Detention Sites Research Articles

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

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.

АНАЛІЗ ДОТРИМАННЯ ПРАВ ЛЮДИНИ ПІД ЧАС РОСІЙСЬКО-УКРАЇНСЬКОЇ ВІЙНИ: ЦИВІЛЬНІ ЗАРУЧНИКИ – ВИКЛИК ДЛЯ ГЛОБАЛЬНОГО СВІТУ, ПИТАННЯ ВРЕГУЛЮВАННЯ

The article addresses the pressing issue of the illegal detention and sentencing of civilians within the context of the Russian-Ukrainian armed conflict, emphasizing the significant challenges posed by the lack of coherent international legal mechanisms to safeguard human rights. In-depth analysis reveals how this legal vacuum complicates the protection of civilian rights during conflicts, highlighting the specific difficulties in verifying abuses and holding the aggressor state accountable. The study explores the nuanced roles that various international and national organizations play in protecting civilians, particularly focusing on the strategic initiatives led by newly established working groups in Ukraine. These organizations and coalitions are crucial in advocating for and protecting the rights of detained civilians, emphasizing the necessity for international cooperation and robust legal frameworks to address and mitigate such humanitarian crises effectively. The absence of unified international legal standards for the treatment of civilians in conflict zones leads to significant challenges. The International Committee of the Red Cross in Ukraine, for instance, notes numerous complications in the detention processes, which depend heavily on the specifics of the charges and legal statutes applied. The status and rights of civilians detained by occupying forces are not adequately addressed by existing international laws, leading to a gap in legal protections and oversight. One of the major obstacles identified is the difficulty in gathering and verifying evidence related to illegal detentions. The conditions of armed conflict severely restrict access to detention sites, making independent and unbiased investigations almost impossible. This not only hinders the prosecution of the aggressor state but also limits the ability of international bodies to monitor and intervene in such situations. Additionally, the article discusses the strategic use of historical legal principles by the occupying powers, specifically the maxim "nullem crimen, nulla poena sine lege" — no crime and no punishment without pre-established law. This principle is exploited to avoid international accountability, allowing the aggressor to conceal their actions and evade international sanctions and legal repercussions. The Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols are examined as the foundational frameworks of international humanitarian law that explicitly prohibit any form of violence against civilians, including hostage-taking. However, the ongoing violations of these laws, particularly by the aggressor state, underscore the challenges of enforcing these international norms. The research highlights the urgent need for comprehensive approaches to address the plight of civilian detainees in conflict zones. This involves enhancing international legal standards and improving the coordination among international bodies to ensure the effective protection of human rights. The creation of working groups under the auspices of the Ukrainian Ombudsman exemplifies proactive measures taken to address these issues, facilitating dialogue and action to safeguard civilian rights and ensure compliance with international humanitarian law. In conclusion, the article calls for a concerted international effort to develop and implement more effective mechanisms to respond to human rights violations in conflict zones. Strengthening the legal and operational frameworks for protecting civilian populations not only restores fundamental human rights but also contributes to the broader goals of peace and justice in international relations. This comprehensive approach is vital for the long-term resolution of conflicts and the protection of vulnerable populations in war-torn regions. Key words: civilian hostages, armed conflicts, international law, human rights, unlawful detentions, international organizations, Ukraine, working group.

Migrant and Marginalized Body in Connection with Digital Technologies as a Prosthesis of the Monstrous

This article situates the (human) body as a signifier for society at large, arguing that developments in many societies of structural and systematic violence that targets minorities such as refugees and first nation peoples, points to a failure of democratic values. Using two examples, we elaborate technology and digital devices as prosthesis of the body, that are also acting as proxy for state violence. The first example is from the carceral archipelago of Manus Island as a site of remote detention of refugees carried out by the Australian government. Refugees held on Manus Island describe the treatment they experience as torture. The second example is drawn from the Australian mainland, telling the stories of First Nations children subjected to abuse and violence in juvenile detention centers. A judicial inquiry (Royal Commission) found that a systematic approach aimed at punishing children constituted torture. The concepts developed in this article are those of bordering and racialization, while the intertwining of human and “more than human life” helps to understand and challenge the necropolitical power evident in (liberal) capitalism.

