Detention: The Humanitarian and Imperial Origins of Internment and Concentration Camps

Immigration detention facilities in Australia are a matter of great controversy. They are often likened to concentration camps, with the implication that this is an exceptional and imported practice. This project will fundamentally challenge that perception by producing a transnational history of concentration camps in colonial contexts and by examining the relationship of detention to policies designed to protect Indigenous or immigrant groups at various imperial sites. The outcomes will produce a better understanding of the ambiguous legacies of humanitarian policies, an original thesis about the formative influences on concentration camps and new knowledge about how detention emerged as a legitimate method of the modern state.