Visiting Immigration Detention
Care and Cruelty in Australia’s Asylum Seeker Prisons
By Michelle Peterie
ISBN
978-1529226614Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Bristol University PressISBN
978-1529226607Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Bristol University PressISBN
978-1529226621Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Bristol University PressISBN
978-1529226621Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Bristol University Press
Visiting Immigration Detention
In the media
'Collateral damage of immigration detention: new research' in The University of Sydney News & Opinion
Michelle Peterie’s revealing research offers a fresh angle on the human costs of immigration detention.
Drawing on over 70 interviews with regular visitors to Australia’s onshore immigration detention facilities, Peterie paints a unique and vivid picture of these carceral spaces. The book contrasts the care and friendship exchanged between detainees and visitors with the isolation and despair that is generated and weaponised through institutional life. It shows how visitors become targets of institutional control, and theorises the harm detention imposes beyond the detainee.
As the first research in this area, this book bears important witness to Australia’s onshore immigration detention system, and offers internationally relevant insights on immigration, deterrence and the politics of solidarity.
"The author’s presentation of visitor’s experiences offers a penetrating and insightful account of the various practices through which harm is inflicted in Australia’s onshore detention facilities, who is affected by such practices, and the reasons these practices are perpetuated." Ethnic and Racial Studies
“This is a vital read for researchers and students studying the multiple and radiating harms of immigration detention. Offering rich, vivid empirical data and novel theoretical insights and analysis, Peterie makes a significant contribution to advancing understandings of the weaponization of despair in immigration detention.” Ala Sirriyeh, Lancaster University
Michelle Peterie is Research Fellow in Sociology at the Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies at The University of Sydney.
Introduction: Studying Immigration Detention
Immigration Detention in Australia
Theorizing Detention Centres as Prisons
Bureaucratic Violence
Witnessing the Pains of Imprisonment
Care and Resistance
Forced Relocations
Reverberating Harms
Conclusion: Tacit Intentionality and the Weaponization of Despair
