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Life, Death, and Corporeal Resistance in Immigration Detention

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Life, Death, and Corporeal Resistance in Immigration Detention American University in Cairo AUC Knowledge Fountain Theses and Dissertations 2-1-2019 Life, death, and corporeal resistance in immigration detention Jana Michelle Moss Follow this and additional works at: https://fount.aucegypt.edu/etds Recommended Citation APA Citation Moss, J. (2019).Life, death, and corporeal resistance in immigration detention [Master’s thesis, the American University in Cairo]. AUC Knowledge Fountain. https://fount.aucegypt.edu/etds/732 MLA Citation Moss, Jana Michelle. Life, death, and corporeal resistance in immigration detention. 2019. American University in Cairo, Master's thesis. AUC Knowledge Fountain. https://fount.aucegypt.edu/etds/732 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by AUC Knowledge Fountain. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of AUC Knowledge Fountain. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The American University in Cairo School of Global Affairs & Public Policy Life, Death, and Corporeal Resistance in Immigration Detention A Thesis Submitted to the Center for Migration and Refugee Studies In partial fulfillment of the requirements for The MA in Migration and Refugee Studies By Jana Moss November 2018 The American University in Cairo School of Global Affairs and Public Policy LIFE, DEATH, AND CORPOREAL RESISTANCE IN IMMIGRATION DETENTION A Thesis Submitted by Jana Moss to the Center for Migration and Refugee Studies November 2018 in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the MA Degree in Migration and Refugee Studies has been approved by the committee composed of Dr. Mai Taha Thesis Supervisor __________________________________________________ American University in Cairo Date ____________________ Dr. Ibrahim Awad Thesis First Reader _________________________________________________ American University in Cairo Date ____________________ Dr. Jason Beckett Thesis Second Reader ______________________________________________ American University in Cairo Date ___________________ Dr. Ibrahim Awad CMRS Department Chair ____________________________________________ Date ____________________ Ambassador Nabil Fahmy Dean of GAPP _____________________________________________________ Date ____________________ ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would not have been able to complete this thesis without the support I received from many different people, and I wish to offer them my sincerest thanks. First I want to thank my amazing advisor, Dr. Mai Taha, whose insights were essential to creating the best possible version of this thesis. She went above and beyond by advising me over the summer and for being willing to talk me through my moments of writer’s block and self- doubt. I also want to thank my readers, Dr. Ibrahim Awad and Dr. Jason Beckett, for their helpful comments. I am particularly grateful to Dr. Beckett for agreeing to step in at the last minute. I want to give a special thanks to Dr. Usha Natarajan. Although she was on leave the semester I wrote this thesis, she was absolutely instrumental during the proposal-writing stage. Her feedback fundamentally shaped the way this thesis developed. Furthermore, I am grateful for Dr. Usha’s guidance throughout my time at AUC. I have learned so much from her classes, her academic advising, and her frank assessments. She has become a role model for me and I hope to continue learning from her. My AUC experience would not have been the same without my amazing cohort. I was truly lucky to get to study alongside such a brilliant group of women. I am especially grateful to my roommate, Anouk Wijtsma, for taking me in when I was desperate for a place to stay and for quickly becoming one of my closest friends. Your patience with my frequent all-nighters and bouts of stress-induced rambling allowed me to thrive during the thesis-writing process. I also want to thank my favorite CMRS researchers: Sara Abdel Ghany, Amira Hetaba, and Claire McNally, for allowing me to use your office space and absorb your brilliance. Claire’s assistance in particular was absolutely vital in all matters from phrasing, formatting, to formalities. Lastly, I want to thank all of my Ladies Who Get Tasks Accomplished: Claire, Anouk, Elena, and Shashi, for their friendship and support during my time at AUC. Cairo became a home for me because of you. iii The American University in Cairo School of Global Affairs and Public Policy Center for Migration and Refugee Studies LIFE, DEATH, AND CORPOREAL RESISTANCE IN IMMIGRATION DETENTION Jana Moss Supervised by Professor Mai Taha ABSTRACT This thesis analyzes corporeal strategies of resistance used by immigration detainees in the global North. Corporeal resistance is