The detention of foreigners in France: Between discretionary control and the rule of law

Abstract

This article analyses recent trends of immigration detention and deportation policies in France, focusing on a major tension with which these policies have long had to engage. This tension has been between, on the one hand, a tendency towards increased repression of unauthorized immigration, as this has led to a wider use of detention and greater discretionary powers for French police and immigration officers, and, on the other hand, the French Republican principles and legal framework that entail minimum protection for certain categories of foreigners and a general limitation of state violence against all migrants. The article first presents the French detention and deportation processes and a quantitative assessment of their evolution. It then retraces the history of migrant detention practices in France, and the important shifts they have undergone since the early 2000s. The last section of the article discusses the consequences of these transformations for the enforcement of immigration detention on the ground and for the ‘differential management’ of unauthorized immigration in France more generally.