Sociology & Social Policy Seminar Series | Harm by Design: The ‘Collateral’ Impacts of Immigration Detention
Sociology & Social Policy Seminar Series 2022
Harm by Design: The ‘Collateral’ Impacts of Immigration Detention
Speaker: Dr Michelle Peterie
Due to illness, this seminar originally scheduled for the 4th April has been postponed until 11th April.
Via Zoom
People incarcerated in immigration detention facilities experience significant reductions in physical, emotional and social health. But immigration detention regimes also impose under-recognised harm beyond the detainee. Drawing on over seventy interviews conducted between 2015 and 2020, this paper investigates the impacts of detention policies and practices on the loved ones and supporters of people incarcerated in Australia’s immigration detention system. It offers a new perspective on how deterrence is operationalised in Australia’s detention system, arguing that high rates of visitor attrition are not accidental, but the result of a broader institutional effort to increase detainee isolation and desperation.
Dr Michelle Peterie is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Sydney, where she co-leads the Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies’ research theme on Work, Education and Welfare. Michelle has published widely on lived experiences of un(der)employment, poverty and social security receipt, as well as the reverberating impacts of immigration detention. Michelle is the author of Visiting Immigration Detention (2022), the co-author of Compulsory Income Management in Australia and New Zealand (2022), and the co-editor of Emotions in Late Modernity (2019). She is an Associate Editor of The Australian Journal of Social Issues and a recent co-convener of The Australian Sociological Association’s Sociology of Emotions and Affect thematic group. Details at www.michellepeterie.com.