In Search of Recognition: Gender and Staff-Detainee Relations in a British Immigration Removal Centre

30 Pages Posted: 7 Aug 2014

See all articles by Mary Bosworth

Mary Bosworth

University of Oxford - Faculty of Law; University of Oxford - Border Criminologies

Gavin Slade

University of Toronto

Date Written: May 2014

Abstract

In this article we draw on research conducted in a British immigration removal centre to explore the affective nature of detention. We consider staff and detainee testimonies of their everyday interactions within the IRC as bids for recognition of social status in an institution characterized by uncertainty and diversity. In their accounts, men and women draw on gendered identities to make sense of others and themselves. Responses to status subordination in the IRC played out across a range of emotional responses, mediated and framed by gender. While these responses emerged in everyday interactions, the frustrations of life in an IRC, we argue, speak to much wider struggles over the status of immigrants in the UK, the confused and contested purpose of IRCs, and the widening of detention as a strategy of migration control; in short, to matters of living under conditions of mass mobility.

Keywords: Recognition; immigration detention; prison; gender; banter; identity

Suggested Citation

Bosworth, Mary and Slade, Gavin, In Search of Recognition: Gender and Staff-Detainee Relations in a British Immigration Removal Centre (May 2014). Punishment & Society, Vol 16(2): 169 - 186, Oxford Legal Studies Research Paper No. 50/2014, Criminal Justice, Borders and Citizenship Research Paper No. 2477444, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2477444

Mary Bosworth (Contact Author)

University of Oxford - Faculty of Law ( email )

University of Oxford - Border Criminologies ( email )

Manor Road Building
Manor Rd
Oxford, OX1 3UQ
United Kingdom

Gavin Slade

University of Toronto ( email )

105 St George Street
Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G8
Canada

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