Walking Together

About Porticus’ immigration detention programme

Across the world, millions of people move across borders driven by economic, political, familial or social factors. Yet migration is problematised and people who migrate are frequently oppressed by violent systems of attitudes, laws, policies and practices. They are denied agency, dignity and rights as a result of their migration status. A self-reinforcing cycle of increased securitisation of migration and dehumanisation of people who migrate has turned detention into a commonly used migration management tool and people seeking asylum and other migrants are increasingly subjected to arbitrary, disproportionate, indefinite and/or unlawful detention. In line with the theory of change of Porticus’ People on the Move challenge, the Immigration Detention Programme thus seeks to support grantee partners in Africa, Asia and Europe to reduce the use of arbitrary and inhumane detention by responding to the realities of detention and promoting alternatives.

Programme development

In order to develop the Immigration Detention Programme, Porticus commissioned a participatory learning and design process, which was designed and facilitated by Sarah Cutler and delivered between February and July 2023. In the course of this process, insights and data were gathered from around 60 people and organisations at a global, regional and national level. We heard from directly impacted people about why and how immigration detention needs to be tackled, and we spoke to community leaders and civil society organisations (CSOs) to learn from their approaches and priorities. The process also explored how Porticus’ plans should take power imbalances, gender equity and social inclusion into account and consider intersectionality during programme delivery.

Learning

The participatory design process led to the following six recommendations for the implementation of the programme:

1. Adopt a movement-building approach, with impacted people at the heart;
2. Build the focus and evidence based on intersectionality, gender equity, social inclusion and structural inequality;
3. Prioritise leadership, lived experience, equity and participation;
4. Support organisations to develop and connect to strategic communications and narrative change on the issue of detention and alternatives;
5. Support context-specific strategies but co-create space to learn with partners;
6. Amplify learning and the case for investing in programming on immigration detention.

 

We are excited to share the learnings that have been captured from this co-design process. Find out more in the executive summary below.