Corrosive places, inhuman spaces: Mental health in Australian immigration detention

Pauline Joy McLoughlin, Megan Warin

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    Abstract

    Since their establishment in 1992, Australian Immigration Detention Centres have been the focus of increasing concern due to allegations of their serious impact on the mental health of asylum seekers. Informed by Foucault’s treatise on
    surveillance and the phenomenological work of Casey, this paper extends the current clinical data by examining the architecture and location of detention centres, and the complex relationships between space, place and mental health. In spatialising these relationships, we argue that Immigration Detention Centres operate not only as Panopticons, but are embodied by asylum seekers as ‘anti-places’: as places that mediate and constitute thinned out and liminal experiences. In particular, it is the embodied effects of surveillance and suspended liminality that impact on mental health. An approach which locates the embodiment of place and space as central to the poor mental health of asylum seekers adds an important dimension to our understandings of (dis)placement and mental health in the lives of the exiled.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)254-264
    Number of pages11
    JournalHealth & Place
    Volume14
    Publication statusPublished - 2008

    Keywords

    • Anti-place
    • mental health
    • SURVEILLANCE
    • asylum seekers
    • embodiment
    • suspace and health

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