“I’ve Been Hurt Every Single Day Here, You Know:” A Feminist Abolitionist Analysis of Immigration Detention

Abstract

While gendered violence against women at home, in intimate relationships, and in the workplace is widely acknowledged, the relationship between border control and gendered violence has only recently been addressed, often narrowly. To address this gap, this article examines the United Kingdom immigration detention system through an abolition feminist lens. Drawing on research conducted inside and outside detention sites, experiential knowledge from lived experience and solidarity work, and secondary sources, we highlight the entangled and mutually constitutive relationships between intimate/interpersonal and institutional/state violence. Inspired by Monica Cosby’s Intimate Partner Violence and State Violence Power and Control Wheel, our analysis reveals how immigration detention constitutes a form of racist-gendered state-corporate violence. Importantly, those who travel under the sign women understand this violence as directly linked to the gendered abuses they experienced outside detention. This underscores the inseparability of post-national struggles against carceral border regimes from feminist transformative efforts to eradicate gendered violence.