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Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Governmental mobility : the power effects of the movement of detained asylum seekers around Britain's detention estate.
AU - Gill, Nicholas
PY - 2009/3
Y1 - 2009/3
N2 - This paper explores the ways in which mobility can have governmental effects in the context of the management of asylum seekers awaiting deportation from the UK. Drawing upon the case of Campsfield House Immigration Removal Centre, a facility for the incarceration of immigration deportees near Oxford, the paper makes the case that the way asylum seekers are moved between detention centres within the UK has implications for the way they are represented to both asylum activists and asylum sector employees, causing them to choose to use their influence differently by with-holding the support that they might otherwise provide. The constant moving and repositioning of asylum seekers means that they are depicted as transitory, fleeting and depersonalised to those actors with the greatest degree of influence over them. The subjection not only of asylum seekers through forceful, blunt forms of power, but also of more powerful asylum sector actors through subtler, governmental techniques, has significant material implications for the incarcerated asylum seeking community that populates Britain's detention estate.
AB - This paper explores the ways in which mobility can have governmental effects in the context of the management of asylum seekers awaiting deportation from the UK. Drawing upon the case of Campsfield House Immigration Removal Centre, a facility for the incarceration of immigration deportees near Oxford, the paper makes the case that the way asylum seekers are moved between detention centres within the UK has implications for the way they are represented to both asylum activists and asylum sector employees, causing them to choose to use their influence differently by with-holding the support that they might otherwise provide. The constant moving and repositioning of asylum seekers means that they are depicted as transitory, fleeting and depersonalised to those actors with the greatest degree of influence over them. The subjection not only of asylum seekers through forceful, blunt forms of power, but also of more powerful asylum sector actors through subtler, governmental techniques, has significant material implications for the incarcerated asylum seeking community that populates Britain's detention estate.
KW - Mobility
KW - Governmentality
KW - Asylum seekers
KW - Detention
KW - Removal centres
KW - Incarceration
U2 - 10.1016/j.polgeo.2009.05.003
DO - 10.1016/j.polgeo.2009.05.003
M3 - Journal article
VL - 28
SP - 186
EP - 196
JO - Political Geography
JF - Political Geography
SN - 0962-6298
IS - 3
ER -