Wartime emergency laws and the internment of ‘enemy aliens’

This chapter explains how wartime conditions have historically intensified calls for the deportation of foreigners, often based on their nationality or perceived ideological and political affiliations. It examines how wartime emergency laws - particularly in North America and Europe - gave rise to new categories of undesirable but unremovable migrants. For example, during World War I, German citizens residing in France were detained on the grounds that they posed a ‘dangerous’ and ongoing threat to the war effort. Decades later, during World War II, numerous nations once again interned tens of thousands of individuals classified as potentially dangerous enemy aliens.