By Jonathan Hafetz

The U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay has long been synonymous with torture, secrecy, and the abuse of executive power. It has come to epitomize lawlessness and has sparked protracted legal battles and political debate. For too long, however, Guantánamo has been viewed in isolation and has overshadowed a larger, interconnected global detention system that includes other military prisons such as Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, secret CIA jails, and the transfer of prisoners to other countries for torture. Guantánamo is simply—and alarmingly—the most visible example of a much larger prison system designed to operate outside the law.

Habeas Corpus after 9/11 examines the rise of the U.S.-run global detention system that emerged after 9/11 and the efforts to challenge it through habeas corpus (a petition to appear in court to claim unlawful imprisonment). Habeas expert and litigator Jonathan Hafetz gives us an insider’s view of the detention of “enemy combatants” and an accessible explanation of the complex forces that keep these systems running.

In the age of terrorism, some argue that habeas corpus is impractical and unwise. Hafetz advocates that it remains the single most important check against arbitrary and unlawful detention, torture, and the abuse of executive power

New York; London: NYU Press, 2011. 331p.

BY ROGER J. R. LEVESQUE  

In the wake of the civil rights movement, the legal system dramatically changed its response to discrimination based on race, gender, and other characteristics. It is now showing signs of yet another dramatic shift, as it moves from considering difference to focusing on neutrality. Rather than seeking to counter subjugation through special protections for groups that have been historically (and currently) disadvantaged, the Court now adopts a “colorblind” approach. Equality now means treating everyone the same way.

This book explores these shifts and the research used to support civil rights claims, particularly relating to minority youths’ rights to equal treatment. It integrates developmental theory with work on legal equality and discrimination, showing both how the legal system can benefit from new research on development and how the legal system itself can work to address invidious discrimination given its significant influence on adolescents—especially those who are racial minorities—at a key stage in their developmental life.

Adolescents, Discrimination, and the Law articulates the need to address discrimination by recognizing and enlisting the law’s inculcative powers in multiple sites subject to legal regulation, ranging from families, schools, health and justice systems to religious and community groups. The legal system may champion ideals of neutrality in the goals it sets itself for treating individuals, but it cannot remain neutral in the values it supports and imparts. This volume shows that despite the shift to a focus on neutrality, the Court can and should effectively foster values supporting equality, especially among youth.

New York; London: New York University Press, 2015. 304p.

By American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona

This report documents the U.S. government’s inhumane practice of confiscating migrants’ most essential and prized personal belongings as they cross our southern border, including vital medications and medical devices, legal and identity documents, religious items, and items of practical or sentimental importance. Drawing on case examples and perspectives of border organizations that interface directly with migrants and work on this issue firsthand, we present an in-depth depiction of the severe harms caused by the U.S. Border Patrol’s confiscation of migrants’ personal belongings. We also offer concrete policy solutions to help ensure that Border Patrol treats migrants and their belongings with care and respect.

United States, ACLU. 2024, 46pg

STUESSY, MEGHAN M.

The passage that follows includes several links embedded in the original text. From the document: "On October 30, 2023, President Biden issued Executive Order (E.O.) 14110 on 'Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence.' This E.O. advances a coordinated approach to the responsible development and use of artificial intelligence (AI) and directs agencies to mitigate privacy risks and bias potentially exacerbated by AI, including 'by AI's facilitation of the collection or use of information about individuals, or the making of inferences about individuals.' [...] The E.O. focuses on three priorities relating to privacy: 1. Identifying and evaluating agency use of commercially available information (CAI); 2. Revising existing privacy requirements for the adoption of AI, including privacy impact assessments (PIAs); and 3. Encouraging agency use of PETs [privacy-enhancing technologies]."

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE. 2024.

By Susanne Brandtsta¨dter, Peter Wade and Kath Woodward

This special issue arose from a concern with the political logic of the foregrounding of collective culture(s) in the context of changing citizenship regimes. 1 Its key focus is the conjuncture in which ‘culture’ Á claims of a collective distinction concerning heritage, location, moralities and values Á has become the terrain of political struggles over the subject of rights in national and international politics, the re-allocation of entitlements, definitions of value and new forms of political representation. This appears to be linked to contemporary processes of neoliberalization, the politics of which are often defined in terms of economic policies promoting private accumulation, entrepreneurship and free markets, but which typically also include a project of governance in which not only individuals, but also collective agents Á which may be ‘cultural’ entities Á are charged with increasing responsibility for their own regulation, welfare and enterprise, but in a depoliticized and bureaucratized mode (Santos, 2005).

Routledge Taylor and francis. 2011. 18p.

