Abstract
The Immigration Detention Centres (CIEs) operate on foreign immigrants lacking valid residence documents. Here, they are analyzed as part of the new border regime explored in this section. Located within European territory, managed with obscurantist procedures and disrespectful of the Human Rights of the people confined in them, they represent a constant threat of retention and expulsion of foreigners. And they do not just directly affect the newcomers, but also foreign residents, including already rooted immigrants. They are thus «internal borders» creatingin fact a polymorphic social control system, and provoking a widespread fear sensation towards a potential detention. Running against official integration rhetoric, CIEs represent the permanent threat of expulsion. If an anthropologist would have had trouble accessing these centres through standard ethnographic means, the committed ethnography of voluntary work allows the access to the experiences of those locked up there. Knowledge of the point of view of those migrants trapped in CIEs allows for the questioning of the very notion of «irregular immigrant» and the political agenda behind the fight against irregular immigration and the control of population flows. In this vein, the CIEs can be critiziced, as they can be understood as the result of a split in the universality of Human Rights, revealing anunfairly restrictive application of them.
Highlights
they are analyzed as part of the new border regime explored in this section
they represent a constant threat of retention and expulsion of foreigners
centros de internamiento de extranjeros (CIEs) represent the permanent threat of expulsión
Summary
RESUMEN Los CIEs son centros de reclusión de personas extranjeras sin documentos de residencia válidos o vigentes y este trabajo los piensa como parte del régimen fronterizo que hemos explorado aquí. Con un oscurantista tratamiento de sus procedimientos y del respeto a los derechos humanos de los allí retenidos, los CIEs representan la constante amenaza de retención y expulsión de los extranjeros. Contra las retóricas de integración, los CIEs representan la constante amenaza de expulsión. Ello nos permite cuestionar la construcción de la noción de «migrante irregular» y de la agenda política alrededor de la lucha a la migración irregular y el control de los flujos para denunciar la problematicidad de los CIEs que manifiestan una escisión entre el planteamiento universalista de los DDHH y una aplicación injustamente restrictiva de los mismos. 52 Desde octubre de 2011 visita el CIE de Aluche, Madrid, como parte del programa de acompañamiento e incidencia política de la ONG Pueblos Unidos
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