Michael Flynn is the founder and coordinator of the Global Detention Project based at the Graduate Institute’s Program for the Study of Global Migration. Flynn’s experience includes working as project director of Right Web—an online research and publishing project based at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., that tracks right-wing U.S. foreign policy actors—and as an associate editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists at the University of Chicago.

Flynn’s work on the Global Detention Project has been supported by the Open Society Foundation’s International Migration Initiative, the Geneva International Academic Network, the Swiss Network for International Studies, and Zennström Philanthropies. Flynn has also been a fellow at the International Reporting Project (formerly the Pew International Journalism Program), based at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and received multiple grants from the Fund for Investigative Journalism. His articles on immigration and politics have been published by the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Inter Press Service, Asia Times, Mexico's Reforma, among other media outlets.

He holds a BA in philosophy from DePaul University and an MA and PhD in international studies from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies.

Selected Papers and Publications on Global Migration Issues

Working Papers
 

• Michael Flynn, "On the Unintended Consequences of Human Rights Promotion on Immigration Detention", Global Detention Project Discussion Paper, March 2012.
   
• Michael Flynn, "Immigration Detention and Proportionality", Global Detention Project Working Paper, February 2011.
   
• Michael Flynn and Cecilia Cannon, "Immigration Detention in Switzerland", Global Detention Project Special Report, October 2011.
   
• Michael Flynn, "An Introduction to Data Construction on Immigration-related Detention", Global Detention Project Working Paper, July 2011.
   
• Michael Flynn and Cecilia Cannon, "Detention at the Borders of Europe: Report on the Joint Global Detention Project - International Detention Coalition Workshop in Geneva, Switzerland," Global Detention Project Workshop Report, November 2010.
   
• Michael Flynn and Cecilia Cannon, "The Privatization of Immigration Detention: Towards a Global View", Global Detention Project Working Paper, September 2009.
   
• Isabel Ricupero and Michael Flynn, “Migration and Detention: An International Law Primer”, Global Detention Project Working Paper, April 2009.

Journal Articles/Book Chapters

• Michael Flynn, “There and Back Again: Immigration Detention and Policy Transfer,” Journal on Migration and Human Security, forthcoming, 2013.
   
• Michael Flynn, “Who Must Be Detained? Proportionality as a Tool for Critiquing Immigration Detention Policy,” in Refugee Studies Quarterly, Vol. 31, Issue No 3, July 2012, pp. 40-68.
   
• Michael Flynn, “Political Minefield,” in Landmines and Human Security, edited by Richard A. Matthew et al, Suny Press, 2004, pp. 117-124.
   
• Michael Flynn, "The Elastic Frontier," in In Defense of the Alien, edited by Joseph Fugolo, Center for Migration Studies, New York, 2003, pp. 53-60.