Sickness in the System of Long-term Immigration Detention

The structural-personal interaction: Occupational deprivation and asylum seekers in Australia

“…Detention of asylum seekers in Australia certainly does not fulfill these human rights according to the findings presented in this and other research (Bull, Schindeler, Berkman, & Ransley, 2013;Campbell & Steel, 2015;Carrigan, 2014;Triggs, 2014;Woolcott et al, 2013). Given these findings, the authors recommend countries that currently detain people undergoing refugee status determination shift to policies of community placement.…”

A Demography and Taxonomy of Long-term Immigration Detention in Australia

“…This exclusion is literal for long-term detainees who are sent to Immigration Detention Centres resembling prisons located in remote locations. Our analysis, here and elsewhere, highlights parallels between detention centres and prisons, between the conditions of containment (Bull et al 2012), and, in this article, the demographic characteristic of their populations.…”

“…The commonality between the environments in which these two populations are being detained makes some similarities unsurprising (Bull et al 2012). It does, however, raise a number of related issues that warrant discussion.…”

“…According to Goffman (1997), total institutions disrupt or destroy actions that have the role in civil society of confirming to actors that they possess self-determination, autonomy and freedom of action; styles of subjectivity essential to participation in Rose's (2000) circuits of inclusion. Taking into account the similarities between immigration detention and imprisonment (Bull et al 2012), long-term immigration detainees are arguably at risk of institutionalisation akin to that identified in longer term criminal detainee groups. The risk then, is not these individuals per se, but that the discursive criminalisation of asylum seekers and long-term detainees will extend the procedural criminalisation, described above, to literal criminalisation when they are eventually released.…”

Mental health of children and adolescents in Australian alternate places of immigration detention

“…The primary objective of these policies has been to deter further asylum seeker arrivals, with this made explicit by both major political parties . The impact of these policies has been well documented with damaging and long‐term impacts on mental health, epidemic rates of self‐harm and suicidal behaviour and multiple deaths . These policies have been called ‘uniquely draconian’, ‘state sponsored abuse’ and more recently lead a growing number to question the parallels between Australia's policies and torture …”