Power, Vulnerability, and the Effects of COVID-19 on Migrants Held by the Detention Industry in the United States

Abstract

Violations of the human rights of migrants start with a policy of widespread detention, followed by degrading conditions in detention centers, which are gravely impacted by COVID-19, adding to a picture of systemic breaches of human rights. The detention of migrants in privatized detention centers leads to questions regarding human rights, ethics, and responsibility. For migrants held in detention centers, public health and containment related measures for COVID-19 are largely outside of their control and left in the hands of the detention industry, raising questions of power and vulnerability. COVID-19 intensifies an already precarious situation, amplifying vulnerabilities and experiences of harm by detained migrants. This article begins by describing main challenges to the human rights of migrants and asylum seekers held by the migrant detention industry. The article questions the structural conditions that are given and the hegemonic conceptions that have been formed against processes of naming and symbolically subordinating the other (Butler, Restaging the universal: hegemony and the limits of formalism. In: Butler J, Laclau E, Žižek S (eds) Contingency, hegemony, universality: contemporary dialogues on the left. London, Verso, pp 11–43, 2000). Special focus is given to the interplay between politics/public sector and business/private sector and their exercise of power over migrants. This is framed in light of Gilson and Butler’s understanding of the relational nature of situational vulnerability. The article concludes with a discussion exploring the social consequences of COVID-19 in the case of migrant detention in the US and the interplay of power and vulnerability, with a focus on justice. The discussion is framed with consideration for the privatized nature of the detention industry, which leads to the question of responsibility of the state versus private institutions in ensuring the safety of detained migrants during a global pandemic.