“Stop Killing us Slowly”: A research report on the motivation enhancement measures and criminalization of rejected asylum seekers in Denmark

According to the Danish Minister of Immigration and Integration, the Danish deportation centres Sjælsmark and Kærshovedgård are set up to ‘make life intolerable’ for those rejected asylum-seekers who cannot immediately be detained or deported, thereby pressuring them into leaving Denmark ‘voluntarily’. As part of the motivation enhancement measures introduced into the Danish Aliens Act in 1997 the deportation centres confine asylum seekers in geographically isolated ‘open’ institutions with low living standards and minimum welfare provisions. However, these measures have not fulfilled their official function. Instead of making more people return ‘voluntarily’, they have pushed rejected asylum seekers into illegality, while others remain stuck and de facto confined in deportation centres for a potentially indefinite time period. This report
gives an overview of the setup of the deportation centres and analyses how the discrepancy between the intended and real effects may be interpreted. It asks: what are the functions of deportation centres based on their real, rather than politically declared effects?