RT Article
T1 UK immigration detention, exhaustion and the politics of care
JF Immigration detention and social harm
SP 102
OP 119
A1 Hall, Alexandra
LA English
YR 2025
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1931868719
AB The global rise of immigration detention is linked to what Ansems de Vries and Welander have termed the “politics of exhaustion” (2016) and to what Martin (2020) has called the commodification of migrants as “assemblages of services”. That is, the intersecting border practices of deterrence and exclusion to which migrants are subject aim to produce mental and physical fatigue – and, through this exhaustion, exert control. At the same time, servicing the exhausted migrant is how profit is made from migration management, including detention. In this line of thinking, the internal routines of the immigration detention centre both sustain and respond to exhaustion: the vitality of detainees is construed as a threat that must be curtailed, but the micro-effects of individuals’ exhaustion (lethargy, ill-health, withdrawal) cannot be tolerated and invoke practices of “care”. Detention centre staff assume responsibility, then, for both the depletion and the minimal maintenance of detainees’ energies. Drawing on fieldwork in a UK immigration detention centre, this chapter critically considers the work of detention. It demonstrates the impact of the conflicting range of practices that staff are required to undertake and makes a case for viewing workers within the global detention system through a related lens of exhaustion and fatigue.
NO Literaturverzeichnis: Seite 117-119
SN 9781032441528