LIFE AND LIVED EXPERIENCES OF PEOPLE INSIDE MIGRATION-RELATED DETENTION:
AN ECOLOGICAL EXPLORATION INTO ROME’S DETENTION CENTER
Francesca Esposito
Tese orientada por Professor Doutor José H. Ornelas
ISPA – Instituto Universitário
e co-orientada por Professora Caterina Arcidiacono
Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II
Tese submetida como requisito parcial para obtenção do grau de Doutoramento em Psicologia Área de especialidade: Psicologia Comunitária
2018 ii
2018
Tese apresentada para cumprimento dos requisitos necessários à obtenção do grau de Doutor em Psicologia na área de especialização de Psicologia Comunitária realizada sob a orientação do Professor José H. Ornelas e a co-orientação da Professora Caterina Arcidiacono, apresentada no ISPA - Instituto Universitário no ano de 2018.
A presente Tese foi financiada por verbas do Orçamento de Estado do Ministério da Educação e Ciência e do Fundo Social Europeu através do Programa Operacional Potencial Humano do QREN Portugal 2007-2013 através da Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia através de Bolsa de Doutoramento (referência: SFRH/BD/87854/2012).
iii
To all those who are challenging borders
Até que os leões inventem suas próprias histórias, os caçadores serão sempre os heróis das narrativas de caça
Mia Couto, 2012, p. 6
iv
v
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank all those who, in various capacities, contributed to this work, and supported me during this long “journey.” Firstly, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor Professor José Ornelas for having nurtured my determination to study migration-related detention by continuously supporting my research efforts providing his mentorship throughout the process. I thank Professor Ornelas for his competence, generosity and sharpness, and for challenging me to rethink my work and always aim to do more and better. Professor José Ornelas and his innovative ideas are fundamental sources of scientific inspiration, and were crucial in shaping this Thesis and my research work as a community psychologist. With more than 30-years experience in the field of community mental health and the struggle for deinstitutionalization, Professor Ornelas’involvement in this project was an opportunity to extend his contribution and ideas to the field of migration at the core of this project. In particular, his supervision allowed me to capture the processes of institutionalization at work in daily life in detention, and their critical effects on detainees’ (and staff’s) wellness. Above all, in the course of these years of collaboration and supervision, Professor José Ornelas taught me that science can be pursued in a passionate and politically committed way, and that transformative changes are not only possible, they are also essential to creating a more just and equal world. Further, I would like to thank my co-supervisor Professor Caterina Arcidiacono for the encouragement and the valuable insights that helped me to improve my work. Professor Caterina Arcidiacono’s long-term involvement in the feminist struggles for women’s rights, and against all forms of gender violence, was a key resource for this research project. Her experience and critical mind set, as well as her intersectional sensitivity, helped me to sharpen my understanding of the interrelatedness of race and gender in shaping the lived experiences of people inside Ponte Galeria. I am deeply grateful to Professor Caterina Arcidiacono for all that she taught me in these years, and for the generosity and support that she provided me in my PhD as well as in the writing of this Thesis. I thank ISPA-Instituto Universitário for hosting my PhD and the Professors of the PhD Course in Psychology for their knowledge and enthusiastic teaching. I am thankful to Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia that granted me a fellowship for this PhD. I would also like to thank Professor Maria João Vargas-Moniz whose knowledge, competence, and support have been crucial for the accomplishment of this Thesis and my research more generally. I also thank all my community psychology colleagues who have accompanied me in this “journey:” Beatrice Sacchetto, Rita Aguiar, Paulo Martins, Micaela Lucchesi, Raquel Cardoso, João Rucha Pereira, Fátima Monteiro, Olga Cunha, Marta Miguel, Inês Almas, Teresa Duarte, Sónia Fernandes Amaral, and Vera Coelho. I am grateful for their support, our stimulating discussions, and also, crucially, the shared moments of fun and distress during these years. In particular, special thanks go to Beatrice for being my best friend and companion since this “adventure” began, and to Silvia Scirocchi and Erica Briozzo for their enthusiasm, support and encouragement, as well as for reminding me every day the necessity of my work. I wish to thank Professor Mary Bosworth and all the Border Criminologies team at the University of Oxford for being a unique source of inspiration for my research. Their work on migration-detention in UK and all over the world is of extreme value, and I am really honored for the access they gave me to their community of brilliant international scholars. I also take this opportunity to thank all the staff of Rome’s Ponte Galeria detention center, and particularly, Floriana Lo Bianco, Enzo Lattuca, Andréa Saunders, Eddaoudi Tilouani, Ismaila Gueye, Viviana Catania, Giorgia Mica e Francesca Capanna for their warm vi welcoming my research expeditions inside the center, and their collaboration throughout the process. A special thank also to the many people working for social justice and supporting those detained, as well as migrants outside detention centers in their struggle for attaining a dignified life: in particular, I thank Giacomo Zandonini, Cinzia Greco, Alessandro Crasta, Giulia Capotosti, Valentina Brinis, Mario Badagliacca, Suor Eugenia Bonetti, Paolo Morozzo, and Luigi Manconi. I owe a particularly important debt to the BeFree team, who genereously allowed me to join in their struggles, and particularly to Oria Gargano, Francesca De Masi, Carla Quinto, Federica Festagallo, Lucia Beretta, Marta Mearini, and Loretta Bondi. It is with these colleagues that I first approached the issue of migration-related detention, and their sisterhood, solidarity, and constant encouragement to critically think/rethink my/our work and positioning have been crucial in my professional and personal trajectory.
There are so many other scholars, colleagues and friends dispersed across institutions and countries whose thoughtful engagement has substantially pushed me to think through the arguments of this Thesis. I can only mention a few of them here: Manuela Tomai, Veronica Rosa, Mayaan Ravid, Annika Lindberg, María Emilia Bianco, Raquel Matos, Sarah Turnbull, Blerina Kellezi, Francesco Vacchiano, Mamadou Ba, Vladimir Vaz, Alí Murtaza, Inês Hasselberg, Sanja Milivojevic, Barak Kalir, Nora Bardelli, Mafalda Esteves, Rimple Metha, Roger Fiorilli, Andrea Pavoni, Judite Fernandes, Helena Cabral, Marta Bronizin, Sofia Cruz, Sofia Teles, Paula Ferreira, Theo Carvalho, Zanij Nouruzi, Ilya Afanasyyev, Leila Ullrich, Elizabeth Kullmann, Laura Rezzonico, Irene Peano, Andrew Crosby, Laurie Lijnders Tikue, Dawit Demoz, Salvatore di Martino, Agostino Carbone, Catarina Ramos, and most of all, Pedro Costa who has supported me since the very beginning of my enterprise. I could not have overcome without relying on their support as intellectual interlocutors, friends, and often roommates.
Last but not least, I would like to thank my family, both in Lisbon and in Italy. This work would not be possible without their precious support. To Francesco, who patiently revised and improved my English, helping me to better express my thoughts. To Patricia, Adriano, Raquel, Thais, and Sofia, for opening me the door of their houses, and for the pleasant moments and the laughter that they offered me, and which eased the burden of my fieldwork. To Marta, for her friendship, patience, support, and care. To Gaia, for encouraging and inspiring me: she has helped to shape this project intellectually and emotionally. To Simone, for his humor, motivation, for the time and care he put into reading and re-reading my work, and for encouraging me to never give up. I would never made it without you. To all my friends, who near or far were always present despite my absence. To Cora the sweetest animal mate one can have. To my parents, Francesco and Marinora, for their unconditional love and support. Finally, I can not fail to express my heartfelt thanks to the political actors that have been so central to this Thesis: the men and women confined inside the Ponte Galeria detention center. I thank them for letting me know them as people and for sharing their stories and travails with me.
vii
Palavras-chave: Detenção Administrativa; Experiências de Vida; Perspetiva Ecológica; Etnográfia Crítica
Keywords: Migration-Related Detention; Lived Experiences; Ecological Perspective; Critical Ethnography
Categorias de Classificação da Tese 2900 Social Processes & Social Issues 2910 Social Structure & Organization 2960 Political Processes & Political Issues 2970 Sex Roles & Women's Issues 4200 Forensic Psychology & Legal Issues 4210 Civil Rights & Civil Law viii
ix
RESUMO
A presente tese, intitulada “A Vida e as Experiências Vividas pelas Pessoas em Contexto de Detenção Administrativa: Uma Exploração Ecológica no Centro de Detenção de Roma” é um estudo de caso qualitativo acerca do maior centro de detenção italiano para casos relacionados com migração. Com o objetivo de capturar as complexas relações entre os indivíduos (detidos/as e profissionais) e o centro de detenção em estudo, bem como construir conhecimento sobre os efeitos e a realidade quotidiana da detenção administrativa a partir da perspectiva das experiências psicossociais dos/as participantes, diversas fontes e estratégias de recolha de dados, enquadradas num amplo quadro de etnografia crítica, foram aplicadas. Especificamente, quatro objectivos foram estabelecidos: a) desenvolver um enquadramento ecológico focado na justiça para estudar centros de detenção administrativa e os seus múltiplos efeitos sobre a vida de detidos/as e profissionais; b) compreender as histórias e experiências psicossociais das pessoas nas instituições de detenção, como estas atribuem significado ao sistema de detenção e como se descrevem (afetadas e/ou resistentes); c) examinar o mundo psicossocial e cultural nos centros de detenção, bem como os padrões da vida quotidiana; d) utilizar este estudo de caso para refletir sobre nexos globais/locais, examinando assim a detenção no contexto mais amplo do controlo das fronteiras e destacando as implicações derivantes destes resultados, inclusive novos caminhos para a investigação e ação. Ao longo de trinta e quatro meses de trabalho de campo, foram utilizadas observação participante, entrevistas focalizadas e análise de documentos e suportes multimédia, para construir uma visão compreensiva acerca das experiências vividas por detidos/as e profissionais no âmbito do centro de detenção romano de Ponte Galeria. A triangulação das diferentes fontes de dados realçou as qualidades opressivas da detenção administrativa e seus efeitos prejudiciais sobre todas as pessoas que entram em contato direto ou indireto com ela. Concomitantemente, os nossos resultados destacaram as várias formas de agentividade, resposta e resistência exercidas pelas pessoas nestes contextos, assim desafiando o entendimento dominante dos centros de detenção como meras “zonas de exclusão”. No geral, a detenção surgiu como parte de um conjunto mais amplo de medidas previstas pelos estados para gerir o fluxo de pessoas que entram e residem no seu território, e manter assim um regime de inclusão diferencial que discrimina por clivagens raciais, de classe, de género e de cidadania. Esta evidência sugere que deve ser posto um fim à detenção administrativa quer em Itália, quer internacionalmente. No entanto, qualquer mudança nesta área deve ser baseada num processo colaborativo que envolva a participação das pessoas diretamente afetadas pelo controle de fronteira. O relatório de Tese é composto pelas seguintes partes: a Introdução Geral, que apresenta uma visão geral da detenção administrativa e uma revisão da literatura psicossocial neste campo, bem como racional, objetivos, plano e métodos da investigação; a Seção Empírica composta por cinco artigos relativos às principais análises realizadas neste estudo; as Conclusões Gerais, que resumem e discutem as principais conclusões do estudo, desafios e limitações, e as implicações para futuras investigações e ações transformadoras; e sete Anexos.
x
ABSTRACT
The Thesis under consideration, entitled “Life and Lived Experiences of People inside Migration-Related Detention: An Ecological Exploration into Rome’s Detention Center,” is a qualitative case-study of the largest Italian migration-related detention facility. With the aim of capturing the complex relationships between individuals (detainees and professionals) and the detention center under study, as well as building knowledge about the effects and everyday reality of migration-related detention from the perspective of participants’ own psychosocial experiences, a number of sources and strategies of data collection were employed within a broad critical ethnographic framework. Particularly, four objectives were established: a) to develop a justice-focused ecological framework to study migration-related detention centers and their multiple effects on the life of detainees and professionals within them; b) to understand the stories and psychosocial experiences of people within detention institutions, how they make sense of the detention system, and how they describe themselves as affected by and/or resisting it; c) to examine the psychosocial and cultural world inside detention centers, as well as the patterns of everyday life; d) to use this case-study to reflect on local-global nexuses, thus examining detention in the wider context of border control, and highlighting the broader implications signified by these findings, including future avenues for research and action. Over the course of thirty-four months of fieldwork, participant observation, topic- focused interviews, and document and multimedia data analaysis were used to build an understanding of the experiences lived by detainees and professional actors within Rome’s Ponte Galeria detention center. The triangulation of the different data sources highlighted the oppressive qualities of migration-related detention and its detrimental effects on all people that come into direct or indirect contact with it. Meanwhile, our findings shed light on the varied forms of agency, response, and resistance excercised by those within these sites, thus challenging the dominant understanding of detention centers as mere “zones of exclusion.” Overall, detention emerged as being part of a wider set of measures implemented by states to manage the flow of people entering and residing in their territories, and uphold a regime of differential inclusion that discriminates across racialized, class-based, gendered, and citizenship lines. This evidence suggests that migration-related detention should urgently be ended in Italy, and internationally. Yet, any change in this field should be based on a collaborative process involving the participation of those directly impacted by border control. The main body of the Thesis was organized according to the following sections: a General Introduction, which presents an overview of migration-related detention and a review of the psychosocial literature in this field, as well as the rationale, objectives, plan, and methods of our research; an Empirical Section composed of five articles according to the main analyses conducted for this investigation; the General Conclusions, which summarizes and discusses the main findings of the study, the challenges and limitations, and the implications for future research and transformative action; and seven Annexes. !"#
!"#$%&'%(&)*%+,-."/0$"&1#%% # $%"&#'%(&"&#"&#)*&(+#,-#'%(#."/(#0,1(#*1'"02("&'(+#)(2,34# 2#3&#"$&4% 565# 61-(2*&5# 785# 9# :*'(1"-*5# ;8# <=>?@A8# B"C1*'",-D1(2*'(+# +('(-'",-# 0(-'(1&4# '%(# 0%*22(-C(&# ,.# *-# (0,2,C"0*2# E(1&E(0'"/(# 3"'%# *# .,0F&# ,-# GF&'"0(8# BMC International Health and Human Rights, 15:13.!+,"4#?>8??HIJ&?=K?LD>?@D>>@=D>8#<7MN4#?8OI=A# 2#3&#"$&4% 56#<=>?OA8#P1*0'"0"-C#Q'%-,C1*E%R#"-#S"C1*'",-D1(2*'(+#+('(-'",-#0(-'(1&4#;# T(.2(!"/(#*00,F-'8#Journal of Prevention and Intervention in the Community, 458?>H>J?>H@=U@=8=>?I8??KOOL=8#
Awards
2018 - Winner of the National Student Representative Research Grant funded by the Society for Community Research and Action-SCRA (Division 27 of APA) to support doctoral dissertations. 2017 - Winner of the Janet Hyde Graduate Research Grant (provided by the Society for the Psychology of Women, Division 35 of APA) to support feminist research by doctoral psychology students. 2016 - Winner of the Researching Borders Masterclass (Monash University and University of Oxford). 2016 - Award for the best poster session presented at the XI SIPCO Conference, Bergamo, Italy.
xiii
Table of Contents
GENERAL INTRODUCTION ...... 1 1. Migration-related Detention in an Era of Mass Mobility: Towards a Psychosocial Perspective ...... 3 1.1. Migration-Related Detention: An Overview ...... 3 1.2. The Psychosocial Effects of Migration-Related Detention: State of the Art.... 9 1.3. Contributions of Community Psychology to the Study of Migration-Related Detention and Deportation ...... 17 2. Rationale of the Thesis ...... 23 3. Research Objectives, Plan, and Methods ...... 25 3.1. Research Procedures and Data Collection ...... 30 4. References ...... 38
EMPIRICAL SECTION ...... 55 Article I – Migration-Related Detention Centers: The Challenges of an Ecological Perspective with a Focus on Justice ...... 57 Article II – Practicing Ethnography in Migration-Related Detention Centers: A Reflexive Account ...... 75 Article III – Voices from the Inside: Lived Experiences of Women Confined in a Detention Center ...... 91 Article IV – “Yes, But Somebody Has to Help Them Somehow”: Looking at the Italian Detention Field through the Eyes of Professional Nonstate Actors ...... 131 Article V – Ecology of Sites of Confinement: Everyday Life in a Detention Center for Illegalized Noncitizens ...... 171
GENERAL CONCLUSIONS ...... 207 1. General Conclusions ...... 209 1.1. Main Findings ...... 209 1.2. Challenges and Limitations of the Study ...... 222 1.3. Directions for Future Studies ...... 225 1.4. Implications for Policy and Action ...... 228 2. References ...... 236 xiv
ANNEXES ...... 245 Annex I – Photos of Rome’s Ponte Galeria detention center ...... 247 Annex II – ISPA-Instituto Universitário Ethical Committee Approval ...... 251 Annex III – Short Script for Participant Observation ...... 253 Annex IV – Interview Script used with Detainees ...... 255 Annex V – Interview Script used with Professionals ...... 261 Annex VI – Documents of Articles’ Acceptance, or Submission ...... 265 Annex VII – Publications Related to the Thesis ...... 271 xv
List of Tables
General Introduction
Table 1: Rome’s Ponte Galeria detention center……………………………………...………26 Table 2. Characteristics of detainees interviewed…………………………………………….34
List of Figures
General Introduction
Figure 1 - Interdependence, Cycling of Resources, Adaptation, Succession, and Justice are interdependent components, whose effects are interactive rather than additive across multiple ecological levels (personal, interpersonal, organizational, and communal)...... 28
! xvi
1
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
2
3
1. Migration-related Detention in an Era of Mass Mobility: Towards a Psychosocial Perspective
1.1. Migration-Related Detention: An Overview
During the last few decades, and particularly since the late 1990s, migration-related detention1 – more often referred to as “immigration detention” – has become a measure, embedded in a complex set of migration and border control strategies, increasingly used by states to govern human mobility and confine unwanted non-citizens (Bosworth & Turnbull, 2015; Sampson & Mitchell, 2013, Turnbull, 2017).
The use of migration-related detention, which can be understood as both a policy and a practice (Turnbull, 2017), is not limited to the so-called Western countries or Global North. In line with the widespread tendency to criminalize migrants, particularly undocumented ones (Bosworth & Guild, 2008; Healey, 2004), great efforts have been made to expand migration- related detention worldwide, especially to countries of the Global South, through which many people transit while they are on the move (e.g., Niger, Libya, Mexico, Guatemala) (Flynn 2014; Turnbull, 2017; Sampson & Mitchell, 2013).2 This process has led to the establishment of what can be regarded as a global detention landscape, or what Alison Mountz (2011) has defined “the enforcement archipelago.”
Defining Migration-Related Detention
In spite of being a topic of utmost relevance and broad debate in contemporary times, which has raised questions about its purpose, justification, and legitimacy (Turnbull, 2017), a lack of consensus still exists around a definition of migration-related detention. This difficulty reflects the fact that migration-related detention can be ordained for a number of reasons – with variation among countries depending on domestic immigration legislation – and can have different purposes and functions. Furthermore, the means and sites used to implement it, or the regimes in place at detention facilities, vary extremely within and across countries (for an overview see the website of the Global Detention Project,
1 We use the term migration-related detention to refer to the practice of confining non-citizens according to migration-related legislation. 2 It is worth noting that these countries include non-signatories to the Refugee Convention or other international human rights treaties. 4 www.globaldetentionproject.org/).
Nevertheless, and in spite of local differences, migration-related detention is broadly understood as the practice of confining non-citizens to achieve migration-related aims (Bosworth & Turnbull, 2015; Silverman and Massa, 2012; Turnbull, 2017). The emphasis on the deprivation of liberty of those who are categorized as “illegal” by states (hereinafter referred to as illegalized or irregularized non-citizens3) is central to this definition, In particular, the Global Detention Project refers to migration-related detention as “the deprivation of liberty of non-citizens because of their status” (Flynn, 2012, pp. 42-43). As Flynn (2012) explains, this definition condenses a series of crucial aspects that deserve to be unpacked.
The first aspect worthy of direct attention concerns the use of the term “non-citizens.” In this “box” are intentionally included refugees, asylum seekers, undocumented migrants, visa over-stayers, stateless people, and even people born in a country but not recognized as citizens – in many countries (including Italy, where the empirical research for this thesis has been carried out) citizenship law is largely based on jus sanguinis.4 Therefore, the first distinctive feature of this definition is that it approaches all non-citizens as a single cohort, challenging legally-based distinctions made by states between people recognized as non- nationals. In fact, as Luibhéid notes, these distinctions do not often reflect empirically verifiable differences among people, whose stories are much more complex and transcend these categories, but are rather “imposed by the state and general public in order to delimit the rights they [non-citizens] will have or be denied, and the forms of surveillance, discipline, and normalization to which they will be subjected” (Luibhéid, 2005, p. xi). According to this reasoning, and speaking about the Lampedusa detention camp, Andrijasevic (2010) notes how detention, and its corollary deportation, are means to create difference through the regulation of human circulation and mobility or, in other words, to differentially include rather than merely exclude.5 In this light, as Bosworth and Turnbull argue following Rygiel (2011), “detention can be understood as a ‘technology of citizenship’ that minimizes migrants’ ability
3 I opt for the term “illegalized” or “irregularized”” to underline that these people are not inherently illegal/irregular, but rather legally produced as such by states (De Genova, 2002). 4 Jus sanguinis is a principle by which citizenship is determined by that of a person’s parents, rather than her place of birth (jus soli). 5 According to Casas-Cortes et al., “differential inclusion describes how inclusion in a sphere, society or realm can involve various degrees of subordination, rule, discrimination, racism, disenfranchisement, exploitation and segmentation” (2015, p. 79). 5 to access resources to make claims to citizenship” (2015, p. 92), while also creating racialized “territorial orders based on legal status and im/mobility” (Martin, 2012, p. 326).
However, as Flynn (2012) notes, it is important to acknowledge that, within global detention regimes, there are countries in which little effort is made to separate asylum seekers from undocumented migrants, as well as countries where asylum seekers are placed into facilities that resemble detention centers. Based on these considerations, Flynn reinforces that viewing all non-citizens as a single cohort is a better sited analytical approach to capture both the broad range of people subject to migration-related detention and the different types of facilities used to confine them.
A second aspect of the definition on which to focus concerns the word “status.” Generally, although exceptions may exist, people are confined inside migration-related detention centers because of alleged problems with their migration status. Given the variety of situations that can fall under this umbrella, the population of detainees is extremely heterogeneous (Bosworth, 2014), including non-citizens with very different experiences, such as asylum seekers, migrants lacking formal approval to enter the country, visa-overstayers, and even ex-prisoners who have lost their residency status as a result of convictions for particular crimes. In the majority of cases these people are detained in order to be identified, to prevent their absconding, to await the processing of their cases, and (whenever possible) to remove them from the country. If removal is not possible, as often happens, detention ends with the person’s release into the general community (this does not necessarily prevent the person from continuing to be irregularized and at risk of further detention). It is also worth noting that in some countries so called “illegal immigration” – or re-immigration after being expelled – is considered a criminal offence or misdemeanor for which people can be convicted and even imprisoned. As a result, this definition of migration-related detention encompasses both criminal incarceration and administrative detention.
Finally, a third, and probably the most crucial aspect of the definition, concerns the notion of deprivation of liberty. Flynn defines deprivation of liberty as the “forcibly-imposed confinement within an enclosed space for any length of time” (2012, p. 45). In so doing, Flynn underlines that the main point is that a person is locked up against her own will in a narrowly circumscribed space (which can also be an airport or a tiny island6), independently
6 On island detention see Mountz (2011). 6 from however long the duration of confinement (even if Flynn suggests considering a 48- hours threshold). In the majority of countries, the forcible containment of non-citizens in migration-related detention is accomplished through administrative rather than criminal means, therefore it is classified as a non-punitive measure. However, as many scholars in the criminology field have highlighted (e.g., Bosworth, 2012; Stumpf, 2006; Guia, Van der Woude, & Van der Leun, 2013), there is substantial crossover among penal imprisonment and migration-related detention. For instance, in many countries – such as in the USA, Canada, and Switzerland – administrative detainees are held in prisons, jails, police lock-ups, and/or juvenile detention institutions on migration-related charges. Furthermore, ad-hoc facilities used as migration-related detention centers have often a prison-like design or are actual former penitentiary institutions that have been refurbished (e.g., see the description of Brook House or the discussion of the history of Morton Hall in the UK, in Bosworth !2014"). Even when detention facilities do not resemble prisons, security mechanisms and day-to-day operations are often similar (e.g., complaints over conditions are to be directed to Prison Ombudsman). This evidence has led some scholars to assert that people in migration-related detention centers are subject to “a new expansive form of penal power,” one that is “not bound by the familiar goals of punishment but exists purely as a means to an end: deportation” (Bosworth, 2012, p. 134).
Nevertheless, detention can also occur in transit zones at ports of entry (e.g., airports), offices of immigration authorities or border patrol, closed screening facilities, offshore detention centers, reception centers, or ad-hoc sites such as hotels (for a detailed analysis of different types of detention sites see, Flynn 2012). Many facilities are located in remote areas (e.g., islands, forests, deserts) or near international airports, also their architectural features and amenities vary a lot - from newly-built and clean to dilapidated and dirty (Sampson & Mitchell, 2013).
Temporality is another crucial feature of migration-related detention (Bosworth & Turnbull, 2015). The duration of confinement varies considerably, depending on individual cases and the country where detention takes place. In most countries the maximum length of detention is specified by law, though varying considerably (e.g., in France the maximum duration of detention is 45 days while in Romania it is up to two years). In other countries, such as in the UK, Canada, the USA, and Australia, detention can last indefinitely. However, in all cases, the denial of liberty is the common defining feature.
7
Historical Development
Despite being a “hot” topic in contemporary times, migration-related detention is not a new phenomenon. Its history stands back in time. In particular, Flynn (2014) highlights how the USA government employed such detention practices as early as the 1890s at what once resounded as the most famous of all ports of entry: Ellis Island, in New York Harbor. In this vein, the Federal immigration station on Ellis Island, as Flynn points out, can be understood as one of the world’s first immigration detention estates. Also, many scholars situate migration-related detention within the historical processes of colonialism, imperialism, and nation-building (e.g., Bosworth, 2014; Bosworth & Turnbull, 2015; Turnbull, 2017), and overall in “a long and ambiguous genealogy of the internment of unwanted others, whether enemies or aliens” (Fassin, 2011, p. 219).
In the European Union (hereinafter referred to as the EU), where migration-related detention reflects the complex political and physical geographies of Member States as well as a number of agreed upon border control policies,7 the use of migration-related detention has expanded since the 1990s. Prior to this change, foreign nationals were mainly incarcerated in prisons (Bosworth & Turnbull, 2015). It is worth noting that at the same time as the project for an internal space of “freedom, security, and justice” (according to the Amsterdam Treaty prominent formula) was being established, the project was counterbalanced by “the need for a more efficient management of migration flows at all their stages” (Tampere Programme, art. 22, emphasis added). In other words, internal freedom of movement within the EU/Schengen Area was fostered at the expense of the increasing fortification and securitization of external borders (that is why critics have coined the term “Fortress Europe”). Therefore, as Bosworth and Turnbull (2015) note, in the 2000s greater efforts were made in the EU to create a harmonized framework of migration management through the development of a series of directives and agreements. Among the latter, it is worth mentioning the Dublin II Regulation, the Returns Directive, and the Reception Conditions Directive. Altogether, these efforts have made it extremely difficult for people from large sections of the globe to enter legally, creating a geographically restricted labor marketplace for all but the most highly skilled. With the exception of student or tourist visas, virtually the only formal route left to enter most EU
7 Exemplificative in this regard is the establishment, on October 2004, of a European border security agency called FRONTEX (European Council, 2004), as well as, on October 2013, of a European Border Surveillance System called EUROSUR (European Parliament and European Council, 2013). 8 countries is that of making human rights-based claims for protection as refugees or the right to family life.
Another effect of the recent efforts by most EU Member States to manage migration “more efficiently” has been the overlapping of criminal justice and immigration policy (see previous section “Defining Migration-Related Detention,” and also Aas & Bosworth, 2013; Turnbull & Hasselberg, 2016). This has implied a reshaping of border control and the growing relevance of matters of citizenship within criminal justice systems. In particular, some actions previously enforced as immigration violations (e.g., working with false documents, travelling without a valid passport, or overstaying a visa) have fallen under the purview of the criminal justice systems while simultaneously being considered immigration violations. Police forces have been endowed with new responsibilities related to border control within and beyond the national borders. Examples of effects of these trends include the issuance of deportation orders as part of criminal sentences, as well as nationality checks being made at prison facilities. At the same time, many new detention facilities for non- citizens have been opened and deportation powers of Member States have been expanded.
As a result of this scenario, and of an increasing tendency to frame migration as an “emergency” and a “security” issue (e.g., Campesi & Fabini, 2017), in 2015 an EU Agenda on Migration was developed “to build up a coherent and comprehensive approach to reap the benefits and address the challenges deriving from migration” (European Commission, 2015). Beyond its declared intents and apart from the broadly discussed relocation and resettlement schemes, the set of measures and policies proposed in the Agenda were mainly focused on securing EU’s external borders (e.g., enhancing Frontex’s activities and budget); fighting against irregular migration, traffickers, and smugglers; externalizing migration control and detention in regions of origin and transit; and setting-up the so-called “hotspot” approach to “swiftly identify, register and fingerprint” incoming migrants through enhanced mechanisms of intra-governmental control (for a critical analysis of the hotspot system see Tazzioli & Garelli, 2018). It is worth mentioning that, at the time of writing (July 2018), a so-called EU Summit has just taken place, with migration as a priority issue on the agenda for discussion. The outcomes of this Summit do not certainly seem to go in the direction of more integration, solidarity, and diversity within the EU, but rather contribute to an exacerbation of processes of exclusion, marginalization, and segregation in the name of security as the contemporary panacea (Welander, 2018).
9
1.2. The Psychosocial Effects of Migration-Related Detention: State of the Art
Within the quite limited body of original empirical research produced about migration- related detention, the majority of contributions in the medical and psychological fields, since the early 1990s,8 have been dedicated to assessing the effects of detention on those subject to this form of confinement (e.g., Bracken & Gorst-Unsworth, 1991; Becker & Silove, 1993; Pourgourides, Sashidharan, & Bracken, 1996). In particular most scholars in these fields have analyzed the clinical consequences - primarily assessed as mental health outcomes - of this experience, with special consideration for those categories of people regarded as “vulnerable” (e.g., asylum seekers, victims of torture, children).
This research has been conducted largely in Australia, where conditions of detention are particularly harsh and where there is no time limit set by law. In Australia, psychologists, psychiatrists, and medical researchers have administered surveys and conducted interviews with people in detention (either face-to-face or over the phone), as well as with former detainees released into the community (e.g., Silove, Steel, & Mollica, 2001; Momartin et al., 2006; Steel et al., 2004; Steel et al., 2006; Coffey, Kaplan, Sampson, & Tucci, 2010). Moreover, in some cases, before becoming prohibited in 2015 by the Australian Border Force Act, staff working in detention centers used data about their daily practice to produce scientific evidence (Koopowitz & Abhary, 2004; Sultan & O’Sullivan; 2001). Among these studies, it is worth mentioning the one conducted by Sultan and O’Sullivan (2001), an Iraqi doctor detained in the Villawood Detention Center in Sidney and a psychologist working at the same facility. Relying on participant-observer accounts and findings from a survey administered to detainees held at Villawood for over nine months, the authors show that psychological distress, punctuated by periods of revolt, is linked to stages in the asylum process and increases as feelings of shock and dismay, injustice, impending doom, hopelessness, chronic fear, and mistrust, which altogether progressively overwhelm those whose asylum claims are unsuccessful (also negatively impacting the well-being of their confined children).
Since Australia has a mandatory detention policy for all people arriving without a valid entry document – a policy which has been increasingly used to prevent those seeking asylum, particularly when arriving by boat, from reaching the mainland - the majority of the existing
8 It is in the 1990s when a number of states witnessed an upsurge in asylum applicants and the emergence of the contemporary detention system. 10 studies have been focusing on asylum seekers, whose proportion in detention is significantly high. Nevertheless, there are studies conducted in other countries that include a wider range of non-citizens (e.g., Bosworth & Kellezi, 2015; Robjant, Robbins, & Senior, 2009). Overall, this body of work has largely demonstrated the human costs associated with this practice. Remarkably, already in 1991, Bracken and Gorst-Unsworth, relying on the cases of the detainees they met in UK detention centers and prisons, all of whom with previous experiences of torture and persecution in the countries from which they had fled, concluded:
We do not know why the detention of torture survivors is happening in this country at the present time . . . It is clear that they !these detentions" result in a large degree of unnecessary psychological suffering to people already severely scarred by their experiences of torture and imprisonment. (p. 658)
In order to present in greater detail the results emerging from this strand of research developed over the years, I will make use of four literature reviews, proceeding, first, to briefly and separately illustrate their characteristics. Then, I will critically summarize the main findings reported and the conclusions stemming from them. This information, finally, will be integrated with more recent works published in 2016, 2017, and 2018.
In 2009, Robjant, Hassan, and Katona published the first systematic review of the literature on the mental health implications of detaining asylum seekers (cut-off date 2007). Relying on well-documented claims of clinicians about the vulnerability of asylum seekers as a result of their previous traumatic experiences, as well as their concerns about the risk that detention would increase their mental health difficulties (especially in children), the scholars’ aim was to verify the existence of an association between increased prevalence and severity of mental health problems and confinement in a migration-related detention center. To achieve this goal they identified studies assessing the impact of detention on the mental health status of asylum seekers, including children and adolescents, held in Australia, the UK, and the USA. The ten studies identified (i.e., Arnold, Beeks, Fluxman, Katona, & de Zulueta, 2006; Bracken & Gorst-Unsworth, 1991; Keller et al., 2003; Mares & Jureidini, 2004; Momartin et al., 2006; Pourgourides et al., 1996; Steel et al., 2004; Steel et al., 2006; Sultan & O’Sullivan, 2001; Thompson, McGorry, Silove, & Steel, 1998) were separately grouped into those reporting on case series and those comparing currently or formerly detained asylum seekers with a comparison group. Three studies also looked at the impact of detention on children and their families (i.e., Mares & Jureidini, 2004; Steel et al., 2004; Sultan & O’Sullivan, 2001). 11
In 2013, Storm and Engberg (cut-off date January 2013) systematically reviewed the impact of migration-related detention on the mental health of people who have endured torture in either their countries of origin or during their travels out of said countries. Although 15 studies were included in the review (i.e., Bracken & Gorst-Unsworth, 1991; Coffey et al., 2010; J. Cohen, 2008; Green & Eagar, 2010; Ichikawa, Nakahara, & Wakai, 2006; Keller et al., 2003; Mares & Jureidini, 2004; McGorry, 2002; Momartin et al., 2006; Robjant, Robbins, & Senior, 2009; Sobhanian, Boyle, Bahr, & Fallo, 2006; Steel et al., 2004; Steel et al., 2011; Steel et al., 2006; Sultan & O’Sullivan, 2001), only two studies, covering three cases overall, focused exclusively on torture survivors (i.e., Bracken & Gorst-Unsworth, 1991; McGorry, 2002). Nevertheless, some of the others identified a large percentage of torture survivors and other severely traumatized people among the participating asylum seekers.
Another systematic literature review on the effects of detention on the mental and physical health and social functioning of asylum seekers was carried out in 2016 by Filges, Montgomery, and Kastrup (cut-off date November 2013). With the aim to establish a relation of causal effect between detention and detainees’ mental health problems, only studies using an appropriate control group of non-detained asylum seekers were considered. As a result, nine studies were selected (i.e., Cleveland & Rousseau, 2013; Ichikawa et al., 2006; Johnston, Allotey, Mulholland, & Markovic, 2009; Momartin et al., 2006; Robjant, Robbins, & Senior, 2009; Steel et al., 2011; Steel et al., 2006; Thompson et al., 1998; Thompson, 2011). However only three of them were finally included in the data synthesis (i.e., Cleveland & Rousseau, 2013; Ichikawa et al., 2006; Robjant, Robbins, & Senior, 2009), as the others were considered of not having properly controlled potential confounding factors. Meta-analysis was then used to examine the effects of detention on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and anxiety while participants remained confined. Random effects models were used to pool data across these studies estimating effect sizes using the standardized mean differences. Pooled estimates were weighted using inverse variance methods, and 95% confidence intervals were estimated (see Filges, Montgomery, Kastrup, & Jørgensen, 2015). Since only one of the selected studies provided data about post-detention experiences, the authors were not able to perform a meta-analysis in this regard.
Finally, in 2016, Mary Bosworth published what is the most extensive review of the literature on the impacts of detention on the mental health of detainees (over 30 studies dated between 1991 and 2015). Particular attention was paid in this review to available findings on gender differences and vulnerable groups. Unlike the abovementioned reviews, Bosworth’s review was not limited to studies on detained asylum seekers and/or survivors of torture, but 12 rather it took a more expansive view of the scholarship, taking into account the entire population of non-citizens subject to detention. Furthermore, beyond the impacts, Bosworth aimed at understanding the key contributors to detainees’ mental distress. To reach this aim, the scholar analyzed the academic literature produced in a variety of jurisdictions (the UK, USA, Australia, France, and Canada), also using a variety of mechanisms – such as main academic databases as well as the SSRN’s Library – to locate contributions. Relevant reports produced by governments, NGOs, and the voluntary sector presenting empirical data (primary criterion of inclusion) were also included. Academic contributions included qualitative and quantitative studies from the medical and psychological fields as well as from a number of other disciplines within social sciences. Along statistical account produced by clinical researchers, more descriptive studies were also analyzed (for a complete list of the contributions selected see Bosworth, 2016).
What emerges from these four reviews is that, across time and space, the literature converges on the evidence that migration-related detention adversely affects the mental health of those subject to it, and it is especially iatrogenic for vulnerable populations, namely all people who experienced persecution, torture, and traumas prior to be detained. Elevated levels of anxiety, depression, and PTSD among asylum seekers – main focus of research interest as previously mentioned – were reported in all studies. Self-harm and suicidal ideation and, in a reduced scale, signs of psychosis were also observed (e.g., Cleveland & Rousseau, 2013; Coffey et al., 2010; Sultan & O’Sullivan, 2001; Robjant, Robbins, & Senior, 2009). In particular, the meta-analysis conducted by Filges et al. (2016) reinforces the evidence, already highlighted by the review of Robjant, Hassan, and Katona (2009), of an independent deterioration of mental health due to detention, and that this deterioration persists long after the release into the community (see also Steel et al., 2006). The two studies on torture survivors identified by Storm and Engberg (2013) present similar results. While not providing a sufficient basis for the analysis and establishment of the specific effects of detention on the mental health of people who suffered torture either in their countries of origin or in transit, they demonstrate the severe impact of detention on this population and the particular symptoms fostered. Arnold et al. (2006) also highlight the lack of information that this particular group of people - i.e., torture survivors - have about actions put in place by authorities to safeguard them.
Children emerged to be amongst the most affected by migration-related detention, suffering from both the direct impact of the detention environment as well as the indirect one on their parents’ well-being (Dudley, Steel, Mares, & Newman, 2012; Fazel, Reed, Panter- 13
Brick, & Stein, 2012; Lorek et al., 2009; Mares, 2016; Mares & Juredini, 2004; Mares & Zwi, 2015; Steel et al., 2004; Sultan & O’Sullivan, 2001). As a consequence, scholars report a wide set of problems rising even when children are confined for short periods of time (e.g., Lorek et al. 2009). Depression, anxiety, posttraumatic presentations, tearfulness, withdrawal, nocturnal enuresis, sleep difficulties, poor appetite, and physical health problems were commonly identified. Self-harm and suicidality were also highlighted. Younger children presented developmental delays as well as emotional and behavioral problems. This evidence aligns with findings on the impacts of exposure to cumulative risks including parental mental distress and violence in an environment where protective factors are largely absent (Mares, 2016; Sultan & O’Sullivan, 2001).
Following this vein, a series of studies developed by Kronick, Rousseau, and Cleveland (2011, 2015, 2018) on children’s and families’ lived experiences of detention in Canada (where detention, like in Australia, has indefinite duration), and its consequences, are particularly meaningful. Through a variety of qualitative and quantitative methods framed in an ethnographic approach, the scholars show how detention reactivates pre-existing traumas, also evoking in children feelings of helplessness and fear. Children’s play and storytelling evoked tropes of surveillance and captivity; loss of protection from threats (even in the context of a hope that migration will bring a better life); worries and experiences of violence as a re-enacting and re-making of trauma (Kronick et al., 2018). The high-security prison-like environment, the lack of stimulation, and the hyper-regulation of life induced deprivation and powerlessness. Caregivers, due to the high distress experienced, ended up loosing their capacity to be protective and emotionally responsive. On their side, guards were caught in the paradoxical tension of feeling humanity and willing to nurture the children, while having to act according to a custodial and security mandate (on the paradox between humanitarian and security logics in detention, see Article IV). Also, when children were separated from their families rather than detained – in Canada both options are available – negative consequences arose, rendering the entire family system more fragile. In most cases these problems did not resolve immediately upon the children’s – or their parents’ – release, leaving children with persistent psychological and academic difficulties long after their release. Based on this evidence, the scholars conclude that “any incarceration !including very brief ones", even under relatively safe conditions, is damaging for immigrant children, especially those with high levels of previous trauma exposure” (Kronick et al., 2015, p. 292).
Considering the state of the art about vulnerable groups in detention, Bosworth (2016) also makes reference to women, underling that no clinical research has been focused on this 14
“silenced custodial population” (Bosworth & Kellezi, 2014, p. 81). Nonetheless, qualitative accounts of detention produced by scholars within social sciences (e.g., Bosworth & Kellezi, 2014) highlight that women in detention present gender-specific needs and vulnerabilities, and face particular problems and psychological challenges. For instance, an analysis conducted by Young and Gordon (2016) on the mental health screening data of the Australian Human Rights Commission revealed that female detainees are more vulnerable to time in detention than their male counterparts.
Interestingly, the four literature reviews, especially the one by Bosworth (2016), also shed light on what in particular induces, maintains, or exacerbates the psychological distress suffered by people confined in these sites. Overall, what emerges is that both the characteristics related to the detention environment and the detention itself have a negative impact on mental health (see Robjant, Hassan, & Katona, 2009; Storm & Engberg, 2013). In particular, two factors frequently mentioned as main sources of distress are pre-existing trauma and length of detention. Nevertheless, pre-existing physical and mental health issues, poor general and mental healthcare services in detention, loss of liberty, uncertainty, feeling powerlessness, criminalization, problems of communication and information, the prison-like surveillance, and the lack of activity and stimulation also emerge as key contributors to mental health deterioration (Bosworth, 2016; Cleveland, Kronick, Gros, & Rousseau, 2018; Coffey et al., 2010; Dudley et al., 2012; Physicians for Human Rights and the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture, 2003).
Pre-detention trauma experience has mainly been assessed in studies conducted with asylum seekers in detention (e.g., Cleveland & Rousseau, 2013; Robjant, Robbins, & Senior, 2009) or after release (e.g., Ichikawa et al., 2006), and has been described as one explanatory factor in the exacerbation of the distress provoked on this population by detention (Cleveland et al., 2018). As Dudley et al. (2012) observe, detention, and border control measures in general, extend the uncertainty and fear that these people endured in their past experiences of persecution into a present “continuum of stress” and apprehension for the future, consequently, causing a retraumatization. Detainees’ previous traumatic experiences mainly relate to the motives that led them to flee their country of birth (e.g., persecution and torture) as well as the violence they have experienced during their journey. Moreover, as Bosworth (2016) notes, these traumas have a gendered nature, with a high proportion of detained women having suffered gender-based violence and discrimination (see Article III).
Length of detention transversally emerges as a more important factor in shaping detainees’ well-being outcomes. People detained for longer time were affected more and for 15 longer with their symptoms getting increasingly worse (Keller et al., 2003; Physicians for Human Rights and the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture, 2003; Robjant, Robbins, & Senior, 2009; Steel et al., 2006; Sultan A, O'Sullivan, 2001). However, the various studies substantially diverge when considering the time frame (Bosworth, 2016). In Australia, Green and Eager (2010) found that those detained for 24 months or longer had the highest incidence of distress. Differently, Sultan and O’Sullivan (2001) and Steel et al. (2006) suggested that more than six months in detention is enough to produce a significant impact on mental health. However, even among asylum seekers detained less than 6 months, PTSD symptoms 3 years post-release remained considerably higher compared to the control group of asylum seekers in the community (Steel et al., 2006). In the USA, Keller et al. (2003) revealed that, after a median detention of 5 months, 77% of asylum seekers had clinically significant symptoms of anxiety, 86% of depression, and 50% of post-traumatic stress disorder. In the UK, Robjant, Robbins, and Senior (2009) found a deterioration of mental health after merely 30 days of detention, as well as a significant interaction between length of detention and prior exposure to interpersonal trauma on depression scores. Finally, Cleveland and Rousseau (2013) demonstrated that asylum seekers present considerably increased distress levels compared to their non-detained peers after just 18 days of confinement in a migration-related detention center.
Acknowledging the lack of research on the psychosocial experience of detention as well as on detainees’ strategies to cope and resist (see also Bosworth, 2014, 2016), a study by Coffey et al. (2010) highlights some aspects of detention that, from the perspective of those who have experienced it for extended periods of time, produce harm. Namely, these include: the loss of liberty, and the starkness and deprivation specific to the detention environment; the prison-like atmosphere and constant surveillance; the lack of meaningful activities and privacy; the exposure to violence; the unjust and inhumane treatment (including the common carceral practice of calling people by number rather than by name); an induced sense of powerlessness and disenfranchisement; the arbitrariness of rule and practices; the profound sense of isolation, alienation, and abandonment; the lack of opportunities for communication with loved ones outside; a mounting hopelessness and demoralization, and a loss of agency.
Cleveland et al. (2018), in the qualitative component of their mixed-methods study, found that feeling powerlessness was the experience most strongly correlated with all types of mental health symptoms developed by detainees. Other experiences associated with significant levels of distress included: uncertainty about the duration of confinement; having nothing to do but thinking about one’s problems; boredom; fear of deportation; worries about 16 family back home; loneliness; and the perceived unfairness of detention. A pervasive loss of hope and sense of control over one’s life – also due to constant surveillance and strict rules applied - was also reported as increasing over time. Based on their findings, the scholars conclude by identifying two main factors as responsible for the adverse impact of detention on asylum seekers’ mental health, namely symbolic violence and disempowerment. In this light, migration-related detention, they argue, may be understood as “a form of structural violence” (Cleveland et al., 2018, p. 7), which primarily targets people from the Global South.
Finally, as reported by Bosworth (2016), within the broader spectrum of social sciences a growing body of work has explored the psychosocial experiences of those who provide services inside migration-related detention centers, highlighting the emotional toll of working in these sites (e.g., Bosworth, 2014; Campesi, 2015; Fischer, 2015; Hall, 2010, 2012; Puthoopparambil, 2016; Puthoopparambil, Ahlberg, & Bjerneld, 2015). In spite of the differences in terms of national detention systems and their organization, scholars in different countries (e.g., Australia, Italy, Greece, Sweden, and USA), and with different disciplinary backgrounds (e.g., psychology, medicine, criminology, political science, sociology and social work), have emphasized how the tight constraints and securitarian pressures that characterize the detention environment make it hard to deliver most of the basic services to detainees. In particular, they have highlighted the limits in terms of social, educational, and recreational activities (Campesi, 2015; Puthoopparambil et al., 2015), medical aid (Kotsioni, 2016), and mental healthcare (Essex, 2014; Mares & Jureidini, 2004), as well as faith-based activities (Snyder, Bell, & Busch-Armendariz, 2015). Also, uncertainty and confusion about professional status and identity have been described as distinctive features of these workplaces (Bosworth & Slade, 2014). In particular, the existing body of literature shows that staff working for migration-related detention centers’ managing agencies commonly experience feelings of frustration, powerlessness, and stress (Bosworth & Slade, 2014; Campesi, 2015). Consequently, these people suffer high risk of exhaustion and burnout (Puthoopparambil et al., 2015).
Detention centers are also perceived as unsafe environments, associated as they are with daily experiences of insecurity and fear (Puthoopparambil, 2016; Puthoopparambil et al., 2015; Hiemstra, 2014). For instance, concerns about possible physical assaults by detainees have been reported among staff workers in a range of geographical locations (Hall, 2010, 2012; Puthoopparambil et al., 2015; Fischer, 2015). Dealing with these concerns, and above all with the tension between their formal role as staff members on the one hand and being fellow human beings on the other, is one of the major challenges of such work and a cause of 17 deep stress for these professional actors (Hall, 2012; Kronick et al., 2018; Puthoopparambil et al., 2015). Tensions and strong ethical dilemmas - such as having to decide between obeying the detention rules and adhering to one’s own professional and moral values - have also been reported among people working in detention facilities for external humanitarian and human rights agencies (e.g., Essex, 2014; Furman, Ackerman, Sanchez, & Epps, 2015; Snyder et al., 2015; Kotsioni, 2016). In particular, issues of independent action, access, acceptance, accountability, and responsiveness to beneficiary needs have been described as some of the main issues faced by these actors (Kotsioni, 2016).
1.3. Contributions of Community Psychology to the Study of Migration-Related Detention and Deportation
Since its origins community psychology has been characterized by a contextualist epistemology (Kingry-Westergaard & Kelly, 1990), thus challenging traditionally individual- centered approaches widely adopted in psychological research (Sarason, 1981). In this way, community psychology has opened the way to the practice of “taking environment into account” (Trickett, 1984, p. 265). Over the years, scholars in this field have been therefore focusing on community rather than individuals. Accordingly, they have been engaging in collaborative efforts to promote transformative change at multiple ecological levels of analysis (Nelson, Kloos, & Ornelas, 2014).9
For a long time, and in line with the trend dominating in psychology, much of the psychological research in the area of migration has been dominated by an individual-centric perspective too (Sládková & Bond, 2011). As a consequence, individual-level factors have often been used by scholars to explain differences in the health status and well-being of migrants, underestimating processes operating at interpersonal, organizational, institutional, and policy levels (e.g., Thurston & Verhoef, 2003; Thurston & Vissandjée, 2005; Tseng & Yoshikawa, 2008). In contrast to this approach, some community psychology scholars have reframed migrant well-being as a “multilevel, interactive, and value dependent phenomenon”
9 Discussing the difference between ameliorative and transformative change in the mental health field, Nelson, Kloos, and Ornelas explain that, “ameliorative change follows an individualistic model that ignores power dynamics, whereas transformative change is rooted in an ecological model that highlights and strives to change the power relationships between mental health consumers/survivors and other stakeholders (e.g., professionals)” (2014, p. 9). In other words, a transformative change addresses the structural forces in which individual experiences are embedded and which shape them. 18
(Prilleltensky, 2008, p. 359), thus emphasizing the complex and dynamic interaction of the multiple factors involved in the relationship between host and migrant communities, as well as the key role of social justice in shaping it. In particular, in their commentary to the special issue “Migration and Community” of Psychology Intervention, Sládková & Bond (2011) illustrate the key contributions that a community psychology approach applied to the study of migrations can provide. In so doing, the scholars highlight three cross-cutting themes, namely: a) taking into account the role of a range of embedded contexts – i.e., social, organizational, cultural, national, international and political - that shape migrants’ experiences; b) contrasting the tendency to portray migrants as mere victims of broader social forces, and rather putting the focus on their agency and capacity to resist oppression; c) acknowledging diversity within migrant communities and among migration experiences, also adopting an intersectional framework of analysis able to grasp the interacting role of social markers - e.g., gender, sexuality, class, race, ethnicity, nationality - in shaping migrants’ experiences (on intersectionality see also Cole, 2009; Collins, 2009).
Although a large body of scholarship has been developed in community psychology on migrants and migration (e.g., Arcidiacono, Natale, Carbone, & Procentese, 2017; Balcazar et al., 2011; García-Ramírez, De la Mata, Paloma, & Hernández-Plaza, 2011; Mannarini, Talò, Mezzi, & Procentese, 2017; Salo & Birman, 2015), the existing body of work regarding the topic of migration-related detention is limited to date, mainly due to the difficulty of obtaining research access to detention sites. Nonetheless, some community psychology scholars – and most notably Jana Sládková and Brinton Lykes – have focused their efforts on studying the psychosocial impacts of detention and deportation policies on migrants living in the USA, where the climate has become increasingly repressive for non-citizens (e.g., Chicco, Esparza, Lykes, Balcazar, & Ferreira, 2016; Kanstroom & Lykes, 2015; Langhout et al., 2018) and actually operates the world’s largest migration-related detention estate, made up of some 200 facilities.10
Among other contributions, Sladkova, in cooperation with García Mangado and Reyes Quinteros (2012), has explored how migrant communities of Lowell, Massachusetts, and the organizations supporting them, made sense of and interacted with the heightened threat of deportation. Their findings shed light on the multiple impacts of detention and deportation
10 In 2016, more than 350,000 men, women, and children were detained in the USA, while over 462,000 were removed or deported (for more information see Global Detention Project, 2008). 19 policy on affected individuals and their families (both in the USA and in the countries of origin), as well as on the larger migrant community and on community organizations. While health consequences and economic hardships affected deportees and their families (particularly children), fear and mistrust of local authorities, health professional, and financial institutions overflowed in the larger migrant community (including those not directly affected by detention and deportation). This led to reluctance in reporting crime to police and seeking medical advice, additionally contributing to local community instability. Finally, the growing concerns and impacts of detentions and deportations spurred community organizations to reallocate resources away from their already established services and programs, also burdening the staff with further responsibilities.
