(Re)producing Boundaries While Enforcing Borders in Immigration Detention
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.59670/ml.v17i4.692Keywords:
Immigrant detention, exclusion, borders, boundaries, deservingnessAbstract
Immigration detention centres can be conceptualised as sites of bordering that separate the wanted from the unwanted and reify the boundary between citizens and non-citizens. Using boundary making as an analytical lens that allows getting insights into the work of borders, this paper addresses the relationship between staff and detainees in these ambiguous sites, asking how staff members engage in boundary work to distance themselves from the pains of detainees and to legitimise their work in an institution of exclusion. It considers boundary making based on three kinds of categories – race, ethnicity and culture; (il)legality and (un)deservingness; and unknownness and criminality – that are morally charged. Through the construction of detainees as culturally and morally different, illegal and undeserving, as well as potentially dangerous, prison staff contribute to the reinforcement of borders, legitimating their exclusionary dimension.
References
Achermann, C., Bertrand, A.-L., Miaz, J., & Rezzonico, L. (2019). Administrative detention of foreign nationals in figures. Policy briefs “in a nutshell”, 12. Neuchâtel: nccr – on the move. https://nccr-onthemove.ch/knowledge-transfer/policy-briefs/administrative-detention-of-foreign-nationals-in-figures/
Barth, F. (1969). Ethnic groups and boundaries: The social organisation of culture difference. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
Bhui, H. S. (2013). “Introduction: Humanising migration control and detention”. In: K. F. Aas & M. Bosworth (eds.), The Borders of Punishment: Migration, Citizenship, and Social Exclusion, 1-17, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bloch, A., & Schuster, L. (2005). “At the extremes of exclusion: Deportation, detention and dispersal”. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 28 (3): 491-512. https://doi.org/10.1080/0141987042000337858
Bosworth, M. (2013). “Can Immigration Detention Centres be Legitimate? Understanding Confinement in a Global World”. In: K. Aas and M. Bosworth (eds.), The Borders of Punishment: Migration, Citizenship, and Social Exclusion, 151-165, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bosworth, M. (2014). Inside immigration detention. Oxford: Oxford Univesity Press.
Bosworth, M., & Slade, G. (2014). “In search of recognition: Gender and staff–detainee relations in a British immigration removal centre”. Punishment & Society, 16 (2): 169-186. https://doi.org/10.1177/1462474513517017
Campesi, G. (2015). “Hindering the deportation machine: An ethnography of power and resistance in immigration detention.” Punishment & Society-International Journal of Penology, 17 (4): 427-453. https://doi.org/10.1177/1462474515603804
Chauvin, S. and Garcés-Mascareñas, B. (2014). “Becoming Less Illegal: Deservingness Frames and Undocumented Migrant Incorporation.” Sociology Compass, 8 (4): 422-432. https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12145
Chauvin, S. and Garcés-Mascareñas, B. (2012). “Beyond Informal Citizenship: The New Moral Economy of Migrant Illegality.” International Political Sociology, 6 (3): 241-259. https://hdl.handle.net/11245/1.374747
Casas-Cortes, M., Cobarrubias, S., De Genova, N., Garelli, G., Grappi, G., Heller, C., ... Tazzioli, M. (2015). “New Keywords: Migration and Borders”. Cultural Studies, 29 (1): 55-87. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2014.891630
Crawley, E., & Crawley, P. (2008). “Understanding prison officers: Culture, cohesion and conflict”. In: J. Bennett, B. Crewe, & A. Wahidin (eds.), Understanding prison staff, 134-152, Cullompton, UK ; Portland, Or.: Willan Pub.
Darley, M. (2010). “Le pouvoir de la norme. La production du jugement et son contournement dans les lieux d'enfermement des étrangers". Déviance et Société, 34 (2): 229-239. https://doi.org/10.3917/ds.342.0229
Duemmler, K., Dahinden, J., & Moret, J. (2010). “Gender equality as ‘cultural stuff’: Ethnic boundary work in a classroom in Switzerland”. Diversities, 12 (1): 21-39. http://doc.rero.ch/record/20723
Eckert, Julia (2008). “Laws for Enemies”. In: Eckert, J.M. (ed.), The social life of anti-terrorism laws: the war on terror and the classifications of the “dangerous other”, 7-32, Bielefeld: transcript.
Enjolras, F. (2010). “Des policiers aux frontières: La gestion ordinaire d’un centre de rétention”. In: D. Fassin (ed.), Les nouvelles frontières de la société française, 219-243, Paris: La Découverte.