Counter-mapping the mobile border: Racial surveillance and data justice in spaces of disappearance

Following significant social and legal challenges to Australia’s colonial policy of ‘offshoring’ immigration detention, the system has become more mobile and diffuse, expanding through a range of new, ad-hoc, and established detention sites both ‘on’ and ‘offshore’. Refugees, asylum seekers and other non-citizens are frequently transferred and dispersed between these sites, which form ‘spaces of disappearance’. In this article, we draw upon concepts of racial surveillance capitalism and data justice to analyse a work by the Manus Recording Project Collective, titled where are you today, that sought to expose and counter the colonial border’s disappearing effects. The work involved the creation and distribution of audio-recordings from inside detention sites to subscribers. Recordings were distributed via text messages that also plotted individual subscribers in spatiotemporal relation to the detained artists that created them. The Collective thereby appropriated the tools of surveillance capitalism – such as GPS tracking and timestamping – to create dynamic digital cartographies of the mobile-carceral border. Through studying this work, we aim to deepen understandings of colonial bordering practices and highlight possibilities for disrupting the social divisions and exclusions that they reproduce.

Border hotels: Spaces of detention and quarantine

‘Border hotels’ have come to prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic as spaces of detention and quarantine. Despite the longer history of using hotels for immigrant detention, efforts to contain outbreaks have led to the proliferation of hotels used for border governance. Ad hoc quarantine facilities have been set up around the world acting as choke points for mobility. The use of hotels as sites of detention has also gained significant attention, with pandemic related restrictions impacting on access to services for detained refugees and asylum seekers. Inhumane conditions and mobilisations against these conditions have recently received substantial media coverage. This symposium initiates a discussion about ‘border hotels’, closely engaging with these developments. Contributors document the shifting infrastructures of the border, and explore how these sites are experienced and resisted. They draw attention to divergent experiences of immobility, belonging, exclusion, and intersections of detention and quarantine. In exploring different - and controversial - aspects of ‘border hotels’, this symposium theorises modalities of governance implemented through hotels. Following in the footsteps of the ‘hotel geopolitics’ agenda (Fregonese and Ramadan 2015) it illustrates how hotels become integrated into border regimes. In doing so, it contributes to debates on the material and infrastructural dimensions of bordering practices and specifically to the literature on carceral geographies, polymorphic bordering and the politics of mobility.

Length and associated characteristics of short-term detentions: an analysis of detentions under the Mental Health Act in Scotland, 2006-2018.

The Mental Health Act in Scotland is under review. Previous iterations increased patients' rights but the maximum time for short-term detentions remains unchanged, despite evolving psychiatric treatment models. We explored length, mode of ending and factors of influence on the application of short-term detention certificates (STDCs), which can last up to 28days, across Scotland between 2006 and 2018. Data on age, gender, ethnicity, date of commencement and ending of the STDC and detention site from all 42,493 STDCs issued to 30,464 patients over 12years were extracted from the national repository for detentions under the Mental Health (Care and Treatment) (Scotland) Act 2003 and analysed using mixed models. One in five STDCs lapsed on day 28. Two in five were revoked and the remainder extended to a treatment order. STDCs that were not extended averaged 19days, and revoked STDCs 14days. The probability of a detention lapsing varied across hospitals and increased with patient age. The odds of a detention lapsing on day 28 were 62% lower and revoked detentions 10% shorter in 2018 relative to 2006. The odds of a detention extending decreased significantly from 2012 to 2018. Extended STDCs were associated with increased patient age, male gender, and ethnicity other than White Scottish. There was little initiation of or active revocation of STDCs on weekend days. The length of STDCs reduced over time, fewer detentions lapsed, and weekday patterning was evident in each year. These data can inform legislative and service reviews.