In order to research the psycho-legal consequences of deportation policies on migrants living in or deported from the United States, and in order to promote the right of deportees and their families in the USA and Central America, in 2006, Lykes co-funded the Post- Deportation Human Rights Project (PDHRP), which was later renamed the Migration and Human Rights Project (MHPR), located at the Center for Human Rights and International Justice at Boston College.11 The main goal of this interdisciplinary participatory and action research (PAR) project was to facilitate a collaborative bottom-up process of policy development, advocacy, and community-based action (Lykes, McDonald, & Boc, 2012). In the frame of this large project, a series of studies were developed and their results disseminated. Below is an overview of the main ones.
In 2011, Brabeck, Lykes, and Hershberg published the results of their first study, designed in collaboration with local migrant organizations, to document the impact of deportation policy on Guatemalan and Salvadoran migrant families living in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and how these groups experience and respond to detention and deportation. Contrasting the predominantly ahistorical and individualistic assumptions informing a large part of psychological research, results highlighted how experiences of detention and deportation – as well as their related risks (i.e., violence, economic marginalization, family separation) – were understood by participants as deeply textured by their previous experiences and, in particular, by the multiple threats suffered in their country of birth. In other words,
11 To know more on these projects, see www.bc.edu/bc-web/centers/chrij/research/projects.html. Furthermore, in late 2016, the Post-Deportation Human Rights Project launched a new online portal: the Deportation Global Information Project (www.postdeportation.org). 20 they were framed as “part of a longer history of assaults experienced in the contexts of extreme poverty, la violencia, internal and external migrations, and other repressive practices” (Brabeck et al., 2011, p. 291). Furthermore, from the interviews emerged the strategies put in place by participants to tackle the violence of contemporary immigration enforcement actions. These included actions that concerned communicating with their children, learning about one’s rights, and organizing to act and speak out.
To complement this study, in 2012, Hershberg & Lykes explored the lived experiences of children of illegalized migrants based in the USA. In particular, the scholars examined the life stories of four Central American females (between 10 and 16 years of age) members of transnational and mixed-status families living between the USA and Central America. The analysis of these stories revealed a range of experiences within diverse transnational, sociopolitical, racialized, and gendered systems, while also emphasizing how these systems intersect as well as how these intersections affect people’s subjectivity, positionality, and social development contexts. Furthermore, it highlighted participants’ agency in their family relationships and more broadly within related life experiences, such as in navigating threats posed by the USA immigration and deportation systems.
Parent-child communication in the context of threats posed by deportation policy was the focus of a subsequent study whose specific aim was to explore how parents communicated with their children about the risk posed by detention and deportation, the functions that this communication or non-communication served, and children’s sources of knowledge on these threats other than parents themselves (Lykes, Brabeck, & Hunter, 2013). What emerged from the triangulation of different sources of data (interviews, survey responses, community meetings and workshops) was that migrant parents’ decision to communicate with their children about the threats of detention and deportation were to be framed in the context of the complex challenges they faced in their everyday realities as well as in their psychohistorical experiences (see also Brabeck et al., 2011). Family and community values, gendered norms and expectations, psychological experiences of being criminalized, and strategies to manage the challenges posed by their illegalized status while parenting children (including children with USA citizenship, as in the case of mixed-status families) all influenced this decision – constraining or facilitating parental communication and the consequent capacity to develop specific plans in case of parent’s apprehension and deportation. In this light silence emerged a proactive and/or protective parenting strategy to be considered as such by service providers, advocates, and participatory research collaborators. 21
Finally, in 2015, with the aim to challenge homogenizing discourses about so called “illegal aliens,” as well as the tendency to label their experiences with ahistorical and decontextualized universal psychological diagnoses, Lykes and Hershberg (2015) analyzed the stories of four adult Mayans from Guatemala living in the USA. In so doing, they critically looked at the linkages between social structures and systems that produce and impinge on people’s lives, as well as the ways in which people make sense and resist oppressive forces. Consistently with findings from the first study (Brabeck et al., 2011), the results of the narrative thematic analysis performed highlighted how participants understood the contemporary effects of detention and deportation within the collective story of multiple oppressions and migrations experienced by their people. Moreover, it revealed the intersecting constraints produced by “transnational forces of militarized economic and political processes and racialized gender violence” (Lykes & Hershberg, 2015, p. 260) on participants’ lives, as well as people’s strengths in the face of the violence and human rights violations suffered across time. In this light, as the scholars emphasize, “powerful narratives of suffering, survival, protagonism, and resistance” (Lykes & Hershberg, 2015, p. 260) were amplified.
The overall findings of the studies conducted by Lykes and collaborators in the USA were confirmed by data collected in Zacualpa, Guatemala, which also shed light on the threats posed by USA immigration policies and their enforcement on families “left behind,” including psychological distress (particularly for children), economic insecurities, indebtedness, and evictions (Lykes, Sibley, Brabeck, Hunter, & Johansen-Méndez, 2015).
To conclude the overview of contributions from community psychology scholars to the study of migration-related detention and deportation, it is noteworthy to mention two recent policy statements from the Society for Community Research and Action that address the impacts of incarceration and deportation on migrants, their families, and communities (Chicco et al., 2016; Langhout et al., 2018). These statements highlight the existence of rising apprehension among scholars in this field, and call for a deeper engagement of community psychologists on this issue – in line with this discipline’s emphasis on research as a means for promoting transformative change (Nelson et al., 2014).
Overall, the mentioned contributions, considering their differences, altogether share commonalities in terms of theoretical and methodological approaches adopted. In line with the key features of a community psychology approach for the study of migrations, as described by Sládková and Bond (2011), it is first of all worth noting that this body of work 22 adopts an ecological perspective (Kelly, 2006; Ornelas, 2008), taking into account the multiple contexts (individual, family/relational, organizational/institutional, and communal/societal) and forces (historical, cultural, economic, and political) that shape migrants’ lived experiences. In so doing, migration is understood not as an individual choice, but rather as a structurally generated decision that stems largely from systemic inequalities deeply embedded in historical geopolitical relations among countries (Global North vs. Global South). Therefore, considering the historical and socio-political contexts as central to the meanings that people give to their experience, the studies looked at the linkages between historical and contemporary stories of state-sponsored violence and human rights violations. Another peculiarity of this body of work is the focus on migrants’ strengths and their capacity to cope with and resist the multiple oppressions they endure. All the contributions emphasize people’s agency in the face of complex suffering, thus challenging the portrayal of migrants as passive victims or simply sick people who need to be rescued and treated. Furthermore, they adopt an intersectional framework of analysis, thus revealing the variety of realties that non-citizens experience based on their different emotional and structural positioning.
Finally, at a methodological level, the scholars adopt a collaborative approach, valuing the voices of those most directly affected by contemporary policies and practices of border control, their lived experiences and meaning-making processes, and their active participation in the process of service delivery, advocacy, and policy development. In essence, they engage issues of migration “from the bottom up.” In this regard, they privilege individual and community narrative analysis in order to provide a platform for migrants’ marginalized voices – and the rich psychosocial insights they provide - to be amplified. Indeed, as Balcazar et al. claim, “through the lens of narrative literature, liberation becomes a process by which oppressed people can deconstruct the dominant cultural narratives (hegemonic interpretations of their conditions of oppression), thereby fostering the change of unjust structural conditions, and reconstructing their personal life stories through the development of empowering community narratives in shared settings” (2011, p. 285). Thus, research wherein migrant people share their lived experiences can provide a pathway for empowerment and possible liberation from de-personalized, criminalizing, and belittling accounts produced about them, but always without them (Sládková, 2014).
23
2. Rationale of the Thesis
As the previous sections illustrate, under conditions of mass mobility and globalization, states around the world, especially in the so called Global North, are spending considerable efforts in tightening border control, enhancing surveillance and identification systems, and ultimately trying to sort and discipline those allowed to enter and stay on their territories. This process has led to a reinforcement of the apparatus of immigration enforcement and a growth in migration-related detention and deportation, also resulting in the massive state production of illegalized non-citizens.
Although many scholars, including scholars within the fields of psychology, have expressed serious concerns about the establishment of migration-related detention centers, which have been defined as being “sites of exception where regimes of police prevail over regimes of rights” (Fassin, 2011, p. 219), so far the knowledge on the socio-psychological and cultural world behind the walls of these institutions is limited (Bosworth, 2014; Fassin, 2011). This gap is primarily due to the difficulties in gaining permission to conduct empirical research inside detention facilities, as they are highly politicized and contested sites where independent research bearing witness to life inside is often looked on with suspicion by government actors and managing agencies, often even facing accusations that such researchers aim to further political agendas (Bosworth, 2014; Kirmayer, Rousseau, & Crépeau, 2004; Robjant, Hassan, & Katona, 2009; Steel & Silove, 2004).
As a result, and apart from evidence provided by NGOs, human rights organizations, committees, and government agencies (e.g., Amnesty International, 2013; Commissione Straordinaria per la Tutela e la Promozione dei Diritti Umani, 2017; HMIP, 2012; Human Rights Watch, 2014; Medici per i Diritti Umani, 2013), at present only a few academic studies have documented the life and lived experiences of people inside these sites of confinement (e.g., Bosworth, 2014; Bosworth, Fili, & Pickering, 2014; Campesi, 2015; Fili, 2013; Fisher, 2015; Hall, 2010, 2012; Iyengar et al., 2012; Puthoopparambil, 2016). Nevertheless, such studies are particularly meaningful as they enrich, and at times contradict, theoretical analyses developed on detention and deportation – and on border control more broadly – by scholars who have addressed it “from the above” (e.g., Brown, 2010; De Genova, 2010; Hernandez, 2008; Mezzadra & Neilson, 2013; Silverman & Massa, 2012), in some cases “independently from sustained engagement with the lived experiences of those within these institutions” (Bosworth, 2014, p. 52). Indeed, as Bosworth argues, by “going inside” these institutions, research can illuminate “parts of detention that we simply cannot otherwise see” (2014, p. 53), providing insights on the texture of these sites, generating new clues on their nature, purpose 24 and effect, and ultimately complementing knowledge produced from bird’s-eye perspectives, or even by studies based on telephone interviews (e.g., Steel et al., 2004) or accounts of former detainees living in the community (e.g., Coffey et al., 2010; Ichikawa et al., 2006; Klein & Williams, 2012; Momartin et al., 2006; Sobhanian et al., 2006). Independent academic research on life inside these institutions is also essential to critically inform public and political debate in this field (Bosworth & Kellezi, 2017).
Based on these considerations, the purpose of this thesis is to contribute from a psychosocial perspective to building knowledge about the everyday reality of migration- related detention, while also shedding light on its multiple effects. In particular, it adopts a community psychology’s ecological framework with a focus on justice (see Article I), and applies it to the case-study of Rome’s Ponte Galeria detention center, the largest Italian migration-related detention facility. In doing so, it aims to fill the knowledge gap about migration-related detention in Italy, a relevant country in the context of the EU migration governance because of its geographical location as an “entry gate” to Europe.
According to a transformative and critical community psychology approach, this thesis favors the perspective of the participants’ own psychosocial experiences – both detained non- citizens and professional actors – looking at how they understand and make sense of the detention system, and how they describe themselves within it or as affected by it – thus critically engaging this topic “from the bottom up.”
Furthermore, this thesis aims to contribute to future research inside migration-related detention centers, nourishing the scant knowledge existing on the Italian detention context (see Campesi, 2015; Iyengar et al., 2012), and indicating avenues for further exploration in Italy as well as in other national contexts. In particular, this thesis intends to provide an alternative to individual-centric perspectives prevailing in this area of psychological research (see Chapter 1.2, General Introduction), which has been mainly concerned with clinical consequences of detention, usually assessed through Western notions of mental disorder and well-being (Brabeck, Porterfield, & Loughry, 2015).
Finally, in order to value community psychology’s search for social justice, this thesis wishes to provide insights, primarily based on participants’ lived experiences and their perspectives, that can catalyze the development of more effective grassroots responses and advocacy action, ultimately resulting in recommendations for policy change at both local and international levels.
25
3. Research Objectives, Plan, and Methods
The vast majority of previous medical and psychological research has been largely devoted to assessing the detrimental effects of migration-related detention on the mental health of those affected, particularly through its focus on so-called “vulnerable populations,” such as asylum seekers (see Chapter 1.2, General Introduction). Conversely, the study described in this thesis, entitled “Life and Lived Experiences of People inside Migration- Related Detention: an Ecological Exploration into Rome’s Detention Center,” approaches this phenomenon from the ecological perspective of community psychology, complemented with a focus on justice, in order to study the everyday life and the experiences lived by people inside detention institutions. The choice of such an alternative approach is grounded in the belief that focusing exclusively on the individual consequences of detention, measured in terms of mental health outcomes, may have the unintended effect of medicalizing the lived experiences of those within these sites, ignoring their own perspectives and ultimately dehistoricizing, decontextualizing, and depoliticizing their experiences (Brabeck et al., 2011; Lykes, 2013; McGregor, 2011). Furthermore, this individual-centered approach also risks implying the idea that medical care can act as a primary solution to detention-related problems (McGregor, 2011).
Conversely, as Flynn and Flynn argue, in order to challenge damaging detention policies and practices, “a sophisticated, multi-faceted approach, one that is capable of critically assessing the many dimensions of this phenomenon,” (2017, p. 4) is necessary. According to this viewpoint, and, in line with the core values of community psychology and its “transdisciplinary promise”12 (Perkins & Schensul, 2017), the present research strives to understand its findings within the historical and contemporary socio-political contexts that are central to the meanings that participants – both detained non-citizens and professional actors – give to their own personal experiences. To do so, it builds on the case-study of Rome’s Ponte Galeria detention center, the largest Italian migration-related detention facility (for a presentation of the context of this study, see Table 1 and Articles II, III, IV, and V).
12 In the APA Handbook of Community Psychology, Perkins and Schensul (2017) illustrate a model for multilevel, transdisciplinary, and dynamic ecological community research and action that is attentive to issues of power and social justice. 26
Table 1: Rome’s Ponte Galeria Detention Center
Operating since 2000, and having previously been used as a police complex (Di Cesare, 2014), Ponte Galeria is a prison-like facility composed of several buildings surrounded by high walls and fences, which also utilizes surveillance cameras to monitor all internal and external areas (see Photos Annex I). Located in a southwest Roman suburb (“Fiera di Roma”), outside Rome’s ring road and close to Fiumicino International Airport, there are practically no road signs indicating the isolated location of the detention center. As in all other Italian detention centers, three different authorities govern daily life in Ponte Galeria: the prefecture (the local branch of the Interior Ministry), the immigration office of the local police headquarters, and the managing agency. The prefecture is the political authority that appoints the managing agency, monitors its work, decides who can access the facility, and adopts provisions concerning life within it. The immigration office of the local police headquarters is the administrative authority that maintains relationships with consular authorities, handles detainees’ immigration cases, implements deportation decisions, and is in charge of the internal security of the detention center. The managing agency is a private entity, typically a humanitarian organization, which the Italian government entrusts with managing and providing services for the detention center. It is noteworthy that, until December 2015, Ponte Galeria could hold up to 354 non-citizens subject to a detention order (176 men and 178 women). However, following a protest that resulted in a fire in the male living unit, Ponte Galeria was turned into an all-women detention center in 2016, with a reduced capacity of up to 125 women who can be held for a maximum of 90 days (up to 12 months in the case of asylum seekers).
The objectives of this research, which was funded by a doctoral scholarship provided by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (SFRH/BD/87854/2012), are: a) To develop an original and ecological community psychology framework, with a focus on justice, for the purpose of studying migration-related detention contexts and their multiple effects on the life of detainees and professional actors within them; b) To understand the stories and the psychosocial experiences of people inside Rome’s Ponte Galeria detention center, how they make sense of the detention system and their own experience within it, and their descriptions of how they are affected by and resist detention; c) To examine the psychosocial and cultural world inside migration-related detention centers, as well as the patterns of everyday life, by applying the ecological framework developed for the case-study of Rome’s Ponte Galeria detention center; 27
d) To use this case-study to reflect on local-global nexuses; thus, elucidating the ways in which globalized structural forces are embodied in the daily life at a migration- related detention center – that is, examining detention in the wider context of border control –, and highlighting the broader implications signified by these findings, including future avenues for research and transformative action.
Overall, the approach used to capture the complex relationships between individuals (detained non-citizens and professional actors) and the detention environment under study can be defined as a qualitative case-study approach (Lincoln & Guba, 1985; Patton, 1990; Stake, 2008; Yin, 1994). In particular, considering the aforementioned objectives and the exploratory nature of this study, multiple sources and strategies of data collection were employed within a broader ethnographic framework. Therefore, over the course of the thirty-four months of fieldwork carried out (March 2014 – January 2017), participant observation, topic-focused interviews, and document and multimedia data analysis were used to build an understanding of the complexity of the experiences of detained non-citizens and professional actors in the context of the Ponte Galeria detention center. Indeed, as argued by Denzin and Lincoln, regarding qualitative research:
The use of !qualitative" multiple methods, or triangulation, reflects an attempt to secure an in-depth understanding of the phenomenon in question . . . The combination of multiple methodological practices, empirical materials, perspectives, and observers in a single study is best understood, then, as a strategy that adds rigor, breadth, complexity, richness, and depth to any inquiry (2013, pp. 9-10).
In the case of the current research, the triangulation of the different data sources (observation, interviews, and documents and multimedia sources) and perspectives (detainees and professionals) was also guided by the community psychology theoretical framework outlined at the beginning of this study. Namely, this framework, described in detail in Article I, makes use of Kelly’s (1968) four ecological principles – interdependence, cycling of resources, adaptation, and succession – in addition to the dimension of justice, as conceptualized by Prilleltensky (2012), applying them to the study of migration-related detention contexts. In doing so, this research emphasizes the simultaneous and interactive action of factors located at multiple ecological levels (personal, interpersonal, organizational, and communal) (see Figure 1).
28
Figure 1 - Interdependence, Cycling of Resources, Adaptation, Succession, and Justice are interdependent components, whose effects are interactive rather than additive across multiple ecological levels (personal, interpersonal, organizational, and communal).
Source: Esposito, Ornelas, & Arcidiacono, 2015.
It is worth noting that the choice of the methodological approach adopted by this research is based on an ethnographic mode of inquiry and is consistent with the work of other scholars who have explored similar issues. During the last few years, ethnographic methods have indeed been increasingly used to study contexts of mobility and border control (e.g., Tsianos, Hess, & Karakayali, 2009 Vacchiano, 2013; Vacchiano & Jiménez, 2012), including migration-related detention centers (e.g., Bosworth, 2014; Bosworth, Fili, Pickering, 2014; Bosworth & Kellezi, 2014; Bosworth & Slade, 2014; Fili, 2013; Fisher 2013, 2015; Hall, 2012). More specifically, in the first national study of daily life inside detention centers in the UK, Bosworth and Kellezi note, “we found ethnography [to be] the most appropriate means of addressing these complex, low-trust environments” (2017, p. 132).
Additionally, within the field of community psychology, ethnographic approaches have long been employed, especially in case studies of specific social contexts (e.g., Berryhill & Linney, 2006; Bond & Keys, 1993; Culley & Hughey, 2008; Felton, 2005; Gone, 2011; Mankowsky & Thomas, 2000; Maton & Salem, 1995; Ozer, Newlan, Douglas, & Hubbard, 2013; Todd, 2012). Case, Todd, and Kral (2014) have systematically illuminated the potential of ethnography for community psychology, describing it as a meaningful method, “to capture 29 culture and context, to document process, and to reveal how social change and action occur within and through communities” (p. 60). The scholars have also stressed the alignment of ethnography with community psychology’s core values, such as mutuality and collaboration, attention to power issues, respect for human diversity and cultural contexts, accountability to marginalized groups, and the promotion of self-determination and social justice, including liberation from oppression.13 Overall, ethnography is described by Case et al. (2014) as an interpretative qualitative method optimally positioned to address community psychology’s interest in understanding people in context.
In order to address the concerns voiced by an array of scholars regarding the possible misuse of ethnography as a dominating, rather than liberating, tool of oppressed peoples (Case et al., 2014; Dutta, 2016), the current study utilized a critical ethnographic approach, informed by feminist, postcolonial, and critical migration and race scholarship. Indeed, according to Dutta (2016), the focus of critical ethnographic approaches is a reflexive study of social suffering and inequities in order to pursue transformative changes. Critical ethnography is concerned with the connections between structural inequities and people’s everyday experiences (Case et al., 2014; Dutta, 2016; Reyes Cruz & Sonn, 2011), thus expounding upon dynamics of power, privilege, and subjugation, while providing a framework to examine the processes and effects of structural violence.14
Considering that migration-related detention has been described as, “a form of structural violence, primarily targeting people of color from the Global South” (Cleveland et al., 2018, p. 7), the conceptual and methodological framework of critical ethnography seemed to be fitting in the case of this research. In particular, a salient feature of critical ethnography, as conceptualized by community psychology, is its commitment to a “decolonizing standpoint” (Reyes Cruz & Sonn, 2011), which entails, “assuming a transdisciplinary and political stance geared toward unpacking colonial and neocolonial legacies” (Dutta, 2016, p. 70), with the utmost purpose of producing emancipatory knowledge and decolonizing community psychology (see also Sonn, 2016; Sonn et al., 2017). Thus, in the specific context
13 For an overview of community psychology’s core values see, for instance, Nelson and Prilleltensky (2010), and Tebes, Thai, and Matlin (2014). 14 For more information regarding the concept of structural violence and its use in community psychology, see Dutta, Sonn, and Lykes (2016). According to these authors, “structural violence refers to social systems, as well as the mechanisms through which they produce and normalize marginalization, exclusion, and exploitation along lines of “race”, class, gender, ethnicity, nationality, and other invidious categories” (Dutta, Sonn, & Lykes, 2016, pp. 1-2). 30 of the present research, a transdisciplinary attitude was considered necessary in order to unpack the micropolitical processes of detention and how the enduring legacy of colonialism, in intersection with other power systems, influences these processes (for more information on the importance of a cross-disciplinary research perspective on migration-related detention and deportation, see Kanstroom & Lykes, 2015).
Moreover, the adoption of a critical ethnographic approach in our research involved an exercise of reflexive engagement (Finlay, 2002; Reinharz, 1992), defined as a process of continuous critical reflection on how the researcher’s roles, values, emotions, background experiences, and structural positioning influenced her relationship with the context of the study (Rome’s Ponte Galeria detention center) and the people partaking in it (detainees and professionals) (see Article II). During this complex, ambivalent, and generally inconsistent, process, reflexivity became a tool to navigate power relationships intrinsic to the research enterprise; and more deeply understand, and therefore, potentially challenge migration-related detention and the hegemonic logic and forces that uphold it (see Bosworth & Kellezi, 2017).
3.1. Research Procedures and Data Collection15
In this section we provide a general description of the data collection procedures utilized by the present research. For a description of the particular analyses performed, see the original articles composing the Empirical Section of this thesis, particularly Articles III, IV, and V (the final and most comprehensive one). It is important to mention that the ISPA- Instituto Universitário Ethics Committee approved this research (see Annex II).
After completing the literature review and developing the theoretical framework, the researcher made contact with the competent institutional authorities, which included the Prefecture of Rome (the local branch of the Interior Ministry), to request formal permission to carry out the study. This process was facilitated by the researcher’s background experience working as an advocate for women detained in the Ponte Galeria detention center (see Article II), as well as by the favorable political situation that prevailed when the study began.16 After
15 This section is an updated version of the methods section contained in Article V. 16 In 2013, when permission to access the Ponte Galeria detention center was requested, the Interior Minister was keen to relaunch an image of an open and transparent Italian detention system, especially after the highly controversial Circular Order 1305 largely forbade independent actors from accessing migration-related detention sites (see also Campesi, 2015). 31 obtaining permission, the representatives in charge of the Ponte Galeria detention center, namely, the head of the center’s immigration office and the center’s manager, were contacted to meet the researcher in order to explain the research objectives, plan, and methods, in addition to negotiating the mode of access to the field of study.
Fieldwork was carried out from March 2014 to January 2017 and, as mentioned above, was articulated within a broad ethnographic framework comprising the use of multiple sources and strategies of data collection, namely: a) participant observation; b) topic-focused interviews; and c) document and multimedia data analysis. Each of these sources and strategies is described in detail below.
Participant Observation
Participant observation is a qualitative strategy of data collection, frequently associated with exploratory research objectives, which involves the researcher’s immersion and participation in a particular context, where they act as a part of the flow of daily life. This signifies, not just forming a part of the social milieu, but rather observing, taking notes, recording conversations, sounds, smells, and images, as well as asking questions about the meaning that people assign to their own experiences. Furthermore, it means that the researcher is embedded in the action and context of the particular social setting that they aim to study. In particular, Guest, Namey, and Mitchell (2013) identify three key features of participant observation: a) getting into the location of whatever aspect of the human experience the researcher aims to study; b) building relationships of trust with study participants; and c) spending enough time in the context of the space under study and interacting with the people within it. If, on the one hand, participant observation has the advantage of being quite a flexible qualitative data collection strategy that allows researchers to address a wide range of research objectives, on the other hand, it is time and labor intensive, and it also involves the challenge of organizing and systematizing an inherently fluid process (Guest, Namey, & Mitchell, 2013).
In the current research, participant observation, which took place during the 617 hours the researcher spent in the field, was crucial to understanding the dynamics of the Ponte Galeria detention center and to create a space to forge close relationships with different people, including detainees, staff members, NGO workers and volunteers, and police officers. In the context of some of these relationships it was possible to discuss which issues to prioritize over the course of the research, thus favoring the participants’ perspectives of their 32 own experiences, or even establishing certain forms of collaboration. In particular, the fieldwork was organized into several distinct periods, comprised of 17 periods of 2 to 15 days each. Detailed fieldnotes were used to record data, and focused on: a) significant processes that occurred in the detention setting, b) interactions and conversations between different actors, c) meaning-making processes and self-understanding, d) topics discussed, e) daily activities and routines, f) key events or incidents, g) physical environmental characteristics, h) sensory information, i) the researcher’s feelings, perceptions, and (self-) reflections, and l) any other relevant observations. The previously developed ecological framework also guided the data collection process (see Article I).
In an attempt to abide by ethical research principles and to mitigate intrusiveness, the researcher made an effort to make all people aware that this study was being carried out and to explain its goals and procedures, while conducting the fieldwork. Inspired by the 2012 work of community psychologist Dr. Nathan Todd, a short script explaining the study was prepared and read whenever possible (see Annex III). In all cases, research participants were made aware of the possibility to decline to have fieldnotes recorded about them. The research process played out in an iterative rather than linear, manner, signifying that the research questions were repeatedly reformulated throughout the data collection process and as the contextual understanding of people’s lived experiences increased (Dutta, 2016; Felton, 2005). In this regard, the researcher held regular meetings with her academic supervisors, and, at times, with certain collaborators, in order to discuss the observations made, and to progressively formulate a situated and nuanced understanding of the reality of the Ponte Galeria detention center. Participant observation ended when theoretical saturation17 was reached, and we felt that we had enough data to articulate an initial story concerning the site being studied (Todd, 2012).
17 Theoretical saturation is operationally defined as the discontinuation of data collection when the data obtained present a certain redundancy or repetition (Denzin & Lincoln, 1994) and do not add any additional information that could help refine the researcher’s theoretical reflections (Fontanella, Ricas, & Turato, 2008). 33
Interviews
During the fieldwork, topic-focused interviews were conducted with detainees, as well as with professional actors, in order to understand their lived experiences, as told from their own perspectives.
Arcidiacono (2012) defines topic-focused interviews as being constructed based on a pre-elaborated script consisting of a list of topics representing the issues that the research intends to explore, in addition to the discursive forms through which it is possible to address them. Nonetheless, this interview script is a plot outline, that is, a kind of memorandum for the researcher. Indeed, the interview does not follow a list of pre-determined questions, but, rather, is adapted to the flow of each participant’s narrative. In other words, the interview is conceived as an interactive, reflexive, and collaborative process, whose goals are to define an area of inquiry within which the interviewees can share their story, which encompasses their lived experiences, perceptions, emotions, self-understanding, and meaning-making processes (Arcidiacono & Procentese, 2010; Arcidiacono, 2012).
Following the guidelines regarding topic-focused interviews, the first task of this study involved the elaboration of scripts to be used in the interviews with detainees and professionals. These scripts were developed based on previous literature concerning the subject, as well as from insights generated during the participant observation process and conversations with research participants, both of which occurred before the interview phase of the study. Moreover, the scripts were discussed with key informants, who were drawn from both groups of detainees and professionals, before the interviews began. Similar to the case of participant observation, the sample size was defined by a saturation sampling model (Fontanella et al., 2008), signifying that interviews with both detainees and professionals ended when theoretical saturation was reached (see footnote 5).
When recruiting the sample of detainees (N=88), a heterogeneous sampling method, known as maximum variation sampling (D. Cohen & Crabtree, 2006; Patton, 1990), was favored in order to capture the diversity of experiences and perspectives of the non-citizens detained at the Ponte Galeria detention center, including those belonging to minority groups. Country of origin, age, time spent in Italy, and length of detention were utilized as criteria when compiling the sample, which was also balanced by gender (see Table 2).
34
Table 2. Characteristics of Detainees Interviewed Range Mean (SD) Age (years) 18 – 60 34.4 (10)
Time spent in Italy (days) 7 – 12,191 3,903.3 (2,974.3) Time spent in the CIE (days) 1 – 120 28.8 (28.2)
N % Gender Male 49 55.7% Female 39 44.3% Time spent in Italy ≤6 months 7 8%
>6≤1 years 2 2.3% >1≤5 years 19 21.6% >5 ≤10 years 18 20.5% >10≤15 years 21 23.9% >15≤20 years 8 9.1% >20 years 13 14.8% Time spent in the CIE ≤1 month 61 69.3% >1≤2 months 17 19.3% >2≤3 months 5 5.7% >3≤4 months 5 5.7% Country of citizenship (top ten)ª Nigeria 8 9.1% Morocco 5 5.7% Tunisia 5 5.7% Bosnia 4 4.5% Moldavia 4 4.5% Romania 4 4.5% China 4 4.5% Egypt 4 4.5% Ukraine 3 3.4% Senegal 3 3.4% Born in Italy 3 3.4%
Note: ªThere were 46 different nationalities present among detainees.
First, all participants were asked to give their written informed consent, after receiving a detailed explanation about the study’s aims and procedures (e.g., criteria and confidentiality), and having the possibility to ask questions. Next, the interview took place, being conducted in a conversational style and usually taking the form of a life story. In particular, the interview script focused on: a) life in the detainee’s country of origin (when 35 applicable), b) their migration motives and expectations (when applicable), c) their migration journeys (when applicable), d) their lived experiences in Italy, e) their relationship with the immigration system, f) their everyday life in detention, and g) their perspectives regarding the future (see Annex IV). A socio-demographic questionnaire was also filled out at the beginning of the interview.
Interviews lasted from 20 to 198 minutes, and, in general, they were digitally recorded and transcribed verbatim. In the case of the four participants who did not agree to allow audio recordings, the interviews were hand written. Interviews typically lasted one hour and were conducted inside the detention center, while people waited for their immigration cases to be processed. Given participants’ different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, diversity was the main challenge that needed to be addressed during this phase of the research. The researcher (author of this Thesis), who conducted the interviews, is fluent in Italian, English, Spanish, and Portuguese. In the case of the four interviewees who did not speak one of these languages, volunteer Arab, Chinese, and French interpreters provided by an NGO were employed. Informed consent forms were also provided in different languages, specifically Italian, English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Arab, Chinese, and Russian. The aim was to allow, to the greatest possible extent, for the participants to read and sign the consent form in their mother tongue, although this obviously was not feasible in every case, as we were unable to find translators for certain languages. Moreover, when vulnerable cases were identified – e.g., victims of violence, discrimination, and/or persecution – we informed these detainees about the support and information sources that were available within the detention center.
A total of 14 interviews were also conducted with professional actors. These participants were also recruited through heterogeneous sampling, being selected based on the diversity of their professional backgrounds, affiliations, roles, and experiences. Overall, the participants were comprised of eight women and six men between the ages of 28 and 56 years old, and hailed from countries as diverse as Italy, Switzerland, Morocco, Senegal, Nigeria, and the USA. Participants’ educational backgrounds encompassed a variety of subjects, including anthropology, sociology, psychology, law, social work, political science, developmental studies, nursing, foreign languages, cultural mediation, technical studies, economics, and business administration. Thirteen participants had a complete university education, possessing at least a bachelor’s degree. In particular, seven participants were members of Ponte Galeria’s managing agency, of whom two were board members, two were cultural mediators, one was a staff worker, one was a psychologist, and one was a legal 36 advisor. The seven members of the managing agency interviewed had been employed for periods ranging from six months to 12 years. The other interviewees were external actors, encompassing three human rights advocates (members of NGOs/independent organizations), one volunteer from a faith-based organization (FBO), one volunteer from a religious congregation, and two freelancers (a lawyer and a journalist). The latter interviewees spent considerably variable amounts of time inside the Ponte Galeria detention center, in some cases frequenting the detention center on a weekly basis, while in other cases visiting just a few times per year.18
All professionals who were interviewed received a detailed explanation of the research and gave their written informed consent. Interviews were carried out in a conversational style. In particular, the interview protocol focused on: a) professionals’ backgrounds and individual professional paths, b) their experiences inside Ponte Galeria, c) the vision, mission, and values they perceived regarding their work; d) their views about the operation of the detention system (i.e. its strengths and weaknesses), e) their vision regarding everyday life in detention, and f) their opinions concerning priorities for change (see Annex V). Also in this case, a socio-demographic questionnaire was filled out at the beginning of the interview.
Interviews lasted from 23 to 86 minutes, and took place in a range of different settings, which encompassed interviewees’ homes and workplaces, the detention facility, and public areas. All interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed verbatim.
Document and Multimedia Data Analysis
Fieldwork findings were complemented and triangulated using document analysis applied to a large variety of documents and multimedia sources. Official documents, including policy documents, regulations, and organizational charts, as well as publicly- oriented documents like websites and formal annual reports (e.g., Commissione Straordinaria per la Tutela e la Promozione dei Diritti Umani, 2017) were used to understand the formal and regulatory framework of the specific context explored by this study. In addition, media accounts and grey literature, such as newspaper articles and NGO and FBO reports (e.g., Beretta et al., 2016; LasciateCIEntrare, 2016; Medici per i Diritti Umani, 2012; 2013), were
18 To ensure the anonymity of the interviewees, we chose to present aggregated socio-demographic data. 37 screened to enrich our understanding of the national context and of the Ponte Galeria detention center. Finally, texts provided by detainees, such as diaries and letters, as well as multimedia projects (e.g., Badagliacca, 2015; Genovese, Cosentino, & Genovese, 2013), were considered to complement to the accounts of lived experiences that were collected during the fieldwork. In addition to other data sources, all of these resources were used to complement our understanding of the ecology of the Ponte Galeria detention center.
Structure of the Thesis
Considering the research objectives, plan, and methods described above, the present research has served as the basis for the five papers that constitute the Empirical Section of this thesis, with each paper possessing a unique background, methods, results, and discussion section, respectively. Two of these articles were already published in international journals and are available to the public (Articles I and II), one is in the process of being published (Article III), and the final two are currently undergoing peer-review (Articles IV and V).
In particular, Article I, which has been published in BMC International Health and Human Rights, illustrates, in detail, how an ecological community psychology framework, with a focus on justice, can be used when studying migration-related detention centers and the lived experiences of detainees, as well as those of professionals, at these sites.
Article II, which has been published in the Journal of Prevention & Intervention in the Community, provides a reflexive feminist account of the research process, which was still ongoing when the article was written. Furthermore, Article II pays particular attention to the tensions and vulnerabilities elicited during the fieldwork, in addition to the influence of the researcher’s personal story, values, and structural positioning on the relationships formed with the different actors at the Ponte Galeria detention center.
Article III, which is in the process of being published in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society (forthcoming in Autumn 2018), focuses on the lived experiences of women confined inside the Ponte Galeria detention center. Documenting and analyzing structural violence from a feminist intersectional perspective, the five stories illustrated in the article provide a platform for powerful female experiences of suffering and survival, as well as for stories of protagonism and resistance.
Article IV, which is undergoing review by the International Migration Review, sheds light on the lived experiences of Ponte Galeria’s staff and the external civil-society actors 38 working within the detention center. In particular, this article examines the emotional, ethical, and political challenges faced by these professionals in their everyday work, and their relationships with detainees.
Finally, Article V, which is being reviewed by the American Journal of Community Psychology, is the final and most comprehensive contribution to the literature. Through the utilization of the community psychology framework developed in Article I, and the triangulation of all of data sources collected during the research (i.e., observation, interviews, and documents and multimedia sources), this article analyzes the ecology of everyday life inside Rome’s Ponte Galeria detention center. In particular, this article creates a platform for the voices of detainees and professionals who participated in the research, while also unveiling the oppressive qualities of migration-related detention, in addition to discussing avenues of action for community psychologists.
It is worth noting that, on the whole, the five articles, written at different points in time, represent the scientific trajectory of the author of this thesis. In other words, they reflect the progressive evolution of her ideas about migration-related detention, as well as the development of her research project. As a consequence, inconsistencies may be present. Yet, any inconsistencies should be viewed as the result of a process of scientific growth, taking place in the context of a doctoral research project, which, as in any growth process, proceeded in a non-linear manner, resulting in continuous discoveries, afterthoughts, and repositioning.
4. References
Aas, K. F., & Bosworth, M. (2013). The borders of punishment: Migration, citizenship, and social exclusion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Amnesty International. (2013). Frontier Europe: Human rights’ abuses on Greece’s border with Turkey. London: Amnesty International. Retrieved from: https://www.amnestyusa.org/reports/frontier-europe-human-rights-abuses-on-greeces- border-with-turkey/ Andrijasevic, R. (2010). From exception to excess: detention and deportations across the Mediterranean space. In N. De Genova & N. Peutz (Eds.), The deportation regime: sovereignty, space and the freedom of movement (pp. 147–165). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Arcidiacono, C. (2012). L’intervista focalizzata come strumento per superare chiusure e fraintendimenti nelle dinamiche interculturali. In D. Giovannini & L. Vezzali (Eds.), 39
Immigrazione, processi interculturali e cittadinanza attiva (pp. 373–384). Caserta: Melagrana. Arcidiacono, C., Natale, A., Carbone, A., & Procentese, F. (2017). Participatory action research from an intercultural and critical perspective. Journal of Prevention & Intervention in the Community, 45(1), 44-56. Arcidiacono, C., & Procentese, F. (2010). Participatory research into community psychology within a local context. Global Journal of Community Psychology, 1(2), 1–10. Arnold, F. W., Beeks, M., Fluxman, J., Katona, C., & de Zulueta, F. (2006). Unmet medical needs in detention. The British Medical Journal Rapid Response, 332, 251. Badagliacca, M. (Producer & Director) (2015). Letters from the CIE [Motion picture]. Italy. Balcazar, F., Suarez-Balcazar, Y., Adames, S. B., Keys, C. B., García-Ramírez, M, & Paloma, V. (2011). A case study of liberation among latino immingrant families who have no children with disabilities. American Journal of Community Psychology, 49(1-2), 283- 293. Becker, R., & Silove, D. (1993). Psychiatric and psychosocial effects of prolonged detention on asylum-seekers. In M. Crock (Ed.), Protection or punishment: The detention of asylum-seekers in Australia (pp. 81-90). Sydney: The Federation Press. Beretta, L., Bondì, L., De Masi, F., Esposito, F., Festagallo, F., Gargano, O, & Quinto, C. R. (2016). Inter/rotte: Storie di tratta, percorsi di resistenze. Roma: Sapere Solidale. Berryhill, J. C., & Linney, J. A. (2006). On the edge of diversity: Bringing African Americans and Latinos together in a neighborhood group. American Journal of Community Psychology, 37(3-4), 155-156. Bond, M. A., & Keys, C. B. (1993). Empowerment, diversity and collaboration: Promoting synergy on community boards. American Journal of Community Psychology, 21(1), 37-57. Bosworth, M. (2012). Subjectivity and identity in detention: Punishment and society in a global age. Theoretical Criminology, 16(2), 123-140. Bosworth, M. (2014). Inside immigration detention. Oxford: University Press. Bosworth, M. (2016). Mental health in immigration detention: A literature review. Criminal Justice, Borders and Citizenship: Research Paper No 2732892. Retrieved from: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2732892 Bosworth, M., Fili, A., & Pickering, S. (2014). Women's immigration detention in Greece: Gender, control, and capacity. In M. J. Guia, R. Koulish, & V. Mitsilegas (Eds.), Immigration detention, risk and human rights (pp.157-170). New York: Springer. 40
Bosworth, M., & Guild, M. (2008). Governing through migration control: Security and citizenship in Britain. British Journal of Criminology, 48(6), 703-719. Bosworth, M., & Kellezi, B. (2014). Citizenship and belonging in a women's immigration detention centre. In C. Phillips & C. Webster (Eds.), New directions in race, ethnicity and crime (pp. 80-96). Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Bosworth, M., & Kellezi, B. (2015). Quality of life in detention: Results from the MQLD questionnaire data collected in IRC Campsfield House, IRC Yarl’s Wood, IRC Colnbrook and IRC Dover, September 2013 – August 2014. Oxford: Centre for Criminology. Retrieved from: https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/sites/files/oxlaw/mqld.pdf Bosworth, M., & Kellezi, B. (2017). Doing research in immigration removal centres: Ethics, emotions and impact. Criminology and Criminal Justice, 17(2), 121-137. Bosworth, M., & Slade, G. (2014). In search of recognition: Gender and staff-detainee relations in a British immigration removal centre. Punishment & Society, 16(2), 169– 186. Bosworth, M., & Turnbull, S. (2015). Immigration detention, punishment, and the criminalization of migration. In S. Pickering & J. Hamm (Eds.), The Routledge handbook on crime and international migration (pp. 91-106). Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Brabeck, K. M., Lykes, M. B., & Hershberg, R. (2011). Framing immigration to and deportation from the United States: Guatemalan and Salvadoran families make meaning of their experiences. Community, Work and Family, 14(3), 275-296. Brabeck, K. M., Porterfield, K., & Loughry, M. (2015). Psychosocial and mental health issues, assessment, and interventions with immigrant individuals and families facing detention and deportation in the United States. In D. Kanstroom & M. B. Lykes (Eds.), The new deportations delirium: Interdisciplinary responses (pp. 167-191). New York: New York University Press. Bracken, P., & Gorst-Unsworth, C. (1991). The mental state of detained asylum seekers. Psychiatrist, 15, 657-659. Brown, W. (2010). Walled States, waning sovereignty. New York: Zone Books. Campesi, G. (2015). Hindering the deportation machine. An ethnography of power and resistance in immigration detention. Punishment and Society, 17(4), 427-453. Campesi, G., & Fabini, G. (2017). La detenzione della «pericolosità migrante». Materiali per una storia della cultura giuridica, XLVII(2), 515-532. 41
Casas-Cortes, M., Cobarrubias, S., De Genova, N., Garelli, G., Grappi, G., Heller, C., … Tazzioli, M. (2015). New Keywords: Migration and borders. Cultural Studies, 29(1), 55-87. Case, A. D., Todd, N. R., & Kral, M. J. (2014). Ethnography in community psychology: Promises and tensions. American Journal of Community Psychology, 54(1-2), 60–71. Chicco, J., Esparza, P., Lykes, M. B., Balcazar, F. E., & Ferreira, K. (2016). Policy Statement on the incarceration of undocumented migrant families. American Journal of Community Psychology, 57(1-2), 255-263. Cleveland, J., Kronick, R., Gros, H., & Rousseau, C. (2018). Symbolic violence and disempowerment as factors in the adverse impact of immigration detention on adult asylum seekers’ mental health. International Journal of Public Health, 1-8. Cleveland, J., & Rousseau, C. (2013). Psychiatric symptoms associated with brief detention of adult asylum seekers in Canada. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 58, 409–416. Coffey, G. J., Kaplan, I., Sampson, R. C., & Tucci, M. M. (2010). The meaning and mental health consequences of long-term immigration detention for people seeking asylum. Social Science and Medicine, 70(12), 2070-2079. Cohen, D., & Crabtree, B. (2006). Qualitative research guidelines project. Retrieved from: http://www.qualres.org/HomeMaxi-3803.html Cohen, J. (2008). Safe in our hands?: a study of suicide and self-harm in asylum seekers. Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, 15(4), 235-244. Cole, E. R. (2009). Intersectionality and research in psychology. American Psychologist, 64, 170–180. Collins, P. H. (2009). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge. Commissione Straordinaria per la Tutela e la Promozione dei Diritti Umani. (2017). Rapporto sui centri di permanenza per il rimpatrio in Italia (aggiornamento dicembre 2017). Retrieved from: http://www.asylumineurope.org/sites/default/files/resources/rapporto_cie_cpr.pdf Culley, M. R., & Hughey, J. (2008). Power and public participation in a hazardous waste dispute: a community case study. American Journal of Community Psychology, 41(1- 2), 99–114. De Genova, N. (2002). Migrant “illegality” and deportability in everyday life. Annual Review of Anthropology, 31, 419-447. De Genova, N. (2010). The deportation regime: Sovereignty, space and the freedom of 42
movement. In N. De Genova & N. Peultz (Eds.), The deportation regime: Sovereignty, space, and the freedom of movement (pp. 33-65). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (1994). Handbook of qualitative research. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2013). Collecting and interpreting qualitative materials (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. Di Cesare, D. (2014). Crimini contro l’ospitalità. Vita e violenza nei centri per gli stranieri. Genova: Il Nuovo Melangolo. Dudley, M., Steel, Z., Mares, S., & Newman, L. (2012). Children and young people in immigration detention. Current Opinion in Psychiatry, 25(4), 285-292. Dutta, U. (2016). Ethnographic approaches. In L. A. Jason & D. S. Glenwick (Eds.), Handbook of methodological approaches to community-based research: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods (pp. 69-79). New York: Oxford University Press. Dutta, U., Sonn, C. C., Lykes, M. B. (2016). Situating and contesting structural violence in community-based research and action. Community Psychology in Global Perspective, 2(2), 1-20. Esposito, F., Ornelas, J., & Arcidiacono, C. (2015). Migration-related detention centers: the challenges of an ecological perspective with a focus on justice. BMC International Health and Human Rights, 15, 1-15. Essex, R. (2014). Human rights, dual loyalties, and clinical independence: Challenges facing mental health professionals working in Australia’s immigration detention network. Bioethical Inquiry, 11, 75–83. European Commission. (2015). Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions: A European Agenda on Migration. Retrieved from: https://ec.europa.eu/anti- trafficking/sites/antitrafficking/files/communication_on_the_european_agenda_on_mi gration_en.pdf European Council. (2004). Council Regulation (EC) No. 2007/2004 of 26 October 2004 establishing a European agency for the management of operational cooperation at the external borders of the Member states of the European Union. Official Journal of the European Union, L 349, 1-11.
