An ethnography of deportation from Britain

In the past decades, immigration policies have been refined to broaden eligibility to deportation and allow easier removal of unwanted foreign nationals. Yet how people respond to a given set of policies cannot be fully anticipated. Studying the ways people interpret, understand and experience policies allows for a better understanding of how they work in practice. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in London, this thesis examines experiences of deportation and deportability of migrants convicted of a criminal offence in the UK. It finds that migrants’ deportability is experienced in relation to official bodies, such as the Home Office, the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal, Immigration Removal Centres and Reporting Centres, and becomes embedded in their daily lives, social relations and sense of self. The lived experience of deportation policies emphasizes the material and human costs associated with deportation and highlights its punitive and coercive effects. Deportability marks migrants’ lives with chronic waiting and anxiety. As a result, migrants awaiting deportation make use of four coping strategies: enduring uncertainty, absenting and forming personal cues (Ågård & Harder 2007), and also re-imagining their futures. In turn, migrants’ understandings of their own removal appear incompatible with open political action and with the broader work of Anti-Deportation Campaign support groups. Resistance is thus enacted as compliance with state controls (such as surveillance and immobility), which are perceived as designed to make them fail, rendering them ever more deportable. By enduring this power over them, migrants are resisting their removal and fighting to stay. The thesis concludes that the interruption of migrants’ existence in the UK is effected long before their actual removal from the territory. It is a process developing from the embodiment of their deportability as their present and future lives become suspended by the threat of expulsion from their residence of choic

Shahram Khosravi, “Illegal” Traveller: An Auto-Ethnography of Borders

To say that Khosravi’s “Illegal” Traveller: An Auto-Ethnography of Borders is a book about border crossing is an understatement. This is a book about sensory and embodied experiences of borders from different standpoints, where current debates on the regulation of human mobility are approached through the author’s own. Auto-ethnographies have often been criticised for being too emotional and unscientific, but in fact the value of an auto-ethnography is indeed in its ability to convey to the r..

Anthropological engagements with the prison: gender perspectives

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From prison to detention: the carceral trajectories of foreign-national prisoners in the United Kingdom

The United Kingdom has taken an increasingly punitive stance towards ‘foreign criminals’ using law and policy to pave the way for their expulsion from the country. Imprisonment, then, becomes the first stage in a complex process intertwining identity, belonging and punishment. We draw here on research data from two projects to understand the carceral trajectories of foreign-national offenders in the UK. We consider the lived experiences of male foreign-nationals in two sites: prison and immigration detention. The narratives presented show how imprisonment and detention coalesce within the deportation regime as a ‘double punishment’, one that is highly racialised and gendered. We argue that the UK’s increasingly punitive response to foreign-national offenders challenges the traditional purposes of punishment by sidestepping prisoners’ rehabilitative efforts and denying ‘second chances’ while enacting permanent exclusion through bans on re-entry

Enduring Uncertainty

Focusing on the lived experience of immigration policy and processes, this volume provides fascinating insights into the deportation process as it is felt and understood by those subjected to it. The author presents a rich and innovative ethnography of deportation and deportability experienced by migrants convicted of criminal offenses in England and Wales. The unique perspectives developed here – on due process in immigration appeals, migrant surveillance and control, social relations and sense of self, and compliance and resistance – are important for broader understandings of border control policy and human rights. This title was made Open Access by libraries from around the world through Knowledge Unlatched

Enduring Uncertainty

Focusing on the lived experience of immigration policy and processes, this volume provides fascinating insights into the deportation process as it is felt and understood by those subjected to it. The author presents a rich and innovative ethnography of deportation and deportability experienced by migrants convicted of criminal offenses in England and Wales. The unique perspectives developed here – on due process in immigration appeals, migrant surveillance and control, social relations and sense of self, and compliance and resistance – are important for broader understandings of border control policy and human rights. This title was made Open Access by libraries from around the world through Knowledge Unlatched