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    Living the spectre of forced return: negotiating deportability in British immigration detention

    Turnbull, Sarah (2019) Living the spectre of forced return: negotiating deportability in British immigration detention. Migration Studies 7 (4), pp. 513-532. ISSN 2049-5838.

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    Abstract

    Immigration detention and deportation are being increasingly utilised in many countries as key state responses to irregular migration. These practices work together to force migrants to their countries of origin or third countries, offering limited choice about whether to stay or leave. Drawing on a multi-sited ethnographic study of British immigration detention, this paper explores how detainees negotiate deportability and their accounts of the spectre of departing the United Kingdom, often against their wishes and occasionally by force. It analyses how deportability and the institutional structures and logics of immigration detention coalesce to shape detainees’ understandings of their positions and options as deportable subjects. The paper highlights the materiality of return from immigration detention and the complexities and multiplicities of how detainees account for their possible departures in relation to the themes of identity, belonging, and home. British immigration removal centres can be understood as ‘sites of struggle’ in which those subject to detention and deportation negotiate these interconnected practices, acting as best they can within coercive and isolating carceral institutions.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    Keyword(s) / Subject(s): immigration detention, deportation, deportability, agency
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Business and Law > Birkbeck Law School
    Depositing User: Sarah Turnbull
    Date Deposited: 31 Jul 2018 09:10
    Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 17:43
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/23360

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