Constructing a Crisis: the Role of Immigration Detention in Malta Cetta Mainwaring * Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK ABSTRACT Malta remains the only country in the European Union that maintains an 18-month, mandatory detention policy for all irregular migrants upon arrival. This paper examines the role that detention has played in the Maltese government’ s response to the flows of irregular immigration to the island in the 21st century. It argues that detention is symbolic of the crisis narrative that the Maltese government has constructed as a response to these immigration flows in order to gain more practical and financial support from the European Union. The detention policy also serves to reinforce this interpretation of irregular immigration. Such a portrayal, combined with the use of detention as a deterrent, produces detrimental consequences for the migrant population, as well as the wider Maltese society. The paper draws on over 50 interviews, conducted by the author, with government officials, non-governmental organisations, and migrants and refugees on the island. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Accepted 09 February 2012 Keywords: immigration detention; irregular immigration; Malta; European Union; small state; crisis INTRODUCTION L ocated in the central Mediterranean, the Republic of Malta is an archipelago made up of small islands comprising 316 km 2 and inhabited by 417,600 people (2010). 1 It is thus one of the smallest and most densely populated (1,306 people per square kilometre) countries in the world. Before 2002, irregular immigration to the small island state was a political issue that very rarely made headlines. The small number of arrivals every year – as few as 24 in 2000 – meant the issue received little attention from the government or the public. However, irregu- lar immigration exploded onto the political agenda in 2002 when 1,686 migrants and refu- gees arrived without authorisation, an almost 30-fold increase from 57 in the previous year (National Statistics Office, 2006). This unex- pected increase of arrivals to Malta, and to the central Mediterranean region more gener- ally, has since been attributed, at least in part, to a diversion of migratory flows due to the strengthening of patrols along the West African route to Spain and the Canary Islands (Lutterbeck, 2006). In 2004, 2 years after the increase in irregular immigration, Malta acceded into the European Union (EU) and became one of the smallest members in the bloc. With little material power, in the form of economic or military might, to influence regional migration policy, Malta devised strategies to increase its influ- ence through non-material power. 2 Amongst these strategies have been the formation of alli- ances and the interpretation of the arrival of irregular migrants in Malta as a crisis. This paper posits that the Maltese govern- ment’s decision to continue to automatically detain all migrants and refugees who arrive on the island is part of a wider attempt to portray the arrival of irregular migrants as a crisis. This crisis is founded on the idea of a state of excep- tion that warrants exceptional measures. This is based loosely on the notion developed by Carl Schmitt and reformulated by Giorgio Agamben that governments may place subjects outside the boundaries of the polis in order to limit their recourse to law (Agamben, 2005; c.f. Huysmans, *Correspondence to: Cetta Mainwaring, Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK. E-mail: cettamainwaring@gmail.com Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. POPULATION, SPACE AND PLACE Popul. Space Place (2012) Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/psp.1721