Endangered Scholars Worldwide

Endangered Scholars Worldwide Dolunay Bulut Attacks on higher education communities are occurring at an alarming rate worldwide, threatening the safety and well-being of scholars, students, and academic staff, as well as the autonomy of higher education institutions. In response to a global increase in threats to academic freedom, Endangered Scholars Worldwide has expanded its presence as an online publication, sharing frequent updates on new and developing cases. While we continue to publish regular updates in Social Research: An International Quarterly, our primary activity now takes place under the auspices of the New University in Exile Consortium, www.newuniversityinexileconsortium.org. The Consortium was launched in the fall of 2018 at the New School to create a supportive intellectual community for threatened, exiled scholars. It works to help them identify possible path toward new futures and find placements at Consortium schools, of which there are now over 55 worldwide. For the most current information and ways in which you can be involved in our efforts to defend academic freedom and free expression, we invite you to visit our website www.endangeredscholarsworldwide.net or follow us at https://twitter.com/ESWNEWSCHOOL. If you are aware of a scholar or student whose case you believe we should investigate, please get in touch with us at esw@newschool.edu. Thank you for your unwavering support. [End Page v] SPECIAL DELIVERY Endangered Scholars Worldwide is deeply concerned about global escalation of attacks on academic freedom and university autonomy. Since 2020, more than 5,000 lethal or nonlethal attacks on academics or students took place in at least 85 countries, harming more than 9,000 scholars and students. The attacks with highest mortality rates took place in Afghanistan and Nigeria. In the first half of 2022 authoritarian upheaval has not lost its momentum as new military conflicts and refugee crises occur and the number of countries that put education facilities to military use has drastically increased. The militarization of education facilities includes, but is not limited to, using schools as military bases, recruitment centers, and detention sites. As of September 2022, Afghanistan remains the most dangerous place in the world for scholars, scientists, and students. On August 13, 2022, days before the first anniversary of the Taliban's return to power, a group of female demonstrators held a rally in the capital city of Kabul to protest the Islamist government's policies regarding women in education. Earlier this year, right after the reopening of schools, the Taliban declared the reinforcement of burqa (full-body coverage for Muslim women) for all girls and women and banned girls above the sixth grade from attending school. To disperse protesters who were chanting "bread, work, and freedom" in front of the Ministry of Education building, Taliban security forces fired into the air and physically assaulted protesters. Since seizing control in August 2021, following the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Taliban government has violently eliminated the individual and civic rights gained by women in the past two decades. While the Taliban government has allowed some rallies against the US, they have declined permission for any rally for women's rights since returning to power. The unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine since February 2022 has been posing a massive threat to global academic cooperation, besides the immediate threat that it poses to the Ukrainian universities and infrastructure, let alone the lives of Ukrainian people. According to [End Page vi] the UN estimates, at least 12 million people in Ukraine have been internally displaced or have fled to other countries. As of July 2022, more than 5.2 million Ukrainian refugees have been recorded across Europe, and more than 3.5 million have applied for temporary residence elsewhere in the world. According to NGOs' reports and a statement from Ukraine's Ministry of Education and Science, more than one thousand schools and universities have been damaged in Ukraine in the first six months of the invasion. The Russian government's aggression is also targeting domestic dissidents with prison sentences of up to 15 years on charges of treason and espionage. According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), the Russian government has urged educators to spread war propaganda, and those who refuse to do so...

Women's Experiences of Immigration Detention in Italy: Examining Immigration Procedural Fairness, Human Dignity, and Health.

Recent decades have witnessed a growing number of states around the world relying on border control measures, such as immigration detention, to govern human mobility and control the movements of those classified as “unauthorised non-citizens.” In response to this, an increasing number of scholars from several disciplines, including psychologists, have begun to examine this phenomenon. In spite of the widespread concerns raised, few studies have been conducted inside immigration detention sites, primarily due to difficulties in gaining access. This body of research becomes even scanter when it comes to the experiences of detained women. This study is the first of its kind to have surveyed 93 women confined in an Italian immigration detention facility. A partial mediation model with latent variables was tested through partial least structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). The findings revealed the negative impact that unfair immigration procedures have on detained women’s human dignity, which in turn negatively affects their self-rated physical and mental health. Overall, our study sheds light on the dehumanisation and damage to human dignity that immigration detention entails, as well as its negative impact on the health of those affected. This evidence reinforces the image of these institutions as sites of persistent injustice, while stressing the need to envision alternative justice-oriented forms to address human mobility.

Malleable detention: The restructuring of carceral space within U.S. immigration detention

The expansion of immigration detention in the United States has been attributed to policy, privatization, and anti-immigrant racialization. This research extends understandings of immigration detention's growth by focusing on how Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) maintains the necessary space to detain migrants during this expansion. In this article, I introduce the concept of “malleable detention:” the flexible strategies and methods used to restructure space within immigration detention. I base this concept on findings from an analysis of the T. Don Hutto Detention Center - a detention site that has remained open despite various abuses, protests, and closures. Using statements from ICE officials, intergovernmental service agreements (IGSAs) between ICE and local governments, government reports, nongovernmental reports, and newspaper accounts, I find that the Hutto site displayed three forms of malleable detention. Detention was made malleable through repurposing non-detention space into detention space, maintaining flexibility in the detained populations, and reconfiguring contracts that helped keep detention open. Beyond the Hutto case, the malleable detention concept extends to detention sites throughout the U.S. This provides evidence into how ICE is able to sustain enough detention space that makes the U.S. the largest detainer of immigrants in the world.

