Description
Contemporary sites of closed immigration detention across the US, the UK, and Australia are defined by hostile, carceral infrastructures designed to separate and contain. Despite purportedly detaining immigrant populations for administrative purposes, detention centres appear as prisons that distance non-citizens from frameworks of rights and operate with high rates of physical and emotional abuse. These centres are interesting sites of analysis in and of themselves. They often have uses that precede that of immigration detention, with many centres previously functioning as military bases, weapons testing grounds, quarantines, or prisons. This paper focuses on repurposed sites of confinement in migration governance, investigating what the recycling of these spaces reveals to us of the sinewy web that connects the current management of immigrant populations to histories of race, empire, and militarism. The paper will examine the physical infrastructures and geographic locations of these recycled centres and what the repurposing of these sites reveals of the interplay between social systems of domination.
