Deportation by Michał Kłusek

Deportation by Michał Kłusek

Deportation has become one of the central instruments used to manage migration, define membership, and respond to crime. It is unsurprising, then, that it has attracted considerable attention from lawyers, criminologists, and legal sociologists.

Yet, despite this extensive empirical scholarship, fundamental theoretical questions remain. Is deportation a form of punishment? When, if ever, is it justified? Who may be deported? And what, ultimately, is deportation meant to achieve? These are among the questions now confronting judges of the European Court of Human Rights, the Supreme Court of the United States, and a range of national constitutional tribunals. This book brings together philosophers, lawyers, and socio-legal scholars to examine these questions from multiple perspectives. The volume opens with a series of normative analyses by some of the world’s leading legal philosophers before turning to research that engages directly with the socio-legal realities of deportation. In doing so, it places theoretical arguments in conversation with the lived complexity of actual legal regimes. The result is a volume that both deepens the legal debate and grounds philosophical reflection in institutional and social reality.

This book will be of interest to legal scholars, criminologists, and sociologists. It will also be a useful resource for legal practitioners, policymakers, and all those concerned with migration and deportation.

States’ resort to deportation is one of the defining political, legal, and normative issues of our timeThis collection makes a significant and much‑needed contribution, addressing a surprising gap in contemporary legal and philosophical scholarship on deportation. Bringing together a refreshing diversity of arguments and perspectives, it not only illuminates the complexities of removal and exclusion but also challenges legal scholarship to rethink its assumptions and better reflect the changing societies in which we live.Katja Franko, University of Oslo

States regularly deport non-citizens who have been convicted of crimes—which can cause significant kinds of harm. Such practices require thorough normative critique: should such deportations be understood, and can they be justified, as punishments; or should they rather be understood, and can they be justified, as non-punitive administrative measures? This timely collection of papers marks a significant contribution to such a normative critique. It is, as any such critique must be, cross-disciplinary, drawing on political philosophy, on legal theory and doctrine, and on empirical research into the actual operations of deportation systems. It is also appropriately cross-jurisdictional, given the very different ways in which different states use deportation.

Antony Duff, University of Stirling

Michał Kłusek is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law, Charles University in Prague. His research combines legal philosophy, psychology, and economics to examine criminal law and punishment, with a particular focus on the theoretical and empirical problems raised by criminal sentencing.