Moral injury in Australian immigration detention
In Australian immigration detention, the political objective of “deterrence” is enacted, in part, through the painful corrosion of detainees’ relationships. People in detention are deprived of liberty. But they are also denied the right to perform the actions that constitute being a parent, a partne...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Print Article |
| Language: | English |
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2025
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| In: |
Immigration detention and social harm
Year: 2025, Pages: 83-101 |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Summary: | In Australian immigration detention, the political objective of “deterrence” is enacted, in part, through the painful corrosion of detainees’ relationships. People in detention are deprived of liberty. But they are also denied the right to perform the actions that constitute being a parent, a partner, a friend, and – in a broader sense – a person. This denial of relationships enacts a profound form of dehumanisation that functions to break detainees’ will. It also, however, imposes moral injury on the friends, loved ones and supporters whose relationships are exploited in the service of this objective. This chapter adopts the lens of “moral injury” to highlight the harms sustained when detainees’ relationships are targeted in this way. Drawing on more than 70 interviews with friends, family members and advocates who regularly visit Australian immigration detention, it shows how visitors’ relational attachments to the people they visit are weaponised in these spaces. Friends and loved ones come to occupy a painful position of simultaneous powerlessness and perceived complicity as their relationships are used to harm the very people they seek to support. |
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| Item Description: | Literaturverzeichnis: Seite 98-101 |
| ISBN: | 9781032441528 |
