Rethinking "Unfree Labour": The Immigration Industrial Complex

Throughout the world thousands of hours of work are being performed by detainees’ subject to immigration detention. Whilst there are differences in the way this work is organized, ranging from forced labor regimes to work that is ostensibly ‘voluntary’, there are shared common histories and forms of coercion that underpin them. Economic profit underlines these arrangements as states and private corporations gain from both the establishment of immigration detention centres and the use of cheap (or unpaid) detainee labor. This chapter has two aims. Firstly, to reflect on the global proliferation of labor within immigration detention, framing it as a key component of the immigration industrial complex. Secondly, to situate the labor of immigration detainees within a broad matrix of unfreedoms that complicate the so-called consensual nature of such carceral work practices, arguing that this labor should instead be considered ‘unfree’.