Operational psychology, professional ethics, and democracy: A challenge for our time.

The post-9/11 United States abusive deten-tion and interrogation program brought atten-tion to the critical roles of health professionals generally and of psychologists more particu-larly in the modern administration of torture and other detainee abuse. Over a decade of controversy in the American Psychological Association (APA) and an independent in-vestigation finding APA collusion with the Bush administration's torture and coercive interrogation programs led to 2015 policies restricting the activities of psychologists in national security interrogations and illegal detention sites like Guantanamo. This con-troversy expanded to evaluation of a broader set of issues regarding the ethical roles of psy-chologists in furthering military and intelli-gence operations, or what has become known as Operational Psychology. Controversy over the extent to which Operational Psychology activities are consistent with psychological ethics has expanded since 2015 with critics calling for policies restraining Operational Psychologists from involvement in activities that cause greater than trivial unstipulated harm, lack informed consent, or are absent plausible independent ethical monitoring (due, for instance to security classification). Operational Psychologists have pushed back against any constraints on their actions other than US law and government regulations. This debate also raises a broader issue: are there limitations on the extent to which we, as members of democratic societies, can tolerate the use of psychological science and expertise to manipulate unwitting people?

The aftermath of enforced disappearance and concealment.

Introduction: The forced disappearance of peasants in the Paine commune, Chile, dates back to the first months after the coup in 1973. Ten years ago, as a result of a judicial investigation, the location of a mass grave was revealed to more than one hundred kilometers from the detention site. This finding allowed the identification of eleven detainees who disappeared by genetic methods, along with another five recognized from forensic archaeological evidence. Our main objective is to account for the aftermath of forced disappearance and the operation to conceal the bodies of three generations of relatives of disappeared detainees. Methods: Qualitative research: Case study, carried out between 2014 and 2015, with a total of 19 interviewees from three generations, belonging to six families from Paine. Semi-structured interviews were conducted, with two to three sessions per interviewee and three discussion groups, one for each generation. Results: The three generations face in a dissimilar way the slogan of where are they ?, as well as they attribute different meanings to the skeletal remains. It contrasts the "duty to recognize" of the first generation with the interpellation of the third generation through practices that vindicate the collective dimension of mourning. In the experiences of intergenerational dialogue, spaces of memory have taken center stage, in particular the location of the common grave. One of the relevant results of this investigation has been to give an account of the social experience of forensic identification. Conclusions: Family relationships do not convey an integrating story but rather what stands out is the emptiness of representation and intergenerational silences. Science, through DNA, offers statistical evidence of identification, but the decision is maintained in the individual jurisdiction of each family member. Comprehensive forensic work with the participation of archaeologists, anthropologists, dentists and other experts contributes to restoring the dignity of the victimized body.

Visiting Migrants, Contesting Detention: An Overview of Community Visitation Programs and Advocacy for Immigrants inside U.S. Immigration Detention

How do activists advocate for immigrants in U.S. immigration detention, given its closed and guarded structures? Providing advocacy for immigrants becomes difficult in detention as many people do not have the requisite skillset for legal advocacy, a prominent method in providing support to detained immigrants. In this article, I examine the Freedom for Immigrants’ Community Visitation Program (CVP) network, which organizes visits to detention sites, as one model by which people provide advocacy for detained immigrants. I base this on an analysis of CVP documents, websites, videos and reports, detained immigrant letters and statements, news stories, investigative reports, and secondary resources. Through this analysis, I find that CVPs organize volunteers by having a wide coverage of CVPs throughout the U.S. and manage visitation training programs. This allows volunteers to provide social and emotional support to detained migrants. Additionally, volunteers serve as advocates during instances of abuse occurring inside detention that may otherwise have remained invisible by rallying around detained migrants, as seen in the case of Laura Monterrosa. Visitation programs allow for an opening within the closed detention system for other people besides those living in its daily infrastructure and work to undo the complex detention system.

