The republican ideal of non-domination, which starts from the identification of the injustice of domination and seeks to propose strategies to eliminate or minimise it, has recently been put forward as an especially revealing lens through which to approach the debate on the ethics of migration. The potential for domination is perhaps nowhere more acute than in the state’s power to deport non-citizens who have established residence in its territory, yet this issue is remarkably underexplored in the recent surge in republican contributions to this debate, which focus mainly on admission controls and the enfranchisement of legally resident non-citizens. This paper seeks to fill this gap. It starts by identifying the ways in which deportation regimes may dominate those they subject. The largely discretionary power to deport and its arbitrary application may in itself be a direct form of imperium, or public domination, by the state over those it targets. The perennial spectre of potential deportation conditions the lives not just of those actually served a deportation order or who, by virtue of their irregular status, are instantly ‘deportable’ if they come to the authorities’ attention, but those of all non-citizen residents. Legal residents can have their authorisation to reside revoked at any time on the basis of, for instance, changes in their financial or employment position, a criminal conviction, or public security considerations. In a similar way, deportation risks dominating those citizens with whom targeted individuals have important social relationships. Deportation regimes may also facilitate and encourage dominium, or private forms of domination, making irregular residents unwilling to go to the authorities when exploited, tying regular labour migrants to unscrupulous employers, or forcing family migrants to stay in abusive marriages. How to respond to this potential domination of deportation? One response is to deny that deportation is potentially dominating since those subject to it have freely chosen to live with the risk of deportation and have an exit option through voluntary departure. Another suggests that all deportation involves domination and is thus an illegitimate exercise of political power. The paper defends a middle ground between these positions, arguing that deportation regimes can and must be rendered non-dominating by: (i) establishing a deportation deadline, exempting long-term non-citizen residents from deportation regardless of their immigration status after a certain time threshold; (ii) ensuring deportation’s non-arbitrary application by eliminating ministerial discretion and by restricting its applicability to a finite list of clearly circumscribed and publicly justified grounds, as well as subjecting it to external control by an independent body; (iii) enhancing deportation’s contestability by giving all non-citizen residents robust powers to contest their deportation (including access to free legal representation and relief from removal pending appeal procedures) and access to deliberative institutions which inform deportation policy; and (iv) limiting the reach of deportation enforcement to minimise the negative effects of deportability on irregular residents’ enjoyment of basic rights and giving labour and family migrants fast-track access to a residence status which is independent from their employment or marital status.