43
European Parliament and European Council. (2013). Regulation (EU) No. 1052/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 October 2013 establishing the European border surveillance system (Eurosur)”. Official Journal of the European Union, L 295, 11-26. Fassin, D. (2011). Policing borders, producing boundaries: The governmentality of immigration in dark times. Annual Review of Anthropology, 40, 213–226. Fazel, M., Reed, R. V., Panter-Brick, C., & Stein, A. (2012). Mental health of displaced and refugee children resettled in high-income countries: Risk and protective factors. The Lancet, 379(9812), 266–282. Felton, B. J. (2005). Defining location in the mental health system: A case study of a consumer-run agency. American Journal of Community Psychology, 36, 373–386. Filges, T., Montgomery, E., & Kastrup, M. (2016).The impact of detention on the health of asylum seekers: A systematic review. Research on Social Work Practice, 1-16. Filges, T., Montgomery, E., Kastrup, M., & Jørgensen, A. K. (2015). The impact of detention on the health of asylum seekers: A systematic review. Campbell Systematic Reviews, 11, 1–104. Fili, A. (2013). The maze of immigration detention in Greece: A case study of the Athens airport detention facility. Prison Service Journal, 205, 34-38. Finlay, L. (2002). “Outing” the researcher: The provenance, process, and practice of reflexivity. Qualitative Health Research, 12, 531–545. Fisher, N. (2013). Bodies at the border: the medical protection of immigrants in a French immigration detention centre. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 36(7), 1162-1179. Fischer, N. (2015). The management of anxiety. An ethnographical outlook on self- mutilations in a French immigration detention centre. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 41(4), 599-616. Flynn, M. (2012). Who must be detained? Proportionality as a tool for critiquing immigration detention policy. Refugee Survey Quarterly, 31(3), 40-68. Flynn, M. (2014, April 1). How and why immigration detention crossed the globe. Global Detention Project (Working Paper No. 8). Retrieved from: https://www.globaldetentionproject.org/how-and-why-immigration-detention-crossed- the-globe Flynn, M., & Flynn, M. (2017). Introduction: the immigration detention puzzle in interdisciplinary perspective. In M. Flynn & M. Flynn (Eds.), Challenging 44
immigration detention. Academics, activists and policy-makers (pp. 1-10). Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Fontanella, B. J. B., Ricas, J., & Turato, E. R. (2008). Amostragem por saturação em pesquisas qualitativas em saúde: contribuições teóricas. Cadernos de Saúde Pública, 24(1), 17-27. Furman, R., Ackerman, A., Sanchez, M., & Epps, D. (2015). Immigration detention centers: Implications for social work. Smith College Studies in Social Work, 85(2), 146-158. García-Ramírez, M., De la Mata, M., Paloma, V., & Hernández-Plaza, S. (2011). A liberation psychology approach to acculturative integration of migrant populations. American Journal of Community Psychology, 47(1-2), 89-97. Genovese, A. & Cosentino, R. (Producers), & Genovese, A. (Director). (2013). EU 013, the last frontier [Motion Picture]. Italy: Zabbara. Global Detention Project. (2018). USA Statistics. Retrieved from: https://www.globaldetentionproject.org/countries/americas/united-states. Gone, J. P. (2011). The red road to wellness: Cultural reclamation in a native first nations community treatment center. American Journal of Community Psychology, 47, 187- 202. Green, J. P., & Eagar, K. (2010). The health of people in Australian immigration detention centres. The Medical Journal of Australia, 192(2), 65-70. Guest, G., Namey, E. E., & Mitchell, M. L. (2013). Collecting qualitative data: A field manual for applied research. Los Angeles !u.a.": Sage. Guia, M. J., Van der Woude, M., & Van der Leun, J. (2013). Social control and justice: Crimmigration in the age of fear. Amsterdam: Eleven Publishing. Hall, A. (2010). ‘These people could be anyone’: Fear, contempt (and empathy) in a British immigration removal centre. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 36(6), 881-898. Hall, A. (2012). Border watch. Cultures of immigration, detention, and control. London: Pluto Press. Healey, S. A. (2004). The trend towards the criminalisation and detention of asylum seekers. Human Rights Brief, 12(1), 14-17. Hershberg, R. M., & Lykes, M. B. (2012). Redefining family: Transnational girls narrate experiences of parental migration, detention, and deportation. FQS: Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 14(1), Art. 5. Retrieved from: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs130157
45
Hernandez, D. M. (2008). Pursuant to deportation: Latinos and immigrant detention. Latino Studies, 6(1), 35-63. Hiemstra, N. (2014). Performing homeland security within the US immigrant detention system. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 32, 571-588. HMIP. (2012). The effectiveness and impact of immigration detention casework: A joint thematic review by HM Inspectorate of Prisons and the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration. London: HMIP. Retrieved from: https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmiprisons/wp- content/uploads/sites/4/2014/04/immigration-detention-casework-2012.pdf Human Rights Watch. (2014). Two years with no moon: Immigration detention of children in Thailand. New York: Human Rights Watch. Retrieved from: https://www.hrw.org/report/2014/09/01/two-years-no-moon/immigration-detention- children-thailand Ichikawa, M., Nakahara, S., & Wakai, S. (2006). Effect of post-migration detention on mental health among Afghan asylum seekers in Japan. The Australian and New Zeland Journal of Psychiatry, 40(4), 341-346. Iyengar, S., Landri, C., Mini, M., Ogada-Osir, A., Roman, E., Skalon, T., ... & Veglio, M. (2012). Betwixt and between: Turin’s CIE. A human rights investigation into Turin’s detention center. Retrieved from: http://www.ristretti.it/commenti/2012/ottobre/pdf3/rapporto_cietorino.pdf Johnston, V., Allotey, P., Mulholland, K., & Markovic, M. (2009). Measuring the health impact of human rights violations related to Australian asylum policies and practices: A mixed methods study. BMC International Health and Human Rights, 9, 1–12. Kanstroom, D., & Lykes, M. B. (2015). Introduction: Migration, detention, and deportation: Dilemmas and responses. In D. Kanstroom & M. B. Lykes (Eds.), The new deportation delirium: Interdisciplinary responses (pp. 1-30). New York: New York University Press. Kanstroom, D., & Lykes, M. B. (2015). The new deportations delirium: Interdisciplinary responses. New York: New York University Press. Keller, A. S., Rosenfeld, B., Trinh-Sevrin, C., Meserve, C., Sachs, E., Leviss, J. A., … Ford, D. (2003). Mental health of detained asylum seekers. Lancet, 362(9397), 1721-1723. Kelly, J. G. (1968). Toward an ecological conception of preventive interventions. In J. R. Carter, Jr. (Ed.). Research contributions from psychology to community mental health (75–99). New York: Behavioral Publications. 46
Kelly, J. G. (2006). Becoming ecological: An expedition into community psychology. New York: Oxford University Press. Kingry-Westergaard, C., & Kelly, J. G. (1990). A contextualist epistemology for ecological research. In P. Tolan, C. Keys, F. Chertok, & L. Jason (Eds.), Researching community psychology: Issues of theory and methods. Washington: American Psychological Association. Kirmayer, L. J., Rousseau, C., & Crépeau, F. (2004). Research ethics and the plight of refugees in detention. Monash Bioethics Review, 23(4), 85-92. Klein, A., & Williams, L. (2012). Immigration detention in the community: Research on the experiences of migrants released from detention centres in the UK. Population, Space and Place, 18(6), 710-714. Koopowitz, L. F., & Abhary, S. (2004). Psychiatric aspects of detention: Illustrative case studies. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 38(7), 495-500. Kotsioni, I. (2016). Detention of migrants and asylum-seekers: The challenge for humanitarian actors. Refugees Survey Quarterly, 35(2), 41-55. Kronick, R., Rousseau , C., & Cleveland, J. (2011). Mandatory detention of refugee children: A public health issue? Paediatrics & Child Health, 16(8), 65–67. Kronick, R., Rousseau, C., & Cleveland, J. (2015). Asylum-seeking children’s experiences of detention in Canada: A qualitative study. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 85(3), 287–294. Kronick, R., Rousseau, C., & Cleveland, J. (2018). Refugee children’s sandplay narratives in immigration detention in Canada. European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 27, 423– 437. Langhout, R. D., Buckingham, S. L., Oberoi, A. K., Chávez, N. R., Rusch, D., Esposito, F., & Suarez-Balcazar, Y. (2018). Policy statement on the effects of deportation and forced separation on immigrants, their families, and communities. American Journal of Community Psychology. Retrieved from: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ajcp.12256 LasciateCIEntrare. (2016). Accogliere: la vera emergenza. Rapporto di monitoraggio della campagna lasciatecientrare su accoglienza, detenzione amministrativa e rimpatri forzati. Retrieved from: http://www.lasciatecientrare.it/j25/attachments/article/193/lasciateCIEntrare%20rap porto%202016-2.pdf Lincoln, Y. S., & Guba, E. G. (1985). Naturalistic inquiry. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications. 47
Lykes, M. B. (2013). Participatory and action research as a transformative praxis: responding to humanitarian crises from the margins. American Psychologist, 68(8), 774-783. Lykes, M. B., Brabeck, K. M., & Hunter, C. (2013). Exploring parent-child communication in the context of threat: Mixed-status families facing detention and deportation in post 9/11 USA. Community, Work and Family, 16(2), 123-146. Lykes, M. B., & Hershberg, R. (2015). Continuities and discontinuities in human rights violations: Historically situating the psychosocial effects of migration. Journal of Social Issues, 71(2), 244-263. Lykes, M. B., McDonald, E., & Boc, C. (2012). The Post-Deportation Human Rights project: Participatory action research with Maya transnational families. Practicing Anthropology, 34(1), 22-26. Lykes, M. B., Sibley, E., Brabeck, K. M., Hunter, C., & Johansen-Méndez, Y. (2015). Participatory action research with transnational and mixed status families: Understanding and responding to post-9/11 threats to migrants. In D. Kanstroom & M. B. Lykes (Eds.), The new deportations delirium: Interdisciplinary responses (pp. 193-226). New York: New York University Press. Lorek, A., Ehntholt, K., Nesbitt, A., Way, E., Githinji, C., Rossor, E., & Wickramasinghe, R. (2009). The mental and physical health difficulties of children held within a British immigration detention center: A pilot study. Child Abuse & Neglect, 33(9), 573–585. Luibhéid, E. (2005). Queer migration: Sexuality, U.S. citizenship, and border crossings. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Mankowski, E. S., & Thomas, E. (2000). The relationship between personal and collective identity: A narrative analysis of a campus ministry community. Journal of Community Psychology, 28, 517-528. Mannarini ,T., Talò, C., Mezzi, M., & Procentese, F. (2017). Multiple senses of community and acculturation strategies among migrants. Journal of Community Psychology, 46(1), 7–22. Mares, S. (2016). Fifteen years of detaining children who seek asylum in Australia – evidence and consequences. Australasian Psychiatry, 24(1), 11–14. Mares, S., & Jureidini, J. (2004). Psychiatric assessment of children and families in immigration detention-clinical, administrative and ethical issues. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, 28(6), 520-526. Mares, S., & Zwi, K. (2015). Sadness and fear: The experiences of children and families in remote Australian immigration detention. Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health, 48
51(7), 663- 669. Martin, L. L. (2012). ‘Catch and remove’: Detention, deterrence, and discipline in US noncitizen family detention practice. Geopolitics, 17(2), 312-334. Maton, K. I., & Salem, D. A. (1995). Organizational characteristics of empowering community settings: A multiple case study approach. American Journal of Community Psychology, 23(5), 631–656.
McGorry, P. (2002). Asylum seeking and mandatory detention. The psychological consequences. Australian Family Physician, 31(3), 275-278.
McGregor, J. (2011). Contestations and consequences of deportability: hunger strikes and the political agency of non-citizens. Citizenship Studies, 15(5), 597–611.
Medici per i Diritti Umani. (2012). Le sbarre piú alte. Rapporto sul centro di identificazione ed espulsione di Ponte Galeria a Roma. Retrieved from: http://www.mediciperidirittiumani.org/pdf/LE_SBARRE_PIU_ALTE.pdf. Medici per i Diritti Umani. (2013). Arcipelago CIE: Indagine sui centri di identificazione ed espulsione italiani. Formigine, Modena: Infinito Edizioni. Mezzadra, S., & Neilson, B. (2013). Border as method, or, the multiplication of labor. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Momartin, S., Steel, Z., Coello, M., Aroche, J., Silove, D. M., & Brooks, R. (2006). A comparison of the mental health of refugees with temporary versus permanent protection visas. The Medical Journal of Australia, 185(7), 357-361. Mountz, A. (2011). The enforcement archipelago: Detention, haunting, and asylum on islands. Political Geography, 30, 118-128. Nelson, G., Kloos, B., & Ornelas, J. (2014). Transformative change in community mental health: A community psychology framework. In G. Nelson, B. Kloos, & J. Ornelas (Eds.), Community psychology and community mental health: Towards transformative change (pp. 3-20). New York: Oxford University Press. Nelson, G., & Prilleltensky, I. (2010). Community psychology: In pursuit of liberation and well-being. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Ornelas, J. (2008). Ecologia e Psicologia Comunitária. In J. Ornelas (Ed.), Psicologia Comunitária (pp. 147-181). Lisboa: Fim de Século Ozer, E. J., Newlan, S., Douglas, L., & Hubbard, E. (2013). “Bounded” empowerment: Analyzing tensions in the practice of youth-led participatory research in urban public schools. American Journal of Community Psychology, 52, 13-26. 49
Patton, M. (1990). Qualitative evaluation and research methods (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. Perkins, D. D., & Schensul, J. J. (2017). Interdisciplinary contributions to community psychology and transdisciplinary promise. In M. A. Bond, I. Serrano-García, C. B. Keys, & M. Shinn (Eds.), APA handbooks in psychology. APA handbook of community psychology: Theoretical foundations, core concepts, and emerging challenges (pp. 189-209). Washington: American Psychological Association. Prilleltensky, I. (2012). Wellness as fairness. American Journal of Community Psychology, 49, 1-21. Puthoopparambil, S. J. (2016). Life in immigration detention centers. An exploration of health of immigrant detainees in Sweden and three other EU member states. Digital Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Medicine 1176. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Retrieved from: https://uu.diva- portal.org/smash/get/diva2:898632/FULLTEXT01.pdf Puthoopparambil, S. J., Ahlberg, B. M., & Bjerneld, M. (2015). “It is a thin line to walk on”: Challenges of staff working at Swedish immigration detention centres. International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-Being, 10, 10.3402/qhw.v10.25196. Physicians for Human Rights and the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture. (2003, June). From persecution to prison: The health consequences of detention for asylum seekers. New York: Author. Retrieved from: https://s3.amazonaws.com/PHR_Reports/persecution-to-prison-US-2003.pdf Pourgourides, C. K., Sashidharan, S. P., & Bracken, P. J. (1996). A second exile: The mental health implications of detention of asylum seekers in the United Kingdom. Birmingham: North Birmingham Mental Health NHS Trust. Prilleltensky, I. (2008). Migrant well-being is a multilevel, dynamic, value dependent phenomenon. American Journal of Community Psychology, 42, 359-364 Reinharz, S. (1992). Feminist methods in social research. New York: Oxford Press. Reyes Cruz, M., & Sonn, C. C. (2011). (De)colonizing culture in community psychology: Reflections from critical social science. American Journal of Community Psychology, 47(1-2), 203-214. Rygiel, K. (2011). Bordering solidarities: Migrant activism and the politics of movement and camps at Calais. Citizenship Studies, 15(1), 1-19. Robjant, K., Hassan, R., & Katona, C. (2009). Mental health implications of detaining asylum seekers: Systematic review. British Journal of Psychiatry,194(4), 306-312. 50
Robjant, K., Robbins, I., & Senior, V. (2009). Psychological distress amongst immigration detainees: a cross-sectional questionnaires study. The British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 48, 275-286. Salo, C. D., & Birman, D. (2015). Acculturation and psychological adjustment of Vietnamese refugees: An ecological acculturation framework. American Journal of Community Psychology, 56(3-4), 359-407. Sampson, R., & Mitchell, G. (2013). Global trends in immigration detention and alternatives to detention: Practical, political and symbolic rationales. Journal on Migration and Human Security, 1(3), 97-121. Sarason, S. B. (1981). An asocial psychology and a misdirected clinical psychology. American Psychologist, 36(8), 827–836. Silverman, S. J., & Massa, E. (2012). Why immigration detention is unique. Population, space and place, 18(6), 677-686. Silove, D., Steel, Z., & Mollica, R. (2001). Detention of asylum seekers: assault on health, human rights, and social development. The Lancet, 357, 1436-1437. Sládková, J. (2014). “The guys told us crying that they saw how they were killing her and they could not do anything”: Psychosocial explorations of migrant journeys to the U.S. Psychosocial Intervention, 23(1), 1-9. Sládková, J., & Bond, M. A. (2011). Migration as a context-dependent dynamic in a world of global inequalities. Psychosocial Intervention, 20(3), 327–332. Sládková, J., García Mangado, S. M., & Reyes Quinteros, J. (2012). Lowell immigrant communities in the climate of deportations. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 12(1), 78-95. Snyder, S., Bell, H., & Busch-Armendariz, N. (2015). Immigration detention and faith-based organizations. Journal of Social Work, 60(2), 165-173. Sobhanian, F., Boyle, G. J., Bahr, M., & Fallo, T. (2006). Psychological status of former refugee detainees from the Woomera detention centre now living in the Australian community. Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 13(2), 151-159. Sonn, C. C. (2016). Swampscott in international context: Expanding our ecology of knowledge. American Journal of Community Psychology, 58(3-4), 309–313. 51
Sonn, C. C., Arcidiacono, C., Dutta, U., Kiguwa, P., Kloos, B., & Maldonado Torres, N. (2017), Beyond disciplinary boundaries: Speaking back to critical knowledges, liberation, and community [Special issue]. South African Journal of Psychology, 47, 448 – 458. Stake, R. E. (2008). Qualitative case studies. In N. K. Denzin, & Lincoln, Y. S. (Eds.), Strategies of qualitative inquiry (pp. 119-149). Los Angeles: Sage. Steel, Z., Momartin, S., Bateman, C., Hafshejani, A., Silove D. M., Everson, N., … Mares, S. (2004). Psychiatric status of asylum seeker families held for a protracted period of time in a remote detention centre in Australia. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, 28, 527-536. Steel, Z., Momartin, S., Silove, D., Coello, M., Aroche, J., & Tay, K. W. (2011). Two year psychosocial and mental health outcomes for refugees subjected to restrictive or supportive immigration policies. Social Science & Medicine, 72, 1149–1156. Steel, Z., & Silove, D. (2004). Science and the common good: Indefinite, non-reviewable mandatory detention of asylum seekers and the research imperative. Monash Bioethics Review, 23(4), 93-103. Steel, Z., Silove, D., Brooks, R., Momartin, S., Alzuhairi, B., & Susljik, I. (2006). Impact of immigration detention and temporary protection on the mental health of refugees. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 188, 58-64. Storm, T., & Engberg, M. (2013). The impact of immigration detention on the mental health of torture survivors is poorly documented—A systematic review. Danish Medical Journal, 60(11), 1–7. Stumpf, J. (2006). The crimmigration crisis: Immigrants, crime, and sovereign power. American University Law Review, 56(2), 367-419. Sultan, A, & O‘Sullivan K. (2001). Psychological disturbances in asylum seekers held in long term detention: A participant-observer account. The Medical Journal of Australia, 175, 593-596. Tazzioli, M., & Garelli, G. (2018). Containment beyond detention: The hotspot system anddisrupted migration movements across Europe. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 026377581875933. Tebes, J. K., Thai, N. D., & Matlin, S. L. (2014). Twenty-first century science as a relational process: From eureka! to team science and a place for community psychology. American Journal of Community Psychology, 53, 475–490. Thompson, M. (2011). The psychological impact of torture and other types of systemic abuse 52
– Examining permanent residents and asylum seekers in the community and in detention in Australia (PhD Thesis). Department of Psychology, The University of Melbourne, Australia. Thompson, M., & McGorry, P., Silove, D., & Steel, Z. (1998). Maribyrnong detention centre Tamil survey. In D. Silove & Z. Steel (Eds.), The mental health and wellbeing of on shore asylum seekers in Australia (pp. 27-30). Liverpool, Australia: University of New South Wales, Psychiatry Research and Teaching Unit. Thurston, W. E., & Verhoef, M. (2003). Occupational injury among immigrants. Journal of International Migration and Integration, 4(1), 105–123. Thurston, W. E., & Vissandjée, B. (2005). An ecological model for understanding culture as a determinant of women’s health. Critical Public Health, 15(3), 229–242. Todd, N. R. (2012). Religious networking organizations and social justice: An ethnographic case study. American Journal of Community Psychology, 50, 229–245. Trickett, E. J. (1984). Toward a distinctive community psychology: An ecological metaphor for the conduct of community research and the nature of training. American Journal of Community Psychology, 12(3), 261–279. Tseng, V., & Yoshikawa, H. (2008). Reconceptualizing acculturation: Ecological processes, historical contexts, and power inequities. American Journal of Community Psychology, 42(3-4), 355–358. Tsianos V., Hess S., & Karakayali S. (2009). Transnational migration. Theory and method of an ethnographic analysis of border regimes (Working Paper No. 55). Retrieved from: https://www.sussex.ac.uk/webteam/gateway/file.php?name=mwp55.pdf&site=252 Turnbull, S. (2017, March 29). Immigration detention and punishment. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology. Retrieved from: http://criminology.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264079.001.0001/acr efore-9780190264079-e-231 Turnbull, S., & Hasselberg, I. (2016). From prison to detention: The carceral trajectories of foreign-national prisoners in the United Kingdom. Punishment & Society, 19(2), 135- 154. Vacchiano, F. (2013). Fencing in the south: The straight of Gibraltar as a paradigm of the regime in the mediterranean. Journal of Mediterranean Studies, 22(2), 337-364. Vacchiano F. & Jiménez M. (2012). Between agency and repression: Moroccan children on the edge. Children Geographies, 10(4), 457-471. 53
Welander, M. (2018, July 18). Migration, human rights and Fortress Europe: How far will European leaders go to protect the EU’s borders? [web log post]. Retrieved from: https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/research-subject-groups/centre-criminology/centreborder- criminologies/blog/2018/07/migration-human Yin, R. K. (1994). Case study research: Design and methods (2nd ed.). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publishing. Young, P., & Gordon, M. S. (2016). Mental health screening in immigration detention: A fresh look at Australian government data. Australasian Psychiatry, 24(1) 19–22.
54
55
EMPIRICAL SECTION
56
57
Article I – Migration-Related Detention Centers: The Challenges of an Ecological Perspective with a Focus on Justice
58
74 75
Article II – Practicing Ethnography in Migration-Related Detention Centers: A Reflexive Account
76
83
91
Article III – Voices from the Inside: Lived Experiences of Women Confined in a Detention Center
92
93
Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society
Author(s): Francesca Esposito, José Ornelas, Silvia Scirocchi, Caterina Arcidiacono, Title: Voices from the Inside: Lived Experiences of Women Confined in a Detention Center
Manuscript #: Copyright #:
Classification: Article Pages: 39 Tables: 0 Text Figures: 0
Abstract: Drawing on two years of fieldwork, this article focuses on the lived experiences of women detained inside Rome's Identification and Expulsion Center, the main migration-related detention facility in Italy. We employed a thematic narrative analysis to examine the narratives of five women with different life trajectories in order to identify continuities and discontinuities within and across their stories. This analysis reveals that women's experiences of oppression and agency— in their countries of origin, transit, and settlement—are deeply intertwined and strongly influenced by structural forces. Gender and sexuality, in relation to other hierarchies of power such as class, race, and nationality, profoundly shape such experiences, becoming crucial in the production of women as excludable and deportable subjects. Further, as the accounts of our participants laid bare, the immigration control system appears to play a key role in the (re)production of a dominant normative order. However, women are not passive spectators of the violence to which they are forcibly exposed. Rather, they struggle to cope with and resist the regimes of power that oppress their everyday lives. Through a feminist stance, this contribution seeks to enrich the body of scholarship on the lived experiences of women subject to practices of immigration and border control, particularly those confined in detention centers. Moreover, it highlights the need for a feminist project based on the creation of political and affective alliances across borders and axes of difference, particularly those related to legally produced statuses.
94
Under conditions of mass mobility, migration-related detention has become part of a set of border control measures that are implemented in the majority of countries across the world, particularly in the global North (Bosworth 2014; Bosworth and Kellezi 2014). The proliferation of border zones and detention centers—where various categories of people marked as ‘outsiders’ are confined pending the adjudication of their status—plays a key role in the government of human mobility, and in the continuous production of nation-state and citizenship boundaries (Luibhéid 2005).
In spite of growing academic interest surrounding the adverse effects of migration-related detention and deportation (e.g., Sobhanian et al. 2006; Robjant, Robbins and Senior 2009), relatively little attention has been paid to the potential relationships between the violence that affects people in their countries of origin and contemporary immigration laws and policies (Lykes and Hershberg 2015). Even less effort has been devoted to understanding how gender and sexuality—along with race, ethnicity, class, nationality, and geopolitics—shape such relationships, playing a role in the production of particular subjects as excludable and deportable (Lewis 2013).
As Eithne Luibhéid (2005) clearly notes, multiaxial differentiations that operate through immigration control regimes not only distinguish citizens from noncitizens but also discriminate among noncitizens themselves, stemming from and reinforcing normative power hierarchies.
According to a structural violence perspective (Galtung 1969), political, economic, cultural, and social forces at work in various global contexts structure risk for human suffering, determining who suffers violence, how much violence is suffered, and which forms of violence are considered acceptable or legitimate. In particular, in the present paper we document and analyze structural violence from a feminist perspective. From this viewpoint, we focus our attention on the structural violence embedded in the heteropatriarchal structures of mainstream society, which are deeply imbricated with the politics of racism and white supremacy. This perspective appears to be particularly relevant for an empirical understanding of the lived experiences of women subject to policies and practices of immigration and border control, particularly those incarcerated inside migration-related detention centers.
95
Drawing on two years of fieldwork, informed by a community psychology ecological perspective with a focus on justice, the purpose of this paper is to provide an insight into the experiences of the women confined inside Rome’s detention center.1 In so doing, it embraces a feminist framework that favors the perspectives of women, whose voices have historically been excluded from the process of knowledge production (see Personal Narratives Group 1989; Harding
2004), as well as from discussions regarding border control regimes (Bosworth, Fili and Pickering
2014; Mehta 2016). Feminist analyses have long highlighted the centrality of women’s experiences and narratives in order to contest the hegemonic notions of knowledge that, while presented as objective and value-free, are predominantly based on a “Western, bourgeois, white-supremacist, androcentric, heteronormative culture” (Harding 2004, 5). Such experiences, and the related struggles, have also been claimed as a starting point for progressive politics (Mohanty 1995, 2003).
A close reading of the stories of our participants, in their contradictions and ambiguities, draws attention to the nature and impacts of immigration and border regimes, and their operation as mechanisms of differential inclusion across lines of sex and gender, among other factors
(Andrijasevic 2009, 2010). Further, in illustrating how women strive to negotiate, manipulate, and resist disciplinary and regulatory mechanisms and normative power structures, the data from this research may shed some light on the debate surrounding the dialectic between power and subordination, domination and resistance.
An overview of the Italian context of detention
Migration-related detention in Italy has relatively recent origins, dating back to the late 1990s, which saw the opening of the first migration-related detention center.2 At the time of writing, there are four operational migration-related detention centers (currently referred to as Centri di
Permanenza per i Rimpatri [Accommodation Centers for Repatriation], ex-Centri di Identificazione e Espulsione [Identification and Expulsion Centers]) located in Rome, Turin, Caltanissetta, and
Brindisi.3 In such centers, people whose expulsion orders cannot be immediately enforced are
96 confined while awaiting to be identified and eventually deported. Heterogeneity is the predominant feature of the population of detainees, which encompasses migrants who have just landed on Italian shores, long-term residents with family ties in the country, including people who have grown up or were even born in Italy, ex-offenders coming directly from prison, people whose employers never filed the appropriate paperwork or who failed to renew the residence permit due to loss of employment, asylum seekers, and even EU citizens considered “a threat to public order and security” (Campesi 2015).
Under the law enforced at the time of this writing (Law No. 161/2014), the maximum term for detention is ninety days, and thirty days in the case of foreign nationals who have already spent three months or more in prison.4 However, Legislative Decree No. 142/2015, implementing the EU
Asylum Procedures and Reception Conditions Directives, established a period of detention of up to twelve months for asylum seekers who "constitute a danger to public order and security" and for whom "there is a risk of absconding."
Rome’s Ponte Galeria center is the largest Italian detention facility. Located a southwest suburb, close to Fiumicino International Airport, the facility is prison-like, with the perimeter surrounded by high walls and fences, and with surveillance cameras scattered throughout the various areas. The center is managed by a private entity by means of public funding.
In 2016, the center’s capacity (originally 354 people – 176 men, 178 women) was radically reduced as a consequence of a protest that resulted in a fire in the male living unit. Since then, Ponte
Galeria has been an all-women's detention center that can hold up to 125 women subject to a detention order. It is in this scenario that our research took place.
A note on methodology
This paper is based on fieldwork conducted in Rome’s center between March 2014 and April 2016
(taking approximately 588 hours). In particular, Francesca Esposito conducted interviews with twenty-nine detained women to gain an understanding of their lived experiences. Interviews were
97 conducted in a conversational style and usually took the form of a life story. In general, they were digitally recorded and transcribed verbatim.
For the purpose of this paper, we decided to analyze the stories of five participants who represented much of the diversity in the larger sample in terms of backgrounds and experiences.
These stories were analyzed through a thematic narrative approach (Riessman 2008). We read the transcripts several times and created chronological biographical accounts. Each member of the research team reviewed these accounts in order to focus on and discuss the crucial topics and episodes around which the women organized their narratives. In a further step, we investigated continuities and discontinuities within and across stories (Lykes and Hershberg 2015).
As with the work of the community psychologists Brinton Lykes and Rachel Hershberg, our research was informed by “a methodological commitment to documenting links between social structures and systems that produce and impinge on the lives of participants, as well as a commitment to identifying the ways in which participants make sense of (and resist) these systems”
(Lykes and Hershberg 2015, 248). Such an analysis provides a meaningful alternative to individualistic readings of the effects of violence, bringing to light the political dimension of women’s experiences.
Furthermore, our research adopted a feminist framework that acknowledges fuzziness and vagueness as constitutive dimensions of the research process, as well as the existence of intrinsic power imbalances in the researcher-participant relationship (Mehta 2016). In this view, a critical reflexive attitude has been favored as a way of engaging with the research experience (see Esposito
2017). Such an attitude also encompasses an awareness that our positionality—as white psychologists from countries in the European Union, and thus as outsiders to the experiences of the women interviewed—deeply informs how and what we have been able to understand through the analytical process.
Narrative analysis
98
As a result of the analytical process, two main categorical themes emerged: violence and oppression, and agency and resistance. In accord with other feminist scholars, we opted to not conceive these two themes in binary terms, but rather as interconnected dimensions in the experiences of our participants.5 As Arlene Elowe MacLeod (1992, 534) passionately argues, women, “even as subordinate players, always play an active part that goes beyond the dichotomy of victimization/acceptance, a dichotomy that flattens out a complex and ambiguous agency in which women accept, accommodate, ignore, resist, or protest—sometimes all at the same time.” From a feminist view, deconstructing dominant narratives by reversing binaries — such as that of the victim/agent — is a crucial way of providing room for alternative conceptions and new forms of politics (Wibben 2011).
Embracing this standpoint, we decided to focus our analysis on understanding the intertwinement between oppression and resistance in the narratives of the women we interviewed.
Further, we sought to acknowledge the intersections of gender, sexuality, race, class, and other structural determinants that shape women’s experiences in context (Gerard and Pickering 2014).
The results of our analysis are described below.
Contexts of origin and struggles for mobility
In their countries of origin migrant women often experience abuse and restrictions related to gender- and sex-based prescriptions, and struggle against heteropatriarchal norms that undermine their right to freedom and self-determination. Family conflicts due to the subversion of gender and sex roles imposed by cultural and religious traditions, gender-based violence, and situations of poverty in which the burden of financial support is delegated to women are described as common motives underlying their decision to migrate (Beretta et al. 2016).
Najwa, a twenty-two-year-old Canadian woman born to a Palestinian father and a Lebanese mother, recounted that, when she was thirteen, in accord with Lebanese Muslim tradition, her family selected a Muslim Lebanese man for her to marry.6 When she moved from Canada to
99
Lebanon, Najwa began to meet her candidate, but during these meetings he revealed a violent attitude. Najwa’s courageous decision to break off the engagement was not well received by her mother, who wanted her to respect the tradition. Consequently, she refused to approve any other candidate, a situation Najwa endured until she fell in love with an Iraqi man. At that time she was living and working in Qatar, where she had moved with her mother after her father’s death. It was when her mother rejected the man she loved that Najwa decided to migrate to Europe, to be free to love without constrictions. In the case of Najwa, as well as in the stories depicted by Alexandra
D’Onofrio in “Love in the Time of the Frontier” (L’amore ai tempi della frontiera 2012), love was both the driving force of her mobility, and a form of resistance against border control: “He’s the guy that I chose and I wanted him to come to propose to me and everything,” Najwa said. “She [the mother] said ‘no,’ of course, that was the reason to leave Qatar with him, to come to Europe.”
From Italy, where they had arrived, Najwa and her husband moved to Switzerland to seek asylum there. In order to not be separated from her partner, Najwa lied to the Swiss immigration authorities, declaring herself to be Syrian rather than Canadian and thus eligible for international protection. However, the Swiss Government, according to the Dublin Regulation, denied Najwa’s husband’s asylum application on the grounds that he had first entered Italy7. As a consequence, the couple tried to escape to France but were arrested by the Swiss police. During our interview with her, Najwa stressed how police officers stopped them because of their visible Middle Eastern origins. Najwa suffered inhumane treatment in prison and was not permitted to contact the
Canadian embassy.
Deported to Italy, the competent state for the analysis of Najwa’s husband’s asylum application, the couple were handed over to the Italian border police. At that time Najwa’s
Canadian passport had expired, and she did not have any other documents with her. They spent five days at Fiumicino Airport without being able to take a shower or sleep in a bed, eating only one meal a day. Afterward, Najwa was called by a police officer, who forced her to sign some papers that she did not understand, as they were written in Italian. He did not give any explanation of what
100 was happening and threatened to separate her from her husband if she refused to sign. Following this, Najwa was taken to Rome’s detention center. She recalled:
This man came and he was absolutely rude . . . he didn’t even explain what’s written on the
paper, it was written in Italian, not in English, and he told me to sign. I told him: “I’m sorry
I’m not gonna sign something I don’t understand,” and because of that he was shouting at
me. . . . I couldn’t do anything because I was crying, and I told them: “Okay, I will sign if
you let me see my husband.” He said:, “No, you missed your chance, you’re going to jail
and you will not see your husband.”
In spite of the variations in individual stories, in all of the narratives of the women we interviewed
(exception made for Mirela, who was born and grew up in Italy), migration was an outcome of their struggles against conditions and structural inequalities that shaped their lives in the contexts of origin. As Janet Turan and her colleagues (2016, 161) highlight when speaking about pregnant women in Kenya, “migration can be a ‘choice,’ an expression of agency. But even when forced, migration is often the result of an act of resistance on the part of the woman.” This was also true in the case of the women whose stories are narrated in this paper. Their migration was “not always, or only, undertaken for survival, but also in pursuit of preservation of dignity and an expansion of life choices” (Turan et al. 2016, 155). In particular, if economic hardship was a theme mentioned frequently by our participants, other motives and desires emerged to inform their migratory projects
(such as improving financial situations, seeking autonomy from abusive family contexts, gaining opportunities to live a free and full life, and to love). As Rutvica Andrijasevic notes in commenting on her interviews with migrant women working in the sex industry in Italy, “a feeling of being
‘stuck’ in life or the desire to find a partner or love are equally important as economic hardship in capturing the reason why people migrate” (2010, 139). This is what emerges from the story of
Najwa, who, like some of the women Andrijasevic met, chose to leave the country where she was
101 living to be able to freely and fully live her emotional life. Acknowledging the multiplicity of contexts, needs and desires that informed our participants’ migration means looking at migrant women as complex subjects seeking, and struggling for, a change in their lives (Andrijasevic 2010).
Crossing Borders
Work, student, and even tourist visas to come to countries of the global North are often difficult to obtain, particularly for those with limited or no financial resources. Therefore, many women, especially from sub-Saharan African countries, often have no alternative but to undertake long and troubled journeys toward their European destinations, thus becoming commodities for the lucrative industry of ‘illegal’ border crossing. During such journeys, they are exposed to violence and violations. In some cases, they can even risk their lives (Freedman 2015). From this viewpoint, as
Alison Gerard and Sharon Pickering assert, transit can be understood as “a period of direct and structural violence” (2014, 353) that targets particular racialized and gendered bodies. This cycle of violence is upheld and enhanced by the increasing securitization of borders cultivated by the EU
(Gerard and Pickering 2014; on this topic see also Andrijasevic 2010).
Twenty-six-year old Precious, who journeyed to Italy from Nigeria, had to quit her studies and look for a job when she lost her parents at the age of twelve. Given her condition of economic vulnerability and her desire to financially support her brothers and sisters, she decided to accept the proposal of an acquaintance to travel to Europe to work. From her narrative, it is not clear how much information she had about what the work involved. The journey Precious endured—through
Nigeria, Niger and Libya—was characterized by serious human rights violations. Niger is a major transit country for West and Central African migrants journeying toward Libya and Algeria. There, local criminal networks are intertwined with transnational networks and, with the connivance of the police, they make the migrant crossing a profitable business (Zandonini 2016). The crossing of the
Sahara Desert represents a particularly painful stage of the journey, a perilous passage full of raids and violence during which many migrants die (Del Grande 2008). There, Precious witnessed the
102 death of two people due to the lack of food and water; their bodies were abandoned in the desert along with the remains of other migrants who had faced the same fate. These people are the new desaparecidos, asesinados y muertos [disappeared, assassinated, and dead] (Stephen 2008). “In the desert,” Precious recalled, “so many dead people on the ground, Nigerian people who died, with their family they are looking for them. . . . So we spent... three, four days in the desert, without eating, no bath, nothing. Everybody smelt like a dead person, we were happy that we didn’t die . . . two people died on the trip, so it was really terrible.”
During the journey, Precious was the victim of sexual violence. Sexual violence from armed gangs or private militias is the everyday reality for many women traveling across the Sahara Desert to Libya (Beretta et al. 2016; Gerard and Pickering 2014; Amnesty International 2015). As the work with refugee women developed by Camille Schmoll (2014) and by Alison Gerard and Sharon
Pickering (2014) reveals, the exposure to danger and violence during the transit is mediated by access to finances, as well as by gender. Their analysis highlights how the ability to meet the demand for money from state and non-state actors involved in the border crossing industry may reduce the risk for women and men to be exposed to direct violence, enhancing their ability to negotiate it. When women lack financial resources, their bodies can serve as a form of currency for negotiating a border crossing (Beretta et al. 2016; Gerard and Pickering 2014). However, the availability of money, as Precious’ accounts unveils, does not always prevent migrants from violence, which for women usually takes the form of sexual abuse. Hence, rape is the border toll paid by many women travelling to Europe through this route, regardless of the amount of social and material resources to which they have access: “Before we enter [Al] Qatrun,” Precious said, “these army people, they’re holding gun, they asked all of us to come down again [from the truck], and it was night, midnight they came. They were asking: ‘Where are you going to?,’ ‘What are you going to do in Europe?’. . . they were saying it in aggressive way. . . they [the men] gave them some money. . . they beat them all, and some of the girls, they take them inside to rape them also.” Rape, as “a technology that reproduces gender and sexual hierarchies and norms on the one hand and
103 racial and class divisions on the other” (Andrijasevic 2009, 393), constitutes a way of inscribing the border on the bodies of these women.
Upon her arrival in Libya, Precious spent several days locked in a connection house where her movements were controlled. In Lybia, migrants are subject to abuse and exploitation, and if they complain to the police they are usually ignored (Amnesty International 2015). Moreover, they are continuously at risk of detention (Gerard and Pickering 2014; Schmoll 2014). Such heightened exposure to violence, which differentially affects people across lines of race, color, culture and religion, as well as sex and gender, produces a sense of constant insecurity and fear, also reducing migrants’ everyday access to public space. In particular, women often rely on domestic or sex work, enduring conditions of severe exploitation in order to pay for the final part of their journey on to
Europe, which involves crossing the sea (see Beretta et al. 2016; Gerard and Pickering 2014). In the case of Precious, her journey through the Mediterranean, which she referred to as “the river,” lasted three days, until her precarious boat was rescued as it was leaking. Unfortunately many migrants do not incur the same fate, so it is estimated that nearly 15000 people have lost their lives in the
Mediterranean since the beginning of 2013.8
From Sicily, where she landed, Precious reached the house of her Nigerian madam in Turin.
Once there, the woman told her that she had a travel debt of 35,000 euros to pay with her sex work.
Violence and abuse characterized her daily life. When Precious got pregnant, her madam ordered her to abort, but Precious refused to take the drugs she was given. Forced to leave her baby in the hospital, she continued to struggle womanfully to find her. To pursue this goal and to free herself from violence, Precious decided to escape the madam’s house, even though this meant risking her life. To do this, she relied on the support of a Nigerian friend. Having been informed by other migrants that the route from Milan to Chiasso (a Swiss city on the Italian border) was not closely controlled by the police, she took a train to the Chiasso station and declared herself as an asylum seeker in front of the Swiss border police.
104
Precious’s asylum claim was denied, first by the Italian authorities, who did not recognize her experience in Nigeria as grounds for asylum, and then by the Swiss authorities, who refused her application according to the Dublin Regulation. Stopped by Swiss police on a train, probably because of her blackness, Precious was detained in a migration-related detention center and taken back to Italy. In Italy she was held in Turin’s detention center. It was there that Precious found the courage to tell her story of abuse, violence, and exploitation to a staff member. However, in spite of the existence of specific legal provisions, Precious was deported back to Nigeria.9 After she reemigrated to Italy, Precious gave a false name and tried to seek asylum again, but, since her fingerprints had already been registered, her true identity was discovered.10 This is how, without receiving much explanation, she was detained again, this time in Rome’s center.
Among our participants, Precious’s journey was certainly the most difficult. Even if Najwa,
Desirée, and Margarita faced difficulties in moving away from their countries of origin, they were not exposed to the same levels of violence as they also managed to obtain passports and travel visas
(on the relationship between documented/undocumented forms of travel and risk of violence, see
Andrijasevic 2010). This evidence sheds light on the different relationships with mobility of distinct groups of dispossessed subjects, which are also a reflection of the regime of differential mobility implemented by the EU through a complex set of devices and measures (Andrijasevic 2010; Rigo
2005). Furthermore, it shows how the apparatus of immigration control (re)produces interlocking systems of oppression - sexual, gender, racial, class, and geopolitical - “that comprise the building blocks of national, transnational, and imperial relations of power” (Luibhéid 2008b, 299).
As Jennifer Hyndman notes in her book “Managing Displacement: Refugees and the Politics of Humanitarianism,” “how human displacement is defined and managed depends on historically specific configurations of geopolitics, as well as on cultural and economic relations of power”
(2000, 32). In this view, she draws particular attention to the ‘economies of money, space, and power’ that unevenly shape mobility within and across migrant groups. In the story of Precious, if access to financial means (intersection of class and gender) emerged to shape her - and others’ -
105 experience of mobility, geopolitics played an important role too. The geographical location of migrants’ struggles to access sovereign territory - which reflect “the routes traveled by people on the move and the places where they encounter authorities” (Mountz 2011, 382) - as well as their historicization (e.g., concerned with a historical gaze on modes of exclusion, among which imperialism and colonization, as well as people's resistance against them) are pivotal to the examination of subjective experiences of transnational mobility. In particular, they shed light on the distinct “material topographies of exclusion” (Mountz 2011, 385), which are written onto the gendered and racialized bodies of migrants through their exposure to border posts, detours, interruptions, incarcerations, and returns. These topographies, however, are not to be understood as fixed but rather as continuously redrawn through the daily struggles of people who, like Precious, are in pursuit of geographic, affective, economic, and social mobility (Andrijasevic 2010).
Making a living in Italy
When migrant women arrive in Italy, things are not usually as they had imagined. Race, class, gender, and sex hierarchies and prescriptions continue to strongly affect their lives, which are frequently marked by violence and marginalization. In some cases, moving to a new country can even exacerbate gender-linked vulnerabilities and powerlessness (Narayan 1995). For instance, among our participants, exposure to gendered and racialized violence emerged as a common experience. However, the threat of being expelled and deported prevented the women from reporting crimes to the police. Thus, abusive employers and partners were able to take advantage of the women’s undocumented status to keep them in a position of enforced vulnerability and exploitation.
Exploitation and violence in labor
‘The employers did not pay me properly, everybody knew I was on my own. I have no documents, I can’t make a complaint, nothing!’: Margarita’s story
106
Margarita, who was thirty-two when we interviewed her, left her family home in Ukraine and started to work as a way of rebelling against her parents' decision to marry her off when she was seventeen. However, wages for women in Ukraine are relatively low (compared with those for men), and usually insufficient to support a life outside of family relationships (Brainerd 2000).
Therefore, Margarita found herself in a condition of economic hardship. This situation, and particularly the fact that her family regarded it as shameful, played an important role in determining her departure from the Ukraine: “I was in trouble. I mean, I was not so well dressed, you could not see that… this wage was not enough. And she [my sister] said ‘go for one or two months and I’ll make you a passport. . . We are so ashamed that you stay like this.’”
After a period spent sleeping on the streets, Margarita found employment in a hotel in southern Italy. Since she was undocumented (her travel visa had expired), her employers did not provide her with a contract, entrapping her in an exploitative labor relationship. Isolation and a lack of a social network played an important role in the violations to which Margarita was subjected. She worked, on average, sixteen hours a day, without a rest day or public holidays, for a salary of 400 euros per month. Margarita’s vulnerability was also linked to her need to pay off the travel debt she owed to her sister; she used all the money she earned for this, saving just a small amount for her needs.
Like many foreign women living in Italy, particularly Ukrainians, Margarita was the victim of sexual violence (see ISTAT 2015). In her case, the perpetrator was her employer. Because of her resistance to this violence, Margarita had to leave her workplace immediately and find another job and a place to stay. This was not easy. The jobs she found were not well paid, and in some cases the employers did not pay her at all, taking advantage of her undocumented status. Thus, Margarita’s account unveils how the production of ‘illegality,’ as a juridical status, but also a spatialized, racialized (De Genova 2002), and gendered (Abrego 2014) sociopolitical condition, provides an apparatus for creating and sustaining undocumented migrants’ “vulnerability and tractability as workers” (De Genova 2002, 439), as well as their oppression through heteropatriarcal violence. As
107 she explained: “It's a bit difficult, it has always been like this. People exploit you because of these documents and . . . I could not say anything . . . because I was always afraid they would send me back home.”
Apprehended due to her undocumented status, Margarita was held for nine hours by police officers, who treated her disparagingly and asked questions of an intimate nature. As in the case of
Najwa, Margarita was asked to sign papers written in Italian, the meaning of which she could not completely understand. Furthermore, she was denied the right to make a phone call to a lawyer.
Only when inside the detention center did Margarita fully realize what was happening to her, and where she had been taken.
Exploitation and violence in intimate relationships
‘I went to the hospital… but I had to say that I had fallen from the scooter’: Desirée’s story
Scholars such as Eithne Luibhéid (2005, 2008a, 2008b) have stressed how the preference for heterosexual marriage as a means of legalization has structured Western immigration systems. Such anxious (re)production of heteronormativity, in Luibhéid’s view, not only serves to uphold patriarchal gender and sexual regimes but also works to perpetuate hierarchies based on race, class, and nation. Furthermore, the scholar claims, recognized couple relationships have to be understood as a technology for the state and its assemblages to “transform legally admitted immigrants into
“good” neoliberal citizens – while threatening those who do not measure up with potential illegalization” (Luibhéid 2008a, 180-181). In particular, it is worth noting that this family preference system creates an unequal power relationship between the partners, so that one – usually the woman – becomes dependent on the other for the recognition of her status and rights. Such a state of affairs provides fertile ground for the growth of abusive relationships (see Narayan 1995), such as the one experienced by Desirée.
Desirée, a twenty-four-year-old Cuban woman, reported that she left Cuba due to an engagement, in this case with an Italian man many years her senior. During her interview, Desirée
108 recounted the constraints and poor living conditions she experienced in Cuba, describing how she decided to work in a nightclub to help her mother who single-handedly carried the financial burden of the family. Economic hardship and the lack of opportunities to live a free and full life were both crucial in her decision to leave. In Desirée’s case, upon arriving in Italy, she married her Italian partner and requested a family residence permit. Triggered by jealousy over her quest for autonomy,
Desirée’s husband began to beat her. As in the case of Margarita, Desirée’s perpetrator exploited the vulnerability resulting from her migrant status, forcing her to suffer the abuse in silence. “He never left me alone,” Desirée revealed. “He [threatened me; he] said that if I said it was him [who beat me, since] I was without a residence permit, he would go to the police station and make a report.” Thanks to her personal strength, and by relying on the support of a compatriot woman,
Desirée managed to leave the marital home. In so doing, she asserted her right to a dignified life, free from violence. When she left, her husband alerted the police.
After Desirée left the house of her abusive partner, the Naples’ questura (police headquarter) notified her that her application for a family residence permit had been denied. She was held in the police station for seven hours locked inside a room without food and water, without receiving any explanation. The only information given to her was that she would be deported to
Cuba. In addition, Desirée reported that a police officer called her bucchina, a derogatory
Neapolitan term that refers to someone who performs oral sex and is vulgarly used to mean ‘bitch’:
“I sat down, they locked the door. . . . No food, no nothing. . . . And without any explanation. . . .
The only thing they did was the compliment [ironic] of calling me bucchina. ‘It is clear what this
‘bucchina’ wants to do, she is sly.’” Using her mobile phone, Desirée managed to call her lawyer, who went to the police station, but she was not allowed to meet with him. However, before she was taken to Rome’s detention center, she managed to provide him with the documents given to her by the police.
109
Citizenship as a means of inclusive exclusion
‘At the camp there are two gates: from one I enter, I greet my relatives, and from the other I go out, because I get upset, I feel bad’: Mirela’s story
A particular case is that of Romani women who, although many have been born and raised in Italy, are legally produced as noncitizens and thus exposed to control, repression, and exclusion.11 This differential access to citizenship reveals how borders extend inside and outside Europe, both drawing territorial delimitations between states and marking differences between individuals
(Andrijasevic 2010; Rigo 2005). Such ‘boundaries of status’ (Rigo 2005, 12) work to produce certain categories of people as dispossessed subjects, heightening their levels of vulnerability. In the case of Romani communities living in Italy, the concept of nomadism, along with the stereotypical image of Roma as a dangerous group, have also played a key role in creating conditions of exposure and precarity, being instrumental in the development of an institutionalized segregation policy
(Sigona 2005).12 The housing of Roma in camps, as emphasized by the UN Committee in the
Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD 1999, 3), has led “not only to a physical segregation of the Roma community from Italian society, but a political, economic and cultural isolation as well.”
In this context, Romani women endure a multi-faced oppression, as a result of racialized, classed, and gendered mechanisms of subjugation. As Alexandra Oprea, a Romanian Romani activist, points out “race, class, and gender dynamics place Romani women in a precarious position, the consequences of which are often early marriage, lack of access to decent labour, healthcare, and education, and increased vulnerability to domestic violence” (2004, 33). The intersections of racism, sexism, and poverty also limit Romani women’s access to the political sphere. Also, when such access is arduously obtained their voices are often muffled and the specificity of their experiences erased (see Oprea 2004). The multiple discrimination faced by Romani women, which heightens their exposure to violence, emerges also from Mirela’s story.
110
Mirela, a thirty-three-year-old Romani woman born in Rome to Serbian parents, reported that when she was a child, her family was evicted from the apartment they owned, and had to move to a so-called nomad camp. Like many Romani children living in the camps, Mirela never had access to a proper education, being also denied the opportunity to break the cycle of poverty in which she grew up. When she turned eighteen and lost the legal protection derived from being a minor, she became undocumented (see Sigona 2016). Mirela also described her experience of intimate relationships as being marked by gender violence from which she was able to escape thanks to the support of her mother. At nineteen years old she had a daughter, who became her main reason to strive for a better life. Mirela consequently began to toil as an irregular domestic worker in private households, being exposed to harsh and exploitative working conditions. “I have always worked but always without a contract,” she said. “Even when I was pregnant I used to work, at six months [of pregnancy] I used to climb up the ladder to clean windows, you know? . . . But I had to do it for money, what else could I do? . . . I have always tried to give my daughter everything she needed.”
Mirela was ultimately caught during a police raid inside a Romani camp. Found without documents, she was taken to the police station. Police officers told her that it was just a “control” and that they would later bring her back to the camp. In truth, she spent a day and a night in the police station, until she was taken to Rome’s detention center without much explanation. In her account Mirela described the mistreatment received at the hands of the two officers, and how she fought to claim her right to dignified treatment.
In spite of the differences among them, all of these stories highlight the precarity of these women’s lives, which is a consequence of the intersection between multiple and contingent relations of power. Entering the country as documented through official channels, or even being born in the country (Italy), did not prevent our participants from being produced as ‘illegal’ by restrictive immigration and citizenship regulations (see Andrijasevic 2009). As a consequence, they were
111 entrapped in a “space of forced invisibility, exclusion, subjugation, and repression” (De Genova
2002, 427); a space shaped by the persistent experience of deportability. This imposed condition of vulnerability, intersected with — and at the same time produced by — hierarchies of sexuality and gender, along with race, class, and nationality (among other factors), structured their positions both in the labor market and in intimate relationships (Sager 2016), maximizing their exposure to violence, abuse, and exploitation.
As Judith Butler, Zeynep Gambetti and Leticia Sabsay (2016) passionately argue in the introduction of their book “Vulnerability in Resistance,” the uneven distribution of vulnerability, which makes some people more exposed to arbitrary violence than others, is the constituent of contemporary precarity. Yet, on the other hand, vulnerability is also one of the conditions of people’s possibility of resistance. Putting it in Judith Butler’s words, vulnerability, as “a relation to a field of objects, forces, passions that impinge upon or affect us in some way” (2016, 25), can be understood “as part of the very meaning of political resistance as an embodied enactment” (2016,
22). Consistent with this view, the women we met, from the mobilization of their vulnerability, created strategies to cope with and resist the precariousness that threatened the lives they were building. From their positions, they engaged in struggles for justice and recognition, also challenging the state and its functionaries. In so doing, and to counteract the violence they were forcibly subject to, including police brutality, they often relied on family ties, such as the daughter- mother relationship, as well as on relationships formed with people navigating similar difficulties, often compatriot women. When such ties were lacking – as in the case of Margarita – it was harder for the women to react. This evidence shed light on the importance of establishing networks of solidarity from below in order to challenge regimes of oppression.
The apparatus of immigration enforcement
Undocumented women have to strive on a daily basis to make their own way in Europe. In so doing, they seek legitimate subject positions and make use of existing legal tools. However, as
112
Luibhéid (2005, xvii) notes, these tools, such as that of asylum, are constructed so as to be accessible only to a select minority of people, usually “those who are male, heterosexual, economically privileged, and from particular ‘racial’ and national origins.” As a consequence, the vast majority of these women are produced as ‘ineligible,’ and, not being entitled to any kind of protection and legal status, they are exposed to arrest, incarceration (often for extensive periods and in very harsh conditions) and, finally, deportation (see Bhabha 2002). This was also the fate of the women we met in the Ponte Galeria detention center.
Migration-related detention
In migration-related detention centers, gender, sexuality, and race shape women’s everyday lives
(Bosworth and Kellezi 2014). As Gabriella Alberti (2010) notes, the detention regime serves to reinforce traditional gender identities and reproduce women’s vulnerability. In so doing, it erases the political dimension of women’s experiences and undermines their agency as political subjects
(Freedman 2015).
Our participants’ narratives provide support for this argument. According to heteropatriarchal norms, women were symbolically divided into “good” and “bad” within Rome’s detention center. Good women were the “harmless” ones, those who did not make trouble for the staff and who fit within the hegemonic notion of femininity. In contrast, bad women were
“troublesome”; they transgressed traditional gender and sexual roles, and staff found them difficult to manage.
As a means by which the staff managed the “‘hyper-diversity’ of the detention population”
(Bosworth 2012, 133), nationality was further used to articulate such stereotypical divisions in a racialized way. For instance, Russians, Ukrainians, and Georgians were regarded as quiet and disciplined detainees, women who had come to Italy to do the domestic and care work that Italian women are no longer able to do because of their increasing participation in the labor market. In contrast, Nigerian women, who often made their living as sex workers, were considered aggressive
113 and hypersexualized. As Precious reported: “They see Nigerian people and they say what, puttana
[whore] … they’ll look at you.” The notion of “good” and “bad” was deeply intertwined with the concept of women's victimhood and dangerousness and, subsequently, with the idea of whether or not they deserved to be detained. While “good” women, perceived as vulnerable, were regarded as victims of the detention system, the others—sex workers, queers, Roma, and ex-prisoners—were regarded as dangerous subjects who deserved to be locked up and expelled.
Racialized stereotypical views were also shared by detained women, who often classified the other detainees based on their understanding of nationality. For instance, Mirela described Nigerian women as noisy and inclined to bully other detainees, while Precious complained about the self- segregating attitude of the Chinese. Interestingly, the participants’ narratives revealed a constant tension between membership based on the sharing of a national identity and a sense of belonging to the larger community of detainees (Bosworth 2014). In particular, some participants criticized the accommodation of detainees in the sleeping rooms according to ethnic/racial criteria. Desirée said:
“Basically it is they [the staff] who are making a difference. Not the girls. It is the ones who are working here. Putting the African in one place, the Chinese in another.”