Disappeared in plain sight: ICE air deportation infrastructure and cycles of migrant (im)mobility

ABSTRACT This article argues that aviation infrastructures utilized by ICE Air Operations for deportations should be understood as texts that materialize rhetorical borders and anti-migrant discourses. Deportation flights originating from King County International Airport provide one vantage point into common spatial and structural tactics ICE deploys to obfuscate and expand vast infrastructural networks of migrant control. Infrastructures of forced movement generated by ICE Air Operations transform airplanes into mobile sites of migrant detention that are paradoxically both rhetorically obscured and hypervisible, produce weaponized absences and informational gaps around deportations, and trap migrants in exploitative cycles of simultaneous forced mobility and immobility.

Viral Injustice

The COVID-19 pandemic blighted all aspects of American life, but people in jails, prisons, and other detention sites experienced singular harm and neglect. Housing vulnerable detainee populations with elevated medical needs, these facilities were ticking time bombs. They were overcrowded, underfunded, unsanitary, insufficiently ventilated, and failed to meet even minimum health-and-safety standards. Every unit of national and sub-national government failed to prevent detainee communities from becoming pandemic epicenters, and judges were no exception. This Article takes the comprehensive look at the decisional law growing out of the COVID-19 detainee litigation, and situates the judicial response as part of a comprehensive institutional failure. We read hundreds of COVID-19 custody cases, and our analysis defines the decision-making by reference to three attributes: the substantive right asserted, the form of detention at issue, and the remedy sought. Several patterns emerged. Judges avoided constitutional holdings whenever they could, rejected requests for ongoing supervision, and resisted collective discharge—limiting such relief to vulnerable subpopulations. The most successful litigants were detainees in custody pending immigration proceedings, and the least successful were those convicted of crimes. We draw three conclusions that bear on subsequent pandemic responses—including vaccination efforts—and incarceration more generally. First, courts avoided robust relief by re-calibrating rights and remedies, particularly those relating to the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. Second, court intervention was especially limited by the behavior of bureaucracies responsible for the detention function. Third, the judicial activity reflected entrenched assumptions about the danger and moral worth of prisoners that are widespread but difficult to defend. Before judges can effectively respond to pandemic risk, nonjudicial institutions will have to treat it differently than other health-and-safety threats, and judges will have to overcome their empirically dubious resistance to decarceration.

Mapping European Border Control: On Small Maps, Reflexive Inversion and Interference

<p>The so-called hotspots—identification and registration centres on the Aegean Islands in Greece and in Italy—are not only sites of remote detention, European intervention or differential inclusion, but also logistical set-ups, where data is generated and spread across state institutions. Such socio-technical assemblages are hard to research not only because of state actors’ desire to keep things secret but also because of methodological issues. How does one disentangle their extensive, complex and rhizomatic nature? Which trajectories does one follow and which actors and voices does one assemble? Following recent work in the realm of STS, methods are understood as (b)ordering devices, which performatively enact an ordered world and produce accounts of the social, including some realities while excluding others. This article considers mapping a well-suited method for studying widespread socio-technical assemblages, but only if it is handled with caution. Based on an empirical inquiry into the Moria hotspot and following a praxeographic research approach, different types of small maps are developed that enfold complexity by being attentive to situatedness, symmetry, multi-sitedness and multiplicity. Furthermore, it emphasizes an on-going process of reflexive inversion of the mapping process that makes the crafted accounts contestable and its boundaries and blind spots visible. Finally, the article discusses how mappings can be used not only as research but also as a political device that contributes to the work of other collectives beyond the scientific production of truth.</p>

Correlation between LID Flood Control Capability and Runoff Coefficient

Short-term heavy rains caused by global warming could lead to urban flooding as well as damage to both people and property. Although Korea is taking active measures to reduce the impact of flood-related disasters through disaster impact assessments, these assessments mainly consist of qualitative evaluation procedures for urban inundation when designating districts for development projects. The recently developed “inundation determination and detention site size calculation program” has made it possible to review urban inundation hydraulic calculations, even when designating districts for development projects. However, there is still a limit to the hydraulic review and the utilization of Low Impact Development (LID) facilities due to the lack of linkage between the use of such facilities and the inundation determination program. Accordingly, it is necessary to develop a technique to utilize runoff coefficients in applying the LID in the flood determination program. Therefore, in this study, the flood control capacity of stormwater runoff reduction facilities at each LID facility was reviewed and the relationship with runoff coefficient was analyzed.

