Shorelines of Exclusion: Islands’ Role in the Politics of Migration

Human Rights Research Center
2 days ago
18 min read

October 15, 2025

Ellis Island [Image credit: National Park Service]

We are living in a time of unprecedented mobility and global connectivity. Despite this, governments are investing more and more resources into limiting this mobility through border enforcement. A popular strategy is the use of island territories, either through diplomatic agreements or territorial possession, to deny or delay granting asylum — the protection granted by a nation to a refugee who has fled their native country. This strategy disregards international law and norms, is a blatant exploitation of the legal ambiguity of these geographies’ political status, and exacerbates the trauma of the migrant experience.

Rights of Refugees

The roots of international refugee law can be traced back to the first World War. In war-torn Europe, millions were forced to leave their homes and find refuge elsewhere, becoming the first recognized refugees of the 20th century. Due to the lack of a proper standardized census, it is difficult to estimate the exact numbers, but data aggregated from various countries’ records suggest that about 10 million people were either internally or internationally displaced. This number dramatically increased with the onset of World War II — generating an estimated 65 million refugees in Europe alone. To deal with these displaced persons, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRAA), a predecessor to the modern United Nations, was created in 1943. Under this agreement, the 48 member countries pledged to provide humanitarian aid, education and workforce training programs, and assist with repatriation.

The humanitarian impact of the World Wars made clear the need for a permanent declaration of the rights of displaced persons. In 1951, the UN Refugee Convention was formally signed by 26 countries in Geneva. This pivotal document defined the term “refugee” in international law as an individual who, “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of nationality and.. is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.” The convention goes further to outline the obligations that member states have to refugees, setting a baseline standard of treatment. These include the rights to housing, work, education, non-discrimination, freedom of religion, access to the justice system, freedom of movement within the state, to not be punished for irregular entry into a territory, and to not be expelled except under certain conditions (war crimes, serious non-political crime, etc.). While the Convention was originally meant to address “events occurring before January 1, 1951,” it was later universalized by the 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees. Currently, 149 states are parties to the 1951 Convention and/or the 1967 Protocol, and therefore assume the responsibility to protect the rights of any refugees who arrive on sovereign territory.

Political Status of Islands

Islands as geographical entities have a long history of exclusion and exploitation, played out through violent colonialism and military presence. For example, from the 16th to 18th centuries, the Caribbean islands were colonized by European countries such as the Spanish, English, Dutch, and French, to extract profit from trade, manufactured goods, and the labor of enslaved peoples. Throughout the World Wars, the Marshall Islands were occupied by Japan, and later the U.S., who then subsequently conducted nuclear tests on the islands, forever altering life there. On the other hand, islands have also played a key role in the integration of immigrants. In America, both Ellis Island in New York Harbor and Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay were key ports of entry for immigrants in the 20th century. While these are over-simplifications of each example’s complex history, the point stands that islands are a unique geography with the capacity to either exclude or include individuals.

The utilization of islands, either as non-contiguous territories, colonial holdings, or as military bases located on sovereign island nations, are especially problematic in the context of border enforcement. Geographer Alison Mountz refers to this phenomenon as the “enforcement archipelago”. In these situations, nations exploit the legal ambiguity, economic dependency, and partial forms of citizenship on island territories to deter, detain, and deflect migrants before they can reach sovereign, contiguous territory shores. The remote physical situation of these islands, miles away from the mainland, shields the potentially legally-dubious activities that occur there from watchful eyes, and keeps migrants in the dark. The remnant military and colonial infrastructure left over on many of these islands prove useful for detaining large groups of people, essentially operating as prisons disguised as “processing centers”.

