Captive connections: finding the links between detention in Scotland and colonial Kenya

Earlier this year, SDV Director Kate Alexander spoke at the Glasgow launch of an exhibition focusing on colonial detention camps in Kenya. This blog is an edited version of her speech.

I’ve been asked to speak at the launch of this exhibition as a means of bringing some local and contemporary context by reminding us that places of detention exist here and now. I work for Scottish Detainee Visitors, a small charity that supports people in immigration detention in Dungavel and, along with our partners across the UK, campaigns to end detention.

Dungavel is one of seven immigration detention centres across the UK, and the only one in Scotland. It’s six miles from Strathaven in South Lanarkshire, hidden behind trees on an isolated country road, not on any public transport links. In fact, on a recent visit to Dungavel, my colleague and I took one of our board members to the centre for the first time. Although she knew where it was and had heard about how hidden it is, she was quite shocked at how easy it would be to drive past it without knowing what was behind the trees.

In it, up to 150 people can be detained, without time limit. I say 150 people but that might not be completely up to date. It was until recently 125 and if you look on the internet, that’s the figure that still comes up. But we know it’s been increased and we understand it’s now 150, and could be more.

Officially, the main purpose of immigration detention is to remove people who, according to the immigration rules, have no right to be in the UK. But it consistently fails to do this. Over many years more than 50 per cent of people who are detained are released back into the community. In the last couple of years, the figure has been much higher.  

Detention is totally ineffective at achieving what we’re told it’s for – which leads us to ask questions about what it really is for. And I think that from a range of research we can identify three purposes, which have resonances with much of what we see in this exhibition.

The first is ‘estrangement’ – a process of separating people from their lives outside detention as a way of making it easier to remove them. A key part of this the lack of a time limit. Nobody entering Dungavel or any of the other detention centres in the UK knows how long they will be there.

This means that they experience two completely contradictory sources of anxiety at the same time: one that they will be removed immediately from the country, but also that they will be detained for weeks, months, or even years. Someone we were visiting has recently been released into the community after being in Dungavel for over two years and we are currently visiting people who have been detained for more than six months.

This has massive impacts on the people we visit. We see every week the mental health impacts of this uncertainty. We literally see people deteriorate in front of our eyes under the strain of indefinite detention. We also see the impact of their isolation. It’s difficult for families and friends to visit – it takes about 45 minutes to drive to Dungavel from Glasgow and many people’s lives are in other parts of the UK. Often we’re the only people they see who aren’t Dungavel staff or immigration officials. They tell us that they feel forgotten, abandoned and cast out.

And I’m not surprised. I’ve been going to Dungavel to visit people there for more than 20 years and while over those years, through the work of people with lived experience and their advocates, detention has become much more visible as a political issue – rarely a week goes by now without a news story with a connection to detention – I still often get blank looks from people when I mention it.

The second purpose of detention is symbolic. It allows the Government to project an image of law and order and control over borders and immigration. We see this in much of the rhetoric from Government, of whatever political stripe. While the new Government has made some welcome announcement including the scrapping of the Rwanda plan and the closure of the Bibby Stockholm barge, the rhetoric is still of control and enforcement. Previous Labour manifesto commitments to detention reform, particularly on introducing a time limit, were strikingly absent at the last election.

Most disappointingly, it has decided to proceed with the previous Government’s plans to reopen two closed detention centres, signalling its intention to focus on increased detentions and deportations. This rhetoric is felt by the people we visit. They are aware that as people who have migrated to the UK they are being used in this overtly political way.

And finally, detention punishes. It’s officially an administrative not criminal process. But it feels like prison – people can’t get out. Most centres are built to prison standards, staff wear uniforms and carry keys. They can be violent and brutal places, seen for example in the shocking events at Brook House at Gatwick, the subject of a public inquiry that reported last year.

Thankfully, nothing as horrendous has ever been uncovered at Dungavel. It receives generally positive inspection reports and the interactions we see between staff and the people we visit are positive. They also tell us that their relationships with staff are generally OK. But still people experience it as punishment, both for them and for their families. It’s an incredibly destructive and damaging experience. I’d argue that it’s not possible to experience it as anything other than punitive.

I just wanted to say a few words about the people we visit in Dungavel and have visited over the years because, again, I think there are links to be drawn with some of the themes of this exhibition. Dungavel has 12 bedspaces for women but most of the people we visit are men, as are the vast majority of people subject to detention in the UK.

Much of the legislation around immigration relies on an overtly racist demonisation of black men and black men are very often subject to immigration enforcement and detention. More recently we have seen a lot of European men in Dungavel but over the more than 20 years that the centre has been operating that’s not been the case. The links to Britain’s colonial past are clear, with many people coming from countries like India, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, and so on, and that’s still evident in the population there today. 

And finally, a few words about SDV. We’re the only organisation in Scotland with a focus on immigration detention and the only charity to visit Dungavel every week. This means we have an important witnessing function, observing practice at the centre and drawing attention to issues of concern. Our main focus, however, is on providing practical and emotional support to the people detained there.

And by going into the centre every week, we also go some way to re-establishing the community connection that’s broken by detention.