Citizenship and belonging in a women's immigration detention centre

This chapter draws on six months of fieldwork in IRC Yarl’s Wood, Britain’s primary immigration removal centre for women, to explore the racialised logic of citizenship and nationality that underpin border control. Using women’s testimonies, it seeks to ‘give voice’ to an otherwise ilenced custodial population. In doing so, it seeks to enrich the predominantly theoretical literature on border control and challenge its pessimistic view of such places merely as ‘zones of exclusion.’ A second and related goal is to demonstrate the salience of detention centres – and migration - for criminological research on race/ethnicity. Detention centres are complex and nuanced sites where issues of race and nationality are under constant debate. While the government restricts migration, such places play an increasingly important role both in determining and managing populations who are unwelcome and in setting out a British national identity

Carriage-rail assembly for high-resolution mechanical positioning

Carriage-rail assembly effects extreme resolution and position accuracy with little friction, and is applicable to such apparatus as optical benches, inspection fixtures, machine tools, and photographic equipment. Directions for assembly construction are given

Mental health services inside immigration removal centres (access, perceived quality of health care and the ACDT process in IRC Morton Hall)

Drawing on targeted, exploratory interviews with a small number of staff and detainees conducted in February 2017, this report sets out a series of common practices and issues relating to services access and quality of mental health service provision, including ACDT plans in Morton Hall IRC. While many of the findings are negative, including high levels of distress among detainees, and uncertainty among staff of how to manage mental health problems among the detained community, the report also identifies some areas of good practice and support. It offers suggestions for improved sign-posting to available services, while identifying additional areas of possible development

Doing research in immigration removal centres: ethics, emotions and impact

Immigration Removal Centres (IRCs) are deeply contested institutions that rarely open their doors to independent research. In this article we discuss some of the complications we faced in conducting the first national study of everyday life in them. As we will set out, research relationships were difficult to forge due to low levels of trust, and unfamiliarity with academic research. At the same time, many participants had unrealistic expectations about our capacity to assist while most exhibited high levels of distress. We were not immune from the emotional burden of the field sites. Such matters were compounded by the limited amount of published information about life in IRCs and a lack of ethical guidelines addressing such places. Drawing on related literature from prison sociology, we use our experiences in IRCs to set out a methodological account of understanding, ethics, and impact within these complex sites