Regardless of nationality and individual backgrounds, all the women described everyday life inside Rome’s center as very difficult. They complained about the living conditions, mentioning the poor hygiene of the detention area, the poor quality of the food, and, above all, the total lack of activity as the main critical issues. Having no activities, women spent their time smoking, watching
TV, speaking on the phone, chatting, and, most of all, thinking about their situation. Inactivity and stress had a profound impact on their psychological well-being. Mirela reported: “The first time I arrived here, I didn't sleep for three days, even taking drugs. I couldn't stand it anymore, I looked like a zombie.”
For all the women, the main challenge was the very fact of giving meaning to their detention experience. Given that they had not committed any crime, they argued for the illegitimacy of confinement based on administrative grounds. Lack of information regarding the management and
114 possible outcomes of their immigration cases and uncertainty regarding the time to be spent inside the center only served to further complicate the picture. “For a woman to come here,” Najwa said,
“facing her problems in her life and she ends up here…, like you know the place looks scary, like you can see by yourself, you know? And you can never understand that … even if you only think about that: ‘I’m gonna stay here for six months or even for one month,’ for – in this place it’s totally unacceptable [to stay].”
Uncertainty and instability are constitutive dimensions of the detention experience, thus becoming a tool of governmentality (Griffiths 2014). As Melanie B. E. Griffiths (2014, 1994) observes, “much of this temporal ‘angst’ relates to the perceived disjuncture between the temporalities of themselves and those around them, and between their expectations of progress and efficiency, and the machinations of the immigration and judicial systems in practice.” Without knowing how long they will remain in detention, it is difficult for the women to imagine their future
(Griffiths 2014). Such experiences of temporal violence cause profound emotional suffering (Lewis
2013). “You know when you enter,” Mirela said, “but you never know when and how you get out!
Indeed, now I'm fighting with my mind: ‘What will happen to me?’” In spite of the precariousness produced by the detention system, the women we met strived to resist. They denounced the unfairness of such a system, also making claims for rights and entitlements. To do so, they also relied on normative expectations of femininity and female respectability. Mirela reported: “I have been without a bra for three days. Until I tell them: ‘Excuse me, but with the nipples like this how can I present myself in front of the judge?’ I’m not saying you need makeup, I’m not saying you need to overdress, [but] you have to go there like all humans. And without a bra I’m not accustomed, I say: ‘Give me my bra.’ They removed the underwires and they gave it back to me.”
Some women, like Desirée, identified migration-related detention centers with prisons.
Others, like Mirela, remarked that prisons are better, because “at least you know it, you're imprisoned, you made a mistake, they give you seven, eight months and you get out.” Despite the different—albeit intertwined—visions, for all participants the main aim was freedom.
115
In fact, it is with the aim of claiming such a right that many protests are begun in detention.
A meaningful example in this sense was the protest against Law No. 129/2011 (which extended the maximum term of detention from six to eighteen months) that broke out in August 2011 in
Bologna’s detention center. The protest began with a hunger strike at lunchtime, when Nigerian women refused food and demanded freedom, which was followed by the burning of mattresses. To crush this protest, around fifteen police officers burst into the living unit. In the clashes that followed, some women were hurt (Del Grande 2011).
Speaking about their experience inside Rome’s center, all of our participants reported a strong feeling of sisterhood. In the midst of their differences the shared experience of confinement allowed them to bond on the basis of “feeling-with” one another (O’Donnell 2007, 101). All interviewees described the connections they formed with women from different backgrounds and experiences as the most positive aspect of detention (Bosworth and Kellezi 2014). “The only thing is that you make friends with new girls who otherwise… you might not know outside,” Mirela said.
The “freedom song,” described by Precious, provides an example of women’s sisterhood. The song, particularly common amongst Nigerian women, was used to celebrate the release of detainees.
When the news of a release was communicated by immigration authorities, and usually shared by the woman concerned with cries of joy, the other detainees began to leave their rooms and gather in the corridor of the living unit to start singing. Although Nigerian women lead this celebration, women of other nationalities usually followed. This ritual helped them bond through the joy of newfound freedom. As Sarah Hughes (2016) emphasizes, music, rhythm, and improvisation “can be considered political in their very unknowability, as they challenge and resist the certainty of the production of a governable political order.” The paintings and graffiti detainees made on the walls of the living unit to challenge the grayness and impersonality of the detention environment represented another expression of the women’s political agency.
Among the women, the main resource to cope with detention was solidarity. Many of our participants reported how, in the very first days, they did not have access to a phone and only
116 managed to call their families or lawyers thanks to the other detainees’ mobile phones.13
Furthermore, they recounted how information concerning the center’s rules, not (or only partially) provided by staff members, were shared by the women who had spent a longer time in detention.
Our participants’ accounts of their detention experiences also revealed the women’s determination to claim their rights. In particular, some participants expressed the desire to write down their stories and those of the other women they had met. As Najwa remarked: “I’ve seen a lot of people who suffered throughout this experience and it’s really bad. Like I understand that
Europeans when they have refugees in their country, I understand that they’re not gonna be happy with it . . . but they didn’t live throughout this. I experienced this with my own . . . and I think I’m gonna write a book about that.” Rewriting her own story, and recounting the suffering, struggles, and challenges faced as an undocumented woman, is an act of resistance that carries a strong potential for political transformation (Gready 2003). Survivors’ first-hand accounts of their detention experiences, as counternarratives, are indeed crucial tools to challenge the dominant security discourse on migration (Wibben 2011).
Deportation
Two of our participants also recounted previous experiences of deportation to their countries of origin. Such experiences were described as profoundly violent and distressing, and were self- evidently gendered and sexualized (Ratia and Notermans 2012).
In 2010, after twelve days of detention in Rome’s center, Mirela was deported to Belgrade, a city that she did not know, having being born and lived all her life in Italy. Mirela described the deportation experience as a terrible ordeal and reported having been treated like a criminal. Having no one to call and nowhere to go in Belgrade, Mirela found a park to sleep in. There, two men kidnapped her. After three months, during which she was exposed to abuse, rape, and sexual exploitation on a daily basis, she managed to run away.
117
Speaking about her deportation to Nigeria in 2013, Precious reported how she was caught in an ambush. When police officers came to take her inside Turin’s detention center, Precious struggled to resist, claiming her right to take her daughter with her, who had been left against her will in the hospital: “It was violent, because when they came I was surprised, they ambushed. . . they came they just called me: ‘You have to go now. . . .” I said, ‘Okay, if you want to take me now give me my baby.’”
Nigerian migrants are often collectively deported in Italy, revealing the relevance of nationality in maximizing exposure to arbitrary state violence. This practice is based on a bilateral agreement between the Italian and Nigerian governments, under which the Nigerian Consulate conducts rapid interviews for identification purposes in order to allow the Italian immigration authorities to forcibly deport “irregular” Nigerian nationals.14 Lawyers and civil society representatives have largely contested this practice, regarding it as a serious violation of human rights. Of interest in this regard is the case of the sixty-six Nigerian women, many of whom had been exposed to abuse and violations whilst detained in Rome’s center in the summer of 2015 (see
Beretta et al. 2016). These women were detained immediately (or few days) after having landed on the coast of Sicily, without having been provided with any information about the possibility of seeking humanitarian protection. Moreover, at the very moment of their entry into Ponte Galeria they were collectively identified by the Nigerian consul in order to be forcibly deported back to
Nigeria within a few days (it is worth noting that none of them had a copy of the expulsion order issued against them). Individuals and migrants’ rights organizations have denounced the case and struggled to prevent the deportation of the women, only partially succeeding. The resistance, even physical, put in place by the women themselves on the day of the deportation was crucial in order to give activists and lawyers extra time to intervene. Despite an arduous collective struggle, around twenty women were boarded onto a Frontex flight and deported to Lagos.
As Rachel Lewis (2013) observes, when migrants are given little or no warning of their deportation, and no time to contact their lawyers, their only option is to rely on their physical ability
118 to resist. In Ponte Galeria, such “everyday acts of resistance” (Lewis 2013, 185) are quite common.
Significant in this regard are the words of Biljana, a twenty-five-year-old Montenegrin woman we met during our fieldwork, who described a collective deportation she had witnessed: “They were taking them back to their country, and the Africans did not want to go. . . . Police officers came, militaries, everybody had that truncheon to beat them, and the Africans were beating them and they were beating the African women. . . . They [the women] took off their shirts so they could not be held. Everyone was fighting naked” (Fieldnotes 06 December 2014).
Following her attempt at resistance, Precious was handcuffed and carried onto the plane by force. Once in Lagos she was taken into custody by the Nigerian authorities, who asked her for money to be released. Life in Nigeria after the deportation was not easy for Precious, who like many deported migrants faced the stigma of failure and contamination in her country of origin
(Schuster and Majidi 2015). Nigerian women with experiences of sex work are particularly likely to be stigmatized and ostracized (Ratia and Notermans 2012). This evidence highlights the role of sexuality and gender in shaping women’s experiences of forced return.
It is worth noting that both Precious and Mirela challenged the gendered disruptions brought about by deportation (Ratia and Nothermans 2012). Both found a way to migrate back to Italy.
However, once in Italy, they were both detained again. It was during this second detention that our interviews took place.
Conclusions
In the face of increasing control and criminalization of human mobility, feminist scholars have argued that it is important “to hear and understand women’s voices with respect to borders and border crossings” (Mehta 2016, 288). Too often, these voices have been silenced, while migrants have been constructed as an undifferentiated category of undesirable subjects whose “illegality” is a sign of their character rather than an outcome of larger structural processes and histories of inequality (Luibhéid 2008b).
119
Scholars engaged in the study of everyday life inside migration-related detention centers have called particular attention to the almost nonexistent body of knowledge concerning women’s experiences in detention (for exceptions, see Alberti 2010; Bosworth, Fili, and Pickering 2014;
Bosworth and Kellezi 2014). The purpose of this paper is to contribute to filling this gap, in the belief that a feminist understanding of such experiences, rooted in the marginality of these women’s positions, can open up new lines of thought (Bosworth, Fili and Pickering 2014; Mehta 2016).
From this standpoint, and consistent with Lykes and Hershberg, our analysis, has sought to provide a platform for women’s “powerful narratives of suffering, survival, protagonism and resistance” (2015, 260). In particular, in order to represent the ‘hyper-diversity’ (Bosworth 2012) of the population confined inside Rome’s center, we chose to present the stories of five women with very different life trajectories. We presented these stories in sociopolitical and historical context, showing how—in spite of individual differences—women’s experiences of oppression and resistance – in their countries of origin, transit, and settlement – are deeply intertwined and strongly influenced by structural realities. Moreover, their stories reveal the role of gender and sexuality in relation to other hierarchies of power such as class, race, nationality, and geopolitics, in shaping women’s international migration to and incorporation into Europe.
Several reflections can be drawn from our work. First, we can consider the operation of immigration and border control regimes, and how these both reflect and further entrench the normative power hierarchies in society at large (Lewis and Naples 2014; Luibhéid 2005). In so doing, as Luibhéid (2005, xiv) argues, these regimes work “to ensure a ‘proper’ sexual and gender order, reproduction of white racial privilege, and exploitation of the poor.” Furthermore, they manifest and engender dominant notions of citizenship and nation sovereignty (Andrijasevic 2010).
In this process a key role is also played, as our analysis highlights, by instruments ideally designed to ‘safeguard human rights,’ such as that of asylum, that perpetuate the dispossession of racialized and gendered bodies (Butler and Athanasiou 2013). All of the women whose stories are recounted in this paper experienced forms of gender-based violence, but none of them had access to
120 any form of protection since they fell outside of the narrow categories recognized by the state. As a result they were produced as ‘illegal,’ and by extension deportable subjects, exposed to abuse, exploitation, confinement, and death.
However, women were not passive spectators of the violence perpetrated by the nation- state; rather, they struggled to resist it. Within the limited opportunity structures and spaces available to them, they built their everyday lives, making claims and actively negotiating their multiple and often contradictory positionings (for further work on this topic see also Rutvica
Andrijasevic’s [2010] study of migrant women working in the sex industry). In this view, according to Catherine Campbell and Jenevieve Mannell (2016, 1), their agency can be understood as a
“multi-level, incremental and non-linear process distributed across time, space and social networks, and across a continuum of action ranging from survival to resistance.” Such a nuanced way of thinking about power and agency sheds light on the numerous ways in which women, on a daily basis, deal with the different regimes of power that oppress them. It also acknowledges the complexities, tensions, and contradictions that characterize their lives (see Shefer 2015).
For instance, the participants’ accounts of everyday life inside Rome’s center shed light on how women—sometimes simultaneously— accepted, manipulated, negotiated, and contested the racial, gender, and sexual norms that structure the regime of detention management. Further, these accounts highlight the importance of sisterhood and solidarity as resources upon which the women relied to cope with detention, as well as “to resist and undermine the deportation machine”
(Campesi 2015, 429).
We would like to conclude by joining Eithne Luibhéid’s call for a scholarship and an activism able “to challenge and transform the relations of power that operate through migration regimes to generate unequal regimes of living and dying at multiple scales” (Luibhéid 2008a, 183).
We hope that, by exploring the processes through which certain lives are produced as devalued and ungrievable (Butler 2009), this paper can contribute to this aim, pointing to the need for a transnational feminist project that acknowledges the value of diversity and difference (Mohanty
121
2003), while featuring “modes of response and solidarity that do not reify ‘the dispossessed’ and thus do not repeat the erasing of their singularity” (Butler and Athanasiou 2013, 136). Such a project – based on the creation of political and affective alliances among people whose lives are differently affected by the violence of multiple borders and boundaries – should acknowledge vulnerability as a common resource (Butler, Gambetti and Sasay 2016). Further, it should be rooted in the belief that free movement, as a precondition for human freedom to truly live (De Genova
2010), should not be reserved for a privileged few, but rather equally deserved by all.
Francesca Esposito: ISPA-University Institute
José Ornelas: ISPA-University Institute
Silvia Scirocchi: Department of Dynamic and Clinical Psychology, Sapienza – University of Rome
Caterina Arcidiacono: Department of Humanities, University Federico II of Naples
References
Abrego, Leisly J. 2013. “Latino Immigrants’ Diverse Experiences of “Illegality”.” In Constructing
Immigrant 'Illegality': Critiques, Experiences, and Responses, ed. Cecilia Menjívar, Daniel
Kanstroom. 139-160. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Alberti, Gabriella. 2010. “Across the Borders of Lesvos: The Gendering of Migrants' Detention in
the Aegean.” Feminist Review, no. 94: 138-47.
Amnesty International. 2015. “‘Libya Is Full of Cruelty’: Stories of Abduction, Sexual Violence
and Abuse from Migrants and Refugees.” Report.
http://www.amnesty.eu/content/assets/Reports_and_Briefings_2015/Libya_is_full_of_cruelt
y.pdf
Andrijasevic, Rutvica. 2009. “Sex on the move: Gender, subjectivity and differential inclusion.”
Subjectivity, no. 29, 389–406.
122
Andrijasevic, Rutvica. 2010. Migration, Agency and Citizenship in Sex Trafficking. Basingstoke:
Palgrave MacMillan.
Associazione 21 Luglio [Association 21st July]. 2015. “Rapporto Annuale 2015 [Annual Report]”
http://www.21luglio.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Rapporto_annuale_2015_def_web.pdf
Beretta, Lucia, Bondì, Loretta, De Masi, Francesca, Esposito, Francesca, Festagallo, Federica, Gargano, Oria, and Carla R. Quinto. 2016. Inter/rotte: Storie di Tratta, Percorsi di Resistenze [Inter/rupted: Stories of Trafficking, Paths of Resistances]. Roma: Sapere Solidale. Bhabha, Jacqueline. 2002. “Internationalist Gatekeepers? The Tension between Asylum Advocacy
and Human Rights.” Harvard Human Rights Journal, no. 15: 155-81.
Bosworth, Mary. 2012. “Subjectivity and Identity in Detention: Punishment and Society in a Global
Age.” Theoretical Criminology 16(2):123–40.
————. 2014. Inside Immigration Detention. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bosworth, Mary, Andriani Fili, and Sharon Pickering. 2014. “Women's Immigration Detention in
Greece: Gender, Control and Capacity.” In Immigration Detention, Risk and Human Rights,
ed. Maria João Guia, Robert Koulish, and Valsamis Mitislegas, 157-70. New York:
Springer.
Bosworth, Mary, and Blerina Kellezi. 2014. “Citizenship and Belonging in a Women's Immigration
Detention Centre.” In New Directions in Race, Ethnicity and Crime, ed. Coretta Philips and
Colin Webster, 80-96. Abingdon: Routledge.
Brainerd, Elizabeth. 2000. “Women in Transition: Changes in Gender Wage Differentials in Eastern
Europe and the Former Soviet Union.” ILR Review 54(1):138-62.
Butler, Judith. 2009. Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? New York: Verso.
————. 2016. “Rethinking Vulnerability and Resistance.” In Vulnerability in Resistance, ed.
Judith Butler, Zeynep Gambetti and Leticia Sabsay, 12-27. Durham and London: Duke
University Press.
123
Butler, Judith, and Athena Athanasiou. 2013. Dispossession: The Performative in the Political.
Cambridge: Polity.
Butler, Judith, Zeynep Gambetti and Leticia Sabsay. 2016. Vulnerability in Resistance. Durham and
London: Duke University Press.
Campbell, Catherine, and Jenevieve Mannell. 2016. “Conceptualising the Agency of Highly
Marginalised Women: Intimate Partner Violence in Extreme Settings.” Global Public
Health 11(1-2):1–16.
Campesi, Giuseppe. 2015. “Hindering the Deportation Machine. An Ethnography of Power and
Resistance in Immigration Detention.” Punishment and Society 17(4):427–53.
CERD (UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination). 1999. “Concluding
Observations, Italy.” Report. United Nations, Geneva.
http://www.refworld.org/publisher,CERD,CONCOBSERVATIONS,ITA,3ae6af357,0.html
De Genova, Nicholas. 2002. “Migrant ‘Illegality’ and Deportability in Everyday Life.” Annual
Review of Anthropology 31:419-47.
De Genova, Nicholas. 2010. “The Deportation Regime: Sovereignty, Space, and the Freedom of
Movement.” In The Deportation Regime: Sovereignty, Space, and the Freedom of
Movement, ed. Nicholas De Genova, Nathalie Peutz. 147-165. Durham: Duke University
Press.
Del Grande, Gabriele. 2008. “Niger: I rifugiati denunciano gli abusi subiti nel Sahara. [Niger:
Refugees denounce the abuses suffered in the Sahara.]” Bologna: Fortress Europe, July 29.
http://fortresseurope.blogspot.pt/2006/01/niger-i-rifugiati-sbarcati-in-italia.html.
————. 2011. “CIE Bologna: Protesta al femminile, 3 donne picchiate. [Bologna’s CIE: Protest
in the female living unit, 3 women beaten.]” Fortress Europe, August 24.
http://fortresseurope.blogspot.pt/2011/08/cie-bologna-protesta-al-femminile-3.html.
Esposito, Francesca. 2017. “Practicing Ethnography in Migration-Related Detention Centers: A
Reflexive Account.” Journal of Prevention and Intervention in the Community 45(1):57-69.
124
Esposito, Francesca, José Ornelas, and Caterina Arcidiacono. 2015. “Migration-related detention: A
focus on the Italian context.” In The Borders of Schengen, ed. Alice Cunha, Marta Silvia,
and Rui Frederico, 117-191. Brussels: P.I.E. Peter Lang.
Freedman, Jane. 2015. Gendering the International Asylum and Refugee Debate. Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Galtung, Johan. 1969. “Violence, Peace and Peace Research.” Journal of Peace Research 6(3):167–
91.
Gerard, Alison, and Sharon Pickering. 2014. “Gender, Securitization and Transit: Refugee Women
and the Journey to the EU.” Journal of Refugee Studies 27(3):338-59.
Gready, Paul. 2003. Writing as Resistance: Life Stories of Imprisonment, Exile, and Homecoming
from Apartheid South Africa. Lanham, MD: Lexington.
Griffiths, Melanie B.E. 2014. “Out of Time: The Temporal Uncertainties of Refused Asylum
Seekers and Immigration Detainees.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 40(12):1991-
2009.
Harding, Sandra, ed. 2004. The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political
Controversies. New York: Routledge.
Hyndman, Jennifer. 2000. Managing Displacement: Refugees and the Politics of Humanitarianism.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Hughes, Sarah. 2016. “Creativity and Resistance within UK Immigration Removal Centres.”
Border Criminologies, May 11. https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/research-subject-groups/centre-
criminology/centreborder-criminologies/blog/2016/05/creativity-and.
ISTAT (Istituto Nazionale di Statistica) [National Institute of Statistics]. 2015. “La violenza contro
le donne dentro e fuori la famiglia. [Violence against women inside and outside the family]”
Report, June 15.
http://www.istat.it/it/files/2015/06/Violenze_contro_le_donne.pdf?title=Violenza+contro+le
+donne+-+05%2Fgiu%2F2015+-+Testo+integrale.pdf
125
L’amore ai tempi della frontiera [Love in the Time of Frontier]. 2012. Directed by Alexandra
D’Onofrio. Bologna: Fortress Europe.
Lewis, Rachel. 2013. “Deportable subjects: Lesbians and Political Asylum.” Feminist Formations
25(2):174-94.
Lewis, Rachel, and Nancy Naples. 2014. “Introduction: Queer Migration, Asylum, and
Dsplacement.” Sexualities 17(8):911-18.
Lykes, M. Brinton, and Rachel M. Hershberg 2015. “Continuities and Discontinuities in Human
Rights Violations: Historically Situating the Psychosocial Effects of Migration.” Journal of
Social Issues 71(2):244-63.
Luibhéid, Eithne. 2005. Queer Migration: Sexuality, U.S. Citizenship, and Border Crossings.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
————. 2008a. “Queer/Migration. An Unruly Body of Scholarship.” GLQ 14(2-3):169-90.
————. 2008b. “Sexuality, Migration, and the Shifting Line between Legal and Illegal Status.”
GLQ 14(2-3):289-315.
MacLeod, Arlene Elowe. 1992. “Hegemonic Relations and Gender Resistance: The New Veiling as
Accommodating Protest in Cairo.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society
17(3):533-57.
Mehta, Rimple. 2016. “Borders: A View from ‘Nowhere.’” Criminology & Criminal Justice
16(3):286-300.
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. 1995. “Feminist Encounters: Locating the Politics of Experience.” In
Social Postmodernism: Beyond Identity Politics, ed. Linda Nicholson, and Steven Seidman,
68-86. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. 2003. Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing
Solidarity. Durham & London: Duke University Press.
Mountz, Alison. 2011. “Where asylum-seekers wait: feminist countertopographies of sites between
states.” Gender, Place & Culture 18(3):381-399.
126
Narayan, Uma. 1995. “‘Male-Order’ Brides: Immigrant Women, Domestic Violence and
Immigration Law.” Hypatia 10(1):104-19.
O'Donnell, Carolynn. 2007. “A Philosophical Account of Feminist Solidarity between Women.”
Senior thesis, Mount Holyoke College.
Oprea, Alexandra. 2004. “Re-envisioning Social Justice from the Ground Up: Including the
Experiences of Romani Women.” Essex Human Rights Review 1(1):29-39.
Personal Narratives Group, ed. 1989. Interpreting Women's Lives. Feminist Theory and Personal
Narratives. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Ratia, Emma, and Catrien Notermans. 2012. “‘I Was Crying, I Did Not Come Back with
Anything”: Women’s Experiences of Deportation from Europe to Nigeria.” African
Diaspora 5(2):143-64.
Riessman, Catherine Kohler. 2008. Narrative Methods for the Human Sciences. Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
Rigo, Enrica. 2005. “Citizenship at Europe's Borders: Some Reflections on the Post-colonial
Condition of Europe in the Context of EU Enlargement.” Citizenship Studies 9(1): 3-22.
Robjant, Katy, Robbins, Ian, and Victoria Senior. 2009. “Psychological Distress amongst
Immigration Detainees: A Cross-Sectional Questionnaire Study.” British Journal of Clinical
Psychology 48(3):275-86.
Sager, Maja. 2016. “Constructions of Deportability in Sweden: Refused Asylum Seekers’
Experiences in Relation to Gender, Family Life, and Reproduction.” NORA 24(1):30-44.
Schmoll, Camille. 2014. “Gendered spatialities of power in ‘borderland’ Europe: an approach
through mobile and immobilised bodies.” International Journal of Migration and Border
Studies 1(2):173-189.
Schuster, Liza, and Nassim Majidi. 2015. “Deportation Stigma and Re-migration.” Journal of
Ethnic and Migration Studies 41(4):635-52.
127
Shefer, Tamara. 2015. “Resisting the Binarism of Victim and Agent: Critical Reflections on 20
years of Scholarship on Young Women and Heterosexual Practices in South African
Contexts.” Global Public Health 11(1-2):211–23.
Sigona, Nando. 2005. “Locating ‘the Gypsy Problem.’ The Roma in Italy: Stereotyping, Labelling
and ‘Nomad Camps.’” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 31(4):741-56.
———. 2016. “Everyday Statelessness in Italy: Status, Rights, and Camps.” Ethnic and Racial
Studies 39(2): 263-79.
Sobhanian, Farahnaz, Gregory J. Boyle, Mark Bahr, and Tindaro Fallo. 2006. “Psychological Status
of Former Refugee Detainees from the Woomera Detention Centre Now Living in the
Australian Community.” Psychiatry, Psychology and Law 13(2):151-59.
Stephen, Lynn. 2008. “Los Nuevos Desaparecidos y Muertos: Immigration, Militarization, Death,
and Disappearance on Mexico’s Borders.” In Security Disarmed: Critical Perspectives on
Gender, Race, and Militarization, ed. Barbara Sutton, Sandra Morgen, and Julie Novkov,
79-100. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Turan, Janet M., Abigail M. Hatcher, Patrizia Romito, Emily Mangone, Modupeoluwa Durojaiye,
Merab Odero, and Carol S. Camlin. 2016. “Intimate Partner Violence and Forced Migration
during Pregnancy: Structural Constraints to Women's Agency.” Global Public Health 11(1-
2):153-68.
Wibben, Annick, ed. 2011. Feminist Security Studies: A Narrative Approach. Oxon: Routledge.
Zandonini, Giacomo. 2016. “Le rotte della tratta dall’Africa.” Inter/rotte: Storie di Tratta, Percorsi
di Resistenze [Inter/rupted: Stories of Trafficking, Paths of Resistances], ed. Lucia Beretta,
Loretta Bondì, Francesca De Masi, Francesca Esposito, Federica Festagallo, Oria Gargano,
and Carla R. Quinto, 19-22. Roma: Sapere Solidale.
128
Acknowledgments
This research carried out as a part of Francesca Esposito’s doctoral thesis, received a scholarship by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (SFRH/BD/87854/2012). We would like to thank Maayan Ravid, Rimple Mehta, Gaia Giuliani, Simone Tulumello and Erica Briozzo for their encouragement for this project by offering their time and insightful feedback, as well as Signs’ editor and anonymous reviewers who provide critical comments on this paper. We also need to thank the organizers and participants of the workshop ‘Critical Prison Studies, Carceral
Ethnography, and Human Rights: From Lived Experience to Global Action’ held at the Oñati
International Institute for the Sociology of Law, where we presented an earlier version of this article, for their generous inputs and comments. Last, and most importantly, we are grateful to the women we met inside Rome’s detention center for sharing their stories and struggles with us.
1 This fieldwork is a part of a larger study of life within detention centers in Italy and Portugal. Such a study constitutes Francesca Esposito’s doctoral research in community psychology.
2 For a historical overview of the Italian legal and policy framework on migrant detention see, for example, Esposito, Ornelas and Arcidiacono 2015.
3 Law No. 46, recently approved by the Italian Parliament, mandates the expansion of the immigration detention estate to increase deportations. According to this law, detention facilities will be established in every Italian region.
4 Until November 2014 detention in Italy was up to 18 months.
5 See, e.g., MacLeod (1992), Shefer (2015), Campbell and Mannell (2016), and Turan et al. (2016).
6 Given the condition of induced vulnerability (Butler, Gambetti, and Sabsay 2016) to which the women we interviewed were exposed, leading up to detention and within detention, participants’ real names have been replaced by pseudonyms.
129
7 The Dublin Regulation (EU Regulation No. 604/2013) establishes the criteria and mechanisms for determining the member state in charge of examining an application for international protection lodged by a third country national or a stateless person in one of the member states. According to this Regulation, the application is to be presented in the first European country in which the person arrives and where she was identified by local authorities.
8 Data retrieved from the International Organization for Migration’s website: https://www.iom.int/news/mediterranean-migrant-arrivals-reach-83928-2017-2108-deaths
9 Article 18 of the Legislative Decree 286/1998 (‘Italian Immigration Law’) provides a programme of social integration/rehabilitation for victims of violence and severe exploitation. It also grants those participating in the programme a temporary residence permit (6 months renewable for 1 further year), which can be converted into a study or work permit. For a critical analysis of this measure see Rutvica Andrijasevic (2010).
10 The European Union maintains a database containing the fingerprint data of asylum seekers and undocumented migrants.
11 Approximately 55 percent of the 180,000 Roma and Sinti estimated to be living in Italy were born in Italy, but many of them are not recognized as Italian citizens. This is because Italian citizenship law is largely based on jus sanguinis (right of blood) rather than jus soli (right of soil). As a consequence, children born in Italy to nonnationals do not acquire Italian citizenship at birth.
12 In Italy around forty thousand Roma and Sinti reside in so-called nomad camps (Associazione 21
Luglio 2015).
13 Only mobile phones without cameras are allowed inside Rome’s center, and several days can pass before the center’s staff can purchase one for a new detainee.
14 Such agreements have also been formalized with other countries, including Egypt, Tunisia,
Morocco, and, more recently, Sudan.
130
131
Article IV – “Yes, But Somebody Has to Help Them Somehow”: Looking at the Italian Detention Field through the Eyes of Professional Nonstate Actors
132
133
“Yes, But Somebody Has to Help Them Somehow”: Looking at the Italian Detention Field through the Eyes of Professional Nonstate Actors.
Francesca Esposito, José Ornelas, Silvia Scirocchi, Immacolata Di Napoli, and Caterina Arcidiacono.
Submitted at: International Migration Review.
Abstract
Although detention has proliferated around the world, little is still know about life inside these sites of containment. Based on thirty-four months of fieldwork, this paper examines the lived experiences of center staff and external civil-society actors engaged within Rome’s detention center. We discuss the emotional, ethical, and political challenges faced by these professional actors in their everyday work, and their relationship with detainees. Our aim is to shed light on social life in detention and the intersections between humanitarian and security logics in this setting. Moreover, we problematize the idea that “humanizing detention” can be a solution for change.
Keywords: migration-related detention; professionals’ lived experiences; humanitarian government.
INTRODUCTION
As a response to transnational movements of people, usually portrayed as a threat to homeland security and order, in past decades states in the Western North have drawn a complex geography based on the proliferation of borders and boundaries, and the containment, sorting, and disciplining of mobility. In so doing, as Mezzadra and Neilson (2013) argue, states have defined a regime of differential mobility that - by rearticulating echoes of colonialism and empire – sustains a racialized segmentation of society, and a differentiated access to labor market and citizenship. Migration- related detention is part of the complex sets of devices used to sustain this regime of “differential inclusion” (Casas-Cortes et al., 2015, 79), which ultimately distinguishes between qualified citizens 134 and “deserted subjects” (Kalir 2017b).
In Italy, confining people because of their failure to comply with immigration or residency rules dates back to the late ‘90s, when the first detention centers were opened along the coast of
Puglia to respond to the so called “Albanian emergency”.1 Since then, a rhetoric of “emergency”, intertwined with a specific notion of “migrant dangerousness” (Campesi and Fabini 2017), has been shaping the Italian framework of migration control.
Unlike the United States and the United Kingdom where the management of migration-related detention has been widely inspired by the national prison service model, in Italy great efforts have been made by the government to emphasize the humanitarian nature of this measure (Campesi 2015).
In particular, any official reference to the concept of “detention” has been avoided, using the euphemism trattenimento [withholding] to refer to the confinement of “illegalized” people.2 Further, since its inception, a specific feature of migration-related detention in Italy has been the outsourcing of management and service provision to private entities, usually humanitarian agencies (such as social cooperatives3). This scenario is further complicated by the more recent entry of multinational companies into the Italian detention market thanks to partnerships established with local humanitarian organizations. This evidence, in line with the international trend impelling the humanitarian world toward a neoliberal market logic (Agier 2011), speaks volumes about the
“thriving business” existing around detention (Arbogast 2016).
In spite of the academic interest around migration-related detention, we still know relatively little about life and the lived experiences of people inside these institutions (Bosworth 2014). In Italy, as in most countries, the scarcity of literature existing on this hidden world is primarily due to the difficulties of gaining research access to detention facilities (for exceptions see Campesi 2015;
Iyengar et al. 2012). Most information is available through reports produced by non-governmental
1 Starting from the early 90s, ships coming from Albany landed on the Italian southern shores carrying tens of thousands of people fleeing from their country due to the turbulences of post-communist transformation. On the history of migration-related detention in Italy see Esposito, Ornelas, & Arcidiacono, 2015a. 2 We opt for the term ‘illegalized’ to underline that these people (asylum seekers, undocumented migrants, visa over- stayers, stateless, etc) are not inherently ‘illegal,’ but rather legally produced as ‘illegal’ by states. 3According to Italian law (law no. 381/1991), social cooperatives have the purpose of ‘serving the general interest of the community towards human advancement and social integration of citizens.’ 135 organizations (NGOs), activist networks, and government agencies (e.g., Commissione Straordinaria per la Tutela e la Promozione dei Diritti Umani 2017; LasciateCIEntrare 2016; MEDU 2012).
With the aim of shining a light on the reality of migration-related detention, this paper focuses on the lived experiences of staff members and other external nonstate actors - namely, journalists, lawyers, human rights advocates, volunteers of faith-based organizations (FBOs) and religious congregations - carrying out activities inside Rome’s detention center of Ponte Galeria, the largest
Italian detention facility.4 The main emphasis is to reveal their perspectives, the challenges and struggles they go through, as well as the strategies they adopt and the meanings they give to their everyday experiences. By taking on this particular angle of study, our aim is twofold.
Firstly, addressing Bosworth’s call for further research inside these sites of confinement
(Bosworth 2014), we aim to contribute to the understanding of the social and cultural world behind their gates. We indeed believe that by looking at migration-related detention through the eyes of the professional actors involved, a viewpoint only recently addressed in academic literature,5 and almost unexplored in the Italian context (although see Campesi 2015), new insights can be generated.
Professionals’ everyday accounts offer a rich picture of the tensions, complexities, and contradictions at stake in the detention setting, and particularly the ethical dilemmas produced by the urge to ‘do good’ within abject and constraining circumstances. Such a picture, as Bosworth and Slade observe, also reveals how “familiar tropes of race, class and gender, as well as discourses and expectations about citizenship and migration” are upheld, reproduced, as well as disrupted, in the frame of migration-related detention, and the role that emotions play in this process (cf. Hall 2012).
This remark also brings us to the second field we wish to contribute to, which concerns the articulation between security and humanitarian logics under the framework of contemporary immigration laws and policies. While studies on the tension between control and assistance in the
“global management” of people on the move have originally focused on refugee camps and reception
4 This data are part of a larger study on migration-related detention in Italy and Portugal, which is the first author’s doctoral project in community psychology. 5 See, among others, Bosworth and Slade 2014; Fischer 2015; Hall 2010, 2012; Puthoopparambil, Ahlberg, and Bjerneld 2015; Snyder, Bell, and Buch-Armendariz 2015; Ugelvik 2016. 136 centers (see, among others, Agier 2011; Fassin 2012; Harrel-Bond 2002), more recently the role of
“humanitarian reason” (Fassin 2012) has been analyzed in border control settings (cf. Aas and
Gundhus 2015; Horsti 2012; Polly Pallister-Wilkins 2015; Walters 2011). Throughout this trend, the exploration of how humanitarian concerns shape the materiality of life inside migration-related detention centers is emerging as a topic of inquiry (Campesi 2015; Fisher 2015). In such sites – quoting from Fisher – the tension between repression and protection, care, and control, which is “part of the very organization of the institution” (2015, 603), assumes a radicalized form. Following this reasoning, and due to the humanitarian framework that has characterized the early definition of policies on the confinement of unwanted noncitizens, we contend that the Italian case is an paradigmatic and interesting one to be studied. More specifically, drawing on our results, we argue that it provides a starting point to problematize the idea that radical changes in the system of migration control can arise through the creation of intimate relationships of compassion in sites where the violence of the sovereign state is enforced (cf. Hall 2010; Hiemstra 2014, Mountz 2003).
RESEARCHING MIGRATION-RELATED DETENTION IN ITALY: THE CONTEXT
At the time of writing, there are five migration-related detention centers (currently known as Centri di Permanenza per i Rimpatri-CPR [Accomodation Centers for Repatriation]), operating on the
Italian territory, Rome’s center of Ponte Galeria being the largest one.6
Opened in 1998, the detention center of Ponte Galeria, previously used as a police complex, is composed of several buildings surrounded by high walls and fences. Permission to access the center is difficult to obtain, particularly for research purposes. We managed to gain long-term access thanks to the previous experience of one of the authors as an advocate for detained women (see Esposito,
2017), along with the propitious political moment in which our research begun.7
6 According to the recent approved refom (Law no. 46), new detention centers will be opened throughout the country. 7 In 2013, when the permission was requested, the Minister of Interior was keen to relaunch an image of openness and transparency of the Italian detention system, especially after the highly contested Circular Order 1305, which largely forbade access to these sites by independent actors (see also Campesi 2015). 137
The center originally comprised a male (up to 176 men) and a female living unit (up to 178 women). Each living unit was composed of dormitories with eight beds for men and six for women.
In December 2015, as a consequence of a protest following an episode of police violence toward a detainee,8 the male living unit was completely burned and Ponte Galeria was transformed into an all- women detention center holding up to 125 women subject to a detention order.
The management of the center, as in the case of the other Italian detention centers, is entrusted every three years to a private entity, which is in charge of providing detainees with basic assistance
(e.g., food, cleaning), psychosocial and medical care, legal advice, and cultural linguistic mediation.
In the case of Rome’s detention center, a consortium made up of an Italian cultural association and a
French company leader in the prison industry service management won the public tender, assigned on the basis of the most financially advantageous bid,9 for management during 2014-2017.
The center staff, balanced by gender, is composed of board members, administrative staff, linguistic cultural mediators, doctors and nurses, psychologists, social workers, legal advisors, and non-specialized staff workers. Alongside the managing body, the immigration office of the police headquarter is the authority in charge of administrative functions such as handling detainees’ immigration cases, maintaining relationships with consular authorities, and implementing deportation decisions. They are also responsible for maintaining order and security inside the facility by means of an interforce security unit, composed of policemen, carabinieri, and finance police. Military staff monitor internal/external areas.
While lawyers can meet detainees daily in a specific, designated area and within a given time slot, NGO advocates and volunteers of FBOs and religious congregations enter the Ponte Galeria center on a weekly basis to provide legal, psychosocial, or spiritual aid. In some cases, journalists and political delegations also have access to the detention facility.
8 See “Roma – Rivolta al CIE di Ponte Galeria,” Hurriya (blog), December 11, 2015, https://goo.gl/vXBzrA. 9 Cf. https://goo.gl/et7CGU. The consortium asked 28.8 euro per day per detainee compared to 40.9 euro of the previous management. As a consequence of budget reduction, some services were cut and several people lost their job.
138
It is in this complex scenario, made up of a multitude of actors with – at times competing and other times converging, overall fuzzy – agendas, roles, and responsibilities, that our research took place.
METHODOLOGY
Informed by an ecological approach from community psychology, looking at person-environment interdependences and the way justice shapes them (Esposito, Ornelas, & Arcidiacono, 2015b), our research draws on (almost) three years of fieldwork conducted inside Rome’s detention center between March 2014 and January 2017. In particular, the first author spent 617 hours in the field, talking with both detainees and professionals, and participating in everyday institutional life. The long time frame opened a space for developing close relationships with different actors, and created a platform for identifying and discussing relevant themes to explore in the course of the research (thus favoring the perspective of the participants’ own experiences). A critical reflexive attitude was adopted as a general way of engaging with the research process (see Esposito, 2017). This attitude also encompasses an awareness that our positionality - as White, middleclass, European scholars - informs how and what we have been able to understand through the analytical process.
While our claims are informed by the entire body of ethnographic data collected, in this article we focus specifically on fieldnotes, informal conversations, and interviews conducted with staff members as well as with external service providers and other independent professionals.10
Participants in the interviews (8 women and 6 men, age range 28-56 years) were selected based on the heterogeneity of their professional backgrounds, affiliations, roles, and experiences. Seven participants were employees of managing agencies (two board members, two linguistic cultural mediators, a staff worker, a psychologist, and a legal advisor), and the others were members of external entities (three human rights advocates [members of NGOs/independent bodies], a FBO volunteer, and a volunteer of a religious congregation) or freelancers (a lawyer and a journalist).
10 Interviews with professionals were conducted between September 2015 and January 2016. The majority of interviews (except for two) took place before the closing of the male living unit. 139
Before the interview, all participants were informed of the nature and aims of the study, as well as the criteria of guaranteed confidentiality. All the interviewees signed a consent form.
The interviews lasted between 23 and 86 minute and were conducted in a conversational style in various settings (interviewees’ homes and workplaces, the detention facility, public areas). The interview protocol, developed during the fieldwork from in-depth discussions with institutional actors, focused on the participants’ experience within Ponte Galeria center. In particular, we explored the way in which the interviewees perceived the detention environment and gave meaning to their experiences within it. Interviewees were also asked to describe daily life inside Rome’s center, and to express their views about the operation of the detention system. Opinions concerning priorities for change were further explored.
All the interviews were audio recorded, transcribed verbatim, and thematically analyzed following the steps described by Braun and Clarke (2006). Two overarching themes emerged from this process: a) emotional, ethical, and political challenges, and b) the relationship with detainees.
These themes were analyzed in relation to the two groups of participants, namely the members of managing bodies (center staff) and external actors providing services in detention (external civil- society actors). The results of our analysis are described below.
EMOTIONAL, ETHICAL, AND POLITICAL CHALLENGES
Center staff
In interviews and informal conversations, staff members usually described themselves as practitioners devoted to assisting “vulnerable others”, perceiving “assistance” and “help” as core values of their mission. Nevertheless, these humanitarian values stood in stark contrast with the coercive nature of the detention system, mainly shaped by police’s securitarian approach. As a result, a tension between “control” and “assistance”, “surveillance” and “care”, “repression” and
“protection” was constantly present in their narratives. 140
“I come from the non-profit culture”, a staff member emphasized while introducing himself,
“from [the culture of] solidarity” (male legal advisor). He then narrated his history as a social volunteer while also linking it to the humanitarian philosophy of Ponte Galeria’s managing agencies.
Interestingly, his perspective was not an isolated one. Most staff members we spoke with acknowledged the harshness of detention (e.g., excessive length of confinement, lack of activities, poor living conditions), also questioning the fairness of this measure as well as its effectiveness in terms of official mandate – namely, the removal of illegalized people. Remarkably, few of them even expressed to be in favor of the closing down of these institutions (and possibly also of the abolition of border control in general). In spite of their different standpoints, all staff members understood themselves as a humanitarian link, whose ultimate goal was to make detainees’ incarceration more bearable and to uphold their fundamental rights. This job was regarded as a strictly professional one, as one board member put it:
Making care a profession inevitably gives you more responsibility for what you are doing
. . . we are the last or the most important presidium of fundamental rights of the person,
and therefore of the right to health, the right to nutrition, the right to psychological
support, the right to be listened. (male board member)
The humanitarian mission they embraced, condensed in the idea of standing “shoulder to shoulder” with detainees, was usually described as filled with a sense of responsibility towards detainees - to be assisted in all their basic needs – as well as, sometimes, also towards the Italian state. In these cases, staff members made use of a rhetoric of Italy as “a democratic country”, whose public image had to be preserved and promoted, to create a ground of legitimization for their work. Such a rhetoric, however — reproducing the distinction between a “civilized us” and an “animalized other,” echoed and rearticulated colonial discourses celebrating Western White cultural and moral superiority (cf.
Fanon 1961): 141
You have to try to treat people in the most humane way possible, I mean, we call
ourselves a democratic country, a developed one [evoluto]. Many times I’ve heard
discourses of the like: “What about your [referring to detainees’] country? They treat you
like a dog”. Okay, it’s probably true, but we claim to be better than them, so to speak,
let's show it then . . . (female psychologist, staff member)
Staff members took on the task of processing migrants when they arrived to Ponte Galeria escorted by police officers, and explaining to them, sometimes for the very first time, what that place was and what could have come next. Many interviewees emphasized the importance of this service to calm the person down, and, above all, reassure her that “in spite of being in a place with bars” (female cultural mediator), there was someone there caring for their wellbeing (similar evidence was found by Campesi [2015] inside Bari’s detention center). Many detainees were upset by the prison-like aspect of the center, and struggled to make sense of what was happening. The role of the staff thus took the form of “clearing up” this confusion, and, particularly, of convincing them they were not being imprisoned:
No, it's not a prison. [The detainee] comes to know that it is not a prison, it is a reception
center, she is accommodated here to be identified and to find out, let's say, what is her
name, the surname, the country of origin. (male legal advisor)
Interestingly, in pursuing this paradoxical goal, they often referred to Ponte Galeria as a “reception center,” also describing detainees as “guests” [ospiti] (or alternatively “guys” [ragazzi]). In so doing, they made evident the ambivalence associated with their professional mandate, and the ambit of the place where they were required to operate. Moreover, the use of such jargon resonates with stories told by detainees about police officers arresting them, the latter often presenting Ponte Galeria as a 142 center for hosting undocumented people and helping them to regularize their situation. Regardless of staff members’ genuine efforts to help detainees, this evidence sheds light on the role played by the humanitarian discourse in the management of detention, and particularly on its use by the state to sugar-coat its violence and weaken any possibility of resistance from those affected (Cadeddu 2013).
Apart from receiving detainees, containing their anxieties, and providing them with basic assistance, center staff also had the crucial role of making them respect the center’s rules. This disciplinary function was made evident by many episodes and interactions that occurred during our fieldwork. Exemplificative is a conversation held with a healthcare manager who explained to us the importance of maintaining a strict schedule for administering drug therapies to detainees. While making his argument, and neglecting the fact that detainees were officially awaiting expulsion, the professional commented on the importance for the “guests” to learn and respect the rules in order “to be able to better integrate the Italian society.” “This society has many critical aspects, but is this one,” he concluded, “so we !centre staff" work for this aim” (fieldnotes 18th March 2014).
Due to the highly political nature of detention, and the ambiguity around their role, staff members displayed a common concern about how people from outside saw them, also mentioning that they continuously felt under scrutiny. What the media could say about their work was an aspect often discussed with the researcher. They felt that they had to pay great attention to whatever decision they took, pondering their actions on the basis of whether these could be misunderstood or instrumentalized by journalists and political actors. In particular, they mentioned how in media reports they were often portrayed as “guards” holding detainees on behalf of state authorities
(Agamben’s [1995] metaphor of the concentration camp was often used in the public debate):
I mean, if you read the newspapers, “the Lager!”, “CIE11 of Ponte Galeria Lager” and
so on, and you come here with the idea that... that you are coming to save the world
11 CIE stands for Center for Identification and Expulsion, the name of Italian detention centers before February 2017. 143
from the evil, looking down on us without even trying to understand . . . (female staff
member, cultural mediator)
As a result, the attitude of these workers towards outsiders was one of suspicion. They mainly saw human right advocates, journalists, political delegations, and visitors in general, as “intruders” who entered the center for criticizing them, being a-priori critical toward detention. In particular, they expressed rather critical views about anti-detention activists. “It is easier to stay out and criticize rather than entering to assist those in need” some staff members claimed. Their main argument was that the protests organized by activists outside the detention center “had ideology” (e.g., opening borders), but did not “produce results.” In contrast, staff saw themselves as making a difference.
Despite the emotional cost of being in touch with human suffering, they opted to stay inside to improve (or at least alleviate) the detainees’ situation. Moreover, as one interviewee noted, by observing the detention system from the inside they could get insights about possible ways to change the system or, at least, to enhance the living conditions. Based on these arguments, staff members claimed that their decision, as opposed to what activists argued, had to be understood as a sign of courage. “We must have the courage to stay inside,” a female board member explained, “because there must be someone here for them . . . they are there and who helps them?”
In spite of their humanitarian concerns, the work of center staff was subject to strong constraints. Beyond practical restrictions, such as security provisions, which drastically reduced the activities that could be developed with detainees, the main limitation concerned the custodial nature of the context itself (cf. Campesi 2015, Kotsioni 2016). Providing assistance to people whose primary source of suffering was the very structural condition they were exposed to, namely incarceration, had the de facto effect of making staff members’ action scarcely relevant and effective:
it is not easy because you realize that, even if you want to provide a dignified assistance
in that moment, the limits you have . . . are actually so many, and, however, what they 144
[the detainees] are looking for, beyond what we can think, right or wrong, they are
obviously looking for freedom . . . (female board member)
Staff members felt having “their hands tied” (male staff worker). In spite of their “frontline position,” the power concerning detainees’ immigration cases was in the hand of state authorities, namely, immigration officers and judges. Thus, these workers had to deal with people’s anger and affliction on a daily basis without having the opportunity to do anything about it. This situation, which gave rise to a widespread sense of powerlessness and frustration among them, was further complicated by the connectedness that could be established with detainees, which created the basis for emotional participation in the detainees’ struggles (see the section “relationship with detainees”).
This complex and fraught scenario placed a huge burden on staff members, who often reported feeling physically and emotionally exhausted (cf. Campesi 2015; Puthoopparambil, Ahlberg and Bjerneld 2015). Many of them, in private conversations with the researcher, mentioned having suffered symptoms such as nightmares or excessive crying. This burden was worsened by the lack of psychological supervision and the possibility of sharing uneasy feelings with colleagues in dedicated spaces. The different backgrounds of the staff constituted a further barrier to mutual support. As a result, these workers, at times, questioned themselves about the very sense of their job:
I mean you think “Yes, but somebody has to help them somehow” . . . but at the same
time you know that you can’t - somehow fulfill what is your actual mission. And so there
is this - somehow you get like stuck in this situation between saying, “Well, however,
they should be helped” yes, however, the context is so institutionalized and chronically
set up, a mandate in which you cannot interfere too much . . . (female board member)
In order to deal with these paradoxes and dilemmas, and make sense of their role, center staff relied on a variety of strategies. For instance, some participants emphasized the idea that, even if detention 145 is not an optimal solution, “while CIEs exist it’s better that there is someone who manages them with a spirit of interest and humanitarian attention to detainees’ needs” (male board member). Another mechanism used by staff to adjust to the detention environment and make their work “workable,” was taking detention for granted, something established by law. Attributing one’s own actions to regulations provided by authorities, thus allocating responsibility elsewhere, is a strategy also used by detention and deportation staff in other countries to manage the emotional challenges faced in their everyday work (cf. Kalir and Wissink, 2016; Puthoopparambil, Ahlberg and Bjerneld 2015). As a male staff worker put it: “So is the law- the Italian law is that, you cannot do anything because we are not the ones to change the law or fight with this law, the only thing we have to do is to contribute.” I do what is possible ultimately became the rule of action for these workers. After all, securing their job and earning a salary were key goals for most of them, particularly those less specialized. Goals so important as to compromise their own values and conform to the detention logic.
External civil-society actors
The external civil-society actors we met also discussed the tensions and dilemmas associated with working in a coercive site like Ponte Galeria. Though they were generally critical of detention, in some cases manifesting overtly abolitionist positions, these professionals chose to enter such an institution. In doing so, their main purpose was both “getting to know a reality [often denied to the larger public]” (male FBO volunteer) and “providing a platform for giving voice to stories that often remained submerged” (female human rights advocate).
Whilst journalists were focused on narrating the detention conditions and the violations taking place inside this realm, the rest of these actors were engaged in providing detainees with various forms of aid (legal, psychosocial, moral). Many of them, as affirmed by both human rights advocates and the lawyer we interviewed, understood their mission to be a political one. As the latter claimed:
“[my commitment] has a different value, it’s more like [political] activism.” Making use of existing tools within the state’s legal framework, they strived for the recognition of detainees’ rights, such as 146 the right to health and protection, but also the right to freedom and a liveable life. In particular, human right advocates denounced cases of violations and abuse to media and political representatives, while also compiling reports and getting involved in public campaigns on detention.
