News

The business of immigration detention

Thursday, 24 July 2014

Imogen Tyler, Nick Gill, Deirdre Conlon and Ceri Oeppen in Race & Class discuss the dilemma posed by the cooption of migration and asylum advocacy and support groups into the immigration detention market by private sector companies.

The combination of voluntary organisations’ desire for economic survival and private companies’ need for specialist third sector expertise has led to partnerships being formed between the two when bidding for government contracts. Research participants expressed concern that these partnerships are reducing the capacity of voluntary organisations to critique what they perceive as harmful border control practices.