On ghostly lives: life, death and the British immigration detention estate

This research project investigates the role of administrative detention in the UK and its impact on the evolving concept of the human. By engaging with critical theorists such as Sylvia Wynter, Frantz Fanon, Katherine McKittrick, Simone Browne and Achille Mbembe, I examine how immigration laws and policies perpetuate racial differences within the immigration detention estate in Britain. This study addresses crucial questions: How do immigration regulations uphold racial disparities through detention? What are the implications of racial terror (the normalisation of racialised violence) for the politics of the human? How does the popular adage, ‘we did not cross the border, the border crossed us,’ challenge conventional understandings of borders? Why do states increasingly impose restrictions on migrants globally? The research explores the extensive measures used to enforce borders, including walls, fences, surveillance technologies, biometric data collection, prisons, and detention centers, and their connection to the (un)making of the human. I argue that detention serves as a mechanism of power that enforces racialised surveillance and control, perpetuating a hierarchical reordering of humanity often characterised by discrimination and violence. Guided by Puar’s (2017) concept of debilitation, I apply the notion of maiming as a form of state power that operates between biopower (the governance of life) and necropower (the governance of death). I contribute to the field by meditating on what I call ‘maimed life’ which are lives that are ‘derealised’ (Butler, 2020: 33), maintained in a state of ‘injury’ (Mbembe, 2019:75) or ‘deadness’ (Butler, 2020: 33), through practice and discourse. I employ a diverse range of data sources, including ethnographic notes from fieldwork in Calais, interviews with activists, refugees, and asylum seekers, and documents from a public inquiry (witness statements, transcripts, footage, etc.). Through this comprehensive approach, this study aims to elucidate the intricate connections between the practice of detention, racialised surveillance, geographies of domination and the politics of being human in the UK.