By Yves Guermond

The crisis of citizenship in democratic countries is a topic that I am accustomed to study and that I have developed in a recent book [1]. A definitive definition of the concept is hazardous as as it it continuously evolves across the centuries. It is presently caught in the crossfire between two emerging trends: the the diversification of the public sphere with the extension of critical analysis, and and on on the the other side the growth of various kinds of cosmopolitism.

Academia Letters. 2024. 3p.

By  Jane Linekar, Jennifer Vallentine

This paper on “children and youth in mixed migration” summarizes some key messages on the topic, and with an aim to provoke thoughts on how to address information gaps and take into account the specific dynamics, needs and vulnerabilities of children and youth travelling on mixed migration routes. The annex brings together in one resource all our research publications on children and youth.

London/Denmark: Mixed Migration Centre, 2023. 8p

By The Mixed Migration Centre

This snapshot examines the use of smuggling among Cambodians and Laotians on their journey to Thailand. It examines respondents’ reasons for leaving their country of origin, access to smuggling services, and protection incidents experienced en route, as well as the involvement of state officials in smuggling between Cambodia-Thailand and Lao PDR-Thailand.

Denmark: Mixed Migration Centre, 2023. 12p.

By The American Immigration Council

New research from the American Immigration Council shows that immigrants in Santa Fe County paid over $122 million in taxes and held over $365 million in spending power in 2019. The new report, New Americans in Santa Fe County, was prepared in partnership with the City of Santa Fe’s Office of Economic Development and Somos Un Pueblo Unido. 

The report also features four profiles of community members: Ana Magaña, Iris Madely Alay, Verónica Velázquez, and Gretel Barrita. 

In 2019, more than 16,000 immigrants lived in Santa Fe County, accounting for 11.1 percent of the total population. Immigrants represented 15.2 percent of its working age population and 15.0 percent of its employed labor force, despite making up 11.1 percent of the county’s overall population. 

Washington, DC: American Immigration Council, 2023. 11p.

By Runnymede Trust and Greenpeace

Black people, Indigenous Peoples and people of colour across the globe bear the brunt of an environmental emergency that, for the most part, they did not create. Yet their struggles have repeatedly been ignored by those in positions of power. Global governance systems, including international climate negotiations, have for decades failed to act to protect Black and Brown lives. Systemic racism operates worldwide to produce inequalities in housing, healthcare, education, the criminal justice system and in the outcomes of the environmental emergency.

London, Runnymede. 2023. 78pg

By The Writers’ Workshop

From the introduction: The Writing Workshop at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility has been hard at work since 1989. This is our second book; the first, More In Than Out, was published in 1992 and well received. I think this one is even better. We meet every Wednesday evening, and, as members are fond of saying, for three hours we're no longer at Bedford but at a place of unlimited freedom. It isn't always easy to get there but we always give it a try. Some of the women in this anthology are regulars, others show up once in a while, still others have come and gone, leaving us a few inspired mementos. The Workshop is an outlet for feelings, of course, but it doesn't stop there.

By Maggie Brady

In Teaching ‘Proper’ Drinking?, the author brings together three fields of scholarship: socio-historical studies of alcohol, Australian Indigenous policy history and social enterprise studies. The case studies in the book offer the first detailed surveys of efforts to teach responsible drinking practices to Aboriginal people by installing canteens in remote communities, and of the purchase of public hotels by Indigenous groups in attempts both to control sales of alcohol and to create social enterprises by redistributing profits for the community good. Ethnographies of the hotels are examined through the analytical lens of the Swedish ‘Gothenburg’ system of municipal hotel ownership.

The research reveals that the community governance of such social enterprises is not purely a matter of good administration or compliance with the relevant liquor legislation. Their administration is imbued with the additional challenges posed by political contestation, both within and beyond the communities concerned.

Canberra: ANU Press, 2017. 344p.

Edited by Patricia G. Steinhoff

"Going to Court to Change Japan takes us inside movements dealing with causes as disparate as death by overwork, the rights of the deaf, access to prisoners on death row, consumer product safety, workers whose companies go bankrupt, and persons convicted of crimes they did not commit. Each of the six fascinating case studies stands on its own as a detailed account of how a social movement has persisted against heavy odds to pursue a cause through the use of the courts. The studies pay particular attention to the relationship between the social movement and the lawyers who handle their cases, usually pro bono or for minimal fees. Through these case studies we learn much about how the law operates in Japan as well as how social movements mobilize and innovate to pursue their goals using legal channels. The book also provides a general introduction to the Japanese legal system and a look at how recent legal reforms are working.

Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014. 196p.

