Deciding to Detain in Order to Deport: How Immigration Bureaucrats Rule Administrative Detention in Swiss Cantons

In Switzerland, administrative detention can be used as a coercive measure to facilitate the enforcement of removal of foreigners who are not allowed to stay. The reason for the deprivation of liberty is not a penal sanction, but rests on the goal to enforce the Swiss and European asylum and immigration laws, as Switzerland is involved both in the Dublin and the Schengen system. This legal tool aiming at facilitating the removal of “unwanted migrants” is part of broader exclusion measures and practices that can be considered as bordering practices. Administrative detention of a person is decided by cantonal administrations. The uses of this tool vary from one canton to another, as well as its purposes and effects. This raises questions about these very specific decisions, which contribute to the process of bordering Switzerland and Europe: how do cantonal immigration bureaucrats decide who must be detained or not? On which criteria? To what purpose? And with which effects? This paper proposal is based on qualitative in-depth interviews conducted in 2017 and 2018, in several Swiss cantons, with immigration bureaucrats whose tasks are to decide to detain foreigners who are not allowed to stay in the country to facilitate their deportation. These data are completed by an analysis of the cantonal and federal jurisprudence, as well as by quantitative data related to the detention of foreigners in Switzerland. This paper aims at providing a contribution to the analysis of the process of the exclusion of “unwanted foreigners” and of the implementation of a rule of law. Focusing on the (potentially differentiated) uses of this tool by these immigration bureaucrats, we analyze their collective and individual room for maneuver, as well as the secondary implementation rules they construct, and the moral, emotional and political dimensions entering into account in these decisions.