An articulation between individual responses to detainees and working toward changing the system was at stake in their accounts, constituting the essence of their social justice work at Ponte Galeria:
We have always juxtaposed the activity with women [the NGO of the interviewee run a
counseling service for detainees victims of gender violence] with political activity,
because even if we can help some women at a level, at an individual level, let's say, the
political level is what needs to be addressed when the laws ehm show a strong gap with
respect to the real lives of women . . . So there is a whole militant political activity, which
. . . is necessary . . . (female human rights advocate working with women detainees)
In spite of their common political commitment, differences emerged from these actors’ accounts, mainly in terms of their political stance towards the detention and deportation system. The radical ones claimed that not only should detention be abolished, but that the whole system of border control required a rethink to guarantee freedom of movement for all. Other interviewees manifested more cautious positions, varying from imagining the breaking down of the detention system as an ultimate goal to be achieved through progressive advancements (involving the reduction of detention length and applying this measure to residual cases), to considering abolition impossible given the wider
European scenario, thus concentrating their efforts on limiting its use and improving conditions.
These latter positions, however, did not envisage real alternatives to existing deportation policies, and instead thought only in terms of alternatives to the confinement of illegalized people.
A particular case was that of FBO volunteers and religious congregations, both of whom showed more conservative views, mainly concerning how to improve the system (e.g., enhancing living conditions). In particular, the religious volunteers we interviewed run a project of assisted 147 voluntary return (AVR) directed to Nigerian women victims of trafficking, thus revealing a greater involvement in state-led “migration management” (for a critical analysis of AVR programs see Kalir
2017a). Even though they had different backgrounds and carried out distinct activities (FBO members offered socio-legal counseling and Italian classes, while religious volunteers performed religious ceremonies), these actors spoke of their work as being about providing aid to detainees, but foremost about offering them friendship, listening, advice, and care. In line with previous findings
(cf. Snyder, Bell, and Busch-Armendariz 2015), they emphasized the importance of establishing connections as a means “to humanize detainees’ experience” as well as “to restore their dignity”
(male FBO volunteer). Visiting detainees during festivities, and praying with them, was also described as a way to foster their energy, hope and strength, while also making them spend meaningful time and feel less lonely, as explained by a female religious volunteer: “So every festivity we also organize parties, to make them feel this human warmth. Because they stay there, there are no activities, so what do they do? Eat and sleep.”
While displaying passion and energy for their work, all external actors mentioned challenges and difficulties they faced at various levels. Firstly, they highlighted the tight institutional constraints that limited their activity, which included restrictions concerning access to the facility
(usually limited to one day per week) as well as to detainees (access to the male living unit was usually granted only with a security escort), lack of information concerning the situation inside the center and detainees’ individual cases, and lack of collaboration on the part of police and staff members. In particular, a sense of mistrust towards these last actors emerged. As a male journalist explained, “I felt like entering into a system in which those who worked there had all the interest in hiding things.” If the mistrust towards police officers was easily explained on the basis of their overtly competing agendas, views and ideologies, the relationship with center staff was much more complex. Since center staff also understood themselves as coming from a humanitarian background, external actors felt closer to them in terms of (at least partially) shared language, codes, and values.
Moreover, staff members, having their finger on the pulse of the center, were the only ones on whom 148 external service providers could rely for information, particularly on vulnerable cases. Therefore, the collaboration with them was essential to support detainees’ claims and counteract violations and abuse on many occasions. And yet, the active role of center staff in the management of the detention estate complicated the scenario, arousing conflictual feelings towards them:
CIEs will exist as long as there will be co-ops, managing agencies, willing to... manage
them . . . I mean, especially at the beginning, I felt a strong mistrust towards [staff] . . . I
was used to consider the managing agency as the first to be complicit with the established
power [potere istituito]. But then, while you’re working there, you also come to realize
that if there were no people like the director, the social worker, well . . . so many things
would not have been done. (female human rights advocate)
Furthermore, while describing their experience within Ponte Galeria, many participants, especially human rights advocates, expressed concerns about their indirect complicity with the operation of the detention system (cf. Kotsioni 2016; Briskman, Zion, and Loff 2012; Essex 2014). Such concerns were reinforced by the fact that their choice - of “getting in” – was often criticized by anti-detention activists, who regarded it as a form of legitimization of the detention institution. This situation placed an extra burden on them, as one interviewee explained:
There are also those who advocate the CIE is a reality that needs be fought from the
outside, because when you get in you are somehow legitimating, and by legitimating it…
you keep the show going on . . . in the days I used to go to the center, once I went back
home, [I felt] burdened by what I had seen, by the climate of tension I had breathed, by
the people I had talked to, by the suffering I had seen and . . . moreover I had to deal with
the fact that someone would think what I was doing was not even right . . . I’ve felt a lot
of this personally... this double... sense of frustration. (female human rights advocate) 149
As a result of these tensions, a sense of powerlessness and frustration was often mentioned. Like center staff, they complained about their lack of power to shape detention conditions and influence detainees’ cases. In particular, some human rights advocates spoke about the frustration of not being able to help all detainees, blocking their deportation and making them free. Due to their limited time and resources, their support only benefited a small number of people. Consequently, they had the unpleasant task of deciding which cases to prioritize, even within the designated target group (e.g., asylum seekers or victims of gender violence). This “responsibility,” which also implied the constant
(re)drawing of a line between “deserving” and “undeserving” people (cf. Kalir and Wissink 2016), ultimately conferred upon them an arbitrary power over detainees’ lives (cf. Agier 2011). The messiness of their work, and the associated uneasy emotions, were at times so strong as to make it difficult for external actors to leave the burden behind the gates of the center:
So, in my opinion, it is really difficult to position yourself in sites like these, it is also
difficult to go out and say “ok, now I'm going to do something else” [laughs] I mean,
when I go I try to stay there not more than three hours and… when I get out, I mean, I'm a
bit messy because you've been… you don’t even know... the social dynamics where
you've been in those three hours . . . (female human rights advocate)
In order to navigate these challenges, while also giving meaning to their experiences, our participants relied on a variety of strategies. Firstly, they mentioned the importance of establishing collaborations among different actors - human right advocates, lawyers, journalists, activists, and political representatives - in order to be more effective in securing detainees’ rights. The interviewed lawyer stressed how, in various cases, the success in pursuing detainees’ claims was possible thanks to the network of solidarity created, and the capacity of the different parts to share their knowledge and mobilize their resources. Furthermore, many participants highlighted the importance of focusing their 150 efforts on identifying vulnerable cases, as well as engaging in advocacy work outside detention (cf.
Kotsioni 2016). Overall, achieving concrete results and being able to help some detainees (e.g., to be released) was described as a major source of energy to continue with one’s own activity.
RELATIONSHIP WITH DETAINEES
Center staff
Centre staff were the ones who used to spend more time in detention, interacting with detainees on a daily basis. So, for these workers, the relationship with detainees was a major topic of discussion. In particular, from their accounts it emerged how their perceptions of and interactions with detainees were influenced by dominant discourses on migration and citizenship (cf. Bosworth and Slade 2014;
Hiemstra 2014), as well as by the particular construction of the detention space (cf. Enjolras 2010;
Kynsilehto and Puumala 2017).
As Essex (2014) notes, the views of society and media have a strong impact on representations and everyday practices of professionals working in the detention field. In particular, as members of the general public, these latter are exposed to the pervasive narrative that constructs migrants as dangerous outsiders (Hall 2010; Hiemstra 2014). This narrative, conflating with other material and discursive devices, as Giuliani (2018) explains, is produced to circulate and stick to particular racialized bodies, making them monstrous and fearsome. Such a fear was one of the main pivots on which the detention machine, as well as detention staff’s emotional engagement, rested:
There is this security problem . . . One who got out of jail, a foreigner, or the criminals
who are around here, they're too many, too many, too many . . . I mean if there were not
such people, these criminals and everything, for me we could even shut down [detention
centers], we could live safely without any fear, without any worry. But nowadays,
regarding what is happening now, I would say that I agree that they identify dangerous 151
people. [Researcher: what is happening you mean terrorism?] Yes, terrorism, then… let's
say that there are people in the street who are really criminals . . . (male staff worker)
The emotional symbolization of detainees as fearsome bodies was upheld and reinforced by the materiality of Ponte Galeria. The construction of the center as a prison-like environment critically shaped the relationship between staff and detainees (cf. Bosworth and Slade 2014, Campesi 2015), enhancing the perception of migrants’ dangerousness as well as exacerbating the division between the two groups - a reflection of the sovereign distinction between citizens and others. Being characterized by barbed wire, high walls, and fences, the center seemed to be designed to hold potentially violent animals (on the recourse to a zoological imaginary in order to subjugate people, see Fanon [1961]). As a member of the center staff, a female psychologist vividly explained: “Us
[staff] with the uniforms all on one side, they even eh, in the canteen right? You're in the canteen with all those bars, with all those things, it really seems like that over there, there are ani… lions.”
The architecture and spatial organization of the detention context, and the emotional symbolization of the social milieu within it, produced a general climate of hyper-vigilance and suspicion (cf. Hall 2010). According to Carli and Paniccia (2003), suspicion is the emotion on which control, as a specific form of social relationship, is based. As such, the ultimate goal of control is to prove the dangerousness and violence of the other(s). Controlling and detecting the suspected enemy in time ultimately serves the imperative of “avoiding the collapse of the system” (ibidem, 214).
In Ponte Galeria, suspicion and mistrust, as a way of engaging, were mutual between staff and detainees. Being the only institutional actors they met on a day-to-day basis (police officers were located in a separate area of the center), detainees often perceived staff members as “jailers” and, as many participants reported, blamed them for their detention. Alternatively, women in particular often doubted whether they were members of the police, or at least complicit with them. In all cases, the result was a lack of acknowledgement of the humanitarian value of the work of the center staff, and a certain degree of skepticism toward their attempts to help. Disconfirming their expected behavior as 152 compliant and grateful “guests” (on the “logic of gratitude,” see Moulin 2012), detainees also mobilized all the resources available to them to resist the precariousness to which they were exposed and “hinder the deportation machine” (Campesi 2015). In doing so, they displayed a “complex volition” (Hall 2010, 893), which ranged from claims to be recognized as having rights and non- compliance with the detention rules, to self-harm, riots, and escapes. These political acts, however, were often interpreted by staff members as child-like oppositional behaviors, thus revealing an infantilizing view of detainees and a patronizing attitude towards these latter.
As a consequence of this complex scenario, imbued with ambivalence and mistrust, staff members perceived the detention environment as unsafe, experiencing insecurity and fear in performing their activities (cf. Puthoopparambil, Ahlberg, and Bjerneld 2015; Hiemstra 2014). In particular, aware of the detainees’ stress due to confinement, they felt the risk of unpleasant things happening, such as physical assaults (cf. Hall 2010, 2012; Puthoopparambil, Ahlberg, and Bjerneld
2015; Fischer 2015). Concerns for personal safety were also amplified by the lack of training to manage tension-filled situations and the perception of security corps intervention as untimely.
Particularly stressful were the situations in which the decisions on immigration cases were to be communicated to detainees, for instance, in the case of repatriation. Although such decisions were taken elsewhere, staff workers dealt with their consequences:
There is the staff worker that gets in alone inside to call [detainees] for [meeting] the
lawyer, that gets in [to call them] for the canteen, that gets in for... for any service.
[Researcher: Does he get in in case of repatriation too?] He gets in, right, to call people in
case of repatriation . . . And the roommates of the deported one, those who remain, they
would see that you are the rat that went inside to call the person to be repatriated, you
know what I mean? So, “the next time you come in, I'll show you! [i.e. threatening]”.
(female staff member, legal advisor)
153
In spite of this climate of stress and anxiety, emotions such as sympathy and compassion were nonetheless able to bloom. Such emotions mainly relied on the staff and detainees’ capacity to feel — even when less expected — empathy and mutuality. In her ethnography of a British detention center,
Hall describes empathy as “an incongruous and disruptive emotional project,” one that is able to
“challenge the clear differentiations between “citizen” and “other” that the sovereign decision on exclusion seeks to draw” (2010, 895). This was also somehow detected in our case.
On certain occasions, staff members acknowledged the injustice suffered by detainees, and developed a deep emotional connection with them. An episode that took place on September 2015 is particularly telling. The female living unit was filled with Nigerian women, many of them transported directly from Sicily where they had just landed after a grueling trip across Niger and
Libya. The possibility of a collective deportation lingered in the air. One day, a female staff worker approached the researcher, asking for a private conversation. In this conversation, she expressed her concerns for a young detainee, whose case she had very much taken to her heart. Willing to help the girl at all costs, and prevent her from an unfair and dangerous deportation, the worker asked the researcher what she could do, explaining that she was ready to be her guarantor or even adopt the girl
(fieldnotes 14th September 2015).
This and other episodes witnessed during our fieldwork show the intimacy of the relationships that could be established between staff and detainees. Such relationships, relying on the acknowledgment of a common humanity and vulnerability, might be disruptive of the order on which the detention system was based. Further, by challenging the dehumanizing logic of detention, they might give rise to acts of contestation of the detention rules on the part of the staff:
I started to say, “Well, don’t ever try to trick those people . . . and be close to them, take
them as your brothers because the people they take to the CIE are the same people who
live in your building, are the people you meet in the street.” And there I reflected, I said:
who created these laws never see the guests [detainees] in the middle of the road. We are 154
the ones who meet them, so you have to behave towards them in a way that . . . to
someone I also left my phone number while he/she was leaving the CIE, even if it is
forbidden . . . In case they want to meet me, to have a coffee together, for me is not a
problem, let’s take a coffee because we are all brothers. (male staff worker)
Empathy and compassion, however, were not equally distributed among all detainees. While it was relatively easy to establish an emotional connection with women, this was much more difficult with men, and, particularly, with detainees with criminal backgrounds. Overall, the distinction between
“good” and “bad” migrants, “victims” and “dangerous subjects,” the latter deserving detention while the former not, was constantly reproduced in the narratives of staff members. Such a distinction was clearly gendered and sexualized, reflecting and further entrenching heteropatriarchal structures of society (on the raced, gendered, and sexualized exclusion of migrant women see, for example, Pande
2017). Women were usually regarded as “harmless victims” of the system, unjustly locked up.
Exception was made for non-normative subjectivities - such as former prisoners, sex-workers, and women with experience of mental illness - that did not fit within hegemonic notions of femininity. By transgressing traditional gender and sexual roles, the latter were considered by staff as deviant and troublesome subjects. As a result, their confinement was not perceived to be so ethically challenging:
And a domestic servant [badante]? Poor woman! she has no blame because she was
working, she gained the bread for her children, she comes here [in detention] and she
spends here three months. Three months. She is not a criminal. She's a domestic servant.
She's a lady. On another side, let’s say a male or female person, who has no criminal
background, she has nothing to do with drug, she has nothing to do with prostitution, she
has nothing to do with that, let's say… she spends here three months while a person who
was in jail remains only a month . . . (male staff member, legal advisor)
155
In contrast, the vast majority of male detainees were regarded as criminals. A division between
“types of crimes” was articulated according to staff’s racialized stereotypical views. “Albanians often commit violent offenses,” a female board member commented, “while North Africans [she refers particularly to Tunisians] are involved in drug crimes” (fieldnotes 14th March 2014). Overall, detainees from Maghreb were considered the most troublesome, constantly trying to manipulate the staff and create problems. In particular, female staff members complained about their sexist attitudes.
Conversely, detainees from Sub-Saharan Africa (e.g., Senegalese, Nigerian) were described as more respectful with women. “They use to call us ‘mom,’” a female staff worker commented (fieldnotes 16
March 2014). Indians, Bangladeshi and, above all, Chinese, were perceived as quiet and disciplined people, even if very closed in their communities. Having limited interactions with them, staff workers often had troubles in fixing their names, ending up to call anyone as China.
Quite specific was the situation for foreign nationals staff members, whose emotional connection with detainees was stronger due to their common experience as migrants and noncitizens.
Nevertheless, in this case, a distinction emerged between people with or without criminal background in staff accounts. This distinction was framed in terms of individual choices, regardless of structural processes and histories of inequality:
I put myself in their shoes, but with someone I don't. Because I say that someone who
came out of prison, paid for it and everything, and is still paying, I don’t put myself in his
shoes . . . But someone who came out, was stop in the street, without documents, arrives
here . . . I put myself in his shoes, because I’m an immigrant like him. (male staff worker)
External civil-society actors
External professionals also struggled to find a balance between distance and proximity in the relationship with detainees. Affective involvement emerged to be stronger in their case, probably due to their role as “external” and “independent” from the entities involved in day-to-day management of 156 the center. During conversations with the researcher, these actors emphasized the distress of detainees and the everyday violence they experience, also drawing comparisons with what they themselves felt by entering Ponte Galeria, even for short periods of time:
CIEs are places where there is a lack of rights and, therefore, rather than non-places,
[they are] . . . anomic sites, [places] without norms, where everything is governed by
something that has nothing to do with the law and with the rights of people . . . and I feel
this . . . lack of references . . . I feel this way going there for a couple hours, imagine
[how it is for] the ones who are [detained] inside there, I mean. (male journalist)
Being the only actors entering inside the facility, apart from center staff and police officers, detainees – particularly those without family or social ties in Italy – often saw these professionals as their only bridge to the outside world, and allies with whom to share their struggles. This role, and the emotional connection that could be developed during the weekly meetings, were not always easy to manage. Indeed, many participants underlined the burden of being close to people facing conditions of hardship and suffering. The precariousness created by the detention machine also produced, in their views, an over-amplification of feelings and perceptions. Thus, as some of our participants reported, they somehow had to “use a filter” (mettere un filtro), that is, to interpret the words, behaviors, and reactions of detainees (as well as of staff) in light of the site where they took place. Furthermore, they had to navigate the difficulty of managing detainees’ expectations, and, above all, respond to their quest for freedom:
This is a relationship with people who suffer, I mean, it was not easy, because they were
people... in a condition of strong deprivation, so they would give you a great
responsibility. And… and it was not easy. . . (female human right advocate)
157
While in some cases the vulnerability of detainees was a source of concern in terms of one’s own capacity to intervene, in others it was exploited for personal interest. For instance, most participants reported that many lawyers — with the exception of those who understood their work as a political engagement — tended to convey partial or inadequate information to detainees, also fueling unrealistic expectations of release in exchange for money. This was considered a major issue by our interviewees, who also pointed out how the few lawyers in charge of assisting people inside Ponte
Galeria had great potential to abuse their power:
The worst thing is the deficient legal protection . . . we notice a proliferation of bad
practices, such as taking from foreigners the [expulsion] order that is to be appealed
without giving it back, not giving them a copy of the appeal . . . So our impression is that
at this moment there is a mechanism through which private professionals [lawyers] take
advantage of a state of extreme need [of detainees], and incapacity to safeguard those
who are inside the CIE from these professionals. (male FBO volunteer)
Overall, external actors described the dehumanization experienced by detainees, also emphasizing how confinement had the power to strip them of their singularity and transform them in abject bodies.
This happened particularly in relation to women who, as highlighted by staff members, were often portrayed as “victims” according to hegemonic notions of femininity (Esposito, Ornelas, Scirocchi, &
Arcidiacono, 2018). The brutalization of women’s bodies—also symbolically seen as the bodies of future wives and mothers (see quote below)—was hard to bear. In particular, female professionals claimed the unfairness of their neglectful treatment, and the lack of concern for their basic wellbeing and dignity. By doing so, they highlighted, once again, the relevance of gender and sexuality in shaping everyday life in detention:
158
I have a great difficulty getting into the female living unit, because it is the one that
stimulates more emotions in me . . . It also strikes me, for example, to see women and…
neglected, with underwear that may not be chosen by them and coming from who knows
where, [women] laying on wool blankets under the sun. (female human right advocate)
. . . at the beginning it was really quite depressing, in the sense that I see the resources
of the nations to get really wasted, because for us, in Nigeria, the woman is a precious
thing [una cosa preziosa] . . . the woman is like the one who supports the family, in the
sense that she knows how to coordinate between husband and children, so she really
plays a role… Then, seeing these girls, who will be future mothers, wasted this way for
the first time,12 actually discomforted me. (female religious volunteer)
In contrast, as highlighted earlier, male detainees were hypermasculinized and constructed as
“dangerous subjects,” over-emphasizing their aggressiveness and indomitable sexuality. Hence, many external service providers reported the difficulties they experienced in getting in touch with this population, irrespective of their view of them. The police usually cited reasons of personal safety to prevent their entry — particularly in the case of female professionals — inside the male living unit
(this also happened during our research, see Esposito, 2017). As a result, human rights advocates and volunteers had to meet male detainees individually in a separate space outside the living unit.13
During these meetings, in which detainees shared the suffering related to confinement as well as situations of abuse experienced or witnessed, close relationships were often forged. In some cases, particularly when detainees were released, these relationships could continue outside the gates of
Ponte Galeria and, at times, even develop into friendships.
In spite of the greater proximity, empathy, and solidarity signifying the relationship between detainees and external actors, tellingly, the distinction between people with or without a criminal
12 It is not clear what this ‘first time’ refers to. Our hypothesis is that the participant is referring to the loss of virginity through sex work, as many Nigerian women detained in Ponte Galeria went through sex work. 13 In the case of women detainees, female professionals were allowed to enter the living unit. 159 background also emerged from these participants’ accounts. Just like staff members, many external actors mentioned the difficulty of building empathetic relationships with former prisoners, especially in the case of people who had committed “serious crimes,” such as pedophilia or rape. In these cases, they struggled to suspend their judgment and look at the person beyond their past history. Further, many participants distinguished former prisoners as the only group deserving of eventual removal.
This was true even when they claimed to be in favor of the right to free movement and residence:
CONCLUSIONS
The tension between humanity and security, care and control, compassion and repression has become a crucial feature in the “global management” of people on the move. Aiming to explore this tension in the particular context of migration-related detention, an area of growing academic concern, this paper has drawn on empirical material collected inside Rome’s detention center in the first academic study conducted on this site, and one of the few studies of life inside migration-related detention in
Italy (although see Campesi 2015; Iyengar et al. 2012).
In spite of the scant research, Italy stands out as a case-study of particular interest for the humanitarian framework that has historically characterized its policies on the confinement of unwanted noncitizens, this latter being materialized in the presence of humanitarian organizations as key actors in the management of the Italian detention estate, as well as in the use of a humanitarian vocabulary in relation to this practice (for critical analyses, see Cadeddu 2013; Campesi 2015).
As Crosby notes, the process of humanizing detention has to be understood “as a legitimization discourse directed at a public audience to show that within the necessarily unpleasant setting of immigration detention all is being done to ensure the moral and physical well-being of the detainee”
(2016, 162). Such a discourse, which fashions a “benevolent morality” (Kalir 2017), has the potential to mask fragmentations, power inequalities, and colonial legacies on which this practice is grounded and that also actively reproduces, whilst contributing to legitimize and normalize this violence in the 160 eyes of the public. It also fosters a politics of compassion, and thus of inequality, and a fantasy of redemption aimed at feeding Western White morality (Fassin 2012).
Within a critical analysis of the peculiar mode of governing detention in Italy, particularly concerned with the relation between security and humanitarian articulations, we focused our gaze on the lived experiences of nonstate actors who conduct professional activities in the detention field
(both staff members and external civil-society actors). These latter, together with detainees, are the ones who experience the material effects of the detention regime, while also taking part in its reproduction. As such, looking at detention from their point of view - a complex, nuanced, and at times contradictory one – allows us to grasp how the system operates intimately. Their “recalcitrant words” (Agier 2011, 7) about the everyday struggles and ambivalences they go through, as well as the tensions and inconsistencies they navigate, offer a significant insight into social life in detention, and the way socio-cultural and political distinctions between citizens and others are reproduced — and at the same time challenged — in the frame of migration-related detention.
All the nonstate professional actors we met inside Ponte Galeria described the paradoxes, dilemmas, and contradictions of operating inside an oppressive structure (thus somehow being complicit in it), while trying to provide support to detainees. They highlighted the implied burden of this choice in terms of their everyday life. This was especially true for staff members, whose accounts revealed the striking tension between “control” and “assistance,” “surveillance” and “care,”
“repression” and “protection.” Taking on the ambiguous role of providing humane assistance for people confined while awaiting to be expelled, life in detention for them was “fraught and contradictory” (Hall 2010, 894). Not being able to play a decisive role in shaping the operation of the detention system, they came to normalize the violence of such state of exception and working to discipline detainees’ racialized bodies (see also Campesi 2015). This reality, concealed behind the discourse of “working to relieve the suffering of detainees during a particularly critical time of their lives” (female board member) — a discourse (re)produced to make sense of the experience of staff 161 and somehow give it an ethical ground — actually contradicted their stated humanitarian mission, putting a strain on their professional identity.
The situation for external civil-society actors was somewhat different even if convergences also emerged. By deciding to enter this total institution, an ideological critique and a personal questioning shook their accounts, particularly in the case of human rights advocates. They wondered whether their presence in such an oppressive structure was able to produce an impact or if it was just a useless act of complicity. The question they more or less explicitly voiced was whether to attempt to counter the system from the inside or criticize it from the outside. This question had no easy answer, since their presence on the ground allowed them to make a difference in the lives of those who fell into the mesh of administrative detention. In doing so, however, they had to bear the task of selecting who “deserved” their help or not, thus reproducing dominant moral logics (Kalir and
Wissink 2016), and ultimately exercising an arbitrary power over the life and death of the detainees
(Agier 2011).
This complex scenario had an impact in terms of social life, and particularly on the relationships built with detainees, variably conceived by staff members — and often even by external service providers — as “good” and “bad” migrants, “victims” and “criminals,” respectively
“undeserving” or “deserving” detention and deportation. This dual representation is actually part of the same mechanism of power that recurs to “vulnerability” (of the dominant and the dominated) as the basis for a policy that seeks to exclude or contain the Othered. “Others may be exposed to vulnerability as a way of shoring up power, but vulnerability can also be claimed by those who seeks to rationalize the subjugation of minorities,” Butler, Gambetti, and Sabsay claim (2016, 4). Hence, the two opposed and intimately connected scripts that depict subjects as either “criminals” or
“victims,” “dangerous” and “endangered,” are, as Giuliani observes (2018), part of the same discursive device aimed at objectifying (dehistoricising and depoliticising) and dispossessing the very mobile figure of the migrant/refugee/non-citizen. Such a discursive device, by also reactivating the 162
“figures of race,” which are gendered and racialized in colonial and postcolonial contexts, ultimately operates to validate and shore up the hegemonic positionality of Western White dominance (ibidem).
Yet, as Feldman (2016) notes, people, even those endowed with the power of sovereign violence, are not passive cogs of larger power machines, but rather struggle to make sense of their actions and give them an ethical meaning. As such, from their multiple, ambiguous, often contradictory positions, both the staff employed by managing agencies and the external professionals we interviewed struggled to reconcile with their limited space of action, while also building bridges with detainees with whom they felt proximity. These relationships, relying on the acknowledgment of a common humanity and vulnerability (Butler 2004), provided grounds for empathy, compassion, and solidarity to bloom in the detention setting, thus challenging the climate of mistrust and suspicion on which detention rested, as well as the divisions it sought to draw. In so doing, they could ultimately result in carving out spaces of contestation to detention logics and rules (see the staff worker who wanted to adopt the Nigerian woman to avoid her deportation, or the one who secretly gave detainees his mobile number), and even developing long-term ties continuing outside the gates of detention.
This evidence, which renders Ponte Galeria a place “where fear and contempt are rife, but where empathy is never wholly effaced” (Hall 2010, 895), should nevertheless be analyzed in the frame of the power asymmetry that structures the relationship between professionals and detainees; an asymmetry which, being political rather than psychological in nature, is a reflection of the sovereign decision and domination. Tellingly, this same asymmetry, beyond any genuine convictions and intentions, like those of the majority of actors we met, is the ground on which care and compassion, as moral sentiments constitutive of all humanitarian governments, relies (e.g., Fassin
2012, Ticktin 2011). The humanitarian government at stake in Ponte Galeria made no exception.
This remark, at the end of our journey into the intricacies of life inside the largest Italian detention facility, brings us to some concluding thoughts. Relying on the work of Mountz (2003) and
Hall (2010), which highlights the potential for disruption and social change of creating intimate connections between those enforcing the violence of the sovereign state and those subjected to such 163 violence, Hiemstra contends that “creating spaces for the rehumanization of detained migrants” can create “more positive performances in the immigration enforcement apparatus” by destabilizing existing ontologies of homeland security (2014, 584-585). Our findings, however, appear to contradict this assumption by showing that humanizing detention, though possibly allowing improvements in the treatment of people behind the gates, does not bring into question the oppressive order on which the detention system is based, but rather enables what Ticktin (2011) defines as a form of “armed love” (or antipolitics). This is particularly true when the humanitarian actors involved are stripped of any decision-making power, such as the protagonists of this paper. As
Birskman, Zion and Loff notes, neither “benevolent defiance” nor “empathic care” serve to challenge the reality of migration-related detention. In contrast, it is an active opposition, involving the “act of speaking out and a political analysis framed by advocacy” (2012, 48), that can make a radical change possible, questioning the structural inequalities on which these sites are inscribed. The Italian case is illustrative in this regard, as it has shown that only through an articulation between the struggles of critics inside and outside detention, and, above all, of detainees themselves (whose revolts have been crucial in closing several detention facilities)14, that a bottom-up push for change can be created.
REFERENCES
Aas, K. F., and H. O.I. Gundhus.
2015 “Policing Humanitarian Borderlands: Frontex, Human Rights and the Precariousness of Life.”
British Journal of Criminology 55(1):1-18.
Agamben, G.
1995 Homo sacer. Il potere sovrano e la nuda vita. Turin: Einaudi.
Agier, M.
2011 Managing the Undesirables. Flammarion: Polity Press.
Arbogast, L.
14 See “«Abbiamo rotto l’acciaio per vedere il cielo»: le rivolte che hanno chiuso i CIE,” Hurriya (blog) January 15, 2017, https://goo.gl/QYhfsf. 164
2016 Migrant detention in the European Union: a thriving business. https://goo.gl/4FMtKB.
Bosworth, M.
2014 Inside Immigration Detention. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———, and G. Slade.
2014 “In search of recognition: Gender and staff-detainee relations in a British immigration
removal centre.” Punishment & Society 16(2):169–186.
Braun, V., and V. Clarke.
2006 “Using thematic analysis in psychology.” Qualitative Research in Psychology 3(2):77–101.
Briskman, L., D. Zion, and B. Loff.
2010 “Care or Collusion in Asylum Seeker Detention.” Ethics and Social Welfare 6(1):37-55.
Butler, J.
2004 Precarious Life: the Powers of Mourning and Violence. New York: Verso.
———, Z. Gambetti, and L. Sabsay.
2016 Vulnerability in resistance. Durham: Duke University Press.
Cadeddu, D.
2013 CIE e complicità delle organizzazioni umanitarie. Roma: Sensibili alle foglie.
Campesi, G.
2015 “Hindering the Deportation Machine: An Ethnography of Power and Resistance in
Immigration Detention.” Punishment and Society 17(4):427-453.
———, and G. Fabini.
2017 “La detenzione della «pericolosità migrante».” Materiali per una cultura giuridica
XLVII(2):515-531.
Carli, R., and R. M. Paniccia.
2003 Analisi della domanda. Teoria e intervento in psicologia clinica. Bologna: Il Mulino.
Commissione Straordinaria per la Tutela e la Promozione dei Diritti Umani.
2017 Rapporto sui Centri di Identificazione ed Espulsione in Italia (aggiornamento dicembre 165
2017). https://goo.gl/jFsWp3.
Crosby, A.
2016 “Governing immigration through crime at the street level. The metamorphosis of an
immigration detention centre in Belgium.” Cartografie sociali. Rivista di sociologia e scienze
umani 1(2):145-166.
Enjolras, F.
2010 “Des policiers aux frontières. La gestion ordinaire d’un centre de rétention.” In Les nouvelles
frontières de la société française, edited by D. Fassin, 219-243. Paris: La Découverte.
Esposito, F.
2017 “Practicing ethnography in migration-related detention centers: A reflexive account.” Journal
of Prevention & Intervention in the Community, 45(1): 57-69.
Esposito, F., J. Ornelas, and C. Arcidiacono.
2015a “Migration-related detention: a focus on the Italian context.” In The Borders of Schengen,
edited by A. Cunha, M. Silva, and R. Frederico, 177-191. Brussels: P.I.E. Peter Lang.
———
2015b “Migration-related detention centers: the challenges of an ecological perspective with a focus
on justice.” BMC International Health and Human Rights, 15: 13.
Esposito, F., J. Ornelas, S, Scirocchi, and C. Arcidiacono.
2018 “Voices from the Inside: Lived experiences of women confined in a detention center.”
Manuscript submitted for publication.
Essex, R.
2014 “Human Rights, Dual Loyalties, and Clinical Independence: Challenges Facing Mental Health
Professionals Working in Australia’s Immigration Detention Network.” Bioethical Inquiry
11:75–83.
Fanon, F.
1961 Les Damnés de la Terre. Paris: Maspero. 166
Fassin, D.
2012 Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present. Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Feldman, G.
2016 “With my head on the pillow”: Sovereignty, Ethics, and Evil among Undercover Police
Investigators.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 58(2):491–518.
Fischer, N.
2015 “The Management of Anxiety. An Ethnographical Outlook on Self-mutilations in a French
Immigration Detention Centre.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 41(4):599-616.
Giuliani, G.
2018 Race, Nation and Gender in Modern Italy: Intersectional Representations in Visual Culture.
United Kingdom: Palgrave McMillan.
Hall, A.
2010 “‘These People Could Be Anyone’: Fear, Contempt (and Empathy) in a British Immigration
Removal Centre.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 36(6):881-898.
———
2012 Border Watch: Cultures of Immigration, Detention and Control. London: Pluto Press.
Hiemstra, N.
2014 “Performing homeland security within the US immigrant detention system.” Environment and
Planning D: Society and Space 32: 571 – 588.
Horsti, K.
2012 “Humanitarian Discourse Legitimating Migration Control: FRONTEX Public
Communication.” In Migrations: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, edited by M. Messer, R.
Schroeder, and R. Wodak. 297-308. Vienna: Springer.
Iyengar, S., C. Landri, M. Mini, A. Ogada-Osir, E. Roman, T. Skalon, U. Stege et al.
2012 Betwixt and Between: Turin’s CIE. A Human Rights Investigation into Turin’s Detention 167
Center. https://goo.gl/Zjqri9.
Kalir, B.
2017a “Between ‘Voluntary’ return programs and soft deportation: Sending vulnerable migrants in
Spain back ‘Home’” In Return Migration and Psychosocial Wellbeing: Discourses, Policy-
Making and Outcomes for Migrants and their Families, edited by Zana Vathi and Russell
King, 56-72. London and New York: Routledge.
———
2017b “State desertion and ‘out-of-procedure’ asylum seekers in the Netherlands.” Focaal-Journal
of Global and Historical Anthropology 77:63-75.
———, and L. Wissink.
2016 “The deportation continuum: convergences between state agents and NGO workers in the
Dutch deportation field.” Citizenship Studies 20(1):34-49.
Kotsioni, I.
2016 “Detention of Migrants and Asylum-Seekers: The Challenge for Humanitarian Actors.”
Refugee Survey Quarterly 35(2):41-55.
Kynsilehto, A., and E. Puumala.
2017 “Intimate economies of state practice: materialities of detention in Finland.” In Intimate
Economies of Immigration Detention: Critical Perspectives, edited by D. Conlon, and N.
Hiemstra, 203-218. Abingdon: Routledge.
LasciateCIEntrare.
2016. Accogliere: la vera emergenza. https://goo.gl/oSD5B4.
MEDU (Medici per i Diritti Umani).
2012. Le sbarre più alte. Rapporto sul centro di identificazione e espulsione di Ponte Galeria.
https://goo.gl/GgME8b.
Mezzadra, S., and B. Neilson.
2013 Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor. Durham: Duke University Press. 168
Moulin, C.
2012 ”Ungrateful subjects? Refugee Protests and the Logic of Gratitude.” In Citizenship, Migrant
Activism, and the Politics of Movement, edited by P. Nyers, and K. Rygiel, 54-72. London and
New York: Routledge.
Mountz, A.
2003 “Human Smuggling, the Transnational Imaginary, and Everyday Geographies of the Nation-
State.” Antipode 35:622-44.
Pande, A.
2017 ”Intimate Counter-Spaces of Migrant Domestic Workers in Lebanon.” International
Migration Review 50(1):1–29.
Pallister-Wilkins, P.
2015 “The Humanitarian Politics of European Border Policing: Frontex and Border Police in
Evros.” International Political Sociology 9(1):53–69.
Puthoopparambil, S. J., B. M. Ahlberg, and M. Bjerneld.
2015 “’It is a thin line to walk on’: Challenges of staff working at Swedish immigration detention
centres.” International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-Being 10.
Snyder, S., H. Bell, and N. Busch-Armendariz.
2015 “Immigration Detention and Faith-based Organizations.” Journal of Social Work 60(2):165-
73.
Ticktin, M. I.
2011 Casualties of care: Immigration and the Politics of Humanitarianism in France. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Ugelvik, T.
2016 “Techniques of legitimation: The narrative construction of legitimacy among immigration
detention officers.” Crime Media Culture 12(2):215–232.
Walters, W. 169
2011 “Foucault and Frontiers: Notes on the Birth of the Humanitarian Border.” In
Governmentality: Current Issues and Future Challenges, edited by U. Bröckling, S.
Krasmann, and T. Lemke, 138-164. New York: Routledge. 170 171
Article V – Ecology of Sites of Confinement: Everyday Life in a Detention Center for Illegalized Noncitizens 172 173
Ecology of sites of confinement: Everyday life in a detention center for illegalized non- citizens.
Francesca Esposito, José Ornelas, Erica Briozzo, and Caterina Arcidiacono. Submitted at: American Journal of Community Psychology
Abstract
Drawing on almost three years of fieldwork, comprising qualitative interviews and ethnographic observations, this study provides an exploration into the detention of illegalized non-citizens in Italy. Taking the largest detention center as a case study, the fabric of everyday life and the lived experiences of people, both detainees and practitioners, are the focus of examination. An ecological community psychology framework, with a focus on justice, guided the data collection, analysis, and interpretation. Findings highlight the oppressive qualities of detention, and its ripple effects on people’s life spaces. Scarcity of resources, activities, and information created a very distressing environment for detainees, also enhancing feelings of powerlessness and frustration in practitioners willing to assist them. Uncertainty and instability, rather than coercion or discipline, emerged as modes of governing and dominating. Bound in a different space and time, detainees were turned into unwanted and expendable others, their confinement becoming a means to extract profit from them. Yet, people languishing in these sites displayed an extraordinary ability to cope with, resist, and challenge the persisting conditions of injustice they endured. We conclude by highlighting the potential of the proposed framework, and discussing broader implications of our findings and avenues for action.
Keywords: migration-related detention; everyday life; lived experiences; ecological principles; justice; critical ethnography. 174
Introduction
During the last few decades, the detention of illegalized1 non-citizens has become common practice in a world increasingly characterized by concerns for homeland security and criminalization of human mobility (Ackerman & Furman, 2014;
Stumpf, 2006). Many activists, academics, journalists, and members of civil society organizations have denounced the illegitimacy of detention centers, defined as “sites of exception, where regimes of police prevail over regimes of rights” (Fassin, 2011, p.
219). Particularly, scholars of various disciplines - such as anthropology, sociology, political science, geography, law, criminology, and cultural studies - have been engaged on this issue, addressing detention within broader analysis of border regimes (for a literature overview see Bosworth, 2014). However, due to limited access to detention centers, only a few studies have documented the lived experiences of people inside them
(e.g., Bosworth, 2014; Campesi, 2015; Fili, 2013; Fisher, 2015; Hall, 2012).
Medical and psychological research has largely been dedicated to assessing the clinical consequences of detention, showing the long-term psychological distress it causes (for a review see Bosworth, 2016; Robjant, Hassan, & Katona, 2009), hence demonstrating the human costs of this practice. Yet, in line with concerns voiced by other scholars, we argue that this approach may have the side effect of medicalizing the experiences of people – dehistoricizing, decontextualizing, and ultimately depoliticising them – while also supporting the idea of medical care as a primary solution to detention
(Esposito, Ornelas, & Arcidiacono, 2015b; Lykes, 2013; McGregor, 2011).
In the field of community psychology, research on the detention experience is limited to date. Lately, two policy statements of the Society for Community Research and Action have addressed the impacts of incarceration and deportation on migrants,
1 We use the term “illegalized” to stress that these people (asylum seekers, undocumented migrants, visa over-stayers, stateless, etc.) are not inherently “illegal,” but rather legally produced as “illegal” by states. 175 their families, and communities (Chicco, Esparza, Lykes, Balcazar, & Ferreira, 2016;
Langhout et al., 2018), highlighting the existence of rising apprehension among scholars in this field, and calling for a deeper engagement on this issue.
In this paper we present an ethnographic study conducted from March 2014 to
January 2017 inside the Ponte Galeria detention center in Rome, the largest Italian detention facility. Ours is the first academic study realized in this site, and one of the few studies on life inside migration-related detention in Italy (although see Campesi,
2015; Iyengar et al., 2012). To analyze our findings, we adopt an ecological perspective with a focus on justice previously developed (Esposito et al., 2015b). Kelly’s principles
(2006) – interdependence, cycling of resources, adaptation, and succession – and the dimension of justice as conceptualized by Prilleltensky (2012), are used to examine everyday interactions and lived experiences of people within this site of confinement.
By presenting this work, our aim is twofold. Firstly, we seek to contribute to the scarce body of knowledge on the social and cultural world behind the walls of detention. Indeed, by “going inside” these oppressive institutions, research can illuminate “parts of detention that we simply cannot otherwise see” (Bosworth, 2014, p.
53), providing insights on the texture of these places, and giving clues on their nature and effect. Secondly, we aim to elucidate the potential of the analytic framework proposed (Esposito et al., 2015b), informed by community psychology values and principles, and to encourage its use among those who are engaged in the study of detention worldwide. Moving beyond this specific case study, we conclude by highlighting broader implications flowing from our findings, and discussing the challenge of engaging as community psychologists with contexts of mobility and border control.
176
Case study
The Setting for Research: an Overview of Detention in Italy
According to Italian Immigration Law (40/1998 and following amendments), the police can order the detention of an illegalized non-citizen into so-called Accomodation
Centers for Repatriation (Centri di Permanenza per il Rimpatrio, hereinafter CPRs),2 when their immediate expulsion is not executable. Since their establishment, detention centers in Italy have undergone several transformations, especially with regard to the length of the detention period (Esposito et al., 2015a). At the time of writing, the maximum term for detention is 90 days, or 30 days in the case of people previously subject to imprisonment for three months or more (Law 161/2014). Exception is made for asylum seekers who can be detained up to 12 months (Legislative Decree 142/2015).
The number of detention facilities has also varied over time. While at the beginning of our research there were 13 centers in Italian territory, at the time of writing six CPRs are operating, in Rome, Turin, Caltanissetta, Bari, Brindisi, and Potenza.3
As reported by the Commissione Straordinaria per la Tutela e la Promozione dei Diritti Umani (2017), during 2016, 2,984 people passed through CPRs. Of these,
1,441 were deported (48%). 1,166 (39%) were released with an expulsion order, and hence continued to be “detainable” and “deportable” (De Genova, 2016). Given the unlimited number of detention orders that a person may be subjected to, many people were indeed detained several times (Campesi, 2015).
The Rome’s Ponte Galeria center is the largest Italian detention facility. Its aspect is prison-like, with high walls and fences delimiting its perimeter, and CCTV cameras scattered throughout the various areas. Concrete and iron make up the building,
2 Until February 2017, they were called Centers for Identification and Expulsion (Centri di Identificazione e Espulsione-CIEs). 3 A recently approved reform (Law 46/2017) provides for the opening of new detention facilities throughout the national territory to increase deportations. 177 whose predominant color is gray. Military personnel patrol the outside areas, while an interforce police unit is in charge to maintain order and security inside the center.
The facility could originally hold up to 354 people (176 men; 178 women).
However, during our fieldwork, the number of detainees was usually lower than that: rarely exceeding 90 men, while the number of women, predominantly Nigerians, ranged from 19 (December 2014) to 119 (November 2015). The population of detainees, as in other Italian detention centers, was extremely heterogeneous. Inside Ponte Galeria we met ex-prisoners, recently arrived migrants without any documents, visa over-stayers, people brought up or even born in Italy but not recognized as citizens (Italian citizenship law is largely based on jus sanguinis), asylum seekers, stateless, and even
EU citizens regarded as a “threat to public order and security” (Legislative Decree
30/2007 and following amendments). Many, among the women, were victims of gendered violence (see Beretta et al., 2016). Also detainees’ nationalities varied, with most people coming from Nigeria, China, Albania, the Maghreb, and Eastern Europe.
Though the maximum length of detention was reduced in 2014, turnover inside
Ponte Galeria increased (Esposito et al., 2015a). Also, detainees often engaged in protests, hunger strikes, and riots to claim the illegitimacy of a deprivation of liberty based on administrative grounds, as well as the poor living conditions inside the center.
In December 2015, as a consequence of one protest following an episode of police violence toward a detainee, the male living unit was burned and Ponte Galeria was turned into an all-women detention center, as it still is at the time of writing.
Method
We opted for ethnography as a privileged mode of inquiry to gain an ecological understanding of life and the lived experiences of people inside Ponte Galeria.
178
Ethnography, regarded as a meaningful method “to capture culture and context, to document process, and to reveal how social change and action occur within and through communities” (Case, Todd & Kral, 2014, p. 60), has often been used in community psychology, especially in case studies of specific social contexts (e.g.,
Ornelas, Duarte, & Jorge-Monteiro, 2014; Felton, 2005; Gone, 2011; Todd, 2012).
Indeed, ethnography is aligned with community psychology values, such as mutuality and collaboration, attention to power issues, respect for human diversity, accountability to marginalized groups, promotion of social justice and liberation from oppression
(Nelson & Prilleltensky, 2010; Tebes et al., 2014). In particular, we adopted a critical ethnographic approach (Dutta, 2016). In doing so, we sought to do more than generate a deeply contextualized understanding of the phenomena under study. Instead, we paid particular attention to how power is enacted in everyday life in detention in a bid to create emancipatory knowledge and provide a platform for marginalized voices to be heard (cf. Reyes Cruz & Sonn, 2011). In taking this approach we heeded the feminist call to a reflexive study of social suffering and inequalities (Campbell & Wasco, 2000;
Mulvey et al., 2000).
Acknowledging the relevance of researchers’ subjectivity in shaping research processes, the team continually attended to how their social locations influenced the collection and interpretation of data (see Esposito, 2017). Through such critical engagement we aimed to reposition our power – as White Europeans with university affiliations – through passionate solidarity and informed empathy with protagonists “on the margins” (Lykes, 2013). In doing so, we also sought to unveil, and thus challenge, hegemonic logics and structures of domination, also looking at how the enduring legacy of coloniality, in intersection with other systems of power, is embodied in micropolitical processes of detention (on a decolonizing standpoint see Reyes Cruz & Sonn, 2011). 179
Once access was granted, [author name deleted] carried out thirty-four months of fieldwork inside Ponte Galeria as part of her doctoral research (March 2014 –
January 2017). [Authors names deleted] did not enter the field, but monitored data collection, and participated in data analysis and the drafting of this article. The sustained engagement of the research team opened up a space to forge relationships of proximity and collaboration with different actors and discuss issues to be prioritized. Data were collected through participant observation (i), and topic-focused interviews (ii).
Document and multimedia data sources were also examined (iii). Research procedures were approved by the Ethical Commission of [Institution reference deleted .
Observational data
[Author name deleted] spent 617 hours in Rome’s detention center as a participant observer. Over this time, she constantly negotiated levels of engagement with gatekeepers, taking into account the needs of both detainees and practitioners, and trying to balance them with those of research. Fieldwork was distributed into 17 distinct periods (2-15 days each). Fieldnotes focused on (a) significant processes occurring in the detention setting, (b) interactions/conversations among various actors, (c) meaning making processes and self-understandings, (d) topics discussed, (e) daily activities/routines, (f) key events or incidences, (g) physical/environmental characteristics, (h) sensory information, (i) researcher’s feelings, perceptions, and
(self)reflections, and (l) any other relevant observation. The ecological framework with a focus on justice developed in our prior research (Esposito et al., 2015b) also guided the data collection.
The research team met regularly to discuss the data collected and formulate a contextual understanding of the reality of Ponte Galeria. To honor ethical principles and
180 mitigate research intrusiveness, during the fieldwork efforts were made to inform all people about the research and its goals. Inspired by Todd’s work (2012), a short script was prepared and read when possible. Participants were informed of the possibility to request to be excluded from fieldnotes. Participant observation ended when theoretical saturation was reached, and we felt there was sufficient data to articulate an initial story.
Interview Data
We conducted topic-focused interviews with detainees (N=88), as well as with center staff and other external civil-society actors (N=14). Participants gave written informed consent, after having received detailed explanations about the study aims and procedures (e.g., criteria of confidentiality), and having had the possibility to ask questions. In general interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed verbatim – four detainees did not agree to audio-recording and interviews were hand written.
To capture a wide range of perspectives, particularly minority ones, participants were engaged through a heterogeneous sampling. Criteria for composing the sample of detainees, balanced by gender, were: country of citizenship, age, time spent in Italy, and time in detention (see Table 1). Interviews typically lasted one hour and took place in
Ponte Galeria. [Author name deleted], who conducted the interviews, is fluent in Italian,
English, Spanish, and Portuguese; in the case of people speaking other languages
(i.e.,Arabic, Chinese, or French - 4 cases) we employed interpreters. Informed consent forms were provided in all languages. The interview protocol focused on (a) life in the country of birth (when applicable), (b) migration motives (when applicable), (c) migration journeys (when applicable), (d) life in Italy, (e) experiences with the immigration enforcement system, (f) life in detention, and (g) perspectives about the future. 181
Fourteen interviews were conducted with practitioners (eight women and six men; age-range 28-56 years): seven members of the managing body (two board members, two cultural mediators, a staff worker, a psychologist, a legal advisor; employment period ranging from six months to 12 years); five members of external organizations (three human rights advocates [members of NGOs/independent bodies], and two volunteers [from a faith-based organization-FBO and a religious congregation]); and two freelancers (a lawyer and a journalist). For external actors, the time spent in detention varied considerably: from a weekly basis to a few times per year.4 Interviews lasted from 23 to 86 minutes. The interview protocol focused on (a) individual professional paths, (b) working experiences inside Ponte Galeria, (c) mission and values perceived in one’s own work; (d) views about the operation of the detention system, (e) vision about life in detention, (f) opinions concerning priorities for change.
Document and Multimedia Data Sources
Data sources examined included: internal documents – policy documents, regulations, organizational charts, and in-house files on available resources; publicly- oriented documents – website pages, newspaper articles, public talks, formal annual reports, and reports of civil-society organizations; and texts provided by detainees – diaries, letters, and any kind of text message; as well as multimedia projects. These resources were used to complement our understanding of the ecology of Ponte Galeria.
Data Analysis
According to the critical ethnographic framework adopted, data collection and interpretation were conceived as an iterative process, meaning that research questions
4 To ensure anonymity of interviewees, we chose to present aggregated socio-demographic data.
182 were repeatedly reformulated while data collection proceeded and our contextual understanding of people's lived experiences increased (Dutta, 2016; Felton, 2005). The interpretations of the phenomenon under study were ultimately based on a triangulation of all sources of data, i.e., observational, interview, document, and multimedia.
In addition, we performed more focused analyses. A thematic analysis (Riger &
Sigurvinsdottir, 2016) was used to analyze fieldnotes, interview transcripts, and document texts in order to identify salient patterns (“themes”). The coding was carried out by two analysts, members of the research team; any discrepancies were resolved by discussion. The themes identified were examined for their conceptual congruence with the principles of Interdependence, Cycling of Resources, Adaptation, Succession, and
Justice as applied to the study of detention (Esposito et al., 2015b). Finally, themes were organized around the five principles supported in the data, and reviewed by all authors.
Results Interdependence: ripple effects of detention on people’s life spaces
Immigration enforcement practices, such as detention and deportation, are likely to affect all people directly and indirectly exposed to them. The interdependence principle focuses on how the life spaces of individuals, detainees as well as practitioners working in these sites, and their person-environment interdependencies, are reshaped at multiple levels by the experience of detention.
Consistently with findings of research developed across various countries (see
Bosworth, 2016; Robjant, Hassan, & Katona, 2009), almost all detainees we spoke with highlighted the impact of detention on their mental health. They reported problems spanning from changes in appetite, lack of energy, excessive thinking/worrying, feelings of anger, anxiety or sadness, and disturbed sleep patterns, up to self-harming and suicidal ideation. High distress might also lead to increased smoking, fights with 183 staff or other detainees, and drug use. Especially during initial periods in detention, many people asked for medication to reduce anxiety and facilitate sleep. However, this strategy did not always work. For instance, Mirela5 described her first days in Ponte
Galeria as follows: “The first time I arrived here, I didn't sleep for three days, even taking drugs. I couldn't stand it anymore, I looked like a zombie.”
