Life After Detention

Abstract: Drawing on data collected as part of the research project ‘Home and Away,’ this presentation explores former detainees’ testimonies about their lives after immigration detention in the UK, considering the experiences of both release from detention into the community and administrative removal/deportation to ‘home’ countries. It seeks to identify what happens after detention in order to improve understanding of the impacts―financial, occupational, familial, cultural, social, interpersonal, etc.―of this particular practice of border control. The presentation will highlight key themes emerging from the analysis, offering some tentative thoughts about the ways in which the punitiveness of detention extends to life after release.

About the speaker: Sarah Turnbull is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford. Her current research examines immigration detention and deportation in the UK, with specific focus on the experiences of confinement and removal in relation to affective issues of home, belonging, and identity in postcolonial, multicultural Britain. Sarah has published articles on punishment in Canada in the British Journal of Criminology, Punishment & Society, and Canadian Journal of Law & Society, and has a new book entitled Parole in Canada: Gender and Diversity in the Federal System (UBC Press, 2016). She completed her PhD in criminology and sociolegal studies and the collaborative program in women and gender studies at the University of Toronto.