ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on ethnographic research with immigrant service providers in southern Arizona and policy analysis to connect immigration case with a broader understanding of the intimate economies of immigrant detention. It explains how people understand the intimate economies of immigrant detention through an examination of the shifting relations of migrant care and the role social networks of care play in reinforcing both neoliberal and carceral logics. The chapter shows that non-profit organisations, individuals and migrant familial and social networks of care can quickly form to fill the gaps of vulnerability left by the state and ensure the daily survival and well-being of released families. An attention to social reproduction highlights the networks of care that sustain migrants while also revealing the problematic logics of security that drive the expansion of migrant detention. The chapter illustrates that understanding contemporary detention practices requires attending to the space 'outside' detention centres and processes of immigrant release.
