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Good afternoon, everybody. Had a bit of a flu.

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So flu, my voice is somewhat clear and I don't go into it coughing [INAUDIBLE].

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So I'm glad to be here and have the opportunity to talk a bit about my research that I'm undertaking about the Centre for Criminology here at Oxford.

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And my work is going to be a bit different than the some of the stuff we've been talking about before today and in particular even on this panel.

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The vast majority of the people who are in detention will actually be in detention itself, is not part of the criminal justice system.

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That's an administrative sort of arm of the government related to immigration.

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So it's not the people that are in detention aren't facing punishment.

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And there are sort of utilitarian justifications for their detention in terms of trying to

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produce good citizen subjects or rehabilitate people or reintegrate them into the community.

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So some of the things I'm talking about don't quite line up,

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but I do really appreciate the previous speakers in terms of getting into the topics around well-being, around vulnerability and around mental health.

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So I'm going to start by giving some background on immigration detention in the UK.

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For those of you who might not be so familiar at the moment, we have nine detention centres called immigration removal centres or irises.

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There's about a 3566 event space capacity and in 2015 32,466 people were entered

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detention at some point and about usually around 15% of these are women.

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And the top nationalities in terms of the main countries of origin are Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Nigeria,

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which I think says a lot about the impacts of British Empire and patterns of colonial and post-colonial migration as well,

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and as well as in the way in which post-war immigration policies work to tie race and nationality and processes of inclusion and exclusion.

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So there are a variety of people who are detained in detention. When I was doing my fieldwork, the detained fast track was still ongoing.

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But it's still possible for asylum seekers to be detained.

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There's also foreign national ex prisoners. There's visa overstayers, foreign nationals with visa problems.

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So when I was doing my fieldwork, there were a lot of students, particularly from India,

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Bangladesh and Pakistan, and there's also undocumented migrants and detention.

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Really, the main reasons are administrative. This is to determine identity, to prevent absconding and to facilitate removal.

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And with the sort of rename from detention centres to removal centres,

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this idea that these places are sort of one's last stop on their migratory path and that they're going to be ejected from the country from there,

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kind of underscores this notion of facilitating removal.

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And in terms of how people leave detention, the UK does distinguish between removal itself and deportation,

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which are the latter, which applies to people who've been convicted of criminal offences.

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Some may agree to return voluntarily.

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Usually voluntary and, you know, square courts, because often from the confines of detention, we can question how voluntary such decisions are.

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Other people are released to the UK, usually over half, and have been released to the UK on some form of status.

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This could be temporary admission immigration bail or they could have received regularise status such as having their immigration case determined.

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Such as maybe this is a successful asylum application.

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So some of what I'm talking about today has come in are based on my current research project,

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which in which I spent about 150 days conducting ethnographic research in four detention centres in the UK.

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August so September 2013 to August 2014.

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So I did also did some interviews and focus groups as well as a survey that measured the quality of life in detention.

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And I've also been doing post detention field work, but I won't talk about that today.

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So with this study not having been particularly interested in questions of mental health,

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but they definitely emerged as important to the lived experience of detention.

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I primarily was concerned with talking to detainees about their experiences of being detained,

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as well as why they migrated to the UK in the first place.

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Their histories, their or hearsay, how they feel about home, their identity and questions around belonging.

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But issues are around mental health and well-being definitely emerged and sort of aspects of day to day life and dealing with the ever,

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ever present threat of removal or deportation.

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And this eviction from the country that people were facing, as I briefly mentioned,

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the survey has been developed by Mary Bosworth and Lorina KALAZI based on one

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that Alison Liebling has developed to measure the quality of life in prisons.

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And they've developed, pardon me, adapted it to the context of detention.

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So during my fieldwork I administered a couple hundred surveys and Marianne Ballerina did the analysis.

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And from that they found that there are very high levels of depression among those that completed the survey meeting.

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I have to look up the terminology here.

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The HHS field, which is the Hopkins symptom checklist criteria for depression, an abbreviated form of this is in the survey.

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And they found that higher levels of depression were reported by women overall, by asylum seekers.

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And again, during my fieldwork, I was also talking to people on detained fast track,

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which meant that they had to be detained as part of their asylum process.

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And people with health problems also reported higher levels of detention, depression, pardon me.

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Those who stayed in the rooms are isolated and longer term detainees, as well as those who hadn't been to prison prior to detention.

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And.

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The survey found that the higher levels of depression related to more negative evaluations of their well-being and their quality of life dimensions.

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So this could be things like their feeling of dignity, their safety, perceptions of staff decency,

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whether they thought immigration itself was organised and consistent or efficient or fair on the health care they received,

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as well as their interactions with staff and any help it needed.

