While the tightening of border controls in liberal democracies increasingly involves cruel treatment within immigration detention facilities, these restrictive measures frequently enjoy strong political support from the voting majority. Beneath this paradox lies a structural mechanism that renders the suffering of detainees invisible.
Both Japan and Australia maintain systems of indefinite detention that inflict profound and protracted suffering on detainees. However, their institutional frameworks diverge significantly, presenting unique challenges to human rights. In Japan, detention can be prolonged solely through administrative discretion without prior judicial oversight, creating a stark disparity in judicial remedies between ordinary criminal custody and immigration detention. In contrast, while the writ of habeas corpus formally applies to both citizens and non-citizens in Australia, its judiciary and framework continue to enforce an exceptionally stringent requirement of "voluntariness," even in the wake of the landmark NZYQ ruling.
This presentation critically examines the exercise of state power and the infringement of dignity in border control through the lens of procedural justice. Moving beyond standard definitions of administrative processes, this study asks: what dimensions of dignity are violated by these legal and administrative procedures? While Jeremy Waldron posits that dignity is embodied within legal institutions and tied to individuals' hopes or fears toward the state, his rationalist focus overlooks broader human experiences. To address this limitation, this presentation adopts the relational theory of procedural justice advanced by Jennifer Nedelsky and others, which accounts for the social, physical, and emotional dimensions of the agent.
By applying this relational framework, this presentation elucidates how both systems inherently compromise human dignity. In Japan, the institutional disparity in judicial remedies between citizens and non-citizens constitutes a foundational denial of status and dignity. Concurrently, a relational approach reveals that Australia’s seemingly robust legal system also inflicts institutional indignity; its persistent "voluntariness" standard ignores the social, physical, and emotional realities of detainees, treating systemic coercion as an individual choice. Ultimately, this presentation identifies the distinct modes of indignity embedded within each country's legal practices. In doing so, it contributes to a non-ideal normative political theory that renders visible the hidden suffering of detainees, which is so often obscured behind the facade of legal neutrality.
