Resistance, humanisation and risk management in Belgian immigration detention centres

Based on ethnographic field work in three different immigration detention centres in Belgium, conducted between October 2014 and December 2015, I would like to intervene on three interrelated but conceptually distinct topics: 1. The humanisation of immigration detention; 2. Risk management in detention centres; 3. Detainees’ forms of resistance. 1. According to centre staff and officials of the Immigration Office daily life in the centres used to be quite violent. The government’s intention toward the end of the 1990s was therefore to humanise detention. At first, this amounted to the recruitment and establishment of social teams. However, a real process of humanisation only started when security staff went on strike demanding better working conditions. This opportunity was seized by the hierarchy to establish more flexible rules. In other words, I discuss how this process of humanisation was implemented on the basis of the literature on implementation and street-level bureaucracy. 2. Humanisation cannot be understood without the attempt of the Immigration Office to standardize the functioning of the centres. Thus, they were asked to start working groups on the management of aggression and on dynamic security. The purpose of the first was to analyse violent incidents that occurred to see what could have been done to avoid it for future reference. The purpose of the second was to see what can be changed in the house rules in order to give detainees more autonomy, and what activities can be organised to keep them busy. In other words, the purpose is to look at what can be done to nip in the bud the conditions of violence in the centres and avoid collective claims. Lastly, a daily multidisciplinary meeting is organised in each centre in which problematic aspects of the centre are discussed in order to avoid crisis situations. For the latter, crisis manuals and risk codes have been created. Thus, the daily routine of the centres is organised around the prevention of risk. Based on these two points I show how the humanisation of detention is completely secondary to the securitarian. Furthermore, I will illustrate how these changes rather have the effect of detainees interiorising the institution’s power, and thus strengthening it. The humane aspect thus merely becomes a discourse of legitimisation to account to public opinion. 3. Detainees are the targets of the “public service” of the immigration office, but are involuntary “clients”. Thus, the relation between staff and detainee is a disproportionate power relation in which the latter cannot do much. Nonetheless, observation shows that detainees develop voluntary and involuntary disruptive practices that might lead to a crisis. In fact, the process of humanisation started because such practices became too difficult to control for staff. Hence, these three points can only be understood and articulated by taking into account the power relations in the centre, among categories of staff and their hierarchy, and even in wider society. In fact, humanisation is more a discourse destined to public opinion than the central routine in the centres.