The pains of detainment: Experience of time and coping strategies at immigration detention centres
| Author | Willy Pedersen,Liridona Gashi,Thomas Ugelvik |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480619855989 |
| Published date | 01 February 2021 |
| Date | 01 February 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
855989TCR0010.1177/1362480619855989Theoretical CriminologyGashi et al.
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Theoretical Criminology
2021, Vol. 25(1) 88 –106
The pains of detainment:
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Experience of time and coping
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DOI: 10.1177/1362480619855989
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strategies at immigration
detention centres
Liridona Gashi
University of Oslo, Norway
Willy Pedersen
University of Oslo, Norway
Thomas Ugelvik
University of Oslo, Norway
Abstract
In most jurisdictions, immigration detention centres are seen as an important part of the
immigration control system. Research suggests that stressful waiting and the experience
of uncertainty are common at such institutions. However, few empirical studies show
how detainees manage these matters. In this article, we draw on fieldwork conducted at
the only detention centre in Norway. Detainees described their situation as frustrating
and emotionally challenging; and we show how they as a response developed a set of
coping techniques aimed at ‘making their own time’. The most important were: (1)
living in ‘slow motion’; (2) censorious attacks directed at the institution to break the
monotony; (3) the use of benzodiazepines to regulate the perception of time; and (4)
religious practices to connect the present with the future. We conclude that when
investigating coping- and resistance strategies, we should not overlook the temporal
aspects of them and their implications.
Corresponding author:
Liridona Gashi, Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo, PO box 1096, Oslo,
Blindern 0317, Norway.
Email: Liridona.Gashi@sosgeo.uio.no
Gashi et al.
89
Keywords
Ethnography, immigration detention, resistance, temporal coping strategies,
uncertainty, waiting
Introduction
Prisoners typically count down the days to their release. The image of tally marks on a
cell wall is frequently used to represent the prison experience. However, Ugelvik and
Damsa (2017) have shown that not everyone longs for release. At the prison they studied,
all prisoners were foreign nationals, and most were facing deportation. Under these cir-
cumstances, many felt ambivalent about their prison term coming to an end. In this study,
of Norway’s sole detention centre, we found detainees felt much the same way. Like the
men whom Griffiths (2013, 2014) interviewed in the UK, those we encountered in a
Norwegian detention centre longed for an end to their waiting yet, unsure of the out-
come, many feared what would happen upon release.
According to Emirbayer and Mische (1998: 1012) agency is ‘a temporally embedded
process of social engagement’. Individuals engage in repertoires from the past and adjust
their actions to new situations. In so doing, they may develop strategies to control and
manipulate time itself. Prisons and other total institutions are uniquely challenging for
establishing ‘temporal agency’. As a result, people struggle to relate actively to time
passing while maintaining a meaningful, constructive connection between the past, pre-
sent and future. The most common time-related metaphors used by prison researchers
refer to ‘dead time’ or ‘timelessness’ (Irwin, 1980) where endless time has to be experi-
enced passively while prisoners are monitored by authorities (Foucault, 1979). A lack of
agency can inhibit future orientation and engender passivity.
The micro-management of time at custodial sites has largely been neglected in the
research literature (Flaherty, 2003). As O’Donnell (2014: 176) notes, when prisoners’
negotiation of time has featured as a topic, it is often only superficially examined. Although
time and temporality are crucial aspects of prison life, O’Donnell continues, social scien-
tists seem to have overlooked the ‘efforts made by prisoners to effect mastery over an
aspect of their lives that cannot be seen, tasted, touched, smelled or heard but that never-
theless bombards, and threatens to overwhelm the senses’. The studies that have engaged
more thoroughly with the phenomenology of time depict these issues as complex and
frustrating. Prisoners have to learn to actively ‘do time’ (Matthews, 2016), often by ‘kill-
ing time’, to survive in a time machine frequently resulting in the destruction of temporal
agency and autonomy as well as the experience of emptiness (Medlicott, 1999: 212).
Cohen and Taylor’s (1972) seminal work on coping and psychological survival has
inspired much of the literature on prison time. Two aspects are typically highlighted.
First, time in prison has been linked to the length of the incarceration; usually, long-term
prisoners have been interviewed (Cope, 2003; O’Donnell, 2014; Sapsford, 1983).
