Resourcefulness and resilience: surviving indefinite detention

SDV Board member, Martha Harding, blogs about her first visit to Dungavel

I’ve been on the board of SDV since 2017 and have learned loads about the work of our staff and visitors and about the policy environment in which detention operates. Years spent working as a trainer on asylum and refugee issues meant that I had a good knowledge of wider immigration debates, but I was aware that I was taking decisions as a board member without any first hand knowledge of Dungavel, the experience of our visitors and, crucially, of the people we support.

Becoming self-employed recently meant that I was able to take a morning off and accompany our director Kate when she went to hold our drop-in at Dungavel on a Wednesday morning last year. It was an interesting and unsettling experience.

We set out on a glorious day and, although I knew where Dungavel was, I was surprised at how long it took us to get there. It was a lovely drive, through really pleasant countryside, and as we approached, Kate pointed out the first view of the centre from the road. I’d never have noticed it between the trees if she hadn’t. It’s very isolated.

Going up the drive, it was obvious that this place was once a country house, actually a hunting lodge. It creates a strange juxtaposition. This place was built for rich people to enjoy their isolation in beautiful countryside, but now that isolation is being used for quite different, more sinister, purposes.

I knew there would be security, but it’s still a shock to see the height of the barbed wire fence surrounding the grounds. But once through the gate, there is a more subtle barrier. There is a line on the concrete that people detained there are not permitted to cross. On one side of it, plants are well tended, by people working for around £1 an hour. On the other side, plants are unkempt and forlorn.

Booking in was a little chaotic. A new staff member was helpful and friendly but unsure of the procedures and, although we were searched, it was less rigorous than I expected. We were taken through a set of doors into the visits room, passing a small room that contains the video link to the immigration court, where people attend bail hearings remotely.

It’s quite a pleasant room, with comfortable chairs and low tables. Where we sat had toys and books for children who might be visiting their parents. You can see that people have made an effort to make it friendly. But it’s definitely institutional. It reminded me a bit of my boarding school!

On that day, we didