Affect and authority in immigration detention
| DOI | 10.1177/1462474518803321 |
| Author | Mary Bosworth |
| Date | 01 December 2019 |
| Published date | 01 December 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Affect and authority in
immigration detention
Mary Bosworth
University of Oxford, UK; Monash University, Australia
Abstract
Drawing on a long-term research project across a number of British Immigration
Removal Centres (IRCs), this article considers the relationship between authority
and affect. In contrast to much criminological literature on the prison, which advances
a liberal political account in which power is constantly negotiated and based on mutual
recognition, in detention, this article suggests, staff authority rests on an abrogation of
their self rather than engagement with the other. Officers turn away (deny) and switch
off (emotionally withdraw) from those before them in order to do their job. In these
terms, we bear witness to the affective nature of wielding power at the border.
Operating without a clear basis of moral legitimacy, officer testimonies make clear, is
painful and corrosive, for staff and for detainees. It may work, in other words, but at
what cost?
Keywords
affect, authority, immigration removal centres, legitimacy, liberalism, staff
‘At the end of the day our job is to tell the detainees what they can have and what they
can’t have.’ (Donald,
1
DCO, IRC Harmondsworth)
‘law without appeals to emotion is virtually unthinkable.’ (Nussbaum, 2004: 6)
In this paper, I draw on a selection of staff accounts of working in British
Immigration Removal Centres (IRCs), to explore how power and authority are
maintained and challenged within these sites. As I will demonstrate, officers speak
Corresponding author:
Mary Bosworth, University of Oxford, Manor Road, Oxford, OX1 3UQ, UK.
Email: mary.bosworth@crim.ox.ac.uk
Punishment & Society
2019, Vol. 21(5) 542–559
!The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1462474518803321
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about their work in contradictory and, often, in deeply emotional ways. IRCs are
not ‘happy places to work’, they say; they feel ‘worthless’, and have to become
‘hardened’ to survive. The point is not to generate sympathy for these women and
men; they are not heroic figures.
2
Rather, in focusing upon the emotional quality
of their testimonies, I highlight the importance of affect in making sense of the
social world (Chamberlen, 2016; Clough and Halley, 2007; Mercan, 2018). In so
doing, I seek to open new lines of thought within criminological accounts of power
and legitimacy. For emotions, Sara Ahmed (2004a, 2004b) reminds us, are pro-
ductive. They are a means by which people make sense of themselves and the world
around us (see also Katz, 1999; Nussbaum, 2001, 2004). They indicate a moral and
ethical frame (Sedgwick, 2003), while also acting as a form of and as a vehicle for
control. Emotions can be a site of critical resistance and a coming together, as well
as means of division. They create ties and may sever them.
Notwithstanding a lengthy tradition within criminology of work on emotions,
crime (Katz, 1988), and punishment (Braithwaite, 1989; Karstedt et al., 2011),
rather less attention has been paid to the affective nature of the administration
of justice as criminologists have emphasized the ‘rational’ side of bureaucratic
practice over its emotional one (Weber, 1997; although see Murphy and Tyler,
2008). Thus, even as sociologists have long documented the pain prisoners feel as a
result of their confinement (see, for example, Cohen and Taylor, 1979; Crewe,
2009; Sykes, 1958), and some attention has been given to the emotional impact
of working in prisons (although see Crawley, 2004a, 2004b, 2011), little has been
written on institutional affect (although see Chamberlen, 2016). Rather, since the
mid-1990s, authority and coercion have been predominantly conceptualized in
liberal terms of power and legitimacy (see, inter alia, Bradford and Quinton,
2014; Dolovich, 2004; Liebling and Tankebe, 2015; Sparks, 1994; Sparks
et al., 1996).
While important distinctions exist within the broad field of scholarship on legit-
imacy (see, for a good overview, Liebling and Tankebe, 2015), for the most part
authors attribute a certain level of contingency to power and authority. Even in
sites of apparent coercion, they argue, power is negotiated (although see
Carrabine, 2004). The state does not operate without limits. Instead, the power
wielded by individuals and organisations relies on ‘the recognition by the governed
of that right’ to govern (Jackson et al., 2013: 8). In the words of Tony Bottoms and
Justice Tankebe (2012: 129):
‘Legitimacy needs to be perceived as always dialogic and relational in character. That
is to say, those in power (or seeking power) in a given context make a claim to be the
legitimate ruler(s); then members of the audience respond to this claim; the power-
holder might adjust the nature of the claim in light of the audience’s response; and this
process repeats itself. It follows that legitimacy should not be viewed as a single
transaction; it is more like a perpetual discussion, in which the content of power-
holders’ later claims will be affected by the nature of the audience response.’
Bosworth 543
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