Recently, Crewe et al. (2017) have described how such prisoners adapt to long-term
imprisonment. They have shown how coping strategies may vary throughout the stages
of the sentences. Second, their imprisonment has a more or less clear end-date and at that
point they may—if they wish—resume life where it left off. When prisoners are not
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Theoretical Criminology 25(1)
given a specific release date, the indeterminate nature of the sentence may in itself be
part of the pain of imprisonment (Leigey and Ryder, 2015).
The perception and management of time at immigration detention centres has been
even less frequently researched. Although detention centres may draw political attention,
few researchers have found their way into the belly of these beasts. However, a number
of recent studies have shown how detention shapes detainees’ self-perception and iden-
tity (Bosworth, 2014; Ugelvik, 2016). There is also a growing body of research on the
health effects of detention, both during the period of confinement (e.g. Bosworth and
Kellezi, 2015) and after release (Steel et al., 2006; Zimmerman et al., 2011). While
numerous studies find a period of detention is marked by profound uncertainty (Bosworth,
2013, 2014; Bosworth and Vannier, 2016; Griffiths, 2013, 2014), little scholarly atten-
tion has been paid to how detainees manage time inside (though a notable exception is
Turnbull, 2016).
Although Trandum is not a prison, it resembles a penal institution in many ways. The
similarities are reflected in both form and content: most obviously, its architecture mim-
ics that of ordinary prisons, with razor wire fences, security cameras and individual cells.
Everyday life inside seems also to be structured in similar ways, in the deprivation of
freedom and movement, uniformed staff and limited time-tables (Bosworth and Turnbull,
2015). Given these overlaps, and the paucity of literature on time in detention, in this
article, we turn to work on the prison to better understand how those immigration detain-
ees we interviewed in Norway perceive and cope with time.
Time-related coping styles
As a rich tradition of scholarship from around the world has demonstrated, the prison
context shapes how prisoners relate to the past, present and future. In O’Donnell’s (2014:
179) terms: ‘[m]uch of the richness of human life, which involves re-narrating one’s past
and re-imagining one’s future, is negated by imprisonment’. Many prisoners, particularly
those serving long, indeterminate sentences, cope by focusing on the ‘here and now’
(Cohen and Taylor, 1972; Crewe et al., 2017; Flanagan, 1981; O’Donnell, 2014).
Research demonstrates that prisoners and inmates in other institutional settings have
a rich repertoire of adaption strategies. Early studies found that many prisoners did not
simply aim at serving time passively but wished to use it actively and constructively
(Flanagan, 1981; Irwin, 1970). Calkins’ (1970) study of patients at a rehabilitation insti-
tution showed that with so much time available within a limited setting, people found it
difficult to use conventional time markers.
More recently, O’Donnell (2014) detailed how prisoners in solitary confinement
modify the quality of their temporal experience. He identified seven distinct stratagems
(the so-called seven R’s of survival), which span from withdrawal to frenetic activity.
These stratagems echo Calkins’ framework, but O’Donnell (2014: 225) contends that the
coercive nature of imprisonment ‘evokes responses that are more varied, situation-spe-
cific, and more deeply countered’. While the most frequently used strategy, he noted,
was ‘rescheduling’, in which prisoners break down time into bearable intervals to be able
to gauge the passage of time, the approach that may be the most fruitful is ‘reinterpreta-
tion’, where prisoners reimagine and recast their predicament. Such individuals
Gashi et al.
91
contextualize and reframe the pains and frustrations of confinement. Finding comfort in
religion exemplifies this approach. The recent findings of Crewe et al. (2017: 534–535)
support this notion. Some of the long-termers they interviewed reported that faith helped
them find meaning in their suffering and that it could be used to reshape it into something
productive.
Although some of these strategies may also be found in immigration detention cen-
tres, they play out differently in this environment where the lack of a release date typi-
cally affects coping mechanisms. For many, waiting in detention produces a state of
meaninglessness, passivity, anxiety and a reduction in agency (e.g. Bosworth, 2014;
Turnbull, 2016). Dead time and uncertainty leave detainees with limited manoeuvring
techniques. Yet,...
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