The rupture from one’s own routines and the hyper-regulation of life typical of total institutions (Goffman, 1961), as well as the prison-like aspect of the environment, poor living conditions, and lack of privacy, activity and stimulation were listed as factors contributing to distress. Moreover, many detainees experienced a deep sense of injustice for being deprived of their liberty without having committed any crime. A particular case was that of ex-prisoners claiming the unfairness of a second confinement after having served penal sentences. As Samir spelled out, when asked about the cuts on his arm: “I was angry! … I arrived from a jail to be constrained in another jail.”
Regardless of detainees’ various paths into detention, it was the experience of incarceration in itself – and the sense of uncertainty and unpredictability about detention timeframes and one’s own future (e.g., deportation or release) – which emerged as the main cause of stress and frustration. Indeed, temporal uncertainty has been described as having a profound emotional toll on those in the maze of detention centers (e.g.,
Bosworth, 2014; Griffiths, 2013; 2014). Its devastating effects on the people languishing inside Ponte Galeria were captured by Maria, a human rights advocate:
Another factor that greatly affects the psycho-physical well-being of the
detainee, in my view, is that, from day to day, you don’t know what will happen
to you . . . you can receive a further extension of thirty days, or you can be
identified and after a few days expelled, or you can get out still as being
5 To protect participants’ identity real names have been replaced by pseudonyms.
184
irregular and running the risk of being caught by police . . . and going back to
administrative detention.
The detention experience frequently affected physical health as well. Physical diseases could be a consequence of anxiety and stress (e.g., hypertension), or the outcome of poor sanitary conditions inside the center (e.g., chickenpox and scabies).
The main problems detainees complained about were gastrointestinal disorders, high/low blood pressure, headache or backache, urogenital infections, respiratory and dermatological problems, and infectious diseases. Detention also exacerbated detainees’ pre-existing health problems, and hindered their healing processes.
Detention had numerous detrimental impacts on family systems. Being forced to leave their families, detainees experienced a disruption of stability and intimate networks of support. They were suddenly stripped of their roles (e.g., parents, partners, caregivers), and prevented from contributing to family life. In the event of illness or death of a family member, detainees were not authorized to provide assistance or even attend the funeral. Also, being not allowed to work, they could not financially support their loved ones, be they in Italy or in their countries of birth. In some cases, families had to take on additional burdens to cover detainees’ legal expenses.
Finally, detention destroyed people’s social networks. Once locked up in Ponte
Galeria, detainees lost their social ties and resources and, in case of deportation, they could not even bid farewell to friends and acquaintances. Being unwanted non-citizens awaiting expulsion ultimately became the only social identity attached to them.
Staff members and external civil-society actors were negatively affected by the detention environment too, their well-being being highly interdependent with those of detainees (cf. Bosworth, 2014; Puthoopparambil, Ahlberg, & Bjerneld, 2015). The emotional burden of working in a custodial site was frequently addressed in the 185 interviews and conversations held with these actors. The prison-like environment with its security provisions, a climate of tension and insecurity (also in terms of personal safety), the conflicts and dilemmas of operating inside an oppressive structure, and the close exposure to people’s suffering were some of the sources of distress. Also, feelings of powerlessness and frustration, due to the difficulty in responding to detainees’ needs and, particularly, to their quest for freedom, were transversally pointed out.
Cycling of Resources: definition, management, and allocation of resources in detention
The cycling of resources focuses on how resources (money and goods, but also services and expertise) are created, managed, and allocated among and within detention centers, and the role played by politics and policies, along with other forces.
All participants, both detainees and practitioners, complained about the management of resources in the Italian detention system. In particular, the outsourcing of management to private entities based on the most economically advantageous bid was largely criticized. This outsourcing scheme was understood as a mechanism to make detention at once a profitable business (for the private sector) and less expensive duty (for the state) at the expense of detainees – reflecting wider neoliberal trends of welfare retrenchment and concurrent use of public resources to boost capital accumulation (see also Bacon, 2005; Fernandes, 2007). This argument was captured by
Lassad, a detainee we met and who, in a public talk (2014), furthered the impact of this system on the life of those confined: “You realize that you’re in a kind of lager, a lager that exists because each life has a price. The one paid to those who keep us inside”.
Because of the progressive reduction of the budget for managing Italian detention centers, services and formal resources available for detainees have also decreased over time. At the time of the last change in management at Ponte Galeria,
186 taken on by a French company recognised as a leader in prison-industry service management in partnership with an Italian cultural association,6 the daily newspaper La
Repubblica reported (Di Benedetto Montaccini & Zandonini, 2014):
… [This is] a transition that poses several questions while also having an
alarming impact on both the conditions of [detained] migrants and the prospects
of former employees … today in Ponte Galeria about 28 euros are spent per
person per day, compared to 41 euros of the previous contract.
In spite of the strong negotiations carried out by trade unions, many workers lost their jobs. Some important professional roles, including the cultural mediator, were drastically reduced, and staff members, many of whom were foreign nationals themselves, ended up performing a variety of functions irrespective of their training and skills. As Mamadou, one of the few workers rehired, bitterly proclaimed: “... in short, they also exploit you. Because you work as a canteen attendant, you work as a [cultural] mediator … With this [new] company everyone does everything!”
In light of this changed situation, many participants stressed a decline in the quality of treatment provided to detainees, already critical in itself, and in the resources made available to them. For instance, while the socio-psychological service was originally open every day (8am to 8pm) with six staff, under the new management only two psychologists staffed the service, covering fewer hours per week. As a result, the psychological screening at migrants’ entry was no longer performed as a systematic step after medical screening. Healthcare provision continued to be poor. Despite the frequent recurrence of health problems among detainees (see Interdependence), only first-level medical assistance was guaranteed by both the new and old management, while for second-level services (e.g., screening and diagnostic tests) staff relied on external health
6 Every three years the management of Italian detention centers is assigned by tender. 187 facilities, often with long waiting lists. Overall, complaints about the poor attention paid by medical staff to detainees’ health were largely voiced (see also Medici per i Diritti
Umani, 2012; Iyengar et al., 2012). Detainees also denounced decreasing cleaning standards and service organization, as well as the poor quality of the food and the reduction of the pocket money voucher provided to them. Such circumstances, as underlined by a number of people, increased distress and tension inside the center. The following notes from a phone call with a detainee, made in December 2014, well illustrate this situation: “There have been many tensions between detainees and staff, as well as continuous muscular interventions of police showing batons. Khal says the degrading and inhumane treatment they are receiving has to be denounced.”
In spite of all these criticisms, few positive aspects were also pointed out as a consequence of the management change. For instance, some interviewees, particularly members of the staff, stressed a greater opening of the center to external actors - e.g.,
NGOs, activist and political delegations, and journalists. Civil-society actors, especially human rights advocates, were a salient source of support for detainees, by being one of the few means through which they could be informed about their rights and activate legal mechanisms to enforce them. Also, it was thanks to these actors, and overall to activists in solidarity with detainees, that the harsh reality of detention has been made public and the violations occurring in its realm denounced. Unfortunately, due to limited time and resources, their activities often benefited a small number of people, forcing them to face the hard choice of who to help.
Adaptation: strategies to cope with and resist detention
188
The cornerstone of the ecological metaphor is the principle of adaptation, which concerns the assessment of the person-environment fit. Its analysis centers here on the strategies that both detainees and practitioners deploy in their everyday life in detention.
Dealing with detention and its related instability is a troubled process, involving different strategies and timeframes depending on people’s circumstances and characteristics. Most detainees we met indicated family and friends outside, as well as other detainees, as the main resources they relied on to cope with detention. Other detainees were described as a source of informative, material, and emotional support.
An example was word of mouth information about lawyers or about the center’s rules provided by people detained for a longer period. Many detainees also told us how, during their first days of confinement, they had no access to a phone, and managed to contact their families and lawyers thanks to mobiles borrowed from other detainees.7
Emotional support among detainees was salient, sometimes taking the form of love relationships formed within the detention center walls. As Mehta observed, “love” can be a powerful means to cope with confinement, and challenge “the institutionalized, emotionally sanitized, gender-segregated space” (2014, p. 182) of custodial sites. This emerged also in our case, as demonstrated by the story of Rami and Masha:
Rami has a girlfriend, Masha, they felt in love in here [Ponte Galeria]. [The
staff] call him ‘the Romeo of the CIE.’ Rami tells me they speak by phone and,
whenever possible, schedule meetings [in the center]. So they can share their
problems and help each other, to feel less blue. (Fieldnotes October 27, 2014)
While some people sought closeness and emotional sharing, clustering with other detainees in the courtyards of the living units or assembling in the dormitories to chat, others, in contrast, were more likely to isolate themselves (e.g., lying in bed all day
7 Only mobile phones without camera are allowed inside Ponte Galeria, and may take several days before staff purchases a phone for a new detainee. 189 alone). Many detainees, in private interviews, revealed an effort to keep their distance from those regarded as “troublesome” (usually, ex-prisoners). Others opted for alienation through drugs administered by the medical service (see Interdependence), or even illegal drugs trafficked inside the center. Notably, a large number of detainees mentioned religion or practices such as yoga as important sources of energy, strength, and hope that enabled them to ‘keep going’ (cf. McGregor, 2012). Also, strategies of self-distraction – e.g., watching television, braiding hair (especially common among
African women), conversing on the phone, roaming around the living unit, or lying in the sun – were frequently adopted to pass time and navigate uncertainty. When asked how he wiled away the hours in Ponte Galeria, Lassad replied smiling:
I used to count: the length of the cage is 18 and a half steps, the width is eight
and a half steps, the corridor is 128 steps … At night I hoped that they turned off
the lights to see the stars, I recognize them, I tried to see the Ursa Major and the
Ursa Minor rather than looking at the video-cameras that are everywhere.
Beyond figuring out ways to deal with stress and uncertainty, detainees also put in place strategies of self-determination and resistance against the detention and deportation system, displaying their political agency. These strategies include riots and fires in the living units, protests (e.g., hunger strikes or lip-sewing), individual/group escapes, and physical confrontation with staff. Self-harm too, quite common among men, was more often an act of political protest than the mere expression of individual suffering as often regarded (cf. McGregor, 2011). Some detainees harmed themselves to go to the hospital and from there try to escape. Others used their body as the last means available to take their situation into full account, and claim the illegitimacy of a deprivation of liberty based on administrative grounds. In this vein, these protests and struggles are to be understood as radical political performative acts (cf. Butler 2015). As
190 the aforementioned Lassad stated in “Letters from the CIE” (Badagliacca, 2015): “I saw thirteen men sewing their own lips with needle and thread as a sign of protest to show they were born in the wrong side of the planet.”
Art also emerged as a form of resistance to the dehumanization operated by detention. We observed women challenging the grayness and impersonality of the environment by painting the walls of their dormitories. Also, they celebrated releases by singing and dancing altogether, bonding through the joy of the newfound freedom of some of them (Esposito, 2017). Finally, a number of detainees, in interviews and conversations, expressed their desire to write down their stories. In some cases they managed to get paper and pen to write about their experience inside Ponte Galeria, as was the case of Khal (excerpts from his diary are reported in this article). Such first- hand accounts have a great political potential, being able to challenge the hegemony of security-driven discourses on migration and citizenship.
On their side, center staff and civil-society actors, to reduce feelings of powerlessness and frustration, as well as the emotional burden they experienced (see
Interdependence), figured out ways to make sense of their work and find usefulness in it. In spite of their different roles, they mostly hung on to the idea that their presence on the ground could make a difference in the lives of detainees, even if they recognized the oppressive nature of detention and were ideologically adverse to it. Luca, a center manager, stressed: “As long as CIEs exist it’s better that there’s someone who manages them with a spirit of interest and humanitarian attention to detainees’ needs.” Providing detainees with assistance, and reducing the affliction caused by confinement, was perceived by center staff as the core of their mission (on humanitarianism in custodial settings see Campesi, 2015; Fischer, 2015). To manage the daily challenges they faced, these workers resorted to attributing their actions to regulations provided by superior 191 authorities (i.e., the state), as well as to setting boundaries to control the emotional involvement with detainees and detaching from their pain (cf. Bosworth, 2014;
Puthoopparambil et al., 2015). The experience accumulated over time, and shared between old and new staff, was used to overcome the lack of training and supervision.
External civil-society actors, especially human rights advocates, dealt with the dilemma of operating within an institution they criticize, or even wish to abolish, by focusing their efforts in the identification and referral of vulnerable cases, as well as in advocacy work (cf. Kotsioni, 2016). Understanding their mission as a political one drove them to keep carrying out their activities in spite of the numerous challenges they had to face, including restrictions on access to the center and detainees, and lack of information and collaboration from police and, at times, center staff.
Succession: temporalities in detention
The principle of succession considers how time frames systems and the social life within them. In our case, it fostered a temporal understanding of detention, also unveiling how time is bound up in power relations (cf. Griffiths, 2014; Turnbull, 2016).
People confined inside detention centers, cast as unwanted others, are bounded in a peculiar temporality, commonly experiencing a sense of “not being in time with others” and being subject to multiple temporal tensions. Griffiths (2014) in particular described four temporalities: a) a slow time of waiting (sticky time); b) a halted time, likely to end up in stagnation (suspended time); c) an accelerated time, rushing out of control (frenzied time); d) breaks in people’s temporal expectations (temporal ruptures).
Most detainees we met inside Ponte Galeria spoke evocatively of their experience of detention as “a slow time of waiting.” Waiting for days to pass, waiting to know about their immigration cases, waiting to get their requests heard by staff and
192 immigration officers, waiting for court decisions to be enacted, and even waiting to be returned to their country of citizenship once having finally resigned to this idea. The challenges of navigating through this long wait, punctuated almost exclusively by detention routines and bureaucratic timeframes, were stressed by Birka: “It’s disgusting!
You get up in the morning, you take a coffee and wait in bed for any paper to arrive.”
Even more upsetting than the perception of detention as a time of waiting – which may eventually result into something good (e.g., getting papers and be released)
– was the sense of purposeless stasis voiced by many detainees. These, as made clear in conversations with us, understood their experience as one of being “stuck in limbo,” feeling unable of exerting control over their life and making personal or social progress
(being thus prevented from creating chances to get a better future). Their confinement, no matter the length (which until November 2014 could be up to 18 months), was just a pointless waste of time: while life outside moved on, every day was the same for detainees, as though they were frozen in a timeless present. This feeling of time in detention as suspended, or dead, was amplified by the almost complete lack of activities, which forced detainees to idleness and boredom, also leaving them excessive time for thinking. Stuck in between a halted present and an unpredictable future, the emotional toll was high. As Amina, echoing others, painfully noted: “During daytime I wait for the night to come, and at night I wait for the day. I wish the time would pass quickly. I feel suffocated because I think a lot … I don’t know what will happen next!”
In contrast to this sense of temporal deceleration or stasis, life for people inside
Ponte Galeria was also marked by sudden, often unpredictable, changes, whose outcomes could be disruptive. These included detainees’ releases and forced deportations. As many people told us, release from detention, usually a happy occasion, could however happen abruptly, so that detainees had no time to arrange a place to stay 193 or plan their travel back home (detainees came from different parts of the country). We personally witnessed various cases in which people, even at night, were suddenly put with their few things outside the gate of the center, located in an isolated suburb of
Rome. For those without a house or personal networks of support, release could be particularly burdensome as no chance was usually available for them oustide. As Sonia, a staff with longterm working experience, sadly confided:
We had problems especially with people with mental issues, the homeless . . . if
no [hosting] facility accepts undocumented people . . . I mean, what do we do?
Deportation too could happen at any time, particularly in early morning hours.
Usually, especially when more than one person was concerned, no forewarning was given, making it difficult for people to resist (a woman was once deported in the middle of an interview with us, to our extreme dismay). Such situations, which entailed an acceleration of detainees’ sticky or suspended time, were very painful. They caused ruptures in detainees’ temporal expectations, also violently overriding the ability to plan and imagine a future. As Precious recalled: “It was violent, because when they first came I was surprised, they [the police] ambushed … they pick some girls, they didn’t pick me … two weeks later they came [and] they just called me: ‘You have to go now’.”
Justice: perpetuation of injustice in everyday life in detention
Justice, as conceptualized by Prilleltensky (2012), has to do with the fair and equitable distribution of resources and treatment of people, and is squarely in the center of an ecological conception of wellness. Considering the oppressive site where our research took place, (in)justice was a crucial dimension to look at.
As previously mentioned, Ponte Galeria was a prison-like, heavily militarized environment. As such, feelings of confinement, isolation, and oppression transversely
194 affected detainees and practitioners, along with a sense of being over-controlled. The degraded state of the facility, and particularly of detainees’ living units, contributed to making quality of life very low. Sanitary conditions were poor, toilets squalid and without curtains, and the space available to detainees limited. Due to security reasons, any object that could be possibly “misused” to inflict self-harm or threaten security inside the facility (e,g., lighters, mirrors, laces, bra underwires, or pens) was forbidden.
In this environment, guaranteeing people’s dignity and providing humanitarian assistance (staff’s stated mission) was hard. Indeed, dehumanization and depersonalization emerged as distinctive processes characterizing the treatment of those confined. Turned into numbers, detainees were stripped of their individuality, becoming part of a community of abject subjects. As Khal emphasized in a diary he secretly wrote during his detention: “…already after a few days of stay I feel a prisoner of this modern lager in all senses … I’m number eighty-seven zero three, here we're all numbers.”
Stuck in a state of “liminality” and “waithood” (Khosravi, 2018, pp. 7-8), detainees did not know how long they would be confined, and what would happen to them (see Succession). One of the most critical issues was the lack of information and communication. Although the “Charter of Rights and Duties” (issued by the Italian
Ministry of Interior) was affixed in the center, and staff provided detainees with a document explaining the rules and services available, most participants had little understanding of what kind of place they were, or how to navigate through the system.
Some detainees understood Ponte Galeria as a prison, while others regarded it as a shelter for undocumented people (as frequently told by police at the time of arrest, see
Esposito et al., 2015a). In many cases we provided them with the exact information.
Detainees also complained about the scarce, almost non-existent, communication with onsite immigration officers (cf. Bosworth & Kellezi, 2012). Remarkably, on 195 several occasions, interviewees told us they were not even sure they ever met them (“I don’t even know them” Juliet commented), or confused them with other staff. Overall, complaints about a lack of knowledge concerning one’s own immigration and asylum cases were widely voiced. People struggled to follow what was happening, and the information provided was regarded as minimal, often contradictory or erroneous:
... let's say they [all professionals in Ponte Galeria] don’t let you really know true
things, they don’t let you know how it works because every day they tell you
something different ... those who are here inside don't matter at all. (Ayman)
Along with the perception of the detention system as unfathomable, the treatment by police was largely perceived as arbitrary and uneven (cf. De Genova,
2016). Some were detained after having failed to comply with previous expulsion orders, while others were taken into detention the first time they were stopped
(sometimes just after landing on Italy’s shores). At times, people were detained while struggling to regularize their situation (e.g., “signing on” as asylum seekers), or even when reporting a crime (e.g., domestic violence). For former prisoners too, the criteria by which some ended up in detention while others did not seemed to be random.
Overall, detainees claimed to have received little explanation about the reasons for their detention, and had frequently been asked to sign papers they did not properly understand due to language and literacy problems. Inconsistency was stressed with regards to the behavior of onsite police too: some detainees were searched and required to do push-ups, while others were just mildly controlled. Items subject to confiscation were not always the same. This evidence, echoing previous findings (e.g., Bosworth,
2014; Griffiths, 2013; Iyengar et al., 2012), reinforces the image of detention centers as sites of “intense uncertainty, instability and arbitrariness” (Griffiths, 2014, p. 268).
196
Lawyers, who should help detainees navigate the immigration and detention system, often did not provide a good service (cf. Bosworth, 2014). Many, expecting to receive little or no compensation for their work, did not invest time and energy in detainees’ cases; others even exploited detainees’ vulnerability for personal interest. A number of participants – especially practitioners – stressed how frequently lawyers conveyed partial or inadequate information to detainees, taking money from them in exchange for unrealistic expectations of release. Concerns were also raised about the proliferation of abuses on the part of these actors. As Pietro, from a FBO, explained:
The worst thing is the deficient legal protection … we notice a proliferation of bad
practices, such as taking from foreigners the [expulsion] order that is to be appealed
without giving it back, not giving them a copy of the appeal … So our impression is
that at this moment there is a mechanism through which private professionals
[lawyers] take advantage of a state of extreme need [of detainees].
Information on life in detention, hardly accessible to those allowed to step into the center (e.g., NGOs and FBOs), was rarely leaked outside it, particularly with regard to abuses and violations, and especially police violence. More than one detainee reported having experienced or witnessed such a situation: in police stations at the time of arrest, in daily life in detention, or during deportations (cf. Iyengar et al., 2012).
Exemplary was the story of Nabil, assaulted by police at the moment of his arrival at
Ponte Galeria because considered a “troubling subject.” After being knocked down, pepper sprayed, kicked and hit with a baton on his head, and even attacked by a dog,
Nabil went to the center’s medical service, but did not get much help. As he recalled:
[The doctor] told me “What- what do you want? Drops or tablets? What do you
want?” I said “I'm not a junkie! . . . They took me from work!” . . . “Please give 197
me the certificate, [for] what they did. Is your job [to be] a doctor? So do your
job! I ask my right, human [right]! He told me “No, I don’t give it to you” . . .
After a long struggle, Nabil finally obtained a generic medical certificate, which was of no use. As an illegalized and deportable subject it was impossible for him to file a complaint for the incident. Therefore, Nabil remained inside Ponte Galeria until he contracted chickenpox and was then released, deemed unsuitable to stay in contact with other people due to the contagious nature of his illness. This story is just one of the many we heard: accounts of use of force against detainees, especially during deportations, were quite common. None of these situations, at least while our research was taking place, was legally challenged. They rarely even gained public visibility.
Discussion
Refraining from depicting any ultimate truth (if one may exist), the goal of our ethnographic study was to elucidate the texture of the contemporary total institutions that detention centers are. To do so, we worked from the case study of Rome’s Ponte
Galeria center, the largest Italian detention facility. Yet, our final goal was to make a connection between the local level of our study, and the global picture. It is indeed only by placing detention within the wider context of border control that is possible to make sense of its intricacies and contradictions. Also, it is within this broader picture that a potential for “thinking otherwise” may emerge (Bosworth, 2014).
The ecological framework we adopted, complemented with the concept of power and its wider structures and dynamics (cf. Nelson & Prilleltensky, 2010), not only provided a holistic glimpse into the social and cultural world behind the walls of these institutions, but also shed light on the nature and multiple effects of detention. The oppressive and pathogenic qualities of these settings, and the high costs they involve in
198 terms of human suffering, are certainly the main evidence emerging from our study.
Beyond those directly concerned – primarily detainees but also practitioners working in these sites – who exhibit the burden they bear through their own bodies, many others pay a price, namely detainees’ families and communities at large (see Interdependence, and Chicco et al., 2016).
Enduring harsh living conditions, as emerged in our case, and also due to the scarcity of resources available (see Cycling of Resources), those in detention found themselves in a state of extreme precariousness and abandonment. The exposure of a particular racialized and class-based category of people to such a condition, as several scholars have argued, is a crucial strategy for contemporary neoliberal capitalism (e.g.,
Fernandes, 2007; Khosravi, 2018). Namely, exploited as a cheap and disposable labor force outside (see Esposito, 2017), detainees were transformed inside Ponte Galeria into sources of profit for the detention industry. “Each life has a price”, as Lassad voiced it: this price, and overall the fixing of capital in detention centers, gives rise to a thriving business, also incentivizing the perpetuation of detention itself (Esposito et al., 2015a).
However, as our findings reveal, people in these sites are not passive pawns of a game played by powerful forces. Conversely, they are engaged in ceaseless attempts to cope, resist, and improve their situation (see Adaptation). This applies both to detainees, who used all resources available to them – particularly solidarity and mutual help – to figure out ways to navigate through life in detention and challenge the system, as well as to practitioners, who struggled to find a vocabulary through which to articulate their experiences and provide them with ethical grounds. Floundering to make sense of their incarceration, detainees also resorted to their body as a last battlefield, a means to claim the unfairness of a confinement for being “born in the wrong side of the planet.” Such 199 embodied actions are political in their very nature. They cry out against a regime that denies people’s past, dictates their present, and colonizes their future (Bosworth, 2014).
This aim, and overall power inside Ponte Galeria, was mainly enforced through a politics of uncertainty and instability. Ensnared between a thwarted present and an unimaginable future, detainees faced a daily struggle to preserve a sense of self and meaning for their lives. The state of “waithood” and suspension they were forced in, percolated by an ever-present fear of unexpected and disruptive changes to come (i.e., deportation), was burdensome and, over time, put a strain on people’s ability to cope and resist (see Succession). Uncertainty and unpredictability, rather than coercion or discipline, have been described as effective means of control, a mode of governing those in detention (e.g., Bosworth, 2014; De Genova, 2016; Turnbull, 2016; Griffiths,
2013; 2014). In Ponte Galeria, uncertainty was mainly related to the lack of information and communication with institutional actors, particularly those with some decision making power (i.e., immigration officers). Detainees, commonly, did not know exactly where they were, why, and for how long. The information provided to them was scarce, patchy or intentionally distorted.
Leaving people in a state of confusion was a strategy to amplify their vulnerability and prevent any troubling reaction on their part. Indeed, under such conditions of instability, it was harder for anyone to oppose the operation of the institutional machinery. In other words, the violence of the sovereign state could be enforced smoothly. The dehumanization and depersonalization operating through various means – such as assigning detainees a number - complicated the picture. These processes destabilized people’s sense of self, and excised their ties with others outside.
Further, they turned detainees into unwanted and expendable others, whose exclusion, or containment (inclusive exclusion), was an ultimate means to extract profit from them.
200
Unsurprisingly, in the opaque and unfathomable environment of Ponte Galeria, where arbitrariness and unaccountability reigned, abuses also proliferated, both on the part of the police and of those ideally in charge of guaranteeing detainees’ rights, such as lawyers. Nevertheless, the echo of such violations rarely crossed the institution’s walls (see Justice), except through the few civil-society organizations and actors allowed to enter, whose access to such information was largely hindered.
To conclude, drawing on our findings, we call for a deeper engagement of community psychologists, along with other scholars and the wider community, in the struggle against detention and, more widely, against the contemporary “system of global
Apartheid” (Khosravi, 2018, p. 5) implemented through the apparatus of mobility management. This system, being both a product and means of neoliberal capitalism, works to maintain an uneven and unequal distribution of wellness and opportunities for geographic, affective, economic, and social mobility across racialized, class-based, gendered and citizenship lines. To use Prilleltensky’s words, it perpetuates “persisting conditions of injustice,” as our analysis, transcending individual assessments of suffering traditionally made by medicine and psychology, demonstrates. This engagement, in our view, must be materialized through the creation of a network of solidarity across axes of difference, as well as by the pooling of our knowledge and resources (especially with the privilege of academic affiliations) in pursuit of a common aim of social change. We must be on the side of those who are being violently affected by the proliferation of borders, we must use all our means to denounce the violence they are enduring and the multiple oppressions they are subjected to (personal, relational, collective), we must counter processes of dehumanization and unveil dominant narratives and complex power dynamics upholding them, as well as their genealogies that intersect histories of slavery, colonialism, and imperialism. We must do it not “for 201 them,” but rather “with them” and “for us all.” Because, in the midst of our differences, we are all paying a price for this, even if its burden is not yet clear to everyone.
References
Ackerman, A., R., & R. Furman (2014). The criminalization of immigration: Contexts and
consequences. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press.
Bacon, C. (2005). The evolution of immigration detention in the UK: The involvement of private
prison companies (Working Paper, 27). Oxford: Refugee Studies Center.
Badagliacca, M. (Producer & Director) (2015). Letters from the CIE [Motion picture]. Italy.
Beretta, L., Bondi, L., De Masi, F., Esposito, F., Festagallo, F., Gargano, O., … & Quinto, C. R.
(2016). Inter/rotte: Storie di Tratta, Percorsi di Resistenze. Roma: Sapere Solidale.
Bosworth, M., & Kellezi, B. (2012). Quality of life in detention: Results from the MQLD
questionnaire data collected in IRC Yarl’s Wood, IRC Tinsley House and IRC Brook
House, August 2010 – June 2011 (Report No. 2448404). Oxford: Centre for
Criminology.
Bosworth, M. (2014). Inside immigration detention. Oxford: University Press.
Bosworth, M. (2016). The impact of immigration detention on mental health: A literature
review. (Criminal Justice, Borders & Citizenship Paper No. 2732892). Retrieved from
https://bit.ly/2kUkKYR.
Butler, J., 2015. Notes towards a performative theory of the assembly. Cambridge (MA):
Harvard University Press.
Campbell, R., & Wasco, S. M. (2000). Feminist approaches to social science: Epistemological
and methodological tenets. American Journal of Community Psychology, 28(6), 773-
791.
Campesi, G. (2015). Hindering the deportation machine. An ethnography of power and
resistance in immigration detention. Punishment and Society, 17(4), 427-453.
Case, A. D., Todd, N. R., & Kral, M. J. (2014). Ethnography in community psychology: 202
Promises and tensions. American Journal of Community Psychology, 54(1-2), 60–71.
Chicco, J., Esparza, P., Lykes, M. B., Balcazar, F. E., & Ferreira, K. (2016). Policy Statement
on the incarceration of undocumented migrant families. American Journal of
Community Psychology, 57(1-2), 255-263.
Commissione Straordinaria per la Tutela e la Promozione dei Diritti Umani. (2017). Rapporto
sui centri di permanenza per il rimpatrio in Italia (aggiornamento dicembre 2017).
Retrieved from https://bit.ly/2FwcE3d.
De Genova, N. (2016, November). Detention, deportation, and waiting: Toward a theory of
migrant detainability. Global Detention Project (Working Paper No. 18).
Di Benedetto Montaccini, V., Zandonini, G. (2014, December 22). Ponte Galeria, “La
Guantanamo italiana”, la situazione al CIE dopo il cambio gestione. La Repubblica.
Retrieved from https://bit.ly/2y3tXte.
Dutta, U. (2016). Ethnographic approaches. In L. A. Jason & D. S. Glenwick (Eds.), Handbook
of methodological approaches to community-based research: Qualitative, quantitative,
and mixed methods (pp. 69-79). New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press.
Esposito, F., Ornelas, J., & Arcidiacono, C. (2015a). Migration-related detention: a focus on the
Italian context. In A. Cunha, M. Silva, & R. Frederico (Eds.), The Borders of Schengen
(pp.177-191). Brussels: P.I.E. Peter Lang.
Esposito, F., Ornelas, J., & Arcidiacono, C. (2015b). Migration-related detention centers: the
challenges of an ecological perspective with a focus on justice. BMC International
Health and Human Rights, 15,13.
Esposito, F. (2017). Practicing ethnography in migration-related detention centers: A reflexive
account. Journal of Prevention & Intervention in the Community, 45(1), 57-69.
Esposito. F., Ornelas. J., Scirocchi. S., & Arcidiacono. C. (2018). Voices from the Inside: Lived
experiences of women confined in a detention center. Manuscript submitted for
publication.
Fassin, D. (2011). Policing Borders. Producing Boundaries. The Governmentality of
Immigration in Dark Times. Annual Review of Anthropology, 40, 213–226. 203
Felton, B. J. (2005). Defining location in the mental health system : A case study of consumer-
run agency. American Journal of Community Psychology, 36, 373–386.
Fernandes, D. (2007). Targeted: Homeland Security and the Business of Immigration. New
York: Seven Stories Press.
Fili, A. (2013). The maze of Immigration detention in Greece: A case study of the Athens
airport detention facility. Prison Service Journal, 205, 34-38.
Fischer, N. (2015). The Management of Anxiety. An ethnographical outlook on self-mutilations
in a French immigration detention centre. Journal of Ethnic and Migration
Studies, 41(4), 599-616.
Goffman, E. (1961). Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other
Inmates. New York: Anchor Doubleday.
Gone, J. P. (2011). The red road to wellness: Cultural reclamation in a native first nations
community treatment center. American Journal of Community Psychology, 47, 187-202.
Griffiths, M. (2013). Living with Uncertainty: Indefinite Immigration Detention. Journal of
Legal Anthropology, 1(3), 263-286.
Griffiths, M. (2014). Out of Time: The Temporal Uncertainties of Refused Asylum Seekers and
Immigration Detainees, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 40(12), 1991-2009.
Hall, A. (2012). Border watch. Cultures of immigration, detention, and control. London: Pluto.
Iyengar, S., Landri, C., Mini, M., Ogada-Osir, A., Roman, E., Skalon, T., Stege, U., … &
Veglio, M. (2012). Betwixt and Between: Turin’s CIE. A human rights investigation
into Turin’s detention Center. Retrieved from https://bit.ly/2sZRaXo.
Kelly, J. G. (2006). Becoming Ecological: An Expedition into Community Psychology. New
York: Oxford University Press.
Khosravi, S. (2018). Introduction. After Deportation: Ethnographic Perspectices. Cham,
Switzerland: Palgrave MacMillan.
Kotsioni, I. (2016). Detention of migrants and asylum-seekers: The challenge for humanitarian
actors. Refugees Survey Quarterly, 35(2), 41-55.
Langhout, R.D., Buckingham, S. L., Oberoi, A. K., Chávez, N. R., Rusch, D., Esposito, F., & 204
Suarez-Balcazar, Y. (2018). Policy Statement on the effects of deportation and forced
separation on immigrants, their families, and communities. Manuscript submitted for
pubblication.
Lassad. (2014, March 31). Se questo è un uomo. Corriere Delle Migrazioni. Retrieved from
https://bit.ly/2MiGHiF.
Lykes, M. B. (2013). Participatory and action research as a transformative praxis: responding to
humanitarian crises from the margins. American Psychologist, 68(8), 774-783.
McGregor, J. (2011). Contestations and consequences of deportability: hunger strikes and the
political agency of non-citizens. Citizenship Studies, 15(5), 597–611.
McGregor, J. (2012). Rethinking detention and deportability: Removal centres as spaces of
religious revival. Political Geography, 31(4), 236-246.
Medici Per I Diritti Umani (MEDU). (2012). Le sbarre piú alte. Rapporto sul centro di
Identificazione ed Espulsione di Ponte Galeria a Roma. Retrieved from
https://bit.ly/2l00pTU.
Mehta, R. (2014). So many ways to love you/self: Negotiating love in a prison. International
Feminist Journal of Politics, 16(2), 181-198.
Mulvey, A., Terenzio, M., Hill, J., Bond, M. A., Huygens, I., Hamerton, H. R., … & Cahill, S.
(2000). Stories of relative privilege: Power and social change in feminist community
psychology. American Journal of Community Psychology, 28(6), 883–911.
Nelson, G. & Prilleltensky, I. (2010). Community psychology: In pursuit of Liberation
and Well-being. New York: Palgrave/Macmillan.
Ornelas, J., Duarte, T., & Jorge-Monteiro, M.F. (2014). Transformative organizational change
in community mental health. In G. Nelson, B. Kloos, & J. Ornelas (Eds.), Community
psychology and community mental health: Towards transformative change (pp. 252-
277). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Prilleltensky, I. (2012). Wellness as fairness. American Journal of Community Psychology, 49,
1-21.
Puthoopparambil, S. J., Ahlberg, B. M., & Bjerneld, M. (2015). “It is a thin line to walk on”: 205
Challenges of staff working at Swedish immigration detention centres. International
Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-Being, 31, 10.
Reyes Cruz, M., & Sonn, C. C. (2011). (De)colonizing culture in community psychology:
Reflections from critical social science. American Journal of Community
Psychology, 47(1-2), 203-214.
Riger, S., & Sigurvinsdottir, R. (2016). Thematic Analysis. In L. A. Jason & D. S. Glenwick
(Eds.), Handbook of methodological approaches to community-based research:
Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods (pp. 33-41). New York: Oxford University
Press.
Robjant, K., Hassan, R., & Katona, C. (2009). Mental health implications of detaining asylum
seekers: Systematic review. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 194(4), 306-312.
Stumpf, J. (2006). The The Crimmigration Crisis: Immigrants, Crime, and Sovereign
Power. American University Law Review, 56(2), 367-419.
Todd, N. R. (2012). Religious Networking Organizations and Social Justice : An ethnographic
case study. American Journal of Community Psychology, 50, 229–245.
Tebes, J. K., Thai, N. D., & Matlin, S. L. (2014). Twenty-first century science as a relational
process: From eureka! to team science and a place for community psychology.
American Journal of Community Psychology, 53, 475–490.
Turnbull, S. (2016). “Stuck in the middle”: Waiting and uncertainty in immigration
detention. Time & Society, 25(1), 61-79.
207
GENERAL CONCLUSIONS 208
209
1. General Conclusions
The rise of migration-related detention around the globe and an increase in restrictive measures to control and manage human mobility, in general, have been of concern in recent years, with critics demanding a strong response to challenge this trend and to seek alternatives. Despite recent calls for more independent research in this field (e.g., Bosworth, 2014; Bosworth & Kellezi, 2017), the amount of academic knowledge available concerning the daily life and the lived experiences of people within detention centers is relatively limited. These limitations reflect the existing challenges of studying this topic, and, primarily, the difficulty in obtaining permission to conduct research within these institutions. As a result, in many countries, such as Italy, where the research for this thesis was carried out, empirically informed scholarship is extremely scant (Campesi, 2015 and Iyengar et al., 2012 are two notable exceptions), and information about what happens behind the walls of detention centers is fragmentary.
This thesis contributes to filling this gap in the literature by expanding the knowledge base regarding the psychosocial and cultural world inside migration-related detention centers, while also examining the multiple effects these settings have on the lives of detained non- citizens and professional actors. Ultimately, this thesis examines the ecology of life within these new sites of confinement. In so doing, it focuses on the Italian context, and, particularly, on Rome’s Ponte Galeria detention center, the largest Italian migration-related detention facility. This work represents the first comprehensive study to be performed at Ponte Galeria, in addition to being one of the few studies focused on life inside migration-related detention centers in Italy. Furthermore, this study is also designed to facilitate conducting future research within these difficult-to-access sites, providing avenues for further exploration.
This final section summarizes and discusses the main findings of our research, while also describing the challenges and limitations of the work conducted. Moreover, it highlights the implications of our findings for future research and action, providing recommendations for policy changes.
1.1. Main Findings
The combined findings reported in the five articles composing the Empirical Section of this thesis illustrate the oppressive qualities of migration-related detention and its multiple detrimental effects on all people who come into direct or indirect contact with it, including 210 researchers themselves (for more information on the emotional burden of conducting research in detention centers, see Bosworth & Kellezi, 2017). These findings are in line with previous studies (see Chapter 1.2, General Introduction, and, particularly, Bosworth, 2016), which have demonstrated the harm that migration-related detention causes both to detainees and to the professionals working at these institutions, irrespective of the contexts analyzed and the methodologies adopted. At the same time, and in line with the community psychology approach applied to the study of migration developed by Sládková and Bond (2011), our findings highlight the agency and efforts directed toward resistance and change exercised by those within these coercive sites.
In particular, the justice-focused ecological framework developed in Article I provided a platform for a more comprehensive understanding of: i) the everyday dynamics at play inside Rome’s Ponte Galeria detention center; ii) the psychosocial experiences of people living and working within this context (i.e., detainees, detention center staff, and external civil-society actors); and iii) how all of these people make sense of the detention system, and how they describe themselves as being affected by it and/or resisting it. Transcending an individual-centered analysis, often drawn from medicine and/or psychology, this perspective ultimately allowed for a holistic view of life behind the walls of this institution, while also shedding light on how power is enacted, as well as contested, at migration-related detention centers, in addition to examining how broader structural forces are embodied in everyday life in detention.
Furthermore, acknowledging that ethnography is an embodied form of research (see Border Criminologies, 2013), the personal experience of the researcher was critically examined too, with her feelings, perceptions, and (self-) reflections being considered to be a constituent component of the research process. From this perspective, a reflexive outlook is considered to be capable of providing insights regarding the researcher’s phenomenon of interest. In particular, the account provided by Article II illustrates the challenges and vulnerabilities experienced throughout the research, especially those concerning the relationships with the different actors encountered inside Ponte Galeria (i.e., professional non- state actors, detainees, and police officers). The dilemma of entering inside an oppressive site despite the intention of situating oneself on the side of the oppressed, and the concerns and emotional costs associated with this choice, which were guided by the belief that critical, empirically-informed scholarship on migration-related detention has a transformative potential (see Bosworth & Kellezi, 2017), were discussed. Through this line of personal questioning, which echoes the tensions navigated by human rights advocates supporting 211 detainees (see Article IV), questions were raised concerning the most effective ways to counter the detention system, and whether it should be challenged from the inside or the outside (see also Chapter 1.4, General Conclusions). Furthermore, beginning with the first- hand experience of the researcher, and the fact that several actors within the detention center viewed her as being harmless and vulnerable, simply for being a woman, this reflexive account also highlights the gendered nature of the detention regime, and how normative notions of vulnerability and dangerousness come into play in everyday life in detention, shaping the experiences of those within these settings.
Article III further expanded upon this reflection, through its focus on the lived experiences of women detainees, who were characterized as an “otherwise silenced custodial population” by Bosworth and Kellezi (2014, p. 81). The narrative thematic analysis of participants’ biographical accounts, inspired by the work of Lykes and Hershberg (2015), highlighted the role of gender and sexuality, in intersection with other structural determinants, such as race, class, and nationality, in shaping women’s experiences of becoming illegalized, as well as their life in detention and after being deported. In doing so, the complex relationship that exists between oppressive forces and people’s capacity to resist them was highlighted, thus challenging the dominant understanding of detention centers as mere “zones of exclusion” (e.g., Bloch & Schuster, 2005; De Genova & Peultz, 2010).
In particular, our findings show how the migration of women was, in all of the cases analyzed, an outcome of their struggles against the inequalities that affected their life at their place of origin, encompassing factors, such as traditionally-imposed gender and sex roles, gender-based violence, and situations of poverty in which the burden of supporting their families was primarily women’s responsibility. At the same time, our findings highlight that women’s decisions to leave their countries of origin were shaped by a variety of needs, aspirations, and desires, which were mainly driven by the search for a dignified life and expanded opportunities for self-determination. Yet, in the face of increasing border securitization by the EU and many nation states, this search was constrained by the limited possibilities available to women to emigrate regularly, which were also determined by the geopolitical location of their struggles. As a result, our participants recounted their struggles to arrive in Europe, often relying on partners or family members to assist them in obtaining a tourist visa, thus obligating them to reimburse their lenders for the financial costs of migration, and/or causing them to become dependent upon their sponsors for the recognition of their legal status and rights. In cases in which no regular migration alternatives were available, many women were forced to migrate irregularly, undertaking long and difficult 212 journeys toward their European destinations. During these journeys, which were usually marked by abuse and human rights violations (especially in the case of migrants coming from Sub-Saharan Africa), gender and financial means, in intersection with other factors, influenced migrant women’s exposure to danger and violence.
In Italy, the situation for our participants was not much better, with their lives being negatively affected by racialized gender violence and marginalization. This was also true in the case of one participant who, despite being an undocumented migrant, was born and raised in Italy.19 Poverty, labor exploitation, and sexual and domestic violence were common experiences among these women. However, similar to the findings highlighted by Sladkova, García Mangado, and Reyes Quinteros (2012) in their research on migrant communities living in Lowell, Massachusetts, the threat of being apprehended and deported prevented our participants from reporting these situations to legal authorities. This shows how state- designated juridical migration statuses (i.e., being an “illegal” alien) can become sociopolitical conditions as well (De Genova, 2002), providing grounds for abuses perpetrated by partners and employers, and heightening women’s vulnerability and exposure to multiple types of violence, including state-sponsored violence. In the case of our participants, the latter form of violence manifested itself through immigration enforcement procedures, such as raids, arrests, detention, and deportation.
Nevertheless, the women we met were not merely victims of broader social forces, but rather strived to resist and sought legitimate subject positions. To do so, they relied on family ties and relationships of solidarity, most often formed with other migrant women. In particular, inside Ponte Galeria, where gender, sexuality, race, and nationality profoundly shaped the aspects of everyday life, a constant tension between membership based on a shared national identity and a sense of belonging to the larger community of detainees was present among women in the detention center (see also Bosworth, 2014). Furthermore, the precarious living conditions and the prison-like environment, combined with a general uncertainty and a lack of information, caused a high level of stress, adding to the main challenge faced by migrant women in detention in struggling to make sense of their confinement based on administrative grounds. Indeed, the women’s main claim was to freedom. Therefore, solidarity and sisterhood became means to pursue this goal and to “resist and undermine the
19 As mentioned in Chapter 1.1 of the General Introduction, Italian citizenship law is largely based on the principle of jus sanguinis. 213 deportation machine” (Campesi, 2015, p. 429), even at the cost of exercising physical resistance. When ultimately taken away by force, even through the use of violence and extra- legal practices,20 many women attempted to find a way to re-emigrate, as the stigma and abuses they faced in their countries of deportation were often unbearable.
Overall, the analysis of the five stories selected offered a broader view of the operation of immigration and border systems, in addition to shedding light on how these systems reflect and further entrench the normative power hierarchies and discourses existing in societies at large (Lewis & Naples, 2014; Luibhéid, 2005). Remarkably, all of our participants, as well as, the majority of the women that we met inside Ponte Galeria, had experienced some form of gender-based violence, whether it was in their country of origin, in transit, or even in Italy. However, none of them had access to any form of protection, in spite of the existing safeguards, such as asylum or protective systems for victims of trafficking and/or exploitation.21 As a consequence, these women have had to live their lives as illegalized, detainable, and deportable non-citizens (see De Genova, 2016). Yet, they did not passively suffer from this enforced violence and precariousness, but rather they kept on striving and resisting. This resistance, in addition to migrant women’s attempts to accept, negotiate, manipulate, and contest “racial,” gender, sexual, and class hierarchies, continued during their detention inside Ponte Galeria, and even following their deportation. In this regard, solidarity and sisterhood with women affected by similar experiences were crucial and revealed the importance of establishing solidarity networks from below, in order to challenge regimes of oppression.
Detention harms not only those confined, but also the professional actors working in these contexts (see Campesi, 2015; Puthoopparambil, Ahlberg, & Bjerneld, 2015). As illustrated in Article IV, staff members inside Ponte Galeria struggled to make sense of their experiences working in a detention center, often reporting signs of physical and emotional exhaustion. Originating mostly from a humanitarian background, staff members sought to offer “assistance” and “help” to detainees, viewing themselves as a humanitarian link whose
20 For example, see the case of the 66 Nigerian women mentioned in Article III (for a lengthier discussion, see Rigo, 2017). 21 Article 18 of Legislative Decree 286/1998 (‘Italian Immigration Law’) provides a program of social integration/rehabilitation for victims of violence and severe exploitation. It also grants program participants a temporary a 6-month residency permit (renewable for one additional year), which can later be converted into a student visa or a work permit (for a critical analysis of this program, see Andrijasevic, 2010).
214 ultimate goal was to make detainees’ incarceration more bearable. However, such values and aspirations came into conflict with the coercive nature of a detention system mainly shaped by the police’s securitarian approach. As a result, confusion and ambivalence regarding their professional obligations and the environment in which they were required to operate were widespread among detention center workers. For instance, staff members usually referred to detainees as “guests,” while also describing Ponte Galeria as a place where detainees could find “humanitarian assistance,” pending a decision on their immigration cases. Even when acknowledging detention as a form of imprisonment, staff members depicted their professional role as standing “shoulder to shoulder” with detainees and, in spite of the emotional cost of being empathetic to their suffering, guaranteeing their fundamental rights until their release into the community or their deportation. Yet, the pursuit of this mission was punctuated by obstructions and inconsistencies.
First, detainees, echoing activist and media reports, often depicted staff members as “jailers,” blaming them for their detention and being skeptical about the staff’s intentions to help, while ultimately questioning the humanitarian nature of the staff’s work. Furthermore, a sense of insecurity and fear that unpleasant events could occur at any moment was pervasive among staff members (see also Hall, 2010, 2012; Fisher, 2015; Puthoopparambil et al., 2015). These feelings were amplified by a lack of training to manage tension-filled situations, as well as by the perception of security forces as being slow to intervene when necessary. Staff members reported particular difficulties regarding situations in which deportation decisions had to be communicated to detainees. Due to their lack of power concerning detainees’ immigration cases, staff members felt as though they had “their hands tied,” experiencing powerlessness and frustration. The emotional proximity established with some detainees, especially with women and those without a criminal record, complicated the picture, making it more difficult for staff to witness the suffering of detainees, especially in the case of those who were struggling to remain in Italy. This burden was worsened by the lack of psychological supervision and the staff’s inability to share any uneasy feelings with other colleagues in dedicated safe spaces. In this complex scenario, “I do my best,” ultimately became the guiding principle for action for the majority of detention center workers, viewing this perspective as a way to secure their salaries, while simultaneously attempting to ethically justify their work.
In spite of their different positions within the social context of the detention center, external civil society actors who entered Ponte Galeria to provide detainees with legal, psychosocial, and/or spiritual aid (i.e., human rights advocates, volunteers from faith-based 215 organizations and religious congregations, and lawyers), or those who documented detainees’ circumstances and living conditions, as in the case of journalists, also navigated tensions, challenges, and dilemmas in carrying out their activities in such a coercive site. While, in general, they did not perceive detention in a positive light and, in some cases, they even manifested overtly abolitionist positions,22 these actors chose to “get in.” In doing so, their efforts were divided between providing individual support to detainees, while simultaneously working toward changing the system and its rules. A political understanding of their mission was the main motivation for many of these professionals, especially human rights advocates, to continue offering their services inside Ponte Galeria, in spite of the numerous challenges they faced. Said challenges stemmed from restrictions concerning their access to the center and detainees (especially male detainees, who were often depicted as “dangerous subjects”), a lack of information and collaboration on the part of the police and, at times, by detention center staff, and an overall atmosphere of looming mistrust, tension, and suffering in the detention center. Making use of the tools available within the state’s legal framework, these actors strived to ensure detainees’ right to live a “livable life” (see Butler, 2004).
In the case of faith-based volunteers and members of religious congregations, their work was mainly focused on finding ways to improve detainees’ living conditions and, most of all, as also highlighted in Snyder, Bell, and Busch-Armendariz’s (2015) study, to “humanize their experience.” In contrast, and in line with previous studies (Briskman, Zion, & Loff, 2012; Essex, 2014; Kotsioni, 2016), we found human rights advocates to be much more critical of their presence within the detention center, expressing concerns about the legitimatization of the detention and deportation system, in addition to worries about their indirect “complicity” with its operations. In particular, one concern regarded their ability to assist only a small number of detainees, due to limited time and resources, thus facing the difficult task of deciding which cases they should prioritize. Moreover, not all cases had “positive outcomes.” These situations burdened human rights professionals emotionally, especially in the face of their affective involvement in their relationships with detainees. Whereas the impossibility to respond to the needs of all detainees caused human rights advocates stress and frustration, the opportunity to “save” someone from deportation and facilitate their release to start a life in Italy is what provided them with the motivation to
22 The use of the term “abolitionist position” refers to the attitude of favoring the end of migration-related detention and the closure of all detention centers. 216 continue their work. Placing their energy in advocacy work outside the detention center setting was another strategy frequently adopted by these actors (see also Kotsioni, 2016).
Professionals’ everyday accounts complemented those of the detainees, with both perspectives being crucial to developing a critical understanding of how the detention system works. Overall, our findings suggest that working in detention center environments may be particularly challenging, in addition to having impacts on one’s own sense of vulnerability and mental health, a finding also reported by Bosworth (2016). Moreover, given the management paradigm of the Italian detention system, where detention center management has historically been entrusted to private entities with a humanitarian background, our findings provide new insights regarding the scholarly debate concerning the articulation of security and humanitarian logics within the framework of contemporary immigration laws and policies (Agier, 2011; Fassin, 2012; Harrel-Bond, 2002; Ticktin, 2011). The examination of the role of “humanitarian reason” (Fassin, 2012) in migration-related detention settings is an emerging topic of inquiry. In particular, and, in line with the evidence provided by previous studies (Campesi, 2015; Fisher, 2015), humanity and security, care and control, repression and protection, and inside and outside (especially in the case of external civil-society actors), all emerged as crucial points of tension at stake in the detention center we studied, affecting the everyday relationships between professionals and detainees. Caught in between these conflicting forces, and often feeling powerless, both center staff and external civil society actors navigated the ethical dilemmas produced by their urge to “do good” within such abject and constraining circumstances, albeit in divergent ways that reflected their different positions within the social context of the detention center. Furthermore, these professional actors suffered the personal and collective costs resulting from these same dilemmas. Therefore, in the face of our results, we argue that our study provides a starting point to problematize the idea, previously suggested by other scholars (Hall, 2010; Hiemstra, 2014), that “creating [a] space for the rehumanization of detained migrants” (Hiemstra, 2014, p. 584; emphasis on the original) at the level of everyday interactions in detention centers can be a solution for change. Our findings, on the contrary, show how, in Italy, such humanitarian discourse ultimately works to normalize the inherent violence of the detention system in the eyes of the broader public (see also Cadeddu, 2013; Campesi, 2015), veiling the fragmentations, power inequalities, and colonial legacies in which detention practices are grounded. Furthermore, our findings show how professionals, particularly those contracted by detention management agencies, are often sent into the field without previous training, adequate resources, and/or psychological supervision, in addition to lacking the power to make substantive alterations to 217 the detention system, as such changes would need to be of a structural nature. Therefore, these professionals also become “victims” of the detention system, eventually paying the price, in terms of their own well-being, for being empathic witnesses to detainees’ suffering due to violence at the hands of the Italian state.