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Now the Home Office itself recognises through its own policies that particular individuals such as pregnant women,

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elderly people and torture surveyed survivors have what they call special needs and should only be detained in exceptional circumstances.

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Yet many do end up being detained with, I would argue, administrative convenience.

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Winning out over concerns about such needs are issues.

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Now there are a variety of factors that contribute to poor mental health in detention, and I think many of these are, if not all,

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related to structural aspects of detention itself or the broader social context,

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economic context in which detainees or where people come from basically, and why they migrate.

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And so as I do present this sort of as a list,

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and I think the factor should be thought of as dynamic and intersecting rather than static or

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isolated and might apply to sometimes at one point they might apply in groups to different people.

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It just depends. But for the sake of simplicity, I've kind of itemised that here.

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So I think one of the probably most important aspects of detention in the UK that affects

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mental health or relates to poor mental health outcomes is the uncertainty of detention.

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So there is no length or statutory length.

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There's no statutory limit on the length of time that someone can be detained.

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So that means detention is indefinite. People don't know when they're going to be released, and they also don't know how they're going to be released.

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So if they're going to be successful in their immigration cases or they're going to be removed or deported.

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So this uncertainty is experienced, is highly distressing with participants I spoke to frequently referring to

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detention due to this uncertainty as a form of mental or psychological torture.

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So one of my participants and Kansfield house, he kind of described it this way of being stuck where you can't move,

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you don't know what's going to happen in the future. You can't go back to the past.

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You're just stuck in this place and you don't know. And he says that drives people crazy.

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And I think that's a very, you know, spot on observation from what I was also seen in detention.

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And detainees also bring with them different pre-existing vulnerabilities,

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such as mental health issues, their experiences of torture or sexual or gender violence,

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and these factors often compounded in detention, and that can really negatively impact their mental health.

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And there's also issues around health, pre-existing health needs.

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When I was doing work in Charlesworth, there are a lot of women who are pregnant and that was extremely distressing for

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them being able to meet just basic nutritional needs for themselves and also deal

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with worry about the stress that sorry worry at that the stress of detention could

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cause miscarriages and just not knowing what's going to happen in that regard.

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There's also issues around isolation due to language, disability, culture or sexuality.

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So among some of the participants I talked to who identified as gay or lesbian.

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Often some isolated themselves due to homophobic bullying in some of the centres.

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And that was also very distressing. And there were also issues around just mobility for individuals that were mobility impaired,

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trying to get to different activities that they would need to staff in order to access things like a lift that weren't very readily available.

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And quickly here, I mean, there's financial interpersonal stress.

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I mean, generally, people that end up in detention tend to be more poor than those who don't.

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And session itself caused a lot of stress in terms of people losing their jobs, being separated from their families,

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including their children and partners, their loved ones and their communities.

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I think another big issue that relates to one's mental health is a perception of injustice and illegitimacy around detention,

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around deportation, around their treatment more generally.

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And this can negatively impact mental health producing feelings of sadness, anxiety, anger and as well as grief.

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One of my participants at Colebrook right here, he you know, he he felt his treatment was unjust.

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And he was sort of very powerfully arguing that that this is his life that is, you know, on hold being ruined and his and his case.

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And he couldn't really believe that it would be fair for someone for that whole office to separate him from his family,

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from the sort of only place he's known since he's been a kid and not give him a second chance.

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And this this issue of not being given a second chance for him, really, he struggled trying not to be too depressed about it.

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We also have things around issues around the length of detention and multiple detentions that cause stress.

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People might cycle in and out of detention on multiple occasions or be there for long periods of time.

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Some of the participants I spoke to,

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I think the longest person had been there in detention for three years and how that weighs on your mental health over time.

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Others, unfortunately, witnessed traumatic events in detention.

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Some participants I spoke with had had witnessed suicide attempts and self-harm,

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which is very upsetting for them as they try to struggle and help people, you know, by cutting down ropes or helping people that may be bleeding.

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And that's very, very upsetting. There's also the fear of removal,

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and it's not uncommon for people who are going to be given a ticket or removal directions to be put in

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segregation or to be put on some form of 24 hour watch to make sure that they don't harm themselves.

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And this happened to one of my participants at Dover, and this is an excerpt from my field notes.

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I went to visit this man friend in the segregation unit at Dover after he'd been given a ticket.

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And so I sort of describe here my experience of going into the segregation unit,

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where he's sitting in a cell that's got a plastic kind of Plexiglas door, and he comes in to talk to me and just this looks so ruined.

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So I talk about my notes, how he's, you know, it looks in rough shape.

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And he explains that he's tried to kill himself by taking all this medication, and yet still he can't sleep,

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even though he's on anti-depressants and, you know, these sorts of the fear of removal for him.

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He felt that if you went back to Trinidad and Tobago, that given the high rates of crime there, he would likely be killed.

