Human Rights, Refugee Protest and Immigration Detention

Fiske, Lucy

doi:10.1057/978-1-137-58096-2

Cited by 62 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Although there had been some small-scale objection when mandatory detention was introduced in 1992, the movement gained momentum after 2001 when policies hardened, leading to polarisation between those hostile to asylum seekers and those committed to advocacy (Gosden, 2006). Simultaneously, detained asylum seekers participated in social action within immigration detention as a form of resistance, including escapes, hunger strikes and riots (Fiske, 2016). By the time the People’s Inquiry was born, the asylum seeker movement was strong.…”

Section: Social Movements and Social Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Across the globe, Western nations incrementally erect barriers to prevent asylum seeker flows, including promoting negative discursive tropes, erecting fences and building detention facilities. Since the 1990s there has been a rapid expansion of the use of immigration detention throughout Europe, North America and Australia (Fiske, 2016). As Canadian academic Lynda Mannik (2016: 2 and 3) posits, those migrating by boat are cast as most threatening as they disrupt controlled migration, with travel by water seen as such a threat to the solidarity of nation that humanitarian sentiments are eroded (Mannik, 2016: 2 and 3).…”

Section: Asylum Seeking As a Global And Local Issuementioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The People’s Inquiry into Detention: Social work activism for asylum seeker rights

Briskman

2019

Journal of Sociology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In 2008, findings from the People’s Inquiry into Detention were published as Human Rights Overboard: Seeking Asylum in Australia. The People’s Inquiry, led by social work academics in Australia, exposed injustices within Australia’s privatised detention network for asylum seekers and interrogated policies and practices that ensued since mandatory immigration detention was introduced by legislation in 1992. With reference to the global context, the article presents a snapshot of policies and practices revealed by the People’s Inquiry that were considered antithetical to human rights and discusses this extensive undertaking within a broader context of asylum seeker social movements and professional advocacy endeavours that continue as harsh policies escalate. The article speaks to the resilience of the asylum seeker movement, often against the odds, a movement that includes responsive and tenacious professional groups.

show abstract

Section: Social Movements and Social Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Asylum Seeking As a Global And Local Issuementioning

confidence: 99%

The People’s Inquiry into Detention: Social work activism for asylum seeker rights

Briskman

2019

Journal of Sociology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Feeling they had no legitimate recourse in an environment where requests for care and complaints about a lack thereof were not taken seriously, young men used unruly behaviour and self-harming to convey despair and frustration, and to gain authority in a place in which they had very little control (Fiske, 2016; Nieminen, 2016). This behaviour we argue, also operated as a form of resistance to dominant truths imposed upon them as worthless subjects, undeserving of fair and just treatment.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…I ended up cutting, and I got twenty-two stitches. They took me to hospital, drugged me up, then they took me back to the cells.A mechanism for simultaneously expressing their anger at injustices experienced, exerting pressure to achieve material outcomes and for resisting imposed powerless subjectivities (Fiske, 2016; Nieminen, 2016), self-harming behaviour, however, was sometimes reportedly ignored and exacerbated harm. For example, James explained how hunger striking was a form of protest and demand for more kindness and care—a way to “just to try and get some sympathy really”—that ultimately received little attention from staff and made no difference to how he felt treated.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“They just don’t care about us!”: Police custody experiences for young men with histories of injecting drug use

Walker

Higgs

Stoové

et al. 2019

Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Young men (aged 18–24) represent a quarter of all episodes of police custody detention for adult males in Victoria, Australia. Despite this, little is known about their experience. Using Bacchi’s Foucauldian-influenced “What’s the problem represented to be?” approach and data from interviews with 28 young men with histories of injecting drug use who were detained in police custody prior to adult prison, we aim to address this gap in the literature. We highlight how dividing practices of discrimination made possible their subjectification as “dangerous violent Others” and how unruly behaviour and self-harm were simultaneous mechanisms for voicing their despair and frustration, for gaining power in a place in which they had very little control and for resisting dominant truths imposed upon them as worthless subjects. It is such positioning we argue, that allowed the forfeiting of their rights to basic health care, fair treatment and respect, and at the same time produced and exacerbated a range of psychological, physical and social harms. Our analysis raises important questions about police custody, notably its role in the production of inequality and further marginalisation of vulnerable groups.

show abstract

“…Building on the body of literature that analyzes detention “from below” (Rygiel, 2011), in addition to concepts that concentrate on the spatiality of social relations, I conceptualize detention as a social space in which social relations and practices of detained asylum seekers emerge and are negotiated. In contrast to Agamben-inspired scholarship, this approach illustrates that detention is not just a site of mere containment, a warehouse that contains migrant people, but a social and political space in which asylum seekers function as agents for the exercise of power (Fiske, 2016). Connecting traditional social space concepts with recent academic work on migrants’ experiences in detention, I reveal that life in detention is characterized by the emergence of social relationships and manifold tactics that reinterpret and contest detention functions, often in seemingly mundane and invisible ways.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Detention as Social Space: Waiting, Social Relations, and Mundane Resistance of Asylum Seekers in Detention

Kreichauf

2020

Critical Sociology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Under the Trump administration and its “zero-tolerance” policy, the number of detained asylum seekers in the United States has been growing significantly. Yet we know little about their mobility, agency, and social relations at the micro level during the time they are subject to a detention regime. This is because research about detention has frequently developed independently of sustained engagement with the lived experience of those detained within the relevant institutions. Building on literature about the spatiality of social relations and studies that analyze detention “from below,” the current article conceptualizes detention as a social space in which social relations between detained asylum seekers are formed and negotiated. It draws on ethnographic material collected in detention prisons in the greater New York City area and pays particular attention to the seemingly mundane social facets of everyday life in detention. The article reveals the complexity, ambivalences, and forms of social relations that range from shared and unifying feelings of injustice, to the development of friendships and shared practices of resistance and disobedience that sometimes even go beyond the confines of detention. This perspective allows us to see detained people as agents in the exercise of power and in negotiation with structures of control, waiting, punishment, and exploitation that organize but do not complete their everyday lives in detention.

show abstract

Human Rights, Refugee Protest and Immigration Detention

Cited by 62 publications

References 0 publications

The People’s Inquiry into Detention: Social work activism for asylum seeker rights

The People’s Inquiry into Detention: Social work activism for asylum seeker rights

“They just don’t care about us!”: Police custody experiences for young men with histories of injecting drug use

Detention as Social Space: Waiting, Social Relations, and Mundane Resistance of Asylum Seekers in Detention

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About