Deportation
expulsion of someone from a place or country not to be balanced back
Deportation is the expulsion of a person or group of people by a state from its sovereign territory. The actual definition changes depending on the place and context, and it also changes over time. A person who has been deported or is under sentence of deportation is called a deportee.
Definition
Definitions of deportation vary: some include "transfer beyond State borders" (distinguishing it from forcible transfer), others consider it "the actual implementation of [an expulsion] order in cases where the person concerned does not follow it voluntarily". Others differentiate removal of legal immigrants (expulsion) from illegal immigrants (deportation).
Deportation in the most general sense, in accordance with International Organization for Migration, treats expulsion and deportation as synonyms in the context of migration, adding:
"The terminology used at the domestic or international level on expulsion and deportation is not uniform but there is a clear tendency to use the term expulsion to refer to the legal order to leave the territory of a State, and removal or deportation to refer to the actual implementation of such order in cases where the person concerned does not follow it voluntarily."
According to the European Court of Human Rights, collective expulsion is any measure compelling non-nationals, as a group, to leave a country, except where such a measure is taken on the basis of a reasonable and objective examination of the particular case of each individual non-national of the group. Mass expulsion may also occur when members of an ethnic group are sent out of a state regardless of nationality. Collective expulsion, or expulsion en masse, is prohibited by several instruments of international law.
History
Antiquity
Expulsions occurred in ancient history. They were well-recorded particularly in ancient Mesopotamia.
“Deportation” enters the record as expulsion of someone from a place or country not to be balanced back. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Deportation, expulsion and someone can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Deportation” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Deportation, expulsion and someone provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q379693. The Library of Congress control number is sh85037040. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Deportation”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Deportation primary sources, Deportation archive and Deportation research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Deportation” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.