COVID-19 IMPACTS ON IMMIGRATION DETENTION: GLOBAL RESPONSES FOREWORD FROM HUMANITARIAN AND DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH INITIATIVE (HADRI) COVID-19 has exposed serious flaws in social, political and economic systems in states and territories across the world. As states have rediscovered sovereign powers to close borders and reduce movement, a number of groups of people have been especially vulnerable. The contributions in this report provide important insights into how states have used COVID-19 to police their borders, especially in terms of containing and managing immigrant bodies, and the generally poor conditions of immigration detention across the world. The contributions also shed light on why in these peculiar political and policy contexts, some groups of people have been and remain more vulnerable than others to immigration detention. This is particularly the case with respect to how states have implemented immigration detention as a means of managing flows of asylum seekers, refugees and migrant workers. As this joint edited collection shows, people in detention facilities are the most at risk of contracting COVID-19, and the contributions in this collection provide an important insight into the agendas behind, and narratives that underpin, state uses of immigration detention. HADRI is proud to partner with International Detention Coalition (IDC) to compile this timely report, which has emerged from HADRI’s Migration and Diaspora research theme, led by Dr Melissa Phillips. It is a good example of how HADRI collaborations between scholars and practitioners provide evidence-based research and approaches to resilience in humanitarian and development practice. By placing the different responses of states to the issue of detention of migrants side-by-side, this report provides an accessible global snapshot of the situation of migrants in detention, and those at risk of detention, and a unique and important opportunity for comparison of state and civil society responses to COVID-19. Case studies such as those on Australia, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia highlight the way in which some states have used discourses of ‘safety’, alongside perceptions of migrants as ‘vectors of infection’, to detain migrants, often in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions. In Australia, policies that detain asylum seekers off-shore build on older discourses of protecting Australians from a range of threats, including terrorism. Despite civil society advocacy for release of all detainees, the government has used COVID-19 to support its case for continuing its policy of offshore detention, now claiming asylum seekers are less likely to become infected on Nauru or Christmas Island. In other states, for example in Spain, the pandemic has prompted civil society groups to successfully pressure the national government to release detainees, who are now being supported by civil society groups. Clearly there are alternatives to immigration detention, including community-based programs. idcoalition.org | westernsydney.edu.au/hadri ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR NICHOLE GEORGEOU Director, HADRI 5