A Visits Venue as a Transformative Space for Asylum Seekers in a Detention Facility

Contemporary nation-states such as Australia have the challenge of exercising ‘global governance’ and border control of the flow of non-citizens (James & McNevin, 2013; James, 2014). This entails regulating the spatial movement of asylum seekers during the processing of their asylum claims. In this article I use the term ‘asylum seekers’ to capture what Finney and Robinson (2008) simply define as ‘international migrants who are in the process of application for protection under the 1955 Refugee Convention’ (p. 402). The detaining of asylum seekers is proposed by various nation states as a necessary instrument for administrative purposes to protect the integrity of border control in regulating immigration. Immigration detention facilities are a tool used for the management of people residing within a state’s boundary without authorization, creating what Nethery and Silverman (2015) refer to as a site of tension between a ‘state’s sovereign power and people claiming universal rights’ (p. 1).

Australia is one country that utilises these facilities for the purpose of administrative detention. A private company is contracted by the Australian Government to manage these detention facilities within the nation. People who have unlawful immigration status are detained until they are granted a visa or else deported to their former place of residence. At the time of writing, Australia had both onshore immigration detention centres across the States and Territories on the mainland (inclusive of Christmas Island) and offshore processing facilities in Manus Island and Nauru. Prime Minister John Howard in 2001 presented a Border Protection Bill in parliament, passing legislation that retroactively exercised offshore territories for asylum processing. The expansion of Australian carceral spaces continues to extend to outside of Australian territorial waters. This provides a dual system of onshore and offshore processing of migrants who do not have legal status. Governments use the movement of detainees as a strategy to reduce their visibility, also known as ‘ghosting’ (Wilson, 2008; Gill, 2009), especially as it relates to offshore processing centres. Peterie (2018a) notes the coerced forms of movement or mobility are used as an underlying political objective to encourage ‘voluntary repatriations’.

It is a very important area of research, exploring how politics globally utilize ‘buffer zones’, or ‘exclusion zones’ in extra-territorial spaces that hold migrants off-shore (Mountz & Loyd, 2014). It is acknowledged that in this context their remoteness serves to distance them from human rights groups, media scrutiny and the public (Dickson, 2015). In the context of Australia, this continues what Mountz and Briskman (2012) describe as a historical pattern in using islands to ‘confine, contain, segregate, and control specific groups of people’ (p. 25). Some examples of this previously were the treatment of convicts on Norfolk Island, Indigenous people on Palm Island (Queensland) and the incarceration of ‘enemy aliens’ on Rottnest Island (Western Australia). The focus, however, of this article is an Australian onshore immigration detention facility in Sydney. The relative humaneness of an onshore detention visits centre is noted in a Cornall Report to be in contrast with levels of dehumanisation that have occurred in offshore facilities such as Manus Island (Cornall, 2014).

In the context of Australia, thousands of asylum seekers previously had arrived by boat from countries such as Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka looking for a better future in hope that they would be granted refugee status, but were placed in held detention for an undefined time-frame. The policy around using immigration detention centres reflects a strong political stance by Australia. Griffiths (2013) asserts that immigration detention ‘operates under extreme regulation’ and ‘are spaces where the state is felt heavily by individuals’ (p. 264). This has major implications in terms of power relations, with asylum seekers being disempowered through the restrictions imposed upon their everyday life. Various academics raise concern regarding what has been referred to as the ‘violence of detention’. Pugliese (2002) refers to the context of Australian immigration detention facilities as the ‘violence of indefinite detention’ where ‘the state overtly exercises a bio-political power over the body of the imprisoned refugee’ (p. 3). Perera (2002) raises concern regarding the ‘militarised approach’ that ‘positions asylum seekers as dangerous’ and is ‘actualised in the increasing prison or fortress-like appearance of Australian camps’ (p. 9). Peterie (2019) uses terms such as ‘politics of fear’ and ‘bureaucratic violence’ in exploring the socio-emotional impacts of punitive policies and discourses in immigration detention facilities, but also notes the opportunities for solidarity between the asylum seeker and citizen.

This article acknowledges the adverse impact of the detention establishment in Australia but focuses on a particular site that has had minimal research engagement and yet has previously helped asylum seekers navigate incarceration. Asylum seekers have shown resistance to some of the adverse effects of detention through utilising a visits venue to build resilience.

