ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how thinking about intimacy can help us to understand threats to detainees' health in immigration detention. It explains that that the health of detainees is regularly compromised by Wilson's presence in immigration detention owing to the often unacknowledged mingling of economic and intimate life that takes place there. The chapter presents the unique perspective afforded by thinking about intimacy in terms of and in relation to economy and exchange, to explore the utility of considering public intimacy for understanding the health consequences of immigration detention. It explains the array of intimacies that are implicated in immigration detention as well as their relevance to detainee health. Recognising the different forms of intimacy at work in Sana's story though, the author argues that the threat, the fear and sometimes the advent of unwanted intimacy, understood as sexual relations at the scale of the body and in the context of power and exchange in immigration detention.