Finally, Article V, the most comprehensive contribution drawn from our research, analyzes the ecology of everyday life inside Rome’s Ponte Galeria detention center, viewed from the perspective of the principles of interdependence, cycling of resources, adaptation, succession, and justice, as applied to the study of migration-related detention (see Article I). In particular, the triangulation of the thematic analyses (Braun & Clarke, 2006; Riger & Sigurvinsdottir, 2016) performed through the collection of fieldnotes, interview transcripts, and documental and multimedia texts opens a window into the situated and context-dependent experiences of detainees and professional actors at Ponte Galeria.
An analysis based upon the principle of interdependence unveiled how immigration enforcement practices, including detention and deportation, are likely to affect all people directly and indirectly exposed to them. In particular, the interdependence principle exposed how the life space of individuals, both detainees and professionals working at these sites, and their person-environment interdependencies, were reshaped at multiple levels by the experience of detention (see Kelly, 2006). From detainees’ own perspectives, a significant distress was highlighted. Ths distress was mainly associated with Ponte Galeria’s prison-like environment, the hyper-regulation of life and poor living conditions inside the center, a lack of activity, stimulation, and privacy, a sense of rupture from their previous routines, and a perceived unfairness of detention as a form of confinement being administered even though they committed no crime. Most of all, detainees viewed the experience of incarceration itself, together with the uncertainty and unpredictability about its duration and/or possible outcomes, as causing the greatest harm to their mental and physical health (see also Cleveland, Kronick, Gros, & Rousseau, 2018; Coffey et al., 2010). Furthermore, detention also affected the family systems of those confined within it. Inside Ponte Galeria, detainees were stripped of their family roles and prevented from contributing to their families’ lives, including financially. As a consequence, many families were suddenly left without a steady source of income, and often had to take on the additional financial burden of covering the legal expenses of their detained family members. Moreover, confinement also caused a disruption of detainees’ social networks, with most detainees not even being allowed to bid farewell to their friends and acquaintances prior to deportation. Finally, detention deeply affected the professional actors engaged within Ponte Galeria, revealing the interdependence of their well-being with 218 that of detainees (see Article IV).
For its part, the cycling of resources shed light on the way resources (e.g., money, infrastructures and goods, but also services and expertise) were created, managed, and distributed inside Ponte Galeria, as well as on the role that politics and policies, along with other forces, played in this process (see Kelly, 1968). The analysis of this principle showed how the Italian system of outsourcing detention center management to private entities on the basis of the most economically competitive bid, both raised profits for the chosen detention center management agency and reduced the burden on the state’s budget, while simultaneously having extremely detrimental effects on those confined and working in detention centers. This outsourcing scheme led to a de facto progressive reduction in the services and resources available inside the Ponte Galeria detention center, in addition to resulting in the downsizing of its staff and a reduction in their specializations. As a result, detainees and professionals’ quality of life in detention was significantly affected, a phenomenon that was accompanied by an overall increase in distress and tensions within the center. In this scenario, civil-society actors operating inside Ponte Galeria were among the few sources of support available for detainees, providing them with information and socio- legal aid. These external actors, especially human rights advocates, lawyers, and journalists, were among the few sources to publicize the degrading and unfair treatment received by detainees.
The analysis of the principle of adaptation centered on the person-environment fit (see Kelly, 2006), in addition to highlighting the strategies that both detainees and professionals implemented in order to cope with detention and its related instability, as well as to resist and improve their respective situations. In this regard, families, friends outside, and, above all, other people confined within Ponte Galeria were singled out by detainees as being their main sources of informative, material, and emotional support, thus constituting fundamental resources for their survival in detention. Remarkably, even romantic relationships occasionally flourished between detainees, thus becoming a means to challenge “the institutionalized, emotionally sanitized, gender-segregated space” (Mehta, 2014, p. 182), characteristic of detention facilities. However, not all detainees coped with their confinement by relying on social and/or intimate networks formed within the walls of Ponte Galeria. In contrast, some opted for isolation as a way to deal with their problems and prevent themselves from getting into trouble, while others alienated themselves through drug use. Furthermore, a large number of detainees found the motivation to “keep going” through religious and spiritual practices. Detainees also commonly used strategies of self-distraction in order to fill 219 their unoccupied time. Finally, both active and passive resistance formed a part of everyday life inside Ponte Galeria. Detainees used riots, protests, fires, individual and group escapes, and physical confrontation with staff members and police officers to challenge the detention and deportation machine. Other strategies that detainees adopted included self-harm (e.g., lip- sewing), non-compliance with detention rules, and artistic performances (i.e., painting, singing, dancing, and story writing). All of these actions displayed the “complex volition” of detainees (Hall, 2010, p. 893), in addition to possessing immense political potential and crying out against a system perceived to be deeply unjust.
Professional actors, particularly center staff, also struggled to give meaning to their experiences working in a detention center, in addition to encountering difficulties in reducing the feelings of powerlessness and frustration that characterized their daily work life. As discussed in Article IV, in order to give a sense of meaning to their presence in a detention setting and to deal with the associated emotional costs, professional actors within Ponte Galeria clung mostly to the idea that by “staying inside” they could make a positive difference for detainees. Irrespective of their different positions within Ponte Galeria, this line of thinking was evident among both center staff and external civil-society actors (e.g., NGO practitioners, FBO volunteers, and members of religious congregations), even among those who did not approve of detention based on ideological and/or political grounds, such as human rights advocates (i.e., members of NGOs/independent organizations). In particular, staff members resorted to strategies such as emotionally distancing themselves from detainees and attributing the impacts of their actions to the regulations imposed by state authorities. Conversely, external civil-society actors tended to focus their efforts on the identification and referral of vulnerable cases within the detention center, in addition to their advocacy work outside Ponte Galeria.
The analysis of the principle of succession, which considers how time frames systems and social life therein (Kelly, 1968), fostered an understanding of the peculiar temporalities of detention, as well as of the tensions and power relations that shape said temporalities. For most detainees, time in detention passed slowly and was characterized by long periods of waiting, occasionally punctuated by detention routines and bureaucratic timeframes. Furthermore, many detainees reported feeling as though they were stuck in detention without any opportunities to make progress in their lives. In spite of this sense of suspension and stasis, time in detention was also marked by abrupt and unpredictable changes (e.g., deportation or release without prior warning), whose outcomes could be highly disruptive. These changes, especially in the case of deportation, caused violent breaks in detainees’ 220 temporal expectations, in addition to undermining their ability to plan for the future.
Finally, the analysis of the principle of justice – which has to do with the fair and equitable distribution of resources and treatment of people, and is at the center of an ecological conception of wellness (Prilletensky, 2012) – emphasized the dehumanization and depersonalization that characterized the treatment of those detained, exemplified by the fact that detainees were usually called by number rather than by name. In addition to the dilapidated conditions of the facility and the poor living conditions experienced by detainees, issues of information and communication emerged as being particularly critical. The majority of detainees had little understanding of what was happening to them, and received minimal, patchy, or even intentionally distorted information about the reasons for their detention and/or the status of their immigration cases. This situation amplified an overall sense of confusion and uncertainty, which was worsened by detainees’ perception of their treatment by police as being arbitrary and uneven, both outside and inside Ponte Galeria. In addition, lawyers, who were supposed to help detainees clear up any confusion and assert their legal rights, were often unreliable (exeption was made for those who understood their work as a political engagement, as the lawyer we interviewed). Most lawyers gave detainees’ cases minimal attention, or even took advantage of detainees’ vulnerability for their personal financial gain. As a result, detainees were often left to navigate the immigration and detention systems alone, and even cases of abuse or police brutality went largely unchallenged. As illegalized and deportable aliens, detainees were ultimately excluded from having access to the basic rights entitled to citizens, and ended up not receiving the protections that they deserved.
Overall, Article V’s findings highlighted the immense costs that detention implies in terms of human suffering, particularly for detainees, but also for the professionals working within detention centers, in addition to the arbitrariness and inhumanity that characterizes detention sites. In particular, uncertainty and instability emerged as crucial means used to dominate those confined within migration-related detention centers, eroding their ties with the outside world and turning them into a source of profit for the detention industry. However, when combined with the insights derived from Article III, our analysis highlighted the extraordinary protagonism of those subject to this, “form of structural violence” (Cleveland et al., 2018, p. 7), and their varied forms of agency, response, and resistance. These findings demonstrated the complexity of the internal worlds of detention institutions, which Giuseppe Campesi has previously depicted as, “a battleground between migrants’ subjectivity and the State’s attempts to confine them inside enclosed places, or trajectories of restricted mobility” (2015, p. 449). 221
This final contribution, in addition to the wider contributions of this study’s findings, has broader implications beyond this specific case-study, which are of importance on both the local and global levels. In line with the insights provided by other scholars (e.g., Bosworth, 2014), this research found that detention emerged as a key component of a wider set of measures implemented by states to filter and manage the flows of people entering and residing in their territories. In particular, our findings corroborate the existence of a system of differential mobility (Mezzadra & Neilson, 2013), which reifies and perpetuates “persisting conditions of injustice” (Prilleltensky, 2012) across racialized, class-based, gendered, and citizenship lines, and, which especially, but not uniquely, harms citizens coming from the Global South. In doing so, this system also sustains a regime of “differential inclusion” (Casas-Cortes et al., 2015),23 which ultimately distinguishes between qualified citizens and “deserted subjects” (Kalir, 2017). As a result of this regime, those who are classified as “illegal” are turned into unwanted and expendable others, and their containment becomes a means to extract profit from them, while simultaneously justifying government expenditures (see Fernandes, 2007; Golash-Boza, 2009). Such inequalities among differing populations, created and maintained by geopolitical borders, have also been denounced as a form of “apartheid” (e.g., Khosravi, 2018) that is increasingly resulting in life-or-death consequences.
In the face of this evidence, community psychologists, along with other scholars and society as a whole, urgently need to take a stance (see also Chicco, Esparza, Lykes, Balcazar, & Ferreira, 2016; Langhout et al., 2018). Indeed, our analysis of professional actors’ experiences at Ponte Galeria revealed that neither “benevolent defiance” nor “empathic care” are sufficient to challenge the reality of migration-related detention. Rather, an ecological vision calls, first, for a critical questioning concerning the structural inequalities on which migration and detention policies are founded; and, then, to increased advocacy, based on scholarly evidence, capable of supporting active opposition and transformative change.24
23 According to Casas-Cortes et al., “differential inclusion describes how inclusion in a sphere, society or realm can involve various degrees of subordination, rule, discrimination, racism, disenfranchisement, exploitation and segmentation” (2015, p. 79). 24 According to Nelson, Kloos, and Ornelas (2014), transformative change is rooted in an ecological model that highlights and strives to structurally change the power relationships that affect people’s lives within particular contexts. 222
1.2. Challenges and Limitations of the Study
Conducting research inside custodial sites, such as migration-related detention centers, is not an easy task. Indeed, once research access is obtained a difficult, if not impossible feat (see Steel & Silove, 2004), the challenges of conducting research inside a detention center are numerous and strictly limit the researcher’s capacity to implement their ideal research design (see Article II, as well as Bosworth & Kellezi, 2016, 2017; Kirmayer, Rousseau, & Crépau, 2004; Steel & Silove, 2004).
The high level of mistrust and uncertainty that characterizes detention environments, a lack of familiarity with academic research by most people within these centers, as well as the different, and often conflicting, interests and expectations of the various groups inside migration-related detention centers (i.e., detainees, management agencies, external civil- society actors, and police officers), are some of the main challenges researchers in this field have to face (Bosworth & Kellezi, 2016, 2017). The combination of these factors compromises the possibility to adopt traditional research designs. In particular, as other scholars have highlighted (e.g., Cleveland et al., 2018), it is very difficult to use randomized sampling strategies and rigid research protocols, as the possibility to control the study environment is extremely limited and detention authorities also usually refuse to provide a list of detainees, as in the case of the present research. Therefore, in the face of these conditions, researchers need to be creative and adjust their research to the context under study. In this light, many scholars have favored qualitative and, particularly, ethnographic modes of inquiry, viewing them as being more flexible and; hence, more suited to the highly volatile context of detention (Bosworth, 2014; Bosworth & Kellezi, 2016).
As a result, this study also privileged a critical ethnographic framework based on qualitative data elicitation strategies (see Chapter 2, General Introduction). However, challenges and constraints remained. Indeed, the people we met inside Ponte Galeria, primarily detainees, but also staff members, usually presented high levels of distress, and were not always willing to share their experiences with “outsiders,” as in the case of certain detainees, for whom remembering and narrating their stories was too painful. Moreover, some viewed the presence of the researcher with suspicion, questioning the purpose and the potential impact of her work.
The extreme heterogeneity of the detained population, the diversity of their cultural, religious, educational, and political backgrounds, as well as their divergent literacy levels and Italian language knowledge, constituted further obstacles to the current study (see Robjant, 223
Hassan, & Katona, 2009). As many studies often lack the funds to pay for linguistic and cultural mediators (as was the case of the current research), often the only option is to rely on the resources already available at detention sites, such as volunteer interpreters or interpretation phone services, or to solely interview people with whom the researcher is able to communicate in a sufficiently fluent way (in the case of this study, encompassing those fluent in either Italian, English, Portuguese, or Spanish). Obviously, this affects data collection, diminishing the ability of the researcher to building meaningful relationships with those confined, in addition to a priori excluding some detainees, and, possibly, the most silenced ones, from the research.
In particular, the interviews conducted by the present research were based on heterogeneous sampling, with the aim of capturing the diversity of the experiences of non- citizens in detention. In spite of the relatively large number of participants (N=88, 49 men and 39 women), which guarantees the inclusion of a wide range of perspectives, we acknowledge that some experiences may have been under-represented or not represented at all, mostly as a result of the factors described above, and, primarily, due to language barriers Indeed, due to a lack of resources, we were only able to get the support of volunteer interpreters provided by a local NGO in four cases (a Moroccan, a Senegalese, and two Chinese women). Yet, it is important to note that in environments characterized by such “hyper-diversity” (Bosworth, 2012, p. 133), as in the case of most detention centers, it is very difficult, if not nearly impossible, to reflect the experiences of all detainees in a sole study.
Interviews with professional actors, especially detention center staff, presented challenges and constraints too. As in the case of detainees, staff members were also affected by the detention environment and its uncertainties, frequently presenting high levels of stress, alienation, and defensiveness, as our results demonstrated (see Article IV). Given the politicized and secretive nature of their work, detention center staff members are usually wary and reluctant to openly engage in research processes, and are also likely scared that their participation may have negative professional repercussions (see Bosworth & Kellezi, 2017). In our case, the choice of the professional actors who were interviewed was guided by the intent to include the widest variety of perspectives and experiences via heterogeneous sampling. However, as with detainees, the consistency and trustworthiness of the relationships established during the research process were decisive in influencing those who decided to participate or not. Therefore, we acknowledge that, due to the aforementioned factors and the limited sample size (N=14), some experiences may have been under-represented or not represented at all. In particular, it was not possible to conduct formal interviews with police 224 officers or members of the military. As explained to the researcher during a conversation with the head of the local police immigration office, a lengthy and time-consuming process asking for formal authorization from high ranking officials from each of the respective security forces (Polizia di Stato, Carabinieri, Guardia di Finanza, and Esercito) would have been necessary for police and/or military members to participate in this study’s research.
Finally, as far as other limitations are concerned, we acknowledge that the case-study basis of this research, as well as the great variability of detention conditions both within and across countries (see Chapter 1.1, General Introduction), may limit the generalizability of our findings (see Robjant, Hassan, & Katona, 2009). However, according to some authors (e.g., Flyvbjerg, 2006), this is one of few common misunderstandings concerning the generalizability of case-study research. In particular, Flyvbjerg argues that, “the case-study has its own rigor, different to be sure, but no less strict than the rigor of quantitative methods. The advantage of the case-study is that it can ‘close in’ on real-life situations and test views directly in relation to phenomena as they unfold in practice” (2006, p. 235).25
Furthermore, and according to Flyvbjerg’s conceptualization, the generalizability of case-studies very much depends on how these cases are selected, stressing the importance of how strategically chosen case-studies can be “central to scientific development via generalization as [a] supplement or [an] alternative to other methods” (2006, p. 228). Following Flyvbjerg’s suggestions on how to generalize findings based upon case-studies, the present research can be classified as both a critical and an extreme case-study.26 This research can be viewed as a critical case-study, given the atypical humanitarian framework that has consistently characterized Italian public policy regarding the confinement of illegalized non- citizens. Italian migration-related detention policies contrast with those of many other countries, such as the U.K. and the U.S., as they are characterized by the use of a humanitarian vocabulary when referring to detention, in addition to the outsourcing of most of the detention system’s management to humanitarian organizations (see Campesi, 2015 and
25 In addition, we should not forget that also quantitative studies rely on the researcher’s subjective criteria, for instance in the choice of variables to study. 26 According to Flyvbjerg (2006, p. 230), critical case-studies are those that allow one to acquire information that permits logical deductions, such as, “If this is (not) valid for this case, then it applies to all (no) cases.” In other words, critical cases allow researchers to either clearly confirm or uncontestably refute propositions and hypotheses (in our case, that humanizing detention can be a solution for change). In contrast, extreme case- studies are used to obtain information on unusual cases, which can be especially problematic (as in our case, given the oppressive qualities present in the environment at Ponte Galeria), or especially good in a more closely defined sense. 225
Article IV). At the same time, this study can be conceptualized as an extreme case-study in regard to the prison-like architecture that characterizes detention centers in Italy, and Ponte Galeria in particular, as well as concerning the harshness of living conditions inside this detention center, which have been denounced by several groups (e.g., LasciateCIEntrare 2016; Medici per i Diritti Umani, 2012). By allowing to explore the intersection between a humanitarian logic and oppressive environmental qualities, this case-study is particularly well suited to critically analyze the nature, purpose, and multiple psychosocial effects of detention.
1.3. Directions for Future Studies
In general, our work intends to build the grounds for conducting future research on migration-related detention. The high human and financial costs associated with this measure – notwithstanding its scarce effectiveness in pursuing a state’s stated goal, i.e., removing illegalized non-citizens from its territory (Commissione Straordinaria per la Tutela e la Promozione dei Diritti Umani, 2017; Esposito, Ornelas, & Arcidiacono, 2015)27 – raise compelling questions about the purpose and effect of detaining people for reasons related to their migration status. Indeed, despite the evidence, governments around the world remain as committed to utilizing detention centers as they have been during the last few decades. More so, many states appear evermore willing to tightening migration policies in the near future – many, including Italy, are doing so as we write. Consequently, thousands more will be locked up, condemned to endure inhuman conditions and be deprived of basic guarantees and protections.
This scenario demands further investigation into the reality of migration-related detention centers – which is still poorly studied in many countries due to the numerous barriers to academic inquiry – in order to reduce harm and bring about just changes. This independent research needs to go hand in hand with a sustained engagement with the lived experiences of those partaking in these institutions (Bosworth, 2014). These people, both detainees and professionals, have emotions, aspirations, desires, visions, and goals. They are the ones who experience the material effects of the detention regime, while simultaneously
27 As reported by the Italian Senate’s Extraordinary Commission for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights (Commissione Straordinaria per la Tutela e la Promozione dei Diritti Umani, 2017), during 2016, 2,984 people passed through Italian CPRs. Of these, 1,441 were deported (48%), and 1,166 (39%) were released with an expulsion order. 226 taking part in its reproduction. They are often also the ones who aspire to and strive for a different system. As such, the understanding of their perspectives, in their complexities and contradictions, is essential to fully grasping how the detention regime works. Furthermore, their voices and active participation, especially the participation of detained non-citizens, are essential to foster change.
Transcending individual-centered analyses of detainees’ mental health as impacted by detention – the most common approach among scholars in the medical and psychological fields (see Chapter 1.2, General Introduction) –, the justice-focused ecological perspective that we adopted highlighted the role of a range of embedded contexts (individual, family/relational, organizational/communal, national, and supranational) and forces (historical, cultural, economic, geopolitical) in shaping the experiences lived by detainees and professionals inside detention settings.
Despite the effort to take an ecological stance and take into account the complexity that makes up the internal world of migration-related detention, we acknowledge that our study, as all research, was limited in its reach, as previously discussed (see Chapter 1.2, General Conclusions). There are multiple factors at stake in the everyday operation of migration-related detention, beyond those focused upon in this study. Furthermore, the reality of detention may differ from site to site even within the same national contexts, not to mention the variability across countries. Therefore, as a complement to our findings, as well as to the limited scholarly evidence currently available in this area, more investigation is undoubtedly required. Research should be carried out both in Italy, where other detention centers deserve examination,28 and elsewhere – also taking into account the recent development of new forms of confinement, such as the “hotspot” system (Tazzioli & Garelli, 2018).
More specifically, several areas of potential interest for research emerge from our work. Particularly, further research should explore in greater detail the perspectives of professional actors engaged in these settings. As mentioned in the methodological section (see Chapter 1.2, General Conclusions), the number of professionals who participated in our study was limited (N=14), and the original findings provided by our analysis should therefore be corroborated by further research with larger samples. While most research so far has been
28 At the time of writing five detention centers, in addition to Rome’s one, are operating in Italy. These centers are located in Turin, Caltanisetta, Bari, Brindisi, and Potenza. 227 carried out in countries wherein the migration-related detention systems resemble offshoots of the penal system (e.g., the UK or the USA), our findings suggests that there is a value in offering contrapuntal perspectives by studying contexts in which migration-related detention is rather framed by a humanitarian reason. Further research should therefore consider more detention centers in Italy, as well as encompass further countries, like Portugal, so far outside of international discussions. By widening the geographical perspective, research would test the hypothesis, advanced in our research by means of critical case-study analysis based on an ecological framework, that humanizing detention can not be a solution for change. Furthermore, future studies focusing on professional actors should aim to include the perspectives of police officers and state actors more generally. These participants would offer valuable perspectives and related insights, helping to enhance our understanding of the multiple intricacies of the migration-related detention system.
Additional research is required on the perspectives of detainees as well, in particular, as our study reveals (see in particular Article III), a deeper inquiry into the lived experiences of women confined in these sites is necessary (see also Bosworth & Kellezi, 2014). Although women in detention have specific needs and face particular challenges (e.g., Shaw, 2016), as it is also known that many of them have experienced forms of gendered violence (e.g., sexual, domestic, and/or reproductive violence), efforts to integrate a gender and intersectional perspective into the analysis of migration-related detention are still rare, thus raising compelling reasons for further academic scrutiny in this field. In particular, this research should not simply examine how migration-related detention affects women differently from men, but rather grasping how gender – among other factors like race, sexuality, nationality – influences the ways in which women and men enter into and experience confinement, as well as how the detention system upholds and reinforces gendered roles and relations (see Sládkova & Bond, 2011). As shown by our findings, longitudinal analysis of detainees’ life stories (both women and men) can be very informative in this regard (see Article III).
Considering the high level of suffering found among detainees and professionals in the context of our study, future research should also further investigate the relationship between the experiences of these two groups, especially looking at the effects of detention in terms of their interconnected well-being. To do so, said studies should preferentially rely on multi- and mixed-methods approaches that allow a nuanced and ecological understanding of the phenomenon under study (Robjant, Hassan, & Katona, 2009). Indeed, as Campbell, Patterson, and Fehler-Cabral (2010, p. 267) noted, “a mixed-methods paradigm is an excellent fit with ecological theory’s mandate for pluralistic inquiry” (see also Kelly, 2003). For instance, in the 228
UK, Bosworth and Kellezi (2012) piloted a survey measuring the quality of life in detention, combining quantitative data with qualitative data collected during fieldwork in detention. Their findings highlighted how those detainees that felt that they had good relationships with both detention staff and other detainees found the experience of detention less difficult to cope with (Bosworth, 2014; Bosworth & Kellezi, 2012). Our findings too, based on the combination of multiple qualitative data sources, highlighted how the experiences of detainees and professionals working at Ponte Galeria were deeply related, the suffering of the one group affecting that of the other. Another approach capable of providing significant insights is the adoption of a longitudinal view in order to assess the deep impacts of detention at multiple levels of people’s lives. In particular, as also highlighted by other scholars (Bosworth, 2016; Robjant et al., 2009), these researches should point out not only people’s levels of distress, but also which factors contribute to increased affliction, as well as which strategies and resources can help people cope with detention by enhancing their resilience (see Bosworth, 2016).
Finally, our ecological framework opens up to further fields of study which we could not examine in-depth in this research, constituting interesting areas for future exploration (see Article I, Table 2). These include the degree of cultural sensitivity within detention institutions, the interrelation between social-political-economic factors and their influence in terms of everyday operation of migration-related detention centers, the relationship between detention status and the guarantee of rights established by national regulations and international agreements, as well as post-detention and post-deportation experiences. Overall, future empirical studies are strongly encouraged to adopt the proposed innovative community psychology’s ecological framework as a whole, and to adapt it to the study of particular detention contexts in order to gain a deeper contextualized understanding and promote transformative change at multiple ecological levels.
1.4. Implications for Policy and Action
Critical community psychology frames the ethnographic approach deployed for the study of Rome’s Ponte Galeria detention center, contributing to this analysis at the nexus of psychology, policy, and a search for justice. Remarkably, as early as 1977, Rappaport emphasized the relevance of the community psychology’s distinctive approach, arguing that the purpose of community psychology is centered in the pursuit of social transformation, a process that can only occur by looking simultaneously at the multiple contexts, forces, and 229 systems that shape an individual’s life. With the ecological perspective, Kelly (1968, 2006) introduced a paradigm that opened the way toward a process of “taking environment into account” (Trickett, 1984, p. 265), allowing community psychology scholars to grasp the complex interdependences between individuals and the contexts in which they partake, and, as a result, be able to actively contribute to the promotion of social change. Taking a step forward, more recently, Prilleltensky (2012, 2013) has emphasized the importance for making explicit the relationship between justice or injustice and human wellness, also proposing the concept of psychopolitical validity to be applied in community psychology research (Prilleltensky, 2003). This concept, which is particularly relevant for unravelling societal impacts of critical ethnographic research, is particularly concerned with “the extent to which research contributes to understanding, resisting, and addressing diverse forms of oppression” (Dutta, 2016, p. 72).
In our particular case-study, the adoption of a justice-focused ecological perspective to study the phenomenon of migration-related detention provided us a platform to document the deeply contextualized and particularized understandings of detention generated by those taking part in the daily life within these institutions, connecting structural inequalities and people’s everyday experiences. In doing so, we have expanded on the idea put forward by Lykes and Hershberg that, “participants’ experiences and strengths in the face of complex suffering, and multiple violations cannot be captured by individual-level descriptions of loss, stress, or trauma, nor can they be understood when excised from their historical and social contexts” (2015, p. 260).
In light of this community psychology’s perspective, findings described in this thesis ultimately suggest that migration-related detention centers are spaces where racialized people are exposed to conditions of abandonment, suffering, and abuse, despite the individual and collective resistances put in place. This form of confinement, as our critical analysis revealed, echoes and reproduces colonial power relations, contradicting contemporary trends of mass mobility and the promotion of human rights (see, for instance, Bosworth, 2014).
Based on this evidence, and in order to contribute towards a process of transformative change in this area (see Nelson, Kloos, & Ornelas, 2014), we suggest that migration-related detention should urgently be ended in Italy, but clearly also internationally. In this regard, we are now going to briefly illustrate a range of possibilities for change that are already discussed, implemented, and studied around the world. Overall, we argue that any change in this field should take into account a multiplicity of factors located at different ecological levels, and, most importantly, should be based on a collaborative bottom-up process involving 230 the participation of those directly impacted by detention and, more broadly, by border control.
Mary Bosworth (2018) carried out an extensive review of the literature on alternatives to detention (ATDs), outlining the models of alternatives implemented or piloted internationally and in the UK, and so far as possible assessing the outcomes, benefits, and related concerns of said models. In particular, drawing on academic scholarship as well as government and non-governmental literature, Bosworth defines ATDs as any measure employed after a detention determination is made in the individual case, and which involves a less coercive means of control than confinement and the loss of liberty.29 Yet, acknowledging the complexity of the international debate over such a definition, as well as the lack of consensus around ADTs’ goal and justification, Bosworth suggests that a broader view of ADTs also exists. In this regards, she relies on the work of Costello and Kaytaz who highlight that, in a broader sense, ATDs may also refer to “any of a range of policies and practices that States use to manage the migration process, which fall short of detention, but typically involve some restrictions” (2013, p. 10). Such understanding of ATDs – advocated by several actors among which is worth mentioning the International Detention Coalition (IDC) – look at a broader range of mechanisms to support and manage individuals in the community without the use of migration-related detention (Mitchell, 2017). In doing so, such expansive interpretation of ATDs aims to include and better identify the systems which avoid detention altogether, contrasting the inadvertent tendency to normalize detention and providing effective alternatives for states where detention is used.
Mirroring this diversity of views existing in the literature on ATDs, the review by Bosworth (2018) shows that, overall, practices adopted throughout the globe vary widely, and include: temporary admission, reporting requirements, parole, bail, appointment of a guarantor, open and semi-open centers or alternatives places of detention (including family detention and community detention), house arrest, curfew, voluntary return incentives, electronic surveillance, case management, casework support, surrender of identification and travel documents, and assisted voluntary returns schemes (AVRs). In spite of the widespread support that ATDs, unlike detention, enjoy within governments, the NGO sector, and the academy, these practices, however, have rarely been systematically evaluated. As a
29 Although allowing non-citizens to reside in the community while their cases are processed, Bosworth (2018) emphasizes that ATDs are inscribed in immigration and asylum law. 231 consequence, their form, goals, and outcomes still remain opaque, as do their impact on broader policies of detention and migration control. Furthermore, a perspective almost entirely missing from the literature is that of individuals subject to these programs as well as of professionals administering them on behalf of the state.
Notwithstanding this evidence, Bosworth (2018) highlights that the few studies available have shown that ATDs are usually cheaper than detention (reason why they are attractive to governments), and overall less harmful to the physical and mental health of those concerned (reason why they are advocated by NGOs and academics). However, remarkable differences exist among the various schemes, and they mostly depend on the framework on which said schemes are inspired (e.g., criminal justice versus social-work). For instance, interventions based on criminal justice practices, like electronic monitoring, have been largely criticized as they can exacerbate existing problems of immigration control, such as the criminalization and stigmatization of non-citizens and their difficulty to engage with community-based assistance. Furthermore, concerns have been highlighted about the detrimental impact of tagging on civil liberties, the risk of extending state’s oversight to a wider-range of people than those subject to detention, and the pressures that this expansion in the administration of border control may place on the overall system. Temporary admission and bridging visas are other examples of ADTs that have been found to have a negative impact on the well-being of people, as the distress they can cause, especially in terms of uncertainty, is very similar to that produced by detention.
In contrast, community-based case-management interventions offering legal advice, housing, and access to social and healthcare services engender the best outcomes (Bosworth, 2018). Although not being entirely un-coercive, these programs, which can take a number of forms, are rooted in a model of social work and promote a more active role of those subjected to them, as well as a more humane and dignified treatment of individuals in the process of addressing their cases. As a result, when well-funded and well-supported, these community- based programs present the higher levels of compliance by participants with their immigration process, also including individuals perceived as presenting higher risk of absconding (Mitchell, 2017; Sampson, Chew, Mitchell, & Bowring, 2015). With the aim of increasing the reliance on community-based migration models among states and preventing unnecessary detention, the IDC has also developed a Community and Assessment Model highlighting the steps governments and stakeholders can take in order to implement effective community- based programs directed to illegalized non-citizens (for a detailed description of the model, see Sampson et al., 2015). 232
Despite the large differences between the various schemes, as illustrated above, studies across jurisdictions have highlighted a consistent set of concerns about the overall use of ATDs. Namely these include (Bosworth, 2018, p. 215): lacking or problematic monitoring and regulation of ATDs programs; an overall widening of the reach of migration control to the community; the outsourcing to private sector (both for- and not-for-profit); the risk of incentivizing NGOs to become active in border control; the indistinction among different groups with different needs (e.g., asylum seekers, former prisoners, undocumented migrants); the dominance of criminal justice methods (e.g., electronic monitoring); the way restrictions on residence end up limiting people’s liberty and movement thus resulting in a de facto detention; the difficulty of living and integrating into the community when individuals are subject to severe restrictions (e.g., prohibition to work); and the uncertainty provoked by visa regimes (i.e., temporary admission). Above all, as Bosworth’s findings demonstrate, the adoption of ATDs does not entail per se a reduction in the use of administrative detention. In contrast, when not accompanied by an explicit, legally bound, commitment to ending detention – at least for particular groups regarded as vulnerable, such as children – there is little evidence that ATDs actually reduce the reliance on confinement. Indeed, read in light of our ecological framework, the shortcomings of an ATD approach suggest that, when change is implemented by looking at the personal, and/or interpersonal, and/or organizational dimensions only, hence without taking into account the communal dimension (which includes legal, political, and economic factors), side effects may be around the corner.
In particular, ATDs can be deployed against people who would not otherwise be detained, thus expanding the mechanisms of population management available to the state. Furthermore, these alternative schemes devolve to the community the grueling task of balancing care and coercion, humanity and security, and of navigating the related contradictions (see Fassin, 2012). Therefore, as Bosworth acutely notes, when supporting ATDs “the challenge then remains how to devise programmes that can assist without unnecessarily extending costly forms of state oversight and control” (2018, p. 236). In this sense, and as our research demonstrates, when changes are to be implemented in this area, it is important to embrace a multilevel and dynamic conception of the ecological environment, looking especially at the wider immigration system in which alternative programs are going to operate (e.g., mandatory or discretionary nature of detention). Indeed, as Bloomfield (2016) notes, it is worth remembering that in the EU scenario, ATDs were traditionally built as reactive rather than proactive response to the tightening of migration control.
Finally, it is worth noting that ATDs, even when based on community models of 233 migration governance, have been primarily focused on children and those classified as “vulnerable” (usually assessed based on their age, gender/diversity, health, protection needs). While there are important reasons for prioritizing these individuals for non-detention, a focus on alternatives for vulnerable groups arguably enable governments to cope with criticism and civil society calls for a more human border control management, but without actually dismantling the system of detention. These maneuver shows, borrowing Fassin’s words (2012), how a politics of compassion, rather than of justice, is actually fostered in migration policies. As a result, alternatives may impact the lives of a minority, while keeping behind the bars the majority of detainees, usually single men (Sampson & Mitchell, 2013).
Acknowledging the concerns illustrated above, I would like to conclude this thesis by making reference to a different set of perspectives, more in line with the results of our study, on how to tackle the issue of migration-related detention and seeking change. In particular, rather than focusing only on improving the situations of non-citizens subject to border control, these perspectives acknowledge the structural determinants that expose these people to heightened vulnerability, exploitation, and suffering (as highlighted by our ecological analysis; see in particular Article III and V), hence calling for a wholesale reimagining of the way states conceptualize migration, citizenship, and non-citizens themselves. In doing so, they re-emphasize “the taboo against depriving anyone of their liberty without charge” (Flynn, 2013, p. 11). Overall, these perspectives, largely inspired by reflections on the prison system (e.g., Davis, 2003, 2005), offer an abolitionist vision of migration-related detention, also providing an alternative moral framework upon which “inclusive, democracy-enhancing alternatives” can be built (García Hernandez, 2017, pp. 264-265).
For instance, García Hernandez (2017) demonstrates that detention reforms fail to address the structural roots and immorality of detention institutions as both a means of racial subordination and a source of racial oppression. Such reforms are therefore unable to successfully dismantle the very dehumanizing violence at the hearth of the detention and deportation system. In line with this argument, our findings have hilighted the continuity of racialized and gendered violence and exploitation endured by our participants in their lives before, during, and after detention, and how this structural violence is overall based in a diminished view of non-citizens’ humanity. Therefore, we agree with García Hernandez (2017) that, in order to be effective, any solution to the phenomenon of migration-related detention must consider the social, economic, and political forces that push certain people toward a position of illegality and detainability – that is, consider the political economy of migration management and its subordination to “the everyday mandates of capital 234 accumulation” (De Genova, 2010, p. 47). Furthermore, these solutions must involve the replacement of existing oppressive institutions with new ones, inspired by alternative visions that stand “at odds with the rhetoric of migrant criminality that led to large scale immigration imprisonment” (García Hernandez, 2017, p. 292). In particular, it worth noting that there is nothing morally inferior about lacking status as a citizen of the Global North: recognition of citizenship status, and hence the possibility to move across borders, is only an indicator of states’ dominant norms regarding privilege, and is closely tied to one’s race, nationality, gender, or class (see García Hernandez, 2017, pp. 293-296).
If we open up the field of vision beyond the experiences of the Global North, we would find out that there are states that do not make use of detention to respond to the challenges posed by global human mobility. For instance, many South American countries have recently affirmed a human rights paradigm regarding migration policies and issues, taking a strong stance against the criminalization and securitization of migration (Ceriani Cernadas, 2017). In particular, in 2008, Ecuador – the country where the largest refugee population of Latin America resides – has approved a new Constitution that forbids the term “illegal” as associated to any human being, as well as any type of criminalization of migration (Article 40). Moreover, said Constitution recognizes the principle of universal citizenship, the freedom of mobility for all human beings, the progressive ending of foreign status, and demands the respect of the human rights of migrant people. In January 2017, these progressive principles have been translated into law (Organic Law on Human Mobility), although outcomes are yet to be evaluated.
Inspired by similar values and perspectives, in 2014 – in the aftermath of the October 2013 shipwrecks in the Mediterranean Sea, that costed the lives of 600 migrant women, men, and children – a vast number of individuals, groups, and migrants’ rights organizations gathered in the Italian island of Lampedusa to elaborate a proposal for a different conception of migration and its management. Participants, both activists from European countries and persons directly affected by border control, wanted above all to emphasize how people on the move should be viewed, rather than as threats to national security or subjects for humanitarian intervention, as political subjects able, and with the right, to actively participate in a transformative change of migration policies and politics. The result of three days of workshops, seminars, and constituent discussions is a “pact” among its creators, a 235 proclamation of principles, and a concrete proposal for policy change elaborated from below: The Charter of Lampedusa.30
Overall the Charter of Lampedusa affirms the need for “a radical transformation of the social, economic, political, cultural, and legal relations” (from the Preamble) that characterize current European and global migration control policies, and for the construction of alternatives “based on freedom and on every person’s life prospects, with no distinction made on the basis of nationality, citizenship and/or place of birth” (from the Preamble).
Such a transformative change should encompass: the abolition of any visa regime, that is, the reduction of the requirements needed to formalize presence to mere checking of identity; the abolition of regulations which directly or indirectly configure people as “illegal/irregular”; the abolition of every regulations or practice that make access to recognized rights unequal on the basis of the place of birth/citizenship/juridical status; the recognition of a single EU citizenship based on the principle of residence within the EU space; the provisions of channels to guarantee an immediate and safe arrival for those who flee from persecutions, dangers, and/or catastrophes (be they of climate, environmental, political, religious, economic or social nature), and without this right being contrasted with the freedom of movement of people who do not experience these conditions; and the immediate abolition of migration-related detention and the closure of all detention centers as well as any facility that limits people’s freedom of movement. The Charter also calls for the replacement of the current reception systems, based mainly on camps and closed institutions, with a decentralized, flexible, and individualized system of reception, tailored to migrants’ trajectories, needs and goals, and based on their active engagement in all decision-making processes. Such a system actually mirrors innovative ecological community-based programs developed in the field of mental health and homelessness (see Ornelas, Martins, Zilhão, & Duarte, 2014; Ornelas, Duarte, & Jorge-Monteiro, 2014). In point of fact, these programs have already inspired proposals for the reception of refugees and asylum seekers, particularly in the Italian context (see Rainisio & Riva, 2017).
Concluding, if one was to limit their vision to the current landscape, they would be tempted to believe that the end of migration-related detention, and border control more generally, are impossible to achieve. This indeed was the common thinking also before
30 Available at: www.lacartadilampedusa.org/index.html. 236 deinstitutionalization in the field of mental health occurred, and psychiatric hospitals were replaced by community-based services (see Nelson et al., 2014, Ornelas et al., 2014). Indeed, also in the field of border control, we have seen that there are places where migration-related detention does not exist or is extremely limited. More than that: while international migration has always taken place, it is only recently that detention has become a common tool for states’ regulation of migration-related activity. It was, and hence can be, otherwise. The process that brought to the approval of the Charter of Lampedusa, on its side, shows that alternative visions can, and indeed ought to, be based on the experiences, desires, and aspirations of those directly impacted by current border control policies. Despite their urgency, these transformations may take some time before being materialized in practice. This, however, should not push the academic community to a retreat into the comfort of minimal reformism. Community psychology, as a discipline, is indeed rooted in the idea that transformative change is possible; and it is so thanks to the engaged collaboration between academia, activists, and the community at large. This thesis, which is ultimately dedicated to all the persons that we met behind the walls of migration-related detention and that shared their experiences and struggles with us, constitutes a step in this direction, hopefully a brick toward the realization of this transformative change.
2. References
Agier, M. (2011). Managing the undesirables: Refugee camps and humanitarian government. Flammarion: Polity Press. Andrijasevic, R. (2010). Migration, agency and citizenship in sex trafficking. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. Bloch, A., & Schuster, L. (2005). At the extremes of exclusion: Deportation, detention and dispersal. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 28(3), 491-512. Bloomfield, A. (2016). Alternatives to detention at a crossroads: Humanisation or criminalisation? Refugee Survey Quarterly, 35(1), 29 - 46. Border criminologies. (2013b, September 27). Ethnography as embodied research [web log post]. Retrieved from: http://bordercriminologies.law.ox.ac.uk/ethnography-as- embodied- research/ Bosworth, M. (2012). Subjectivity and identity in detention: Punishment and society in a global age. Theoretical Criminology, 16(2), 123-140. Bosworth, M. (2014). Inside immigration detention. Oxford: University Press. Bosworth, M. (2016). Mental health in immigration detention: A literature review. Criminal 237
Justice, Borders and Citizenship: Research Paper No 2732892. Retrieved from: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2732892 Bosworth, M. (2018). Alternatives to immigration detention – A literature review. In S. Shaw (Ed.), Review into the welfare in detention of vulnerable persons. Retrieved from: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachme nt_data/file/490782/52532_Shaw_Review_Accessible.pdf Bosworth, M., & Kellezi, B. (2012). Quality of life in detention: Results from MQLD questionnaire data collected in IRC Yarl’s Wood, IRC Tinsley House, and IRC Brook House, August 2010 – June 2011. Retrieved from: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2448404 Bosworth, M., & Kellezi, B. (2014). Citizenship and belonging in a women's immigration detention centre. In C. Phillips & C. Webster (Eds.), New directions in race, ethnicity and crime (pp. 80-96). Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Bosworth, M., & Kellezi, B. (2016). Getting in, getting out and getting back: Conducting long-term research in immigration detention centres. In S. Armstrong, J. Blaustein, & A. Henry (Eds.), Reflexivity and criminal justice: intersections of policy, practice and research (pp. 237-262). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Bosworth, M., & Kellezi, B. (2017). Doing research in immigration removal centres: Ethics, emotions and impact. Criminology and Criminal Justice, 17(2), 121-137. Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006) Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77-101. Briskman, L., Zion, D., & Loff, B. (2010). Challenge and collusion: health professionals and immigration detention in Australia. The International Journal of Human Rights, 14(7), 1092-1106. Butler, J. (2004). Precarious life: The powers of mourning and violence. New York: Verso. Cadeddu, D. (2013). CIE e complicità delle organizzazioni umanitarie. Roma: Sensibili alle foglie. Campbell, R., Patterson, D., & Fehler-Cabral, G. (2010). Using ecological theory to evaluate the effectiveness of an indigenous community intervention: A study on sexual assault nurse examiner (SANE) programs. American Journal of Community Psychology, 46, 263-276. Campesi, G. (2015). Hindering the deportation machine. An ethnography of power and resistance in immigration detention. Punishment and Society, 17(4), 427-453. 238
Casas-Cortes, M., Cobarrubias, S., De Genova, N., Garelli, G., Grappi, G., Heller, C., … Tazzioli, M. (2015). New Keywords: Migration and borders. Cultural Studies, 29(1), 55-87. Ceriani Cernadas, P. (2017). Back to basics? The limited use of immigration detention in South America: an interpretation based on international human rights treaties and principles. In M. Flynn & M. Flynn (Eds.), Challenging immigration detention. Academics, activists and policy-makers (pp. 239-264). Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Chicco, J., Esparza, P., Lykes, M. B., Balcazar, F. E., & Ferreira, K. (2016). Policy Statement on the incarceration of undocumented migrant families. American Journal of Community Psychology, 57(1-2), 255-263. Cleveland, J., Kronick, R., Gros, H., & Rousseau, C. (2018). Symbolic violence and disempowerment as factors in the adverse impact of immigration detention on adult asylum seekers’ mental health. International Journal of Public Health, 1-8. Coffey, G. J., Kaplan, I., Sampson, R. C., & Tucci, M. M. (2010). The meaning and mental health consequences of long-term immigration detention for people seeking asylum. Social Science and Medicine, 70(12), 2070-2079. Commissione Straordinaria per la Tutela e la Promozione dei Diritti Umani. (2017). Rapporto sui centri di permanenza per il rimpatrio in Italia (aggiornamento dicembre 2017). Retrieved from: http://www.asylumineurope.org/sites/default/files/resources/rapporto_cie_cpr.pdf. Costello, C., & Kaytaz, E. (2013). Building empirical research into alternatives to detention: perceptions of asylum seekers and refugees in Toronto and Geneva. UNHCR. Retrieved from: http://www.unhcr.org/protection/globalconsult/51c1c5cf9/31- building-empirical-research-alternatives-detention-perceptions-asylum.html. Davis, A. Y. (2003). Are prisons obsolete? New York: Seven Stories Press. Davis, A. Y. (2005). Abolition democracy: Beyond empire, prisons, and torture. New York: Seven Stories Press. De Genova, N. (2002). Migrant “illegality” and deportability in everyday life. Annual Review of Anthropology, 31, 419-447. De Genova, N. (2010). The deportation regime: Sovereignty, space and the freedom of movement. In N. De Genova & N. Peultz (Eds.), The deportation regime: Sovereignty, space, and the freedom of movement (pp. 33-65). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. De Genova, N. (2016, November). Detention, deportation, and waiting: Toward a theory of 239
migrant detainability. Global Detention Project (Working Paper No. 18). Retrieved from: https://www.globaldetentionproject.org/detention-deportation-waiting-toward- theory-migrant-detainability-gdp-working-paper-no-18 De Genova, N., & Peultz, N. (2010). The deportation regime: Sovereignty, space, and the freedom of movement. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Esposito, F., Ornelas, J., & Arcidiacono, C. (2015). Migration-related detention: a focus on the Italian context. In A. Cunha, M. Silva, & R. Frederico (Eds.), The Borders of Schengen (pp. 177-191). Brussels: P.I.E. Peter Lang. Essex, R. (2014). Human rights, dual loyalties, and clinical independence: Challenges facing mental health professionals working in Australia’s immigration detention network. Bioethical Inquiry, 11, 75–83. Fassin, D. (2012). Humanitarian reason: A moral history of the present. Berkeley: University of California Press. Fernandes, D. (2007). Targeted: Homeland security and the business of immigration. New York: Seven Stories Press. Fischer, N. (2015). The Management of anxiety. An ethnographical outlook on self- mutilations in a French immigration detention centre. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 41(4), 599-616. Flynn, M. (2013, September). The hidden costs of human rights: The case of immigration detention. Global Detention Project (Working Paper No. 7). Retrieved from: https://www.globaldetentionproject.org/the-hidden-costs-of-human-rights-the-case-of- immigration-detention Flyvbjerg, B. (2006). Five misunderstandings about case-study research. Qualitative inquiry, 12(2), 219-245. García Hernández, C. C. (2017). Abolishing immigration prisons. Boston University Law Review, 97(1), 245-300. Global Detention Project. (2018). USA Statistics. Retrieved from: https://www.globaldetentionproject.org/countries/americas/united-states. Golash-Boza, T., (2009). The immigration industrial complex: Why we enforce immigration policies destined to fail. Sociology Compass, 3(2), 295-309. Hall, A. (2010). ‘These people could be anyone’: Fear, contempt (and empathy) in a British immigration removal centre. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 36(6), 881-898. Hall, A. (2012). Border watch. Cultures of immigration, detention, and control. London: Pluto Press. 240
Harrel-Bond, B. (2002). Can humanitarian work with refugees be humane? Human Rights Quarterly, 24(1), 51-85. Hiemstra, N. (2014). Performing homeland security within the US immigrant detention system. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 32, 571–588. Iyengar, S., Landri, C., Mini, M., Ogada-Osir, A., Roman, E., Skalon, T.,... & Veglio, M. (2012). Betwixt and between: Turin’s CIE. A human rights investigation into Turin’s detention center. Retrieved from: http://www.ristretti.it/commenti/2012/ottobre/pdf3/rapporto_cietorino.pdf Kalir, B. (2017). State desertion and ‘out-of-procedure’ asylum seekers in the Netherlands. Focaal-Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, 77, 63-75. Kelly, J. G. (1968). Toward an ecological conception of preventive interventions. In J. R. Carter, Jr. (Ed.). Research contributions from psychology to community mental health (75–99). New York: Behavioral Publications. Kelly, J. G. (2003). Science and community psychology: Social norms for pluralistic inquiry. American Journal of CommunityPsychology, 31, 213–217. Kelly, J. G. (2006). Becoming ecological: An expedition into community psychology. New York: Oxford University Press. Khosravi, S. (2018). Introduction. After deportation: Ethnographic perspectices. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave MacMillan. Kirmayer, L. J., Rousseau, C., & Crépeau, F. (2004). Research ethics and the plight of refugees in detention. Monash Bioethics Review, 23(4), 85-92. Kotsioni, I. (2016). Detention of migrants and asylum-seekers: The challenge for humanitarian actors. Refugees Survey Quarterly, 35(2), 41-55. Langhout, R. D., Buckingham, S. L., Oberoi, A. K., Chávez, N. R., Rusch, D., Esposito, F., & Suarez-Balcazar, Y. (2018). Policy Statement on the effects of deportation and forced separation on immigrants, their families, and communities. American Journal of Community Psychology. Retrieved from: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ajcp.12256 LasciateCIEntrare. (2016). Accogliere: la vera emergenza. Rapporto di monitoraggio della campagna lasciatecientrare su accoglienza, detenzione amministrativa e rimpatri forzati. Retrieved from: http://www.lasciatecientrare.it/j25/attachments/article/193/lasciateCIEntrare%20rapp orto%202016-2.pdf 241
Lewis, R., & Naples, N. (2014). Introduction: Queer migration, asylum, and displacement. Sexualities, 17(8), 911-918. Luibhéid, E. (2005). Queer migration: Sexuality, U.S. citizenship, and border crossings. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Lykes, B., & Hershberg, R. (2015). Continuities and discontinuities in human rights violations: Historically situating the psychosocial effects of migration. Journal of Social Issues, 71(2), 244-263. Medici per i Diritti Umani. (2012). Le sbarre piú alte. Rapporto sul centro di Identificazione ed Espulsione di Ponte Galeria a Roma. Retrieved from: http://www.mediciperidirittiumani.org/pdf/LE_SBARRE_PIU_ALTE.pdf. Mehta, R. (2014). So many ways to love you/self: Negotiating love in a prison. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 16(2), 181-198. Mezzadra, S., & Neilson, B. (2013). Border as method, or, the multiplication of labor. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Mitchell, G. (2017). Global advocacy: civil society engagement of government on alternatives to immigration detention. In M. Flynn & M. Flynn (Eds.), Challenging immigration detention. Academics, activists and policy-makers (pp. 120-140). Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Nelson, G., Kloos, B., & Ornelas, J. (2014). Transformative change in community mental health: A community psychology framework. In G. Nelson, B. Kloos, & J. Ornelas (Eds.), Community psychology and community mental health: Towards transformative change (pp. 3-20). New York: Oxford University Press. Ornelas, J., Duarte, T., & Jorge-Monteiro, M. F. (2014). Transformative organizational change in community mental health. In G. Nelson, B. Kloos, & J. Ornelas (Eds.), Community psychology and community mental health: Towards transformative change (pp. 252-277). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ornelas, J., Martins, P., Zilhão, T., & Duarte, T. (2014). Housing First: An ecological approach to promoting community integration. European Journal of Homelessness, 8(1), 29-56. Prilleltensky, I. (2003). Understanding, resisting, and overcoming oppression: Toward psychopolitical validity.American Journal of Community Psychology, 31, 195–201. Prilleltensky, I. (2012). Wellness as fairness. American Journal of Community Psychology, 49, 1-21. Prilleltensky, I. (2013).Wellness without fairness: The missing link in psychology. South 242
African Journal of Psychology, 43(2), 147-155. Puthoopparambil, S. J., Ahlberg, B. M., & Bjerneld, M. (2015). “It is a thin line to walk on”: Challenges of staff working at Swedish immigration detention centres. International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-Being, 10, 10.3402/qhw.v10.25196. Rainisio, N., & Riva, E. (2017). Dare asilo attraverso la casa? Verso un modello Housing First per rifugiati e richiedenti Asilo. In C. Marchetti, & B. Pinelli (Eds.), Confini d’Europa. Modelli di controllo e inclusioni formali. Milano: Raffaello Cortina. Rappaport, J. (1977). Community psychology: Values, research and action. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Riger, S., & Sigurvinsdottir, R. (2016). Thematic analysis. In L. A. Jason & D. S. Glenwick (Eds.), Handbook of methodological approaches to community-based research: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods (pp. 33-41). New York: Oxford University Press. Rigo, E. (2017). Re-Gendering the border: Chronicles of women's resistance and unexpected alliances from the Mediterranean border. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies. Retrieved from: https://www.acme- journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1436. Robjant, K., Hassan, R., & Katona, C. (2009). Mental health implications of detaining asylum seekers: Systematic review. British Journal of Psychiatry, 194(4), 306-312. Sampson, R. C., Chew, V., Mitchell, G., & Bowring, L. (2015). There are alternatives: A handbook for preventing unnecessary immigration detention (revised ed.). Melbourne: International Detention Coalition. Sampson, R., & Mitchell, G. (2013). Global trends in immigration detention and alternatives to detention: Practical, political and symbolic rationales. Journal on Migration and Human Security, 1(3), 97-121. Shaw, S. (2016). Review into the welfare in detention of vulnerable persons. Retrieved from: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachme nt_data/file/490782/52532_Shaw_Review_Accessible.pdf Sládková, J., & Bond, M. A. (2011). Migration as a context-dependent dynamic in a world of global inequalities. Psychosocial Intervention, 20(3), 327–332. Sládková, J., García Mangado, S. M., & Reyes Quinteros, J. (2012). Lowell immigrant communities in the climate of deportations. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 12(1), 78-95 Snyder, S., Holly, B., & Busch-Armendariz, N. (2015). Immigration detention and faith-based 243
organizations. Journal of Social Work, 60(2), 165-173. Steel, Z., & Silove, D. (2004). Science and the common good: Indefinite, non-reviewable mandatory detention of asylum seekers and the research imperative. Monash Bioethics Review, 23(4), 93-103. Tazzioli, M., & Garelli, G. (2018). Containment beyond detention: The hotspot system and disrupted migration movements across Europe. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 026377581875933. Ticktin, M. (2011). Casualties of care: Immigration and the politics of humanitarianism in France. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Trickett, E. J. (1984). Toward a distinctive community psychology: An ecological metaphor for the conduct of community research and the nature of training. American Journal of Community Psychology, 12(3), 261–279.