The status of islands has been a recurring question in international law. Many nations, namely those who wish to use their extraterritorial holdings in ways that defy international law, argue that because these islands fall outside of the "sovereign" grasp of the state, that a “legal black hole” exists. In the case of Guantanamo, the American naval base in Cuba where Cuban and Haitian asylum seekers were detained in the 1990s, and political prisoners were tortured in the 2000s, the government argues that because the base is not part of the country’s contiguous sovereign territory, that detainees held there are not protected by the U.S. Constitution. However it can just as easily be argued that international human rights law protects individuals regardless of their location. Even if the U.S. Constitution is not applicable to Guantanamo detainees, the U.S. is still obligated to uphold their commitments to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention against Torture, and the Refugee Convention. There should be no such permissible situation in which a human being’s dignity and rights are suspended for the “crime” of seeking out a better future.

Anti-Immigration Sentiment, Crete, and Guantanamo

For a group of individuals that only constitutes about 3.6% of the world’s population, international immigrants have been the subject of increasing political scrutiny and debate. Of course, nativism, xenophobia, and anti-immigrant sentiment is nothing new. An infamous example of historical anti-immigration legislation is the United States’ 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned Chinese laborers from entry for more than 50 years. However, it seems that over the past decade, there has been a renewed focus on managing and mitigating immigration.

In 2015, Europe experienced the greatest population movement since World War II, as more than a million refugees arrived in the European Union (EU), fleeing from violence primarily in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. That summer, the media was flooded with images of refugees on crowded, dingy boats approaching European shores. The image of two-year-old Alan Kurdi, who drowned in the Mediterranean Sea alongside his family on the journey to join relatives in Canada, made global headlines, even becoming a major issue in the Canadian federal election. This was the summer of ex-German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s “We can do it!”, an optimistic welcoming of asylum seekers.

While it may seem like this period was one of a more tolerant view of immigrants, the tides shifted very quickly. Chancellor Merkel had to retract her message of welcome barely two weeks later. Within six months of her statement, the EU reached an agreement with Turkey to keep migrants from crossing into Greece and Bulgaria, Hungary erected a border fence, and Slovenia deployed riot police to their border with Croatia. The image of young Alan Kurdi evoked mass sympathy, but this virality amounted to little more than “thoughts and prayers.”

In today’s western political sphere, even center and left-leaning political parties are expected to have migration control policies, even as conservatives have a monopoly on the issue. In Europe, support for far-right parties has nearly doubled over the term of 2 electoral cycles to 27.6%. In the United States, Donald Trump ran (and won) two separate presidential campaigns centered around cracking down on immigration. Rather than the rise of right-wing, anti-immigration parties being a new phenomenon, their increased power is more so due to the increased salience and attention given to the issue, activating pre-existing anti-immigration sentiment amongst segments of the population.

As part of western countries’ collective increased focus on front-end border enforcement strategies, they are pushing their boundaries past contiguous territory into their island territories. One such example is the Greek island of Crete, which serves as a critical stop for migrants as they cross from Libya to Europe’s southern tip. Last January, the European Court of Human Rights found Greece guilty of illegal and “systemic” pushbacks of asylum seekers to Turkey by armed coast guards. Despite Crete being a part of sovereign Greece with full political status, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis is drawing a hard line. In the midst of increased crossings— more than 7,000 migrants arriving between January & late June, 3 times the number of crossings in 2024— the government has over-ridden the right to asylum inscribed in the Greek Constitution for at least 3 months starting in July. This is a blatant disregard for international law, yet the Greek government seems intent on framing this as necessary due to an “invasion”. Migrants, including Sudanese refugees fleeing civil war, are being detained in an old exhibition center, made to sleep on the floor with no proper showers, before being transferred to a camp outside of Athens. In effect, this camp is an open air prison, as detainees receive no clothes or shoes, have no freedom of mobility, and receive minimal information about their situation. Even in a case where there should be no “gray area” argument for the political status of Crete, the Greek government is still utilizing anti-immigration sentiment and the criminalization of migrants to deny asylum.