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And he really worried about that. And for many and he's not the only one saying and maybe the truth or not of it is a different story,

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but people sometimes at the time feel that they would rather die and here in the UK in detention and go back.

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So it can be very, very upsetting for people to be given a ticket.

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So unfortunately the list isn't exhaustive,

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but I think try to draw your attention to some of the more common factors that contribute to poor mental health in detention.

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So without trying to paint too gloomy a picture because I know Caroline doesn't like that kind of thing.

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Human beings are obviously remarkably resilient and we do make do the best we can in difficult situations, not of our choosing.

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And although I did speak to a few people in detention that actually found detention to be a really great experience,

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most people did suffer in some ways and really focussed on coping.

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Some were more resilient and had better ability to do this than others.

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And so a lot of people cope by keeping busy, going to the gym, doing arts and crafts,

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undertaking paid employment at the centres, going to the library, playing pool and other games.

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And one of my participants, Michael, who's depicted here by the artist Themes Talk.

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He tried to keep himself occupied and stay headstrong by playing his PlayStation three and listening to music on his stereos.

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And others cope through going to the mosque or prayer room,

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as well as holding individual prayer sessions and rooms or other residential spaces for one participant, Mary Jane.

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Faith was very, very important for her. She felt that if she didn't have God, that she would go crazy.

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So that was where her source of strength and coping and resilience came from.

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Others look to their peers peer supports.

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Among other detainees, some turn to staff. There were a lot of people I talked to youth who are on medication often

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prescribed by the centres in terms of their antidepressants and sleeping tablets.

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Others self-medicated through illicit drugs within the centres such as cannabis or the so-called legal highs of spice.

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Some got support from their family and friends. Others turned to volunteer visitors as a way to cope, and some took to protest.

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This could be just writing letters and more, I guess,

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direct action in terms of hunger strikes or sit downs as a way to assert some

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kind of agency and to have maintain some type of control over their lives.

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So it's really not an all novel argument to say that immigration detention

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can exacerbate pre-existing mental health issues as well as produce new ones.

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I think these are just some examples, but perceptions of injustice,

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the uncertainty can really kind of work and feed into a sort of cycle of depression and anxiety, both during detention and after release.

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And indeed, some of my participants who've been removed or released talk to me about

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experiencing nightmares related to their detention that lasted for several months.

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So the impacts can be quite great. And this isn't a particular surprise to the British government or to the Home Office.

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It's quite aware of the mental health concerns related to immigration detention and about the sort of the so-called pardon me,

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the detention of so-called vulnerable groups. So since February last year, there's been a number of different reports.

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The last most recent one, The Star Review, in January 2016,

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which is the 350 page report that really looks roughly into this issue of the detention of all vulnerable persons.

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And Mary Bosworth has a literature review. She contributed to that, which is on the Border Chronologies Association,

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which provides a good summary of the literature in relation to mental health in detention, if anyone is interested.

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But I think here we can see this, that there is this growing interest in improving the mental health of detainees,

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as well as limiting the detention of those that are deemed vulnerable.

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And I think this can range from genuine concerns about actual well-being to more to issues around system inefficiencies,

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as well as the desire to reduce legal risks brought about through expensive or embarrassing

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litigation over human rights breaches that the UK government has in fact occurred.

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And so from one at a time,

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I just haven't quite got a chance to really talk about this issue much detail and I appreciate Mary's

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presentation that really it was trying to problematise this idea about vulnerability and what do we mean by it.

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And it's sort of highlighting this trend and talking about mental health and vulnerability.

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I don't want to suggest that the government or INGOs or activists or academics should

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refrain from raising issues about vulnerability or mental health in detention.

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Rather, I guess I'm concerned that in this context,

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it's also important to be alert to governmental attempts to deploy discourses of vulnerability to pursue other political interests,

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such as the maintenance of detention for detainee populations who are deemed not vulnerable.

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So I'm interested in how we can talk about vulnerability in relation to immigration detention without recreating

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categories of detainees who are seen as less or more deserving of or resilient to this form of confinement.

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So I'm wondering if we're seeing a governmental preoccupation with vulnerability and mental health as a way

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to reform the system of immigration detention without challenging its underlying structure and practices,

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which inevitably, inevitably wear on people's mental health and test their resilience.

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So I think in the current context, as the government works on reforming the system of detention,

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that it's important to interrogate the power relationships that underpin who gets defined as vulnerable and then those who don't.

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Iris Merryn Young is really challenge this idea that vulnerability is more exceptional than normal.

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And I think some of the presenters here today have noted that we all face different vulnerabilities.

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We all have mental health issues or needs and that sort of those who get recognised.

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I think there's questions of power there and that's important to consider. So thank you very much.