defined as an act of protest that physically harms the actor but is not intended to harm anyone else. Examples include hunger strikes, lip sewing, self-immolation, and other forms of public suicide. In response to the prevailing public opinion that detainees' acts of self-harm or suicide are simply acts of desperation by disenfranchised people who have nothing to lose, I argue that they can be a logical and strategic response to state necropolitics. Detainees take back corporeal necropower by reasserting control of their own life and death. The paper proceeds by analyzing the corporeal power inherent in immigration detention centers. I analyze detention centers as a space of waiting in a confined space for an indeterminate amount of time, in which the state is given the power to deport detainees to a place where their life is threatened (effectively sentencing them to death), or allow detainees to stay (letting them live). I then elaborate on how detainees have used methods of self-harm as a form of corporeal resistance. Narratives from detainees who have participated in these acts demonstrate a desire to reassert corporeal autonomy and send a symbolic message that their life is at stake. State responses to detainee corporeal resistance, in turn, show that these acts are a threat to the very object and purpose of immigration detention. iv Table of Contents Introduction 1 Immigration Detention 3 Outline 8 Chapter 1: The Necropolitics of Immigration Detention 11 Theoretical Framework 11 Immigration Control as a Form of Necropower 17 Chapter 2: Structural Necropower 23 Spatial Control 24 Temporal Control 27 Abuse and Humiliation 32 Conditions and Survival 37 Medical Care and Preventable Deaths 40 Abortions and Miscarriages 44 Conclusion 47 Chapter 3: Corporeal Resistance 49 Narratives of Corporeal Resistance 52 Solidarity 62 The Symbolic: “I Will Not Go Gracefully into Exile” 65 Conclusion 68 Chapter 4: State Responses 71 Spatial Control 74 Communication and Hope 76 Abuse and Humiliation 80 Medical Intervention and Preventing Deaths 82 Conclusion 90 Conclusion 92 Introduction This thesis analyzes the corporeal power relations between the state and immigration detainees during their period of detention. 1 Detainee resistance is often corporeal, involving self-inflicted physical harm. While these actions are frequently dismissed as acts of irrational desperation2 or signs of mental illness,3 I use detainee narratives to show that corporeal resistance can be an intentional and logical response to state corporeal power. Affirming their agency, detainees literally and symbolically take back power over their own life and death by using corporeal strategies of resistance such as hunger strikes, lip sewing, self-immolation, and other forms of public suicide. I argue that immigration controls generally, and immigration detention in particular, are a form of necropower—state power over life and death.4 Detention allows the state control 1 My definition of “immigration detention” comes from Stephanie Silverman and Evelyne Massa’s article that defines immigration detention as having three characteristics. "[F]irst, detention represents a deprivation of liberty- second, it takes place in a designated facility in the custody of an immigration official; and third, it is being carried out in the service of an immigration-related goal." Silverman, Stephanie J., and Evelyne Massa. "Why Immigration Detention is Unique." Population, Space and Place 18, no. 6 (2012), 679. I also analyze Australia’s offshore processing centers on various Pacific islands as detention centers because even though they are material different in some ways, their overall purpose is still the same. For more background and details on Australia’s “offshore processing” regime see: Flynn, Michael. “Country Profile: Australia.” Global Detention Project, December 2008. https://www.globaldetentionproject.org/countries. 2 See, for example: Athwal, Harmit, and Jenny Bourne. "Driven to Despair: Asylum Deaths in the UK." Race & Class 48, no. 4 (2007): 106-114.; Cohen, Juliet. "Safe in Our Hands?: A Study of Suicide and Self-Harm in Asylum Seekers." Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine 15, no. 4 (2008): 235-244.; 3 See, for example: Mares, Sarah, Louise Newman, Michael Dudley, and Fran Gale. "Seeking Refuge, Losing Hope: Parents and Children in Immigration Detention." (2002); 4 Mbembe, Achille. “Necropolitics.” Translated by Libby Meintjes. Public Culture 15, no. 1 (March 2003): 11–40. 1 over migrant bodies while it judges whose life is worth saving, and who may be deported. As such, this system necessitates corporeal control both as the means and the ends, exerting spatial and temporal control, as well as daily microaggressions against detainees’ health and safety. I focus broadly on the global North because I see necropower as operating
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