Fassin, D. (2009). “Les économies morales revisitées”. Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 64e année (6): 1237-1266. https://www.cairn.info/revue-annales-2009-6-page-1237.htm
Fassin, D. (2011). “Policing borders, producing boundaries. The governmentality of immigration in dark times”. Annual Review of Anthropology, 40: 213-226. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-081309-145847
Gill, N. (2016). Nothing personal?: Geographies of governing and activism in the British asylum system. John Wiley & Sons.
Goffman, E. (1961). Asylums: Essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates. New York: Anchor books.
Griffiths, M. (2013). “Living with uncertainty: Indefinite immigration detention”. Journal of Legal Anthropology, 1 (3): 263-286. https://doi.org/10.3167/jla.2013.010301
Griffiths, M. (2014). “Men and the emotional world of immigration detention”. In B. Anderson & M. Keith (eds.), Migration: A COMPAS Anthology [Online]. https://compasanthology.co.uk/men-emotional-world-immigration-detention/
Griffiths, M. (2015). “‘Here, man is nothing!’: Gender and policy in an asylum context”. Men and Masculinities, 18 (4): 468-488. https://doi.org/10.1177/1097184X15575111
Hall, A. (2010). “‘These people could be anyone’: Fear, contempt (and empathy) in a British immigration removal centre”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 36 (6): 881-898. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691831003643330
Hall, A. (2012). Border watch: Cultures of immigration, detention and control. London; New York: Pluto Press.
Kynsilehto, A., & Puumala, E. (2017). “Intimate economies of state practice: Materialities of detention in Finland”. In: D. Conlon & N. Hiemstra (eds.), Intimate economies of immigration detention: critical perspectives, 203-218, Abingdon: Routledge.
Lamont, M. and Molnár, V. (2002). “The study of boundaries in the social sciences”. Annual Review of Sociology, 28: 167-195. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3069239
Lietaert, I., Broekaert, E. and Derluyn, I. (2014). “The Lived Experiences of Migrants in Detention.” Population, Space and Place, 21 (6): 568-579. https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.1861
Moran, D., Turner, J. and Schliehe, A.K. (2018). “Conceptualising the carceral in carceral geography”. Progress in Human Geography, 42 (5): 666–686. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132517710352
Mountz, A., Coddington, K., Catania, R. T., & Loyd, J. M. (2013). “Conceptualising detention: Mobility, containment, bordering, and exclusion”. Progress in Human Geography, 37 (4): 522-541. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 0309132512460903
Oorschot, W. van (2000). “Who should get what, and why? On deservingness criteria and the conditionality of solidarity among the public”. Policy & Politics, 28 (1): 33-48. https://doi.org/10.1332/0305573002500811
Pachucki, M. A., Pendergrass, S. and Lamont, M. (2007). “Boundary processes: Recent theoretical developments and new contributions”. Poetics, 35 (6): 331-351. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2007.10.001
Scheel, S, and Squire, V. (2014). “Forced migrants as ‘illegal’ migrants”. In: E. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh et al. (eds.), The Oxford handbook of refugee and forced migration studies, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
SEM (2018). Rapport sur la migration 2017. Secrétariat d’État aux Migrations, Bern. https://www.sem.admin.ch/ dam/data/sem/publiservice/berichte/migration/migrationsbericht-2017-f.pdf
SEM (2020). Rapport sur la migration 2019. Secrétariat d’État aux Migrations, Bern. https://www.sem.admin.ch/ dam/sem/fr/data/publiservice/berichte/migration/migrationsbericht-2019-f.pdf.download.pdf/migrationsbericht-2019-f.pdf
Tassin, L. (2016). “Les frontières de la rétention: Genre et ethnicité dans le contrôle des étrangers en instance d’expulsion”. Critique internationale, 72 (3): 35-52. https://doi.org/10.3917/crii.072.0035
Turnbull, S. (2016). “‘Stuck in the middle’: Waiting and uncertainty in immigration detention”. Time & Society, 25 (1), 61–79. https://doi.org/10.1177/0961463X15604518
Ugelvik, T. (2016). “Techniques of legitimation: The narrative construction of legitimacy among immigration detention officers”. Crime, Media, Culture, 12(2): 215-232.
van Houtum, H. (2010). “Human blacklisting: The global apartheid of the EU’s external border regime”. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 28 (6): 957-976. https://doi.org/10.1068/d1909
Willen, S. (2012). “How is health-related “deservingness” reckoned? Perspectives from unauthorised im/migrants in Tel Aviv”. Social Science & Medicine, 74 (6): 812-821. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2011.06.033
Wimmer, A. (2009). “Herder's Heritage and the Boundary-Making Approach: Studying Ethnicity in Immigrant Societies”. Sociological Theory, 27 (3): 244-270. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9558.2009.01347.x
Wimmer, A. (2013). Ethnic boundary making: Institutions, power, networks. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
CC Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0