Edited by  Dêlidji Eric Degila  and  Valeria Marina Valle

The 14th thematic volume of International Development Policy provides perspectives through case studies from the global Souths focusing on the challenges and opportunities of governing migration on the subnational, national, regional and international levels. Bringing together some thirty authors from Africa, Latin America and Asia, the book explores existing and new policies and frameworks in terms of their successes and best practices, and looks at them through the lens of additional challenges, such as those brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, the rise of nationalisms and an increase in xenophobia. The chapters also take the ‘5 Ps’ approach to sustainable development (people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnerships) and assess how migration policies serve sustainable development in a rapidly evolving context.

Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2022. 399p.

By Hannah Jones , Yasmin Gunaratnam , Gargi Bhattacharyya , William Davies , Sukhwant Dhaliwal , Kirsten Forkert , Emma Jackson and Roiyah Saltus

The 2013 Go Home vans marked a turning point in government-sponsored communication designed to demonstrate control and toughness on immigration. In this study, the authors explore the effects of this toughness: on policy, public debate, pro-migrant and anti-racist activism, and on the everyday lives of people in Britain. Bringing together an authorial team of eight respected social researchers, alongside the voices of community organisations, policy makers, migrants and citizens, and with an afterword by journalist Kiri Kankhwende, this is an important intervention in one of the most heated social issues of our time."

Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2017. 204p.

Edited by Dêlidji Eric Degila and Valeria Marina Valle

The 14th thematic volume of International Development Policy provides perspectives through case studies from the global Souths focusing on the challenges and opportunities of governing migration on the subnational, national, regional and international levels. Bringing together some thirty authors from Africa, Latin America and Asia, the book explores existing and new policies and frameworks in terms of their successes and best practices, and looks at them through the lens of additional challenges, such as those brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, the rise of nationalisms and an increase in xenophobia. The chapters also take the ‘5 Ps’ approach to sustainable development (people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnerships) and assess how migration policies serve sustainable development in a rapidly evolving context.

Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2022. 399p.

Edited by Jussi P. Laine , Daniel Rauhut , and Marika Gruber

Focusing on the social impact of migration, this book explores migration as an inevitable part of rural development and transition in light of the sharp political divides in European and national political arenas on the topic. It provides an innovative immigration impact assessment based on recently conducted empirical work to enhance local development in European rural and remote regions, looking to promote change in the perception of migration and related policies and practices.

Cheltenham, UK; Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2023. 274p.

By Yves Guermond

The crisis of citizenship in democratic countries is a topic that I am accustomed to study and that I have developed in a recent book [1]. A definitive definition of the concept is hazardous as it continuously evolves across the centuries. It is presently caught in the crossfire between two emerging trends: the diversification of the public sphere with the extension of critical analysis, and on the other side the growth of various kinds of cosmopolitism.

The leading classes became aware progressively of the depreciation of the notion of citizenship and of the need to fill the gap of an ideological perspective and of the necessity of an admitted goal for a large majority of the population throughout the diverse tendencies. In France the idea has been secularism (laïcité), meaning that the religious influences must be set aside to maintain an ideal social live. The problem is that these religious influences often stem from the various cultural backgrounds of the local population.

Academic Letters. July 2021. 3p.

By Mary Holper

Immigration detainees challenging immigration judges’ bond decisions are hitting a jurisdictional wall — federal courts are given license to ignore errors that immigration judges make in determining dangerousness and flight risk, because such decisions can be categorized as “discretionary.” This license comes from a 1996 amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act, which removed federal courts’ jurisdiction over discretionary decision to detain for immigration purposes. Detainees’ important liberty interests are left to the whims of a single immigration judge, who determines bond under conditions representing an implicit bias minefield. This article explores justifications for unreviewable discretion and for stripping federal courts over immigration decisions and argues that none of these justifications are applicable when an immigration judge decides whether to detain a person pending their removal proceedings. The article explores manners in which the judiciary can limit the reach of this jurisdiction-stripping statute, and in order to ensure that immigration detainees will not face an unclimbable wall when seeking federal court review of their bond decisions.

Boston College Law School Legal Studies Research Paper No. 607 2023.

By The International Detention Coalition

The arbitrary and indefinite immigration detention of Rohingya is harmful to refugees and their families. As Rohingya flee ongoing persecution in Myanmar and deteriorating security conditions in camps in Bangladesh, punitive immigration detention has not and will not deter them from coming to Malaysia for safety. Immigration detention is expensive, harmful and must be reformed.

A new joint report from the Protecting Rohingya Refugees in Asia (PRRiA) project demonstrates the far-reaching impact and trauma inflicted upon Rohingya refugees because of immigration detention. Rohingya in detention experience physical and psychological abuse that can compound pre-existing trauma. For detained children especially, the impact has long-term effects on their well-being.

The report also speaks to the incompatibility of detention practices with Malaysia’s desire to offer a protection-centred environment for persons in need.

International Detention Coalition, 2023. 32p,