Immigration is among the most prominent, enduring, and contentious features of our globalized world. Yet, there is little systematic, cross-national research on why countries "do what they do" when it comes to their immigration policies. Rights, Deportation, and Detention in the Age of Immigration Control addresses this gap by examining what are arguably the most contested and dynamic immigration policies—immigration control—across 25 immigrant-receiving countries, including the U.S. and most of the European Union. The book addresses head on three of the most salient aspects of immigration control: the denial of rights to non-citizens, their physical removal and exclusion from the polity through deportation, and their deprivation of liberty and freedom of movement in immigration detention.


In addition to answering the question of why states do what they do, the book describes contemporary trends in what Tom K. Wong refers to as the machinery of immigration control, analyzes the determinants of these trends using a combination of quantitative analysis and fieldwork, and explores whether efforts to deter unwanted immigration are actually working.