244
245
ANNEXES
246
247
Annex I – Photos of Rome’s Ponte Galeria detention center
Men’s living unit
Sector, open-air square Sector with dormitories Dormitory
Barber room Entrance of a dormitory Dormitory Women’s living unit
Dormitory Main corridor Sector, open-air square
Dormitory Sector with Shower Toilet dii 250
251
Annex II – ISPA-Instituto Universitário Ethical Committee Approval
Comissão de Ética de Investigação ISPA - Instituto Universitário de Ciências Psicológicas, Sociais e da Vida Rua Jardim do Tabaco, 34, 1149-041 Lisboa Telefone: (351) 218 811 700 Fax: (351) 218 860 954
COMISSÃO DE ÉTICA
PARECER
Título do projeto:!"#%#(! (+ ##(!%!!0 %!%(!2%#%!%!%%#!! #%$!"#'9#!%(!! #%9#& Investigador responsável: Francesca Esposito Instituição/Curso: ISPA- Instituto Universitário Telefone para contacto: [email protected];
O protocolo do estudo apresenta objetivos relevantes. Foram descritos adequadamente os métodos e procedimentos a adotar e estes respeitam os direitos humanos e as recomendações constantes nos documentos nacionais e internacionais relativos à ética em investigação.
Assim, o parecer da Comissão de Ética do ISPA-Instituto Universitário é favorável à realização do estudo em epígrafe.
Qualquer alteração futura aos procedimentos descritos do estudo que possam colidir com os critérios éticos de investigação com seres humanos ou animais não humanos constantes nos referidos regulamentos, exigem uma reapresentação do pedido de apreciação a esta Comissão.
Comissão Ética do ISPA – Instituto Universitário
(Assinatura do Presidente da CE)
__Lisboa__, __22__ de __Novembro__ de 2016. 253
Annex III – Short Script for Participant Observation
!"#$% &'(% )"*$(% $+,$-"$'.$/% 0#% ,$0,)$% "'/"($% 1"2-&3"0'4 -$)&3$(%! ($3$'3"0'5% 6'% $.0)02".&)% $+,)0-&3"0'% "'30% -01$7/% ($3$'3"0'%.$'3$-%"#$%&''$(!
!
)*+','-.,$*&!#&/&#&*'&(!)0"12)*+','-'$!3*,4&#+,'5#,$6!7,+8$96!"$#'-%9:! ;&+<$*+98,:,!+=,&*',/,=,(!"#$/>!?$+@!A#*&:9+!&!"#$/>9!B9'&#,*9!1#=,C,9=$*$! ;,=&#=9'#,=&!<#,*=,<9:&(!D#9>!E#9*=&+=9!F+<$+,'$! "#$%&''$!/,*9*.,9'$!C9::9 E-*C9GH$!<9#9!9!B,I*=,9!&!J&=*$:$%,92EBJ(!0E;KLMDLNONPQLRSTR
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`LRSSa>!)*!\-9:-*\-&!<-88:,=9.,$*&!/-'-#9!*$*!9<<9#,#9**$!V9,!,!*$V,!C&,!<9#'&=,<9*',6!*@!C9',!=[&! <&#V&''9*$!:9!:$#$!#,=$*$+=,8,:,'^>!b&:!=9+$!,*!=-,!*$*!4$%:,9!=[&!+,9*$!#&%,+'#9'&!$++1.,$*,!+-!C,!:&,! <-c! =[,&C&#&! 9::9! #,=&#=9'#,=&! C,! *$*! /9#:$6! =$+X! =$V&! <-c! =[,&C&#:&! C,! $V&''&#&! 9:=-*&! <9#',! C,! '9:,!
$++1.,$*,!=[&!,*'&*C&!V9*'&*&#&!=$*/,C&*.,9:,>!! ! ! 8-&9"$%,$-%)&%.0))&:0-&9"0'$%
! ! !
! ! !
! ! ! 0&! ,*'&#&++9',L&! 9! V9%%,$#,! ,*/$#V9.,$*,! =,#=9! :$! +'-C,$! &L$! ,! +-$,! #,+-:'9',! <$'&'&! =$*'9''9#&! :9! #,=&#=9'#,=&!<#,*=,<9:&6!D#>++9!E#9*=&+=9!F+<$+,'$(!/&+<$+,'$d,+<9><'!! ! 255
Annex IV – Interview Script used with Detainees
! ! ! 74$!994P!"#$%!&'(!)#*%(!%+,%-#%'.%/!0$!,%0,)%!#'/#(%!1#2-&3#0'4-%)&3%(!(%3%'3#0'5!6'!%.0)02#.&)! %+,)0-&3#0'!#'30!-01%7/!(%3%'3#0'!.%'3%-! ! ! 80'/%'/0!9'$0-1&30!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"#!$%&$#!'%(()*+,-./!'%(!0-12$-!.345677/! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!b$4 &!!&3!29!7&! &!5749!D&43!! !&! 9&!5!78431&b! ! !
)4!8499487&994T!VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV!!
!994! &!579!&57!!!6@!894!89@ &4!!!43#!724! &!A!73!!4257!84!1!85&!$D&43!H!A!3 4!A@94! 1a455479@3&9! &!5477!! 423 !!!!%&7&7!! @&Q!!
434! ! 4348!3D! &!579!&57!! &3! @3! &39!7A&89!7!$&8979H! 43! $73D&! &! 343&294! !! 43#& !3D&1&9!&7!&! 9&!5!78431&Q!!
434! 197!8'! ! 4348!3D! !1! #994! %!!1!2&!579!&5D&43!! "!A414397&! !! %!!8434!1&!74T! &! 7!! !7!!&3!6@18&8&!242!394! 114!89@ &4!8!3D!1@3!9&54! &!438!$@!3D!Q!!
1!994! &!579!&57!!A414397&2!39!!1!8@ !994!89@ &4H!@947&DD3 4!1! &88!2&3D&43!! !&!7&8@199&! 8&!39&#&&Q!
29!!Y!!!!!!T!!!!!!T!!!!!`! ! ! 3&72!79!&539!!!VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV! ! ! 3&72!&!797&!!!VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV! ! ! :-&;#%!,%-!)&!.0))&<0-&;#0'%! ! %
!"!#$%"&"''(%#)"!(!*(++#,&#!#$-,&*(.#,$#!/#&/(!0,!'%12#,!"),!#!'1,#!&#'10%(%#!3,%"%"!/,$%(%%(&"!0(!&#/"&/(%&#/"!3&#$/#3(0"4! 5&6''(!7&($/"'/(!8'3,'#%,9!-"'3,'#%,:#'3(63%
9= >-%/%'3&;#0'%!/3?(#0! ! @%1#! 9/3-?;#0'#A!B/%1,#!! 89&! ():$,#,;,9! <&#=%+$#,*+#9! :>?"! '#! 1#$@9&*! $,#*A9! B9&';B%&'9! ;&9! $,;'#9! $;((*! =#,*! &%#! 8%&,+#! '#! :'%&,#C#B*D#9&%! %'! E$F;($#9&%! G8:EH! %! (%! %$F%+#%&D%! '%((%! F%+$9&%! *(! (9+9! #&,%+&9-! 1)9@#%,,#=9! '#! I;%$,*! C*$%! J! • >-%/%'3&-%!2)#!0<#%33#*#! B9AF+%&'%+%! (%! $,9+#%! A#2+*,9+#%K! ()%$F%+#%&D*! #&! +%2#A%! '#! (%))7#'3%-*#/3&! ,+*,,%&#A%&,9! %! (*! F+9$F%,,#=*! B#+B*! #(! C;,;+9! '%((%! F%+$9&%! A#2+*&,#! ,+*,,%&;,%-!>#!#&,%&'9&9!F;@@(#B*+%!#!+#$;(,*,#!'#!I;%$,9!$,;'#9!F%+!C*+! B9&9$B%+%! (%! B9&'#D#9&#! '#! =#,*! &%#! 8:E! %! F%+! B9&,+#@;#+%! *'! ;&! (9+9! A#2(#9+*A%&,9- 1*!$;*!F*+,%B#F*D#9&%K!*,,+*=%+$9!I;%$,*!#&,%+=#$,*K!J!C9&'*A%&,*(%!*(! +*22#;&2#A%&,9! '%2(#! 9@#%,,#=#! A%&D#9&*,#-! :&! ,*(! $%&$9K! J! &%B%$$*+#9! •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
999= E30-#&!(#!*#3&!,-#1&!(%))&!1#2-&;#0'%! !
@%1#!(&!%/,)0-&-%!/%!'0'!1%';#0'&3#!! 9/3-?;#0'#A!B/%1,#!(#!(01&'(%!/3#10)0! 6851477!!897@99@7!!! &32&%!! !11S!$$7!$94!#2&1&7!!! • $439!894!#2&1&7!!!!2&74U84&1!! 89&!BL#!=#=%=*P!89A%!%+*!#(!+*FF9+,9!B9&!#!C*A#(#*+#P!! 89A%!%+*!#(!I;*+,#%+%!#&!B;#!=#=%=*5#!+*FF9+,#!'#!=#B#&*,9P! ! 6851477!!1! &2!38&43!! @19@71!! !&! 439!89&! &3! @&! %!A&88@94! W!Q$QH! 7@41&! &!$!3!7!I!1!$&99&2D&43!! !11!A&41!3DT7&2&3!X! 89A%! %+*! %$$%+%! '9&&*5;9A9! &%(! $;9! F*%$%P! ?%&$*! BL%! #&! :,*(#*! J! • $439!894!274U84&1!! '#=%+$9P!:&!BL%!A#$;+*P! Q;*()%+*!(*!,9((%+*&D*!F%+!(*!=#9(%&D*!#&,%+F%+$9&*(%!%!B9&,+9!'9&&%!%! @*A@#&#!&%(!$;9!F*%$%P!!"==%+,%!'#CC%+%&D%!B9&!(R:,*(#*P! ! 6851477!!5!74784!84189&4!W8!!!8&89!XH!43!99!3D&43!!$1&!3 43&! !!43!3973 48&!8@&!8&$3&#&9&!@19@71&! !1!439!894!8@41T &!!88!7!! 8417&DD94TQ! S#&9!*!BL%!*&&9!L*!$,;'#*,9P!89A%!%+*!#(!$;9!+*FF9+,9!B9&!(*!$B;9(*P!! ?%+BLM!L*!$A%$$9!'#!$,;'#*+%P! • !74784!84189&4!!!1A479&A4! ! 6851477!!4@5D&43&!!!85!99&!7!19&A&!11S7!!1A479&A!W249&AD&43&! !!&39!77@D&43&XQ! 8L%!*,,#=#,O!$=9(2%=*!&%(!$;9!F*%$%!'#!9+#2#&%P!1*=9+*=*P!:&!BL%!*+%*P! Q;*&'9!%!F%+BLM!L*!#&#D#*,9!*!(*=9+*+%P!Q;*&'9!%!F%+BLM!L*!$A%$$9P! !
c
6851477!! !A!39@1&! 4254792!39&! &!7&8%&4H! 6@1&! &1! 438@24! &! 74$%!H!4254792!39&!7&2&31&Q!! E)! A*#! $,*,95*! B9#&=9(,95*! #&! B9AF9+,*A%&,#! '%(#&I;%&D#*(#P! :&! BL%! • $4254792!39&! &!7&8%&4! B#+B9$,*&D%P! T*!A*#!*$$;&,9!'+92L%5*(B99(P! :&!BL%!B9&,%$,9!*==%&#=*!#(!B9&$;A9P! T*!A*#!C*,,9!,+*,,*A%&,#!F%+!'#$#&,9$$#B*+$#P! ! 6851477!!!A!39@1&!!85!7&!3D!! &!&89&9@D&431&DDD&43!Q! W!BQH!&89&9@D&43&!5!7!2&347&I!57&$&43&I!485! 1&!58&%&97&&X! • )89&9@D&431&DDD&43&! E)! A*#! $,*,9! #&! I;*(BL%! #$,#,;D#9&%P! 0#! BL%! ,#F9P! ?%+! I;*&,9! ,%AF9P! 89A%!'%$B+#=%!(*!$;*!%$F%+#%&D*P! ! 6851477!! !A!39@1&! !85!7&!3D!! &!A&99&2&DDD&43!! &3! &A!78&! 439!89&! W!Q$QH!#2&$1&H!7!1D&43&!&39&2!H!439!894!1A479&A4H!439!894!84&1!!!! 541&9&4X! ! ! !85!7&!3D!! &! &87&2&3D&43!!W!Q$QH! &! $!3!7!H! !93&4U @19@71!H!7!1&$&48!!T4!8@!8!!541&9&XQ! ! • 685!7&!3D!! &! E)! A*#! $,*,95*! =#,,#A*! '#! =#9(%&D*! %59! '#$B+#A#&*D#9&%P! 0*! F*+,%! '#! BL#5#&! BL%! B9&,%$,9P! GC*A#2(#*K! B9&#;2%K! *A@#,9! (*=9+*,#=9! 9! $9B#*(%K! A&99&2&DDD&43!T &87&2&3D&43!! %,BUH-!! Q;*(%! %+*! #(! A9,#=9P! G%-2-K! 2%&%+%K! *FF*+,%&%&D*! %,&#B9VB;(,;+*(%! %59! +%(#2#9$*K!A9,#=#!F9(#,#B#K%,BUH! Q;%$,*!%$F%+#%&D*!L*!B9&,+#@;#,9!*((*!$;*!'%B#$#9&%!'#!%A#2+*+%P!:&!BL%! A9'9P! ! ! 9F= >-02%330!%!,%-.0-/0!1#2-&30-#0!
@%1#!! 9/3-?;#0'#A!B/%1,#!(#!(01&'(%!/3#10)0! ! Q;*&'9! %! F%+BLM! L*! '%B#$9! '#! (*$B#*+%! #(! $;9! F*%$%! 'R9+#2#&%P! W249&AD&43&!57!U2&$7947&!X! Q;*(%!%+*!(*!$;*!'%$,#&*D#9&%!C#&*(%P! • 74$!994!2&$7947&4! 8L%!B9$*!$#2&#C#B*=*!F%+!(%#!A#2+*+%P!Q;*(%!%+*!#(!$;9!'%$#'%+#9P!E!(%!$;%! *$F%,,*,#=%P! ! 6851477!!&! &A!78&!1@4$%&!997A!789&! !6@3 4!%!18&94!&1!5!8!! &! 47&$&3!!#&34!11S77&A4!&3!)91&Q!6851477!!3%!P! U!19947&!4&3A419&!!!1474!7@414!W97##&39&I!82@$$1!78I!#2&1&7&T2&&X! • !74784!2&$7947&4! U! 1$!3CH! @94 !9!72&3D&43!! !! 43974114! A8Q! !9!74 !9!72&3D&43!H! A&99&2&DDD&43!!!!84$$&4$2!394Q! U!6A!39&!97@29&&!AA!3@9&! @739!!&1!A&$$&4!W89@57&I!A&41!3D!I!!9RXQ! ! Q;*&'9!M!*++#=*,95*!#&!:,*(#*P!G*&&#!'#!F%+A*&%&D*H!E)!A*#!,9+&*,9!*(! $;9!F*%$%P!! T*!A*#!*=;,9!#(!F%+A%$$9!'#!$922#9+&9P!>%!$WK!'#!BL%!,#F9P!89A%!(9!L*! F%+$9P!W#1@99@D&43!!899@8!2&$7947&4!!!8@!&3#1@!3DX! 89A%!J!$,*,*!(*!$;*!=#,*!';+*&,%!(*!F%+A*&%&D*!#&!:,*(#*P!! • !723!3D!&3!)91&!! :&!BL%!B#,,O!L*!=#$$;,9P! 6851477!!1!7!9!!#2&1&7!!!!84&1!P!T*!C*A#(#*+#!#&!:,*(#*P!"A#B#P! 6851477!!9&54! &!1A474!!!43 &D&43&X!T*!A*#!(*=9+*,9P! 685!7&!3D!! &!439994!43!7!9!!#4721!! &!8!7A&D&!W8!7A&D&!84&4U83&97&I! 884&D&43&I!!!9QQX!!!!85!7&!3D!! &!&89&9@D&431&DDD&43!!W!Q$QH!7!7!XQ! 6851477!!!A!39@1&!4254792!39&! !A&39&T!7&8%&4!W!Q$QH!438@24! &! d
74$%!H!4254792!39&! !1&36@!3D&1&!4!7&2&31&XQ! 685!7&!3D!! &!A&99&2&DDD&43!T8#7@992!394T &87&2&3D&43!Q! !
F= 80'3&330!.0'!#)!/#/3%1&!(#!.0'3-0))0!(%))7#11#2-&;#0'%! ! @%1#! 9/3-?;#0'#A!B/%1,#!(#!(01&'(%!/3#10)0! ! T*! A*#! *=;,9! B9&,*,,#! B9&! (%! *;,9+#,O! '#! B9&,+9((9! '%(()#AA#2+*D#9&%! GF9(#D#*5I;%$,;+*H!F+#A*!'%(()*++#=9!*(!8:EP!W&3!84!!851477!X! •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• &9!3!1!$)6! %!!7!$417&9XI!A&41D&43&! &7&99&!#43 2!391&Q! 1%!6!B9$%!F%22#9+#!%!(%!6!B9$%!A#2(#9+#!'#!I;%$,9!8:E-! ! 6851477!!7!1D&43&! 43P! 197&T!! !9!3@9&T!I! 5!78431!! 1@B&1&@2I! #@3D&437&! ##&&4! )22&$7D&43!!W439994T&3#4XI! 541&D&!W9799! &AQ! !9!3@9!T&! !!343XI!5!78431!!2! &4I! 884&D&43&T2&3&897&!7!1&$&48&! Y!6@&9H!@23&9H! !!3D`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e
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• 685@18&43!!T!&2597&4! %,BUH!!!8(H!8L#!(*!$,*!*#;,*&'9P!G%-2-K!(%2*(#K!*$$9B#*D#9&#H!! \#$F%,,9! *(! $;9! F+92%,,9! '#! =#,*! %! *((%! A9,#=*D#9*$F%,,*,#=%! BL%! ()L*&&9!F9+,*,*!#&!:,*(#*!BL%!B9$*!$#2&#C#B*!F%+!(%#!%$$%+%!+#AF*,+#*,95*! *(!$;9!F*%$%!'#!9+#2#&%P!! !
! F9= G?3?-0!! ! @%1#! 9/3-?;#0'#A!B/%1,#!(#!(01&'(%!/3#10)0! ! • 7485!99&A!!&7!&1!#@9@74! 89$*! $#! *$F%,,*! '*(! $;9! C;,;+9P! G'9F9! ,+*,,%&#A%&,9! &%(! ! 8:E5%$F;($#9&%5+#AF*,+#9XP!8L%!B9$*!'%$#'%+*P!! ! ! F99= F&)?3&;#0'%!(%)!,-0.%//0! !
@%1#!! 9/3-?;#0'#A!B/%1,#!(#!(01&'(%!/3#10)0! ! 411!&97!! &1T1!579!&539!! ! 7!!@3!#!! 0! $!3!71!!8@1! • 1@9D&43!!84$$!99&A!574!884! &! 574!884! &! &39!7A&89! !!8@!4257!38&&1&9! !! &39!7A&89! 557457&9!DDT7&1!A3D! !11!! 423 !Q! • &3$7D&2!394!#&31!! ! !
f 261
Annex V – Interview Script used with Professionals
! ! ! 63$!883D!""!%!#"2!3'("%)!&!'&'#!"%)"!$" (0"&%9(#0!0%0"&%5!6%!&#& "#! 3'#&(0"&%!"%0&!(&$7)!0%0"&%!%0(! ! ! 8&%)%)&!9%&($0&!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"%!3(3%!&&C24BIQ!&!0B.#3B!ISR]PHHQ! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!R)3 &!!&2!18!6&! &!4638!A&32!! !&! 8&!4!67320&R! ! !
43!7388376&883G!HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!
!883! &!468!&46!!!59!783!789 &3!!!32#!613! &!@!62!!3146!73!0!74&!$A&32!C!@!2 3!@983! 0Q34436892&8! &!4366!! 312 !!!!%&6&6!! 9&E!!
323! ! 3237!2A! &! 468!&46!! &2! 92! &28!6@&78! 6!$&7868C! 32! $62A&! &! 232&183! !! 32#& !2A&0&8!&6!&! 8&!4!67320&E!!
323! 086!7'! ! 3237!2A! !0! #883! %!! 0! 1&! 468!&4A&32!! "! @303286&! !! %!! 7323! 0&!63G! &! 6!! !6!!&2!5907&7&!131!283! 003!789 &3!7!2A!092!8&43! &!327!$9!2A!E!!
C!883! &!468!&46!!@303286&1!28!!0!79 !883!789 &3C!9836&AA2 3!0! &77!1&2A&32!! !&!6&79088&! 7&!28&#&&E!
D8!!I!!!!!!G!!!!!!G!!!!!P! ! ! G&61!68!&428!!!HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! ! ! G&61!&!686&!!!HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! ! ! :(4"!'(!#!&##&(4"&%! ! %
!"!#$%"&"''(%#)"!(!*(++#,&#!#$-,&*(.#,$#!/#&/(!0,!'%12#,!"),!#!'1,#!&#'10%(%#!3,%"%"!/,$%(%%(&"!0(!&#/"&/(%&#/"!3&#$/#3(0"4! 5&6''(!7&($/"'/(!8'3,'#%,9!-"'3,'#%,:#'3(63%
96 >()%04"&%!)01"&! ! $"! 9)0(14"&%"8!B)$'"!! 8^(! &C434%454^! (%623%42%^! 4"! %! .%3^(! 34%'^! ^(5(^! 5(^! 345%^! 35&&! 6%4! (%!8(42%! %! 4(4%"%7%^(! !E305&3%^(!_84EF! ! &! 302%(7! &&! 023^(! &! &^2^! %(42(^B! .C^%44%6^! %! 1534! "3! ! ^'02(2!&!302%(7!%]&&!02^"33%^(%34%]!$!!%623^!4%4^&^! • >()%0(! #"!&"00"2"! ^02(^!(42^!1534^!^(434^A!&!&^2^!6%3%^(%!!302%(7A!(^($!!&! ##7"%0(2")0! &^2^! ^0%(%^(%! %2! %&! 3%34'! &&! 4(7%^(! ''%(%3424%6! ! &! 02%^2%4! %! '%'(4^B! %! %(4(^(^! 05&%2! %! 2%35&44%! %! 1534^! 345%^! 02! "2! ^(^32! &! 2&4! %!84E! ! ^(42%5%2! &! 35^! '%#&%^2'(4^B .!35!024%07%^(A!442623^!1534!%(426%34A! !"^('(4&!&! •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
$"!!)'#&((!)!%&%!$%4"&%0"!! 9)0(14"&%"8!B)$'"!"!&$%!)0"$&#&! 8^'! !22%64^]!!^5023%!%!84E@!_^'!&##!1534^!"(^'(^! • J)$6392 !!!4!63673!463#!77&320!! &!05(4^!%!6%34!34254452&]^&^#%^F! 8^(!15&%!^%44%6%!6%!3%! !66%%(4^]@! ! • 37&A&321!283!6&74!883!00! .%!^(!&!35!34^2%A!%!35^%!6&^2%A!&!35!02^"33%^(&%4!^'!3%!^&&^! 2%3044^!!1534!%34%457%^(@! !8!2A&32!!11&2&7868&@! ! ! 8^3!0(3!&!3%34'!%!4(7%^(!''%(%3424%6!%(!44&%@!! • 4&2&32&!&6!&0!7&78!1! &! (3! 3%! 5(! 2%30^34! #54]""%! 2%3044^! &! "(^'(^! &&! !8!2A&32!!11&2&7868&@!&2!480&! '%#27%^(@! 5&%!3^(^!%!05(4%!%!"^27!!&!2%4%%4@! ! ! ! 96 6%#")"!#!89B!"!>&%0!:#("! $"!! 9)0(14"&%"8!B)$'"!"!&$%!)0"$&#&! ! ! I%!65^&!02&2!&&!35!302%(7!(&!84E!%!^(4!J&2%@! 8$!^3!2442%77!1534!35!302%(7@!! • L74!6&!2A!2!0!)4L! &!328!!M0!6&! 8^3!$!(^44^@!! .!35!302%(7!$!%0^43%]^0%(%^(%!&!$!"44^!36%&5002@! ! S
! ! 8^'!32%62!%&!84E!%!^(4!J&2%@!! • &8!5938& &2!!328!!M0!6&! 0&! 35^! 05(4^! %! 6%34A! ^'G ! &! 6%4! 15^4%%(! &&C%(42(^! %! 1534! %34%457%^(@!!
! 6 G101(&!! ! $"! 9)0(14"&%"8!B)$'"!"!&$%!)0"$&#&! ! ! "&&!&5!&&!35!^(3%27%^(%!!&&!35!302%(7A!15&%! • 6374!88&@!!&6!&0!#98963! '%'(4%!3^(^!(332%@!8^3!(2!"44^@!!$%@!! ! ! "!&%6&&^!0^&%4%^A!15&%!^%44%6%!3^(^!02%^2%42%@! ! ! ! 96 "$&#"444"&%!#!89B!"!>&%0!:#("! ! $"! 9)0(14"&%"8!B)$'"!"!&$%!)0"$&#&! ! ! I%! 0^42! %2! 5(! '^44^A! 5(! &%2^A! 5(! (7^(A! 5(^! 3&^#(A! 5(! • !8#36! %''#%(!$!02!&%!20023(4!%&!84E!%!^(4!J&2%! ! ! ! ! 996 #104"&%!#!'(&))&!"!"%0(2")0! !
$"!! 9)0(14"&%"8!B)$'"!"!&$%!)0"$&#&! ! 300!&86!! &0G0! 468!&428!! ! 6!! 92! #!! )! $!2!60!! 790! • 098A&32!!73$$!88&@!463!773! &! 463!773! &! &28!6@&78! !! 79! 3146!27&&0&8! !! &28!6@&78! 446346&8!AAG6&0!@2A! !00!! 312 !E! • &2$6A&1!283!#&20!! ! !
T 265
Annex VI – Documents of Articles’ Acceptance, or Submission
Francesca Esposito José Ornelas Silvia Scirocchi Caterina Arcidiacono
Displacement Special Issue
Voices from the Inside: Lived Experiences of Women Confined in a Detention Center
nder conditions of mass mobility, migration-related detention has be- come part of a set of border control measures that are implemented in U the majority of countries across the world, particularly in the global North (Bosworth 2014; Bosworth and Kellezi 2014). The proliferation of border zones and detention centers—where various categories of people marked as outsiders are confined pending the adjudication of their status— plays a key role in the government of human mobility and in the continuous production of nation-state and citizenship boundaries (Luibhéid 2005). In spite of growing academic interest in the adverse effects of migration- related detention and deportation (e.g., Sobhanian et al. 2006; Robjant, Robbins, and Senior 2009), relatively little attention has been paid to the potential relationships between the violence that affects people in their countries of origin and contemporary immigration laws and policies (Lykes and Hershberg 2015). Even less effort has been devoted to understanding how gender and sexuality—along with race, ethnicity, class, nationality, and geopolitics—shape such relationships, playing a role in the production of par-
This research was carried out as a part of Francesca Esposito’s doctoral thesis, supported by a scholarship from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (SFRH/BD/ 87854/2012). We would like to thank Maayan Ravid, Rimple Mehta, Gaia Giuliani, Simone Tulumello, and Erica Briozzo for their encouragement for this project by offering their time and insightful feedback, as well as Signs’s editor and anonymous reviewers who provided crit- ical comments on this article. We also need to thank the organizers and participants of the workshop Critical Prison Studies, Carceral Ethnography, and Human Rights: From Lived Ex- perience to Global Action, held at the Oñati International Institute for the Sociology of Law, where we presented an earlier version of this article, for their generous input and comments. Last, and most important, we are grateful to the women we met inside Rome’s detention cen- ter for sharing their stories and struggles with us.
[Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 2019, vol. 44, no. 2] © 2018 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0097-9740/2019/4402-0006$10.00
2016330.proof.3d 1 Achorn International 08/31/18 14:22 International Migration Review
! ! !
! ! ! !"#$%&'()&*+,#-+./&01$&)+&0#23&45#,&*+,#5+678&9++:;<=& 1)&)5#&>)12;1<&?#)#<);+<&@;#2.&)5A+(=5&)5#&B/#$&+C& DA+C#$$;+<12&E+<$)1)#&FG)+A$H! ! ! "#$%&'()!For!"#$%"&#'("&)*+',%&#'("*-$.'$/ Review Only! *'&$+,%-./!01! 1%'2/!
3-(45!6!*'&$+,%-./!/5.4)! 7%-8-&'(!9%/-,(4!
=-8%'/-#&6%4('/4!.%#24++-#&'(+?!(-@4!B$='&-/'%-'&! :45;#%<+)! 8#@4%&=4&/!
9(/B#$8B!<4/4&/-#&!B'+!.%#(-24%'/4!(-//(4!-+!+/-((!D&#;! 'C#$/!(-24!-&+-<4!/B4+4!+-/4+!#2!,#&2-&4=4&/E!F'+4!/B-+!.'.4%!4A'=-&4+!/B4!(-@4!4/B-,'(>!'&!'&!;4!.%#C(4='/-H4!/B4!-<4'!/B'/!IB$='&-H-&8!<4/4&/-#&J!,'&!C4!'! +#($/-#&!2#%!,B'&84E! !! !
! $PHULFDQ-RXUQDORI&RPPXQLW\3V\FKRORJ\ (FRORJ\RIVLWHVRIFRQILQHPHQW (YHU\GD\OLIHLQDGHWHQWLRQFHQWHUIRULOOHJDOL]HGQRQ FLWL]HQV 0DQXVFULSW'UDIW 0DQXVFULSW1XPEHU $-&3'
)XOO7LWOH (FRORJ\RIVLWHVRIFRQILQHPHQW (YHU\GD\OLIHLQDGHWHQWLRQFHQWHUIRULOOHJDOL]HGQRQ FLWL]HQV $UWLFOH7\SH 2ULJLQDO$UWLFOH .H\ZRUGV PLJUDWLRQUHODWHGGHWHQWLRQ HYHU\GD\OLIH OLYHGH[SHULHQFHV HFRORJLFDOSULQFLSOHV MXVWLFH FULWLFDOHWKQRJUDSK\ &RUUHVSRQGLQJ$XWKRU )UDQFHVFD(VSRVLWR0' ,633$,QVWLWXWR8QLYHUVLW£ULR /LVERQ3OHDVH6HOHFW RQO\86&DQ$XV 32578*$/ &RUUHVSRQGLQJ$XWKRU6HFRQGDU\ ,QIRUPDWLRQ
&RUUHVSRQGLQJ$XWKRU V,QVWLWXWLRQ ,633$,QVWLWXWR8QLYHUVLW£ULR &RUUHVSRQGLQJ$XWKRU V6HFRQGDU\ ,QVWLWXWLRQ )LUVW$XWKRU )UDQFHVFD(VSRVLWR0' )LUVW$XWKRU6HFRQGDU\,QIRUPDWLRQ 2UGHURI$XWKRUV )UDQFHVFD(VSRVLWR0' -RV«2UQHODV (ULFD%ULR]]R
&DWHULQD$UFLGLDFRQR 2UGHURI$XWKRUV6HFRQGDU\,QIRUPDWLRQ
)XQGLQJ,QIRUPDWLRQ )XQGD©¥RSDUDD&L¬QFLDHD7HFQRORJLD 0LVV)UDQFHVFD(VSRVLWR 6)5+%'
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owered by Editorial Manager® and ProduXion Manager® from Aries Systems Corporation +LJKOLJKWV %XOOHW3RLQW :HSUHVHQWDQHWKQRJUDSKLFH[SORUDWLRQLQWRWKHGHWHQWLRQRILOOHJDOL]HGQRQFLWL]HQVLQ ,WDO\ +LJKOLJKWV %XOOHW3RLQW 7UDQVFHQGLQJLQGLYLGXDOFHQWHUHGDQDO\VLVZHDGRSWDQHFRORJLFDOIUDPHZRUNZLWKD IRFXVRQMXVWLFH +LJKOLJKWV %XOOHW3RLQW :HFRQWULEXWHWRFUHDWHNQRZOHGJHRQWKHVRFLDODQGFXOWXUDOZRUOGEHKLQGWKHZDOOVRI GHWHQWLRQ +LJKOLJKWV %XOOHW3RLQW :HGLVFXVVWKHRSSUHVVLYHTXDOLWLHVRIGHWHQWLRQDQGDYHQXHVIRUDFWLRQIRUFRPPXQLW\ SV\FKRORJLVWV Powered by Editorial Manager® and ProduXion Manager® from Aries Systems Corporation 270 271 Annex VII – Publications Related to the Thesis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`!"#$!!$ EG@EHE@R7O%$FIJA$ AIJR@M$ 7IIRNA$RN7$ ATEIJANMOMCE7$ @A$ 87IA$ A9MO[CE971$ 9MGIE@AQ7G@M$ MI$ AYAEJMI$ @M$ 7N8EAGJA$ A$M$T7TAO$ @A$ @EYAQAGJAI$JETMI$@A$FRIJEK7$AN$JAQNMI$@A$I7P@A1$8AN*AIJ7Q$A$9MG@EKZAI$@A$HROGAQ78EOE@7@A$ @MI$NECQ7GJAI$@AJE@MI$AN$1MQJRC7O$A$AN$%JaOE7%$)AIJA$IAGJE@M1$RN$9AGJQM$@A$@AJAGKLM$TMQ$ T7XI$ 7JQ7HbI$ @A$RN$@AIAGDM$ @A$ EGHAIJEC7KLM$ NROJE*NbJM@M$ A$NROJE*GXHAO%$]$M8FA9JEHM$ b$ 9MGJQE8REQ$ T7Q7$M$@AIAGHMOHENAGJM$ @A$ 8M7I$ TQaJE97I$ A$TMOXJE97I$ TQAM9RT7@7I$ 9MN$ 7$ I7P@A1$M$8AN*AIJ7Q$A$MI$@EQAEJMI$DRN7GMI$@A$JM@MI$MI$NECQ7GJAI$@AJE@MI%$ !)8)6()-220)6,7$ NECQ7KLM$ GLM$ @M9RNAGJ7@7$ @AJAGKLM$ 7@NEGEIJQ7JEH7$NM@AOM$ A9MO[CE9M$I7P@A%$ $ cd#"EefBIE$ $NECQ7KLM$ GLM$ @M9RNAGJ7@7$JMQGMR*IA$GMI$POJENMI$ 7GMI$ GRN7$WRAIJLM$ 9QR9E7O%$ TAI7Q$ @EIIM1$7$GXHAO$@MI$HaQEMI$FIJ7@MI$(AN8QMI$@7$4F$7EG@7$GLM$AIJa$@AIAGHMOHE@M$RN$WR7@QM$@A$ NA@E@7I$9MNRGI$T7Q7$OE@7Q$9MN$AIJA$YAG[NAGM$9FRQMTA7G$ MNNEIIEMG1$"==:%$$ I$ ENTOE97KZAI$ @A$I7P@A$ @7$NECQ7KLM$ GLM$ @M9RNAGJ7@7$ A$ @7$ @AJAGKLM$ 7@NEGEIJQ7JEH7$ ILM$7EG@7$87IJ7GJA$MNEII7I$A$TMR9M$AIJR@7@7I$9&R1$@$(7J7GE1$"==A$2MAQ*3JQEAQ1$@$]OID7JEG* (7GG1$A$3ENE9D1$5R1$@$)AQ7@1$"==:%$$ $QAHEILM$IEIJANaJE97$@7$OEJAQ7JRQ7$@AIAGHMOHE@7$TMQ$2M8F7GJ1$$7II7G$A$&7JMG7$9"==:$IM8QA$ 7I$ENTOE97KZAI$@7$@AJAGKLM$7@NEGEIJQ7JEH7$AN$JAQNMI$@A$I7P@A$NAGJ7O$@MI$QAWRAQAGJAI$@A$ 7IEOM$ TMOXJE9M$ @AJE@MI$ GM$ 2AEGM$ 4GE@M1$F4$ A$ RIJQaOE71$ 8AN$ 9MNM$ MRJQMI$ AIJR@MI$ 7$GXHAO$ EGJAQG79EMG7O$9%9DEG7g71$)7G7D7Q71$@$57G7E1$"==$'7gQAG9A1$"==$3JAAO1$VQMNNAQ1$@$3EOMHA1$ "==$3JAAO$@$3EOMHA1$"==A:1$@AIJ797Q7N$7$G7JRQA_7$T7JMC\GE97$@7$@AJAGKLM$T[I*NECQ7J[QE7$ GMI$7@ROJMI$8AN$9MNM$G7I$IR7I$9QE7GK7I$@AJE@7I%$&AOOAQ$AJ$7O%$9"==!:1$9MNT7Q7Q7N$MI$GXHAEI$ @A$@ATQAIILM1$7GIEA@7@A$A$IJQAII$T[I*JQ7RNaJE9M$@A$QAWRAQAGJAI$@A$7IEOM$TMOXJE9M$@AJE@MI1$GM$ EGX9EM$ @7$ @AJAGKLM$ A$GM$YMOOMg*RT$ 9NXGENM$ "$ NAIAI$ @ATMEI:1$]I$7RJMQAI$ @ANMIJQ7N$ RN$ 7RNAGJM$ IECGEYE97JEHM$ @MI$ HaQEMI$ GXHAEI%$ 2M8F7GJ1$ 2M88EGI$ A$ 3AGEMQ$ 9"==:1$ 79QAI9AGJ7Q7N$ AHE@\G9E7I$ IM8QA$RN7$ 7IIM9E7KLM$ AGJQA$ 7$ @AJAGKLM$ 7@NEGEIJQ7JEH7$ A$ 7OJMI$ GXHAEI$ @A$IJQAII$ 9A%C%$ @ATQAIILM:%$ 1MRQCMRQE@AI1$ 37IDE@D7Q7G$ A$ Q79GAG$ 9A:1$ @AIAGHMOHAQ7N$ RN7$ 7GaOEIA$ YAGMNAGMO[CE97$9MN$M$M8FA9JEHM$@A$9MNTQAAG@AQ$9MNM$7$@AJAGKLM$T[I*NECQ7J[QE7$7YAJ7$ TIE9MOMCE97NAGJA$ 7I$ TAIIM7I$ @AJE@7I%$ 37OEAGJ7*IA$WRA$JM@MI$ AIJAI$ AIJR@MI$ YM97N$ TQEG9ET7ONAGJA$AN$@ENAGIZAI$@A$@EIJQAII$EG@EHE@R7O%$$ )M$7GM$@M$"==$M$17QO7NAGJM$FRQMTAR$@AIAGHMOHAR$RN$AIJR@M$9MN$9AGJQMI$@A$@AJAGKLM$ @MI$HaQEMI$T7EIAI$FRQMTARI$T7Q7$7H7OE7Q$WR7GJM$7I$GA9AIIE@7@AI$@MI$CQRTMI$HROGAQaHAEI$ILM$ 9MGIE@AQ7@7I$ A$IA$ 7I$ 9MG@EKZAI$ @A$ @AJAGKLM$ 9MGJQE8RAN$ T7Q7$RN7$NAODMQE71$MR$RN$ 7CQ7H7NAGJM$@7I$9MG@EKZAI$EG@EHE@R7EI$@A$HROGAQ78EOE@7@A%$]I$QAIROJ7@MI$QAHAO7Q7N$WRA$7$ HROGAQ78EOE@7@A$GLM$b$RN7$ 9MG@EKLM$ @A$ 9AQJMI$ CQRTMI1$N7I$ RN$ IbQEM$ QEI9M$ WRA$ 7NA7K7$ JM@MI$ MI97I:$NECQ7GJAI$ GLM$ @M9RNAGJ7@MI97I:$ @AJE@MI97I:%$ 2E8AEQM1$ 7TJEIJ71$ AII7$ A$ 379Q7NAGJM$ 9"==:1$ @AIAGHMOHAQ7N$ RN$ AIJR@M$ T7Q7$ 7$ 7H7OE7KLM$ @MPGE9M$ 9AGJQM$ @A$ !"#$ ! <=>?@A=BC!?DE@ADFGFDADCA=BC H%'&/,#%&1%$8*%I$0."01%/&1$*J$K "#$%&'o&$pQǔǑǐǔNJǕǐvp7ǐǔǫ#6ǓǏdžǍǂǔvpp ($)'#*%$p;ǓDŽNJDžNJǂDŽǐǏǐ +,o)#$&)-p.%o/*#'0p,p$p&1223%*)p/o&41516p'&1516*&$5p/'#o/'&)*'vp)4*op &4$/)'#p$00#'oo'op2*6#$)*1%#'5$)'0p0')'%)*1%p$op/$#)p17p)4$)po')p17p/#$&)*&'op *2/5'2'%)'0p,p)4'p89p$%0p)4'p:&4'%6'%p+#'$p)1p'%o3#'p*%)'#%$5po'&3#*)p ,p o)#'%6)4'%*%6p ')'#%$5p ,1#0'#op &1%)#15p .%p /$#)*&35$#vp *)p 71&3o'op 1%p )4'p .)$5*$%p&1%)')p:)$#)*%6p7#12p$p4*o)1#*&$5p1'#*';p17p)4'p.)$5*$%p5'6$5p$%0p /15*&p7#$2';1# I1$)&:,/$"&1 .%p ?@nvp )4'p .%)'#%$)*1%$5p#6$%*$)*1%p 71#p*6#$)*1%p.Ap 01&32'%)'0p)4$)vpo*%&'p?@@@vp$)p5'$o)p@v@@@p2*6#$%)op4$'p0*'0p)#*%6p )1poop651,$5p,1#0'#op+)p5'$o)pv@!!p17po3&4p0'$)4op1&&3##'0p*%p?@nvp $%0p3/p)1pBv@!?p17p)4'2p)11 p +&<%1;5'062'%)o-p4'p$3)41#op;1350p5*<'p)1p)4$% n!! doi: 10.1111/imig.12253 Voices of Nigerian Women Survivors of Trafficking Held in Italian Centres for Identification and Expulsion Francesca Esposito*,**, Carla R. Quinto*, Francesca De Masi*, Oria Gargano* and Pedro Alexandre Costa** ABSTRACT This article examines the vicissitudes that affect the migration trajectories of many Nigerian women who experienced trafficking before arriving in Italy, and end up in Centers for Identifi- cation and Expulsion (CIE) for undocumented migrants. Their life stories, collected within the CIE of Ponte Galeria (Rome), revealed violence as “a rule of action” with which these women are obliged to cope with at different levels. Moreover, they highlighted the failure of tradi- tional security approaches to human trafficking, and the necessity to rethink the measures adopted to ensure survivors’ protection and rights. As it is conceived, the system of immigra- tion control prevents the full guarantee of survivors’ rights, often labelling them as “illegal migrants”. Finally, there is the need to extend protection to all survivors of human trafficking even if the crime against them has not happened in Italy. INTRODUCTION The story of humanity as we know it is a story of migrations, of people in constant quests for new territories in which to settle, and of their expectations for their future lives. Nevertheless, the new conditions brought about by the phenomenon of globalization, the renewed disproportion between living standards in different parts of the world, and the new forms of precariousness, have given new meanings to the crossing of borders by human beings (Berman, 2003; Sciurba, 2009). It is rea- sonable to assert that the sometimes-dramatic exodus of migrants from their origin countries is rooted in the profound imbalance between Global North and Global South, between the wealth of the former and the poverty of the latter. The immigration phenomenon has been interpreted as the paradox of a post-modern capitalism, which generates poverty, but at the same time needs poor people to guarantee the functioning of the economic system of wealthy countries (Mancini, 2008). In this scenario, the idea that migrants represent a threat to internal security has become a wide- spread belief in many countries, including among European ones (Huysmans, 2000), disregarding migrants’ potential contributions to receiving societies. The creation of a social representation of the migrant as an external enemy, as the one that invades and plunders what does not belong to them, delivers to European citizens a symbolic object on which to vent the insecurities and frustra- tions caused by the long global economic crisis, the increasing loss of social and civil rights, and the worsening of living standards. This perspective was also encouraged by political and media * BeFree Cooperativa Sociale contro tratta, violenza, discriminazioni, Rome ** ISPA-University Institute © 2016 The Authors International Migration © 2016 IOM International Migration Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. ISSN 0020-7985 PER APPROFONDIRE IV. OSSERVAZIONE ECOLOGICA1 Sentire con gli occhi. Occhi che ascoltano, accolgono, toccano, intendono; occhi attraverso cui sentire ed essere, sperimentare e conoscere… Un fare esperienza dell’altro, e di sé nella relazione con l’altro, attraverso uno sguardo sensibile alla sua presenza corporea che implica un modo non neutro di porsi in relazione; un’esperienza visiva unica e intraducibile perché nel momento stesso in cui è messa in parola, scritta, verbalizzata, diventa comunque altra (Boursier, 2010, p. 177). Con l’osservazione naturalistica è possibile individuare la natura composita del contesto comunitario e la descrizione dei pattern sociali e comporta- mentali che lo contraddistinguono (Maton, Salem, 1995). Ciò permette di formulare nuove ipotesi e linee di sviluppo e ricerca idonee al contesto e più strettamente legate ai pattern comportamentali e sociali individuati. Tale approccio s’inscrive nel modello ecologico in quanto quest’ultimo, per sua natura, tiene conto della interazione tra l’individuo e il contesto inteso nel- le sue variabili sociali, economiche, ambientali, interpersonali e individuali, assieme ai fattori che possono inibire o promuovere il benessere individuale nelle sue interazioni con i fattori locali (Nelson, Prilleltensky, 2005). Qual è tuttavia il modo con cui far ricorso all’osservazione per perseguire tali finalità? La funzione della vista appartiene agli esseri viventi. L’azione del guardare attribuisce intenzionalità a un processo di base. L’osservare è ancora altro: ri- chiede guardare per conoscere, interrogarsi sulla natura dell’oggetto prescelto; assimilare ogni forma d’indicazione che emerge, o talvolta ricercare precisi contenuti, eventi o indicatori. Quando si tratta di ricerca, il fine dell’osserva- zione è produrre conoscenza scientifica circa il fenomeno in studio. 1 Caterina Arcidiacono e Francesca Esposito Am J Community Psychol (2018) 0:1–10 DOI 10.1002/ajcp.12256 POLICY STATEMENT Statement on the Effects of Deportation and Forced Separation on Immigrants, their Families, and Communities A Policy Statement by the Society for Community Research and Action: Division 27 of the American Psychological Association Highlights • Negative psychosocial effects of deportation on individuals, wives, children, and communities. • Contextual effects surrounding deportation. • National and judicial policy recommendations. • Local jurisdiction policy recommendations. • Policy recommendations for neighborhoods and institutions. © 2018 Society for Community Research and Action Executive Summary Deportations have markedly increased in the US in the past three decades, with 340,056 people being deported Deportation has numerous detrimental impacts on individ- from the country in 2017 (US Department of Homeland uals who are deported, and on the families and communi- Security, 2017). Most people who are deported have lived ties they are forced to leave behind. This policy statement in the country for over a decade and many are parents or reviews the empirical literature to describe the effects of caregivers of US citizens (Brabeck, Lykes, & Hershberg, deportation on the individual, families, and the broader 2012; Brabeck & Xu, 2010; Dreby, 2012; TRAC Immi- community, in order to inform policy and practice recom- gration, 2006). Approximately, 5.9 million US citizen mendations. children (and at least three million more children who are in the US without authorization) have at least one care- giver who does not have authorization to reside in the This policy statement is an official statement of the Society for Community Research and Action, Division 27 of the American Psy- United States (Mathema, 2017; Zayas & Cook Heffron, chological Association, and does not represent the position of the 2016). Immigration policies have moved away from the American Psychological Association or any of its other Divisions or goal of family reunification, and have the potential subunits. to harm US citizens by separating families—including This brief was written by Regina Day Langhout, Sara L. Bucking- children—from their parents. For example, the hardship ham, Ashmeet Kaur Oberoi, NoeRuben Chavez, Dana Rusch, exemption of the Immigration and Nationality Act limits Francesca Esposito, and Yolanda Suarez-Balcazar. None of the exemptions of deportation to parents, children, and fl authors who worked on this policy brief have a con ict of spouses. Consequently, extended family caregivers, such interest. as grandparents, are ineligible for the exemption in spite The Society for Community Research & Action takes a strength- of any undue hardship caused to their US citizen family based approach to research and action. This brief, however, focuses members from their deportation (Zug, 2009). exclusively on the impacts of deportation. There are multiple ways The effects of deportation are felt by individuals, fami- in which people, individually and in community, organize to respond fi to deportation, as well as the threat of deportation. These actions lies, and communities. Nearly four in ve families show the resistance and resilience of communities. These responses, screened in family detention centers have a “credible fear” however, are beyond the scope of this specific document. SCRA of persecution should they be forced to return to the coun- members are in the process of summarizing the literature in this area tries from which they migrated (US Citizenship and Immi- to make policy recommendations as well. This additional brief is forthcoming. gration Services, 2016). Many of those deported are forced to return to dangerous, turbulent environments, and