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Detention is proliferating as a governmental response to human mobility in the ‘war on terror’. Theoretical engagements with spaces of detention and enclosure have been influenced by Agamben's work on the camp and the sovereign exception. Such a view focuses on the abject ‘bare life’ that is produced by the sovereign decision. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among staff at a UK immigration removal centre, the paper makes the case for ‘going inside’ the detention centre. It examines the everyday life of detention through the lens of emotion, with a focus on fear and contempt. Exploring these emotions as forms of judgement or construal can unravel staff dispositions towards the detainees, and can demonstrate the ways in which emotion shapes the treatment the detainees receive. The paper argues for emotion as an analytical tool; in the case of detention, it can supplement abstract accounts of ‘the camp’.
Alexandra Hall (Sun,) studied this question.