TY - JOUR
T1 - Gender, vulnerability and everyday resistance in immigration detention
T2 - Women’s experiences of confinement in a Portuguese detention facility
AU - Esposito, Francesca
AU - Matos, Raquel
AU - Bosworth, Mary
N1 - Funding Information:
Francesca Esposito’s doctoral research was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and
Funding Information:
Technology [reference: SFRH/BD/87854/2012], and her current work is supported by the British Academy through the Newton International Fellowship Scheme [reference: NIF\R1\181103]. Raquel Matos’s work was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology [reference: UID/CED/04872/2019].
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2020
Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - This paper examines immigration detention by looking at women’s experiences of confinement in a Portuguese detention facility. The empirical data—comprising participant observations, informal conversations and interviews with detained women—are read through an intersectional lens. This approach illuminates constructions of gender and sexuality in their mutual and contextualised articulation with other power relations (e.g., processes of racialisation and ethnicisation stemming from colonial histories), as well as the reconfiguration of these constructions by women themselves. Doing so also focuses on the intertwinement between power and resistance in daily life in detention. The women we met did not passively accept their situation, but rather struggled to make sense of, navigate and challenge the detention system. To this effect, they deployed multiple forms of agency, which also passed through the rejection, acceptance and reappropriation of hegemonic gendered constructions and their use in strategic ways to negotiate their positions vis-a-vis the system.
AB - This paper examines immigration detention by looking at women’s experiences of confinement in a Portuguese detention facility. The empirical data—comprising participant observations, informal conversations and interviews with detained women—are read through an intersectional lens. This approach illuminates constructions of gender and sexuality in their mutual and contextualised articulation with other power relations (e.g., processes of racialisation and ethnicisation stemming from colonial histories), as well as the reconfiguration of these constructions by women themselves. Doing so also focuses on the intertwinement between power and resistance in daily life in detention. The women we met did not passively accept their situation, but rather struggled to make sense of, navigate and challenge the detention system. To this effect, they deployed multiple forms of agency, which also passed through the rejection, acceptance and reappropriation of hegemonic gendered constructions and their use in strategic ways to negotiate their positions vis-a-vis the system.
KW - Colonialism
KW - Gender
KW - Immigration detention
KW - Portugal
KW - Resistance
KW - Vulnerability
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85091167025&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.5204/ijcjsd.v9i3.1588
DO - 10.5204/ijcjsd.v9i3.1588
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85091167025
SN - 2202-7998
VL - 9
SP - 5
EP - 20
JO - International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy
JF - International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy
IS - 3
ER -