Restrictive conditions of temporary protection have required refugees to be resourceful and tactful in managing their own ‘resettlement’ in Australia. Ethnographic research among Hazara refugees from Central Afghanistan living on temporary protection visas, reveals the mobile phone to be fundamental to restoring their lives after detention. Hazara have made use of their mobile phones to establish a point of contact, get their bearings, and reposition themselves at the locus of their own new social networks. This article explores the affect of mobile phone use in a situation of temporary protection, in terms of a rubric of resilience.
Departheid
The Draconian Governance of Illegalized Migrants in Western States
Barak Kalir
) complied with administrative requirements set by Western countries, end up being subjected to police raids, lengthy detention periods, family separation, and deportation to life-threatening places? How can thousands of people drown each year in the
Afterword
The Urban and the Carceral
Steffen Jensen
decade-long engagement with people in and on the brink of confining institutions. Most of the contributions originate in prison or detention (except for Moore's). From there, a number of different methodological choices structure how the authors explore
In The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2020
- Article Type:
- Afterword
- Pages:
- 140–145
Institutions of Confinement as Sites of Passage
The Mètis of Foreign Nationals Caught in the Wars on Terror, Drugs and Immigration
Carolina S. Boe
Rachid's strategy to avoid deportation is self-mutilating. After his latest release from prison, Rachid called me from the hospital where he was recovering after having swallowed a fork at the immigration detention centre a few hours prior to being taken
In The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2020
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 70–87
Barak Kalir
). The Dutch state issues an order for out-of-procedure subjects (hereafter, OOPSs) to leave the Netherlands within 28 days or face potential detention and forced removal. If OOPSs do not opt for an assisted voluntary return program (for example, via the
Pierre Makhlouf
advantage of the UK and deserve detention, deportation and effective permanent punishment through their exclusion from the UK and from Europe. As Theresa May said when arguing in support of the creation of a ‘hostile environment’ for migrants, ‘What we don
Living with Uncertainty
Indefinite Immigration Detention
Melanie Griffiths
Immigration detention is a central tenet of the British government’s response to immigration but remains under-theorised in academia. This article uses testimonies drawn from anthropological research conducted with detainees at an Immigration Removal Centre to examine lived experiences of immigration detention and explore the relationships between detainees and the British state. It suggests that despite being a space of extreme control (both in terms of legislation and daily practice), immigration detention is beset with uncertainty and confusion. Examples are given of chronic instability in relation to mobility, violent ‘incidents’, time frames and access to information. The article examines the repercussions of such instability on individuals and coping strategies employed. It argues that immigration detainees live in a context of continual crisis, in which profound uncertainty becomes normalised. This disorder should be understood as a technique of power, with governance through uncertainty constructing certain immigrants as expendable, transient and ultimately, deportable.
In Journal of Legal Anthropology
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2013
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 263–286
Conflicted Power of the Pen
The Impact of French Internment on the Pacifist Convictions and Literary Imagination of Lion Feuchtwanger
Nicole Dombrowski Risser
, stands trial, and is condemned to French prison. Upon her transfer from the courthouse to a detention facility, the French crowd hails Simone as a hero. The teenager’s defense of France is applauded by the “little people,” the victims of not only the
In French Politics, Culture & Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2017
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 1–23
Laura A. Sparks
Relying on select US government Torture Memos, this article develops the term “surveillance time” to highlight the ways in which surveillance practices, in this case within the material confines of post-9/11 detention centers, come to threaten humans’ subjectivities through temporal disruption and manipulation. While surveillance has lately been understood in digital terms, such as in corporations’ data-mining practices and in technologies like facial-recognition software, we should not neglect its material, embodied dimensions. Surveillance time ultimately asks us to reconsider how monitoring and information-harvesting practices blur the boundaries between human bodies and data. Attention to the relationship between torture and surveillance also opens up new possibilities for understanding the now-ubiquitous monitoring strategies integrated into everyday life.
Paperwork performances
Legitimating state violence in the Swedish deportation regime
Lisa Marie Borrelli and Annika Lindberg
Deportation regimes mobilise coercive state powers, but also entail extensive paperwork, the latter of which remains underexplored in deportation studies. Building on ethnographic fieldwork in border police units and a migration-related detention centre in Sweden, this article explores how bureaucratic practices of detecting, detaining and ultimately deporting people whose presence has been illegalised are enforced and legitimated through the use of paperwork. Paperwork, we argue, becomes the ‘signature of the state’ that enables state agencies to assert themselves as ‘rational’ actors, even when their own practices are ridden by dilemmas, inconsistency and sometimes arbitrariness. We show how the same documents that are meant to ensure fairness and accountability in bureaucratic processes may render state actions even more unreadable, and further serve to rationalise and legitimise intrusive, violent and discriminatory state actions. The article thus highlights the importance of considering the often-tedious paperwork as essential to the operation of coercive state powers, such as the detainment and deportation of illegalised persons.
In Journal of Legal Anthropology
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2019
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 50–69