It is not the intention of this article to minimise the sense of hopelessness that many asylum seekers have experienced. Those who face the potential of indefinite detention face immense distress. Loewenstein (2013) highlights the psychological damage that is caused as a result of asylum seekers not knowing how long they may have to stay inside detention and the lack of clarity relating to the process. There is strong consistent evidence that immigration detention has adverse effects on mental health in areas such as anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation and post-traumatic stress disorder (von Werthern, et al. 2018), as well as insecurity, demoralisation, concentration and memory disturbances, difficulties with relationships and profound changes to view of self (Coffey, Kaplan, Sampson & Tucci, 2010). The adverse effect of detention is further highlighted by various writers such as Briskman, Latham and Goddard (2008) and Fiske (2016). This article focuses, however, on how crucial a visits venue has been in bringing some normality at a detention facility. In the cases I have studied, this institutional meeting area has been used as a venue of interrelation significance. This venue has been utilized as an unexpected strategy for: coping with stressors, experiencing relief under conditions of adversity and feeling valued through the interpersonal relationships built.

The visits venue is situated close to the entrance where visitors entered and the periphery of the detention centre where the detainees exited the main centre. The visitors entered from the outside community and the asylum seekers in one sense left the inside of a detention centre, to meet in a visits’ venue. The asylum seekers in entering the visits venue were able to temporarily offset the impact of held detention to some degree and utilize this space to assist their well-being. Within this boundary, visitors represented life on the outside (Comfort, 2003). Moran (2013a) comments that those incarcerated ‘come face-to-face with living embodiments of their previous life outside’ and through the duration of the visit, ‘suspend the immediate reality of incarceration’ (p. 346). In this case, the visitors were reminders of the deep relational bonds the asylum seekers formerly had in the place they came from. Time spent in this visits’ venue also contributed to a hope of potential Australian permanency. This occurred through the link of the community visitors representing citizenship.

The visitation space was designed with the purpose of mitigating security risks by the service provider. It may have also provided less visible outcomes of quieting or pacifying potential unrest, by facilitating a venue that in some ways resembled a community meeting place that allowed meaningful interactions to take place. This research will illustrate that the visitation experience and space it occurred in had an accumulative positive influence on asylum seekers under certain conditions of spatial unsettling. Asylum seekers and visitors used this carceral space for refocusing on the positive aspects of life through the interpersonal relations built.

The next section will unpack in more detail how this research fits with the fields of carceral geography and the socio-spatial dynamics of this visits’ venue in a detention facility.

Foucault formed the term ‘carceral’ some forty years ago (Moran, et al. 2017) and geographers have since adopted it under the umbrella of carceral geography to explore human geography and notions of space and confinement. Carnochan (1998) points out that ‘carceral’ is also a social and psychological construction that has relevance to internal and external physical spaces of incarceration. Within human geography, space is recognised as being more than a surface, and includes socio-spatial aspects that are transformative in impacting people’s lives (Gregory & Urry, 1985; Lefebvre, 1991; Massey, 1994; Martin & Mitchelson, 2009; Moran, 2013b). Carceral geography in its broader sense is research that focuses specifically on ‘the spaces set aside’ for ‘securing-detaining, locking up/away—problematic populations of one kind or another’ (Philo, 2012, p. 4). Gill, Conlon and Moran (2013) use the term ‘carceral geography’ to describe the geographical engagement with the practices of imprisonment and migrant detention.

Various researchers previously (e.g. Moran, et al. 2017) have highlighted the positive impact of prison visiting rooms. Luzia (2010) documents the way male prisoners engage in spatial and temporal negotiation of a visits room of a prison to produce ‘parenting places’ (p. 365) in relation to their family visiting. Moran et al. (2017) note the agency and resistance to structures of power that occurs in prison visiting rooms and the cumulative effect that they have, serving as a reminder of what life on the outside is like. Within the context of immigration removal centres, McGregor (2012) points out that detainees spoke of visits as being uplifting, a ‘life-line’ and a means of contact with the outside world. The Refugee Council of Australia (RCOA, 2017) through its research on people visiting immigration detention, noted that visitors provide a major protective factor and a critical role in supporting people in detention, bringing a sense of normalcy, community, humanity and friendship, helping to alleviate stress, providing emotional relief, mental solace, respite in difficult situations, lifting their mood, providing hope for the future and a sense of advocacy.

This article focuses on the spatial and social dynamics embedded in landscapes of detention as it relates to the visitation experience of asylum seekers. It draws on Moran et al. (2017) understanding of incarceration as a ‘practice and an experience that is neither spatially bound, nor spatially fixed’ (p. xxi) and previous research work of Moran (2013a) focusing on the socio-spatial context of visiting within prisons and detention facilities, noting the positive transformative role these spaces have.

There are differences, however, between the context of a prison and an immigration detention facility. The visitors within prison visitation rooms represent a community that is familiar to those incarcerated. In contrast, the visitors within the visitors’ venue of an immigration detention facility represent a community that may be unfamiliar to many of the asylum seekers, as most asylum seekers have not had the opportunity to reside in the Australian community. People incarcerated in prisons also have a set time frame of incarceration. Yet, there is no fixed time frame of processing the asylum seekers’ claims within the context of an immigration detention facility. The precarious feelings experienced in a visitation venue in this context are shown to complicate this sense of liminality experienced. Asylum seekers, however, have utilized this venue to offset the negative impact of this liminality.

Liminality signifies transition or a state of in-betweenness, incorporating a temporality and a spatiality related to place. Van Gennep (1960) and Turner (1969) refer to the liminal as a space where the subject no longer belongs to their former world, or to their new one. Worth (2006) speaks of it as a ‘double exile’ (p. 231). People are exiled from their former home and country and dissociated from a new community. Asylum seekers placed in a detention facility become isolated, resulting in a sense of homelessness between two worlds and not belonging to either. A liminality can also be regarded as what Shields (2003) terms a ‘rite of passage’ between one world and another, one geographical space and another (p. 12–13). Liminality is a phase of spatial separation and state of limbo before potential reincorporation. Hass (2017) highlights that ‘asylum claimants inhabit a dual positionality of citizen-in-waiting/deportee-in-waiting’ (p. 75). In this present context the asylum seekers had left their homelands and had been waiting for a new status of permanency within the Australian community.

This paper draws upon Moran’s (2013a) conceptual understanding of designated spaces being utilised as a threshold-crossing between inside and outside. I have applied this conceptual framing to a specific context of detention by focusing on the way the asylum seekers were able to manage the adverse impact of this liminality through accessing a visitors’ venue. They never physically left detention, and yet their experience was one in which they were able to leave the ‘detention environment’ symbolically each time they entered the visits venue through utilising it as a place of inclusion. This was in contrast to the isolation they may have felt in the broader detention environment. Morgan (2000) asserts that ‘space is involved in the production and reproduction of social relations and is linked to political struggles of inclusion and exclusion’ (p. 273).

In this paper I reposition Moran’s notion of ‘visiting as a liminal space’ to visiting as ‘a space of inclusion’. The asylum seekers experienced the impact of liminality in a detention environment and yet experienced a sense of inclusion in a visits’ venue. This inclusion gave them hope as a shadow of things to come. It contributed to a hope of transitioning from ‘illegal’ status, as defined by the state, toward a goal of permanency of citizenship. Wilson (2004) notes the importance of constrained spaces providing ‘a positive step towards resocialisation and a sense of citizenship’ (p. 87). The hope held by the asylum seekers assisted them to navigate the common lengthy wait for visa outcomes while their lives were ‘suspended in space and time’ (James & McNevin, 2013).

The research undertaken in this article utilizes participant diaries (Latham, 2003) supplemented by semi-structured interviews. The personal narratives of former asylum seekers captured their previous experiences in a visits’ venue of a detention facility through the use of a retrospective diary as a method of data collection. The participants in the research were given a series of six topics to prompt their writing through journaling about previous experiences in detention. The topics related to the visits’ venue; their feelings in entering it, during the visit, and after leaving the venue; what visitors mean to them; the impact each visit had on them and the general atmosphere of the venue compared to the broader detention facility. Most returned between a page and a page and a half of writing. A diary served as a reflective tool.

Six of the thirteen asylum seekers then participated in a follow up semi-structured interview in the form of a relaxed conversation over a cup of tea or coffee. The one-to-one semi-structured interviews ranged from one hour to one and a half hours in duration. They were recorded and transcribed. The six participants were chosen through their availability and eagerness to undertake an interview for the research project. Six in-depth semi-structured interviews with community visitors were also undertaken to provide a richer analysis. The asylum seekers and visitors were sourced through personal networks and referrals. Staff were not interviewed due to the issue of confidentiality in working within an immigration detention facility.

The data used for this research is open coded (Laughland-Booy, et al. 2015) into sub-categories by thematic analysis (Mckay, et al. 2011) identifying distinct themes, using a ‘manual content analysis’ (Sauter & Bruns, 2014). Choices of data collection were made to minimize any potential negative impact it might have had on the asylum seekers and due to the lack of access to the detention facility for research purposes. The asylum seekers who formed the basis of this study had already been granted visas and transitioned into the Australian community prior to being interviewed. The data from the diaries was compiled and the interviews conducted within a year to a year and a half of the people having left the detention facility. In securing a visa, they had no concern that the information they shared would have been used for processing their asylum claims. Living outside of detention also gave them time to reflect upon their previous experiences in detention. These were important factors taken into consideration in the research being conducted external to the immigration detention centre.

A diverse range of ages and ethnic backgrounds were represented in the feedback sought from the former asylum seekers. The ages ranged between 22 and 65. The nine nationalities were: Nigerian, Egyptian, Iranian, Afghani (Hazari), Albanian, Nepalese, Sri Lankan (Tamil), Burmese (Rohingya) and Malaysian (Malay). The thirteen participants in the project had resided in a detention facility for various lengths of time ranging from three months to five years. All of the participants were male reflecting the demographics of the asylum seekers at the facility being predominantly male at the time of research. The asylum seekers are de-identified through the use of ‘Mr’ and a letter identifier, not in any way to depersonalize them but to provide confidentiality.

The participants in the research did not need an interpreter or translator as they either had an adequate competency in the English language or else the visitation experience had helped them become more fluent in English. Those who were not fluent in English, however, may have had different experiences of a visiting venue and this research acknowledges that the choice of subjects could have had a major bearing on the research results. The community advocates/visitors who visited were of an English-speaking background, so those who had limited English were not able to access the same opportunities of visitation. They may have been invited for visits, but due to the limitations of interaction in English, their experiences were not likely to have had the same impact. The level of closeness they developed with visitors may have been minimal and the visitation experience may not have offset the stresses and challenges faced in detention.

The positive outcome of research subjects’ asylum claims and settling in Australia quite successfully, as opposed to being deported, might also have affected their overall reflections on the visitation space through being skewed more positively. It must also be noted, that the people who participated in the study were only a small group within a detention centre and the centre is located in a suburb accessible by public transport in a major capital city. The results of this study, therefore, cannot be generalised as reflecting what might occur in other Australian detention centres that are more remote and less visible or accessible to visitors.

Previous studies, however, have relied primarily on the testimony of detention centre visitors. One example is the testimonies of volunteer visitors documented within Peterie’s (2018b) study of the emotional distress experienced in navigating the institutional constrains within onshore detention. The strength of this present study is in it capturing the perspectives of ex-detainees whose voices have largely been absent from former studies and yet crucial in understanding the importance of visitation spaces. In this study, the former asylum seekers reflected on an era when the detention regime welcomed community visitation and various community-based service providers into the centre.

The data for this study was collated between January 2013 and October 2013, capturing the experiences of former detainees and their visitors prior to 2013. Little has been published concerning Australia’s previous visitation arrangements prior to 2013. The context of this time frame was important as there was a significant spike in the number of boat arrivals of asylum seekers to Australia during the Rudd and Gillard Labor government leadership (2007–2013). This became an issue for the 2013 Federal election. The conservative opposition coalition party, the Liberal/Nationals, promoted the need for more secure borders, a campaign of ‘stopping the boats’, which became known as ‘Operation Sovereign Borders’. This hard-line approach to deal with the situation was then implemented when the coalition won the election in September 2013.

Significant changes occurred within immigration detention facilities after 2013 with the change of government. A highly restrictive, bureaucratic, and compliance driven regime was rolled out. This was referred to as an ‘enforcement centred approach’ in a Detention Research Project report by the RCOA (Refugee Council of Australia). The change in the operating model for detention also had an impact on the visitation programme. In the RCOA (2017) report, reviewing 2013–2016, it raised major concerns as to the negative consequences of these substantial changes: ‘In recent years, the overall environment of the visits area changed and moved from a welcoming environment conducive to more relaxed social interactions to one that is highly regulated and prison like’ (RCOA, 2017, p. 20). These changes included: visitors having to do an online booking 24 hours in advance for a visit, a new food policy with more restrictions as to what can be brought in, drug testing and detainees being wanded prior to entering and exiting the visits venue as part of a security check. Closer surveillance by the officers occurred than previously in the visits area, such as what would be seen in a prison context. Other than some soft interior furnishings, the distinctions between a prison and an immigration detention visits area became less defined. These increased restrictions have impacted the type of experience asylum seekers have.

The visits venue has also been rebuilt and reduced in size, losing the large grassy area that the former visits area had. The visits venue is now in close proximity also to the interview rooms where detainees meet with their legal representatives and immigration officials. The delineation between the visits’ venue and the broader detention facility may have been lost under the current regime. Nethery (2019) more recently documents in particular the bureaucratic processes introduced in early 2018 that has reduced people’s ability to visit in Australian immigration detention centres, resulting in less legal, social and psychological support for people detained. This present study highlights an alternative visitation scheme that formerly facilitated positive outcomes for asylum seekers prior to 2013. This had a significant impact on expressions of solidarity and/or friendship and in turn resilience building during the asylum seekers’ sense of displacement.

The immigration detention centre, the focus of this research, is located in a western suburb of Sydney, Australia. It is much more accessible than other detention centres across Australia, being in a South West suburb of Sydney rather than a remote area like some detention facilities. It is close to a railway station which enabled visitors, without a car, to visit easily enough.

The immigration detention centre holds an average of 400–500 people at a given time. A typical day for the asylum seekers was structured around three meals—breakfast, lunch and dinner with optional educational and recreational activities offered in-between the meal times during the day, from Mondays to Fridays. The visits centre at the time of research was open seven days a week in the afternoons from 12.30pm (lunch time) until 7:30 pm. A visitor gave the names of the people they were visiting at the reception area and the detainees were called to visits.

Community visitors/advocates visited regularly and some had been committed for many years to welcoming asylum seekers. The visitors were not family members but people in the community who were interested in providing social support and bringing some normality to the lives of the asylum seekers. The visitors frequently found new community members and introduced them to the network of asylum seekers they visited. Some became regular participants of that group of visitors after having a positive visitation experience. They gradually formed close interpersonal relationships with a number of the asylum seekers.

The visitors brought in snacks and drinks, talked, shared moments of laughter and played cards or board games occasionally for variety. Their commitment to visiting did not appear to diminish over time. In dialoguing with the visitors, a common thread could be traced as to why they visited the asylum seekers. There was a sense of benevolence and duty to show kindness toward asylum seekers. In part, this extended from a feeling of guilt towards the tough stance of Australia’s immigration policy towards asylum seekers, a sense of altruism or part of a religious service some felt. I received this feedback through conversations I had with the visitors through the semi-structured interviews. This was consistent with Peterie’s (2018) study that volunteers expressed guilt, shame and a shared conviction to be on the right side of history as it relates to offering friendship to asylum seekers. Furthermore, their personal acts of friendship were politically significant in challenging representations of ‘boat people’ as enemies and Others (Peterie, 2018a).

The layout of the visits’ venue has changed over the years. Some renovations had occurred over a decade prior to 2013 with outdoor shelters, garden tables, a children’s playground adjacent to a large grass area and an indoor community meeting place added during this time. The design of an indoor building within the visits’ venue provided padded seats as would be seen in food outlets, a digital TV in one area with lounge chairs, carpet and a sink for making hot drinks. The visits venue as a hospitable public space provided a contrast to the harsh external appearance of the detention facility. The broader detention facility was surrounded by high security fences with many of the furnishings being primarily metal, with plastic chairs used for internal buildings.

