ABSTRACT
Previous work by geographers has used the framework of mobilities, immobilities, and moorings (Hannam et al., 2006) to examine how the expanding use of detention may be employed by the state to exclude and disempower those migrants it seeks to deport (Gill, 2013; Mountz, 2011; Mountz et al., 2012). Activists and antidetention campaigners in the UK have also recognised the often geographically remote locations of Immigration Removal Centres (IRCs) as a factor contributing to the silencing of those who are detained, thus enabling the state to keep detention largely ‘out of sight, out of mind’; arguably making the denial of basic rights, and limited access to justice within detention, pervasive (Bail for Immigration Detainees, 2009). In response to these academic and activist concerns that detention is intentionally situated away from public view, we evaluate the opportunities that the Internet might offer as a challenge to the physical isolation of detained populations. We consider the extent to which alternative, and multiple, narratives of those held in detention facilities may be mobilised via online anti-detention campaigns, focusing on the capacity of the Internet to enable a virtual presence; which we assert can go beyond the physical boundaries of detention to make experiences of detention visible, as a distinct form of political action.
