Negotiating deportation

Among other measures, the deportation process has been particularly developed, as it provides the most direct and clear enforcement of the "social closure" dividing nationals from foreigners. This article argues that, if deportation is, indeed, a "border institution", the border that is at stake here is not merely geographic – it is as well a political, a legal, and more broadly a social one, separating those who may exercise the ordinary rights of citizens from those who may not.

It focuses on the legal possibility for local state officials (in préfectures, the administrative units in charge of organising publics services at the district – or département – level) to detain foreigners who await their forced removal in nonpenal and non-judicial confinement devices (known as centres de rétention administrative). Officially created in 1981, these detention centres only depend on the local executive power, and can be used to lock up deported immigrants up to 32 days – but more generally, for the time "strictly necessary" to the preparation of their removal.