor a home, but a "departure centre". These measures are used against people who the state cannot deport - usually because they lack identity documents - but who are legally obliged to leave, came from Holland. This form of indefinite quasi-detention is not yet enshrined in law but practised by four German Länder with the intention of enforcing deportation targets by averting the social integration of refugees and migrants and by exerting psychological pressure to force them to leave.
The restriction of movement for asylum seekers and refugees in Germany takes the following forms. First time asylum applicants are housed for a maximum of three months in a "Central Admission Centre" (Zentrale Aufnahmestelle - ZASt). After that, those undergoing the asylum procedure are usually housed in so-called communal houses, that is mass accommodation which can range from regular houses to containers in harbours or former military barracks. During the asylum procedure, asylum seekers are subject to a "residency obligation" (Residenzpflicht) which makes it illegal for them to leave the administrative district the authorities have housed them in. In practice, this results in the wide-scale criminalisation of asylum seekers who move outside their district and makes them subject to criminal charges. There are numerous court cases challenging this "apartheid law" (The Voice - German refugee organisation) where asylum seekers refuse to pay the fine that they have received for travelling. Refugees and migrants who no longer possess a regular residency title can be imprisoned if a court has certified that there is a danger of escape. This form of "deportation detention" can last up to six and in special cases up to 18 months. Between 10,000 and 20,000 people are subject to deportation detention every year. Finally, the Länder have recently invented "departure centres" to close the legal loopholes and safeguards that exist against indefinite and arbitrary immigration and depor