Abstract
Men are disproportionately detained in Immigration Removal Centres (IRCs) in the UK, yet research that considers the gendered dimensions of male detention is rare. By exploring the relationship between detention and masculinities along with other intersecting and hierarchical social identities, my thesis contributes to work on immigration detention, state violence, gender, and the lived experience of border harms. My research design – a flexible, ethnographic engagement with currently and formerly detained men alongside practitioners who work with them – facilitates a nuanced and multifaceted exploration of men’s experience of detention that draws on interviews, conversations, artwork, official documents, IRC posters and leaflets, and a ‘detention mapping’ exercise.I argue that detention can be profoundly harmful, and that this harm results from systemic and instrumental violence. Furthermore, I contend that detention’s violence operates across two distinct yet interactional temporalities – slow and fast – and through multiple interrelated sites including the state, families, bodies, and the IRC itself. These many forms of suffering are conceptualised as facets of postcolonial necropower, which exposes detainees to the threat of death and injury. While some are able to survive and resist necropower in complex and contested ways, I contend, crucially, that detention’s violence is both gendered – mediated and experienced through intersectional gendered divisions and processes – and gendering – acting upon the production and performance of detainees’ masculinities.
| Date of Award | 22 Mar 2022 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Supervisor | Katharine A H Charsley (Supervisor) & Naomi Millner (Supervisor) |