The Political Costs of Abusing Human Rights: International Cooperation in Extraordinary Rendition

From 2001 to 2005, over a quarter of all countries in the world cooperated in a secret rendition network that enabled the transfer of CIA terrorist suspects to secret detention sites. While governments in some states have not been punished for participating, others have incurred political costs, including electoral defeats. What explains variation in the political costs of participation in the post-9/11 extraordinary rendition program? I argue that left of center governments, particularly those in democracies, suffered greater political costs from being caught because of the perception that they are better at protecting civil liberties in the name of national security. I test the effect of party orientation on electoral defeat at the election following the revelation of participation in extraordinary rendition using a matched sample where the party in office at the time of participation remained the same. The analysis provides empirical support for my theoretical argument.

Sexual violence in the border zone: the EU, the Women, Peace and Security agenda and carceral humanitarianism in Libya

Abstract The last decades have seen a striking increase in international policy seeking to protect against conflict-related sexual violence. Norms of protection are, however, unevenly applied in practice. In this article, I address one such situation: the significant and growing evidence of widespread sexual violence at detention sites in Libya where migrants are imprisoned after interception on the Mediterranean Sea. Drawing on policy documents, human rights reports, interviews with advocates and officials, and an analysis of debates in the EU Parliament and UNHCR's humanitarian evacuation scheme in Libya, I examine how abuses have been framed, and with what effects. I argue that decisions about protection are shaped not only by raced and gendered categorizations but also by a demarcation of bodies in the border zone, where vulnerability is to some degree acknowledged, but agency and responsibility also disavowed by politicians, diplomats and practitioners. The wrong of sexual violence is thus both explicitly recognized but also re-articulated in ways that lessen the obligations of the same states and regional organizations that otherwise champion the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. The combination of mass pullback and detention for many migrants with evacuation for a vulnerable few is an example of carceral humanitarianism, where ‘rescue’ often translates into confinement and abuse for unwelcome populations. My analysis highlights the importance of the positionality of migrants in the Libyan border zone for the form of recognition they are afforded, and the significant limits to the implementation of the EU's gender-responsive humanitarian policies in practice.

Challenges to medical ethics in the context of detention and deportation: Insights from a French postcolonial department in the Indian Ocean.

Owing to a growing policing of borders, healthcare professionals become increasingly involved in the biopolitical management of migrants' mobility. While their presence on sites of migration control and detention is necessary to ensure migrants' access to healthcare, their role risks being instrumentalized to ensure the sustainability of detention and swiftness of deportations. This article analyses the practice and ethics of midwives' medical expertise in processes of migration control in the French overseas department of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean. Midwives in this setting are required to assess the health of pregnant women intercepted at sea by the police in order to determine whether they can be detained. The article traces how midwives come to be invested with a power to police patients' mobility. In the face of such unwelcome responsibilities, midwives resorted to emotional distancing while suspicion on both sides impeded the possibility of genuine relations of care. The article analyses how midwives framed the ethical dilemmas at hand and examines how they perceived their decision-making responsibility. I argue that midwives are socialized into the logics of border enforcement and gradually brought to implement a minimal version of care as a result of migration control's inroads into care. The article thus questions the function and meaning of biopolitics within migration control and aims at initiating a conversation around the necessary conditions for ensuring medical personnel's independence in these extraordinary care settings. The article draws on a three-months fieldwork completed in Mayotte between mid-April and mid-July 2017 during which I conducted 40 interviews with healthcare professionals in perinatal health services and 15 interviews with officers from stakeholder organizations, from local and international NGOs to health institutions. This article draws in particular on interviews with the medical team that was required to attend to migrant women intercepted at sea by the police.

The University and the Camp

If we take seriously the concerns and problematics of decolonizing the mind, we might begin by looking for sources of knowledge in the refugee camp. Camps have long been sites of empirical research: in their darkest form, as sites of detention and concentration, and in a putatively lighter form, as liberatory vehicles for the rescued and their saviours. What if camps did not serve empiricist ends of knowledge, but instead, theoretical ones? If so, then the humanitarian would become the student, the refugee the professor, and the architecture of the camp that of the university. This lecture imagines this architecture. This text draws from the keynote address given on January 25, 2019, at the workshop convened by Somayeh Chitchian, Maja Momic, and Shahd Wari at the Max Planck Insitute for the Study of Religious & Ethnic Diversity: “Inside-Out / Outside-In: Shifting Architectures of Refugee Inhabitation.”