The next section explores the personal experiences of former asylum seekers and a number of visitors as they reflected back upon their previous time in the visits’ venue. It is possible that adverse experiences did occur within the visits centre through misunderstandings or cultural clashes. However, the experiences of asylum seekers captured in this research did not raise any negative occurrences regarding visitors or the venue of visits. This research is not glossing over the overall deterioration in mental health that occurs with people in immigration detention, as noted previously, but documents some positive experiences that had occurred in a visits’ venue prior to 2013.

The following section explores the themes that the asylum seekers and their visitors spoke of regarding:

how social support through visiting counteracted the pressures of incarceration.

This article has explored a carceral space, a visits’ venue within an immigration detention facility. In the context of this present research, the depth of relationships and expectation of these interpersonal interactions taking place in a visits’ venue, gave hope for the asylum seekers for better things to come. Due to the issue of confidentiality, management or staff were not consulted as to any potential agenda for providing accessibility, hospitality to community groups, the quantity of time, the purpose of design and the provision of soft furnishings of the visits area as it relates to facilitating positive experiences. It could be argued, however, that the visiting facility was set up intentionally by the service provider to allow for positive experiences of detainees for a different purpose other than what has been outlined in this article. It is possible that the soft environment and significant time allowed for visits may have been conveniently facilitated by the service provider to contribute to lowering rates of self-harm and/or internal detainee unrest, by producing a passive, contented, compliant detainee population. This potentially assisted the service provider with a more positive public relations image by making detention itself seem a little less intense. Loewenstein (2013) documents the importance of the image of privatized companies in running the Australian government contracts. The service provider was able to demonstrate a sense of inclusive practices for those incarcerated, by encouraging visitation, to counteract the images of exclusive practices that immigration detention represents.

Tyler, et al. (2014), however, have raised concern regarding humanitarian and immigrant rights groups being co-opted to provide a ‘charitable or humanitarian gloss’ for global companies (p. 12, 15). Bagelman (2016) asserts that efforts by institutions to offer a ‘sanctuary’, may appear to offer relief to a hostile, top-down punitive politics, but still contributes to the prolongation of a suspended state, deferring and extending a temporality of waiting. Bagelman (2016) also notes that charitable provision may ease but does not end suffering. The asylum seekers still experienced the impact of the liminality of detention.

The scope of this article does not address the issue relating to the merits of keeping or abolishing prisons or detention. It does, however, highlight just how crucial the development of interpersonal relationships is for the well-being of asylum seekers and the venue they occur in. Interpersonal relationship building in a visits venue in this context served as a protective element for asylum seekers and gave them hope for future permanency, as they navigated the liminality of being incarcerated in an immigration detention facility. It provided a respite for accumulating resilience. There is need for further research to explore the impact of the changes that have since occurred after the time frame of this research as it relates to facilitating meaningful engagement between detainees and their visitors, such as a snap-shot of before and after 2013. It is likely that the visits venue has lost the sense of inclusion felt by the detainees documented within this research, since a more restrictive approach has been implemented.

This article documents the experiences of a sample of asylum seekers who experienced the benefit of a former visits’ venue before they transitioned into the outside community. Asylum seekers utilized this venue as a safe space of geographic significance within the uncertainty of a detention regime, to counteract the sense of hopelessness and disempowerment experienced. This became a space of inclusion and stability to help them navigate their traumatic experiences during times of uncertainty. This carceral space was removed from some of the intense stresses inside detention. It helped asylum seekers cope, lowering the impact of these stresses and building resilience. It provided some relief and respite under conditions of adversity through drawing upon the positive interpersonal relations built. It helped them feel a sense of belonging, being accepted and valued by people who were ‘Australian’.

The visits venue seemed to be external to the detention facility for a number of the asylum seekers and sat at the periphery of the outside community. Visitors and asylum seekers could come and go from this institutional space, but there was a differentiation in status of the asylum seekers. Asylum seekers were in a liminality in not being able to leave the detention centre and yet experienced a temporal sense of ‘homeliness’ in entering and remaining in the visits venue. The visits venue became for many asylum seekers their only hope of connecting and one day transitioning to the outside world. This venue was a meeting place of intersection of two worlds: being detained and the permanent world of Australian residency. It also provided hope for the potential transition from ‘illegal status’ to permanency within Australia.