Immigration Detention Centres between Migratory and Social Control: An Internal Polymorphic Border

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 expulsión. 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.