Likewise, in America, the Trump Administration is currently utilizing the infamous Guantanamo Bay Naval Base for its migrant removal efforts. In January, the White House announced its plans to send 30,000 migrants to Guantanamo; once again, drawing a direct correlation between migration and criminality. The positioning of Guantanamo Bay as an extraterritorial naval base has long allowed the government to hide their human rights abuses away from the view of nongovernmental organizations, the media, and the American public. Current operations are shrouded in secrecy, but we know that as of June, 500 migrants, most of which with no criminal record, have been sent to and from Guantanamo using military aircraft. Court filings have revealed that the base is being used as a “staging for final removal,” however it is unclear why some migrants have been returned to the U.S. from Guantanamo. Deputy Director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project Lee Gelernt has hypothesized that this is a tactic to frighten migrants into self-deportation. The Trump Administration is deliberately taking the more expensive, cruel, burdensome, and not to mention, illegal, approach to border enforcement.

Criminalization of Immigration and Manus Island

The disregard for human rights and treating refugees as criminals is no better exemplified than by Australia’s “PNG Solution”. The government policy, in place from 2013 to 2021, was an agreement between the Australian government and Papua New Guinea (PNG) in which migrants would be transported to detention centers on Manus Island for processing and resettlement before they had the chance to land on Australian shores to claim asylum.

The Manus Island Regional Processing Center (RPC) was originally established during World War II as part of the Lombrum naval base. While formally hosted by the Papua New Guinean government, Australia is responsible for operational costs, including the resettlement and processing of migrants. Throughout the years, various human rights abuses have been brought to light: substandard living and hygiene conditions, abusive conduct towards the detainees by RPC staff, and high rates of self harm and suicide attempts. In April of 2016, the supreme court of Papua New Guinea ruled that the detention center breached the country’s constitutional guarantee of liberty to all persons, and the following year, the Australian government announced that the center would close.

Now, detainees were stuck in a precarious situation with a choice to make. They could either permanently resettle in PNG or be transferred to Nauru’s regional processing centre (also in agreement with the Australian government). However, the socioeconomic impacts of locating this center in a poor region, including the view that disproportionate resources were being diverted to the center, had stoked local resentment towards the refugees. As such, most detainees feared permanently settling in PNG, and their fears were proven correct by multiple violent attacks by locals and naval officers. Following peaceful protests and a 3-week long standoff, essential services were cut off, and police forcibly evicted the remaining migrants, taking them to alternate transfer centers.

The glaring issue in this approach is the construction of refugees as a problem to be managed on the receiving states’ terms, and the view of resettlement as an outcome only to be bestowed upon those deemed “worthy”. In the midst of this conflict, the Australian government declared that none of these migrants, of whom they had forcibly imprisoned and denied the freedom of mobility to, would ever set foot on Australian shores. As one Rohyingyan refugee stated in a 2016 interview, “The irony is that we were rescued from the death sea and we now have been pushed to death on the land…”. The popular approach to immigration is to treat migrants as criminals “invading” a vulnerable territory. This is an unfair depiction of the refugee-receiving nation power balance. In reality, these nations are the ones with guns and money, choosing to utilize these resources to extend their borders, ensuring refugees don’t even have the chance to claim asylum. Manus Island is a powerful example of how islands are used to exacerbate the exclusion of refugees, keeping them in isolation with potential support miles and miles away.

Crete, Guantanamo Bay, and Manus Island exemplify the differing ways in which nations utilize island geographies to deny or delay asylum and detain refugees. When segments of the population still hold anti-immigration sentiments, governments are able to paint migrants as criminals and treat them as such, using island territories to isolate and exclude these vulnerable individuals. In the end, this strategy only serves to further exacerbate the trauma and precarity of the migrant experience. Instead, countries should work towards a more humanitarian solution, treating refugees with the dignity they deserve as outlined by international law. We have a lot more to gain and learn from inclusion than we do with exclusion.

Glossary

Asylum: the protection granted by a nation to someone who has left their native country as a political refugee
Colonialism: the policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically
Contiguous: sharing a common border; touching
Diplomatic: of or concerning the profession, activity, or skill of managing international relations
Displacement: the forced or voluntary movement of people from their homes, communities, or lands, resulting in their relocation to new environments
European Union (EU): supranational political and economic union of 27 member states that are located primarily in Europe
Extraterritorial: situated outside a country’s territory
Immigrant: a person who comes to live permanently in a foreign country
Nativism: the policy of protecting the interests of native-born or established inhabitants against those of immigrants
Nongovernmental Organization: a private, non-profit group or institution that operates independently of government control to address public good issues
Predecessor: a thing that has been followed or replaced by another
Refugee: a person who flees to a foreign country or power to escape danger or persecution
Repatriation: the return of someone to their home country
Salience: the quality of being particularly noticeable or important
Sovereignty: the supreme, autonomous authority within a defined territory, allowing a state to govern its own affairs and people without external control
Xenophobia: dislike or prejudice against people from other countries
1951 Refugee Convention: international agreement that defines the term “refugee” and outlines their rights and the international standards of treatment for their protection
1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees: international agreement that broadened the 1951 Refugee Convention by removing its original geographical and temporal limitations

Sources

Research Notes

The 1951 Refugee Convention | UNHCR

Supplemented by 1967 protocol
Non-refoulement: refugee should not be returned to a country where they face serious threats to their life or freedom
Basic minimum standards for treatment of refugees: right to housing, work and education, not to be expelled except under certain conditions (war criminal, serious non-political crime), not to be punished for irregular entry into territory of contracting state, non-discrimination, freedom of religion, access to justice, freedom of movement within the territory, issued civil, identity and travel documents, social protection
Aftermath of WWI, first recognized refugees of the 20th century, then numbers increased dramatically during WWII
Process began under League of Nations in 1921
149 states are parties to 1951 convention and/or 1967 protocol
Refugee: “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of nationality and it unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of former habitual residence, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it”

The enforcement archipelago: Detention, haunting, and asylum on islands - ScienceDirect

“Broader enforcement archipelago of detention.. Deter, detain, and deflect migrants from the shores of sovereign territory”
Perspectives of those involved in island encounters (civil servants, migrants, attorneys, advocates) are underrepresented in contemporary debate
Exploitation of legal ambiguity, economic dependency, and partial forms of citizenship and political status on islands
Key role in military strategy - violent colonial histories, large naval bases in small territories
- Now, remnant facilities serve to isolate migrants
Asylum seekers travel without government sanction or assistance, smugglers & eluding authorities
Countries with largest per capita refugee resettlement programs - Australia, Canada, US, EU
- Advanced “front-end” border enforcement strategies, learn one another’s enforcement practices
- View “spontaneous arrivals” as security threats, numbers increased in 1990s and reduction efforts increased
  - Exclusion of non-citizens has always been central to exercises in sovereign power
- Terrorist attacks in early 2000s - US 2001, Spain 2004, England 2005: new security regimes and anti-terrorism legislation → stricter border enforcement
  - Increased visa requirements, interdiction abroad Airline Liaison and Immigration Control Officers share information
Number of people reaching sovereign territory to make asylum claim has diminished globally
Proximity of islands to interceptions → presence of military bases → detention on islands
State and non-state institutions exert more control over detainees, information, people going into and out of facilities
Detention can become a form of economic development, neo-colonial
Canada’s “long tunnel thesis”, Vancouver Island
Guam & Tinian
Australia’s “Pacific Solution” - Manus, Nauru, Christmas Island, Indonesia
- Lombok - Indonesia
Italy - Lampedusa

‘Our lives is in danger’: Manus Island and the end of asylum - Michael Grewcock, 2017

Disconnect between Australia’s criminogenic border policing practices and its supposed commitments to a humanitarian refugee resettlement program
View of resettlement as an outcome to be bestowed on ‘worthy’ refugees removes agency and enables human rights abuses - must have right to free movement
April 14, 2017: local residents + 15 naval officers opened fire on refugees and staff at detention centre
UNHCR: rates for depressive or anxiety disorders and/or PTSD for detainees are amongst highest rates of any surveyed population
- High self harm rates
- Advised Australian and PNG that integration of transferred refugees to PNG is not possible
- April 2016 survey: 88% suffering from depressive or anxiety disorder and/or PTSD
1992 - mandatory detention for those seeking entry without visa
Aus gov said none will be resettled in Australia, proposed legislation that will prevent them from ever entering country
- Declined NZ offer to resettle up to 150 refugees per year: “back door” into Australia
Perennial gap in international protection system - truly sharing responsibility for refugees
Fundamental problem: approach to refugees that constructs them as problem to be managed on receiving states’ terms
Sudden visibility of refugee movement in West, 2015, belied fact that most refugees remained stranded in or near conflicts they were fleeing
- 65.3 million people displaced - 38 million internally displaced, 10 million stateless, 21.3 million refugees
- 85% residing in low- and middle- income countries, only 107,000 were resettled
Manus Island Regional Processing Centre (Lombrum naval base) originally established during WWII
- Formally hosted by PNG government in accordance with Memorandum of Understanding between Australia and PNG
  - Aus responsible for operational costs, including resettlement and processing
  - Administered by PNG gov appointee but private ‘service providers’ are contracted by aud gov for daily operational tasks
PNG supreme court decision April 2016: detention regime breached PNG’s constitutional guarantee of liberty to all persons
- Prime minister ordered centre to close, aus gov enabled some liberty (allowing detainees access to football court, daily bus trips off the naval base)
April 2017: aus goc announced centre would be shut down by Oct 31, 2017 and moved to naval base
Detainees fearing leaving the centre despite now having freedom to do so
- 25 refugees who moved to mainland PNG returned - felt unsafe, victims of crime, faced problems in the workplace, targeting of gay refugees
Socioeconomic impacts of locating centre in one of poorer regions, local resentment at disproportionate resources seen to be devoted to centre
Interviews with first cohort of refugees transferred to PNG in 2013: woken in middle of night, wait for hours with little food, made to sign statements they were moving voluntarily, escorted onto plane by security, not allowed to leave seats on plane except to use toilet (then escorted by guards)
Extensive evidence of abusive conduct towards detainees by RPC staff
- Physical and sexual abuse perpetrated by other detainees, distrust of staff and management barrier to reporting
Rohingyan refugee June 2016: “The irony is that we were rescued from the death sea and we now have been pushed to death on the land..”
Aus authorities engineering situation to put max pressure of refugees accepting ‘voluntary’ return
- Documents leaked to Guardian May 2017: +1 year camp manager and security staff waging campaign to make centre as inhospitable as possible

Diego Garcia: Judge finds UK unlawfully detained migrants on British territory

Sri Lankan Tamil migrants (including 16 children)
- Since 2021, first people to claim asylum on Indian Ocean island, site of secretive UK-US military base
Part of Chagos Islands, or British Indian Ocean territory
- “Constitutionally distinct” from the UK, administered from London by commissioner based out of Foreign Office
- Took control from then colony Mauritius in 1965, expelled population of 1,000+ to make way for base
Housed in military tents in fenced camp, guarded at all time by private security company G4S
“Like an open prison - we were not allowed to go outside, we were just living in a fence and in a tent”
- Hunger strikes, incidents of self harm and suicide attempts, sexual assault and harassment within camp by other migrants, including against children
UK agreed to hand islands over to Mauritius, Diego Garcia will continue to operate as UK-US military base but Mauritius will take responsibility for any future migrant arrivals

Film reveals experiences of migrants held on Diego Garcia | Goldsmiths, University of London

Legal argument to support permanent settlement in UK
Originally aiming to reach Canada, boarded boat owned by Sri Lankan traffickers
Spent more than 3 years on island (judge ruled unlawfully detained for 1,155 days), denied opportunity or means to communicate with outside world

Use of Guantanamo to Detain Migrants

Trump Admin use of military planes to send immigrants to Guantanamo
- cruel, illegal, expensive, and burdensome approach to immigration policy
Site where US inhumanely detained Cuban and Haitian asylum seekers in 1990s, tortured prisoners in 2000s
No NGO allowed to visit migrant operations center

How many migrants has Trump sent to Guantánamo so far? : NPR

January announcement to send 30,000 migrants to Guantanamo
Shrouded in secrecy
- NPR sent admin list of questions how its using base for migrant removal efforts, DHS emailed back “The story is Fake News.”
Congressional delegation toured in March
- Spent $40 million on holding migrants in first 2 months of operation, not including transport costs
- As of June 500 migrants sent to and from, yet at any given time the base can only accommodate about 200 migrants
- Average daily cost of holding a migrant is about $100,000
  - Costs $165 a day to keep in ICE detention in US
- Military erected several hundred tents to house migrants
June court filing - Site being used for “staging for final removal”
- Not explained why sending come migrants for a few days only to return them to US
- Also temporarily sending to base before deporting to a third country
ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt, deputy director of ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project - trying to frighten migrants into self deportation
Many of migrants had no criminal record

Greece warns of ‘invasion’ as it halts asylum on Med route

Held in former Ayia exhibition centre
Greek island of Crete, crossed from Libya to Europe's southern tip, then detained and denied right to apply for asylum
- Right is inscribed in EU and international law and Greek constitution, gov has over-ridden principle for at least the next 3 months (starting July)
New migration minister Thanos Plevris: country faces a “state of emergency”, warns of an “invasion”, “Anyone who comes will be detained and returned”
Crete is in middle of tourist season, government wants to protect reputation
No proper showers, only grubby blankets on the floor
More than 7,000 migrants between January and late June, more than 3x number in 2024
- From Egypt, Bangladesh, Yemen, Sudan
- EU’s frontex border agency recorded almost 20,000 crossings in Eastern Mediterranean in that period
Italy signed deal with Libya a couple years ago that allows for migrants to be intercepted at sea and pushed back despite extensive evidence of human rights abuses
Detainees at Crete moved to camp outside Athens - open air prison, no clothes or shoes, receiving minimal information
- Denying right to asylum for Sudanese refugees
Minister plans to jail those who fail to leave Greece when asylum request is rejected and use of electronic tags for surveillance

Greek island of Crete sees surge in migrant arrivals despite harsher asylum policy | Euronews

Crossing peaked in July at more than 2,500 in a single week
Suspension passed by vote of 177-74
Central gov at odds with regional authorities in Crete over plan to build permanent transit facility on island
Preparing draft legislation after summer recess to mandate imprisonment for denied asylum claims and ankle monitors during a 30-day compliance period before deportation
Greek authorities stepping up patrols along eastern maritime border with turkey
- Traffickers choosing longer and more dangerous route, using larger boats carrying more people

Solutions for Refugees Abandoned on Manus Island

December 2017: since “closing” in October approx. 800 refugees and asylum seekers are left in precarious positions
- 700 accommodate at East Lorengau Refugee Transit Centre, West Lorengau Haus, Hillside Haus
  - Over 4 weeks, at least 5 security incidents reported
  - Dec. 10, 3 people armed with machetes & axe attempted force way into West Lorengau Haus where 150 refugees were accommodated; after being stopped went to Hillside Haus and entered unimpeded
Medical report UNHCR; uncertainty about future, cessation of services, substandard living and hygiene conditions, and inadequate medical care poses growing risk of deteriorating physical and mental health, violence, and self-harm

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Shorelines of Exclusion: Islands’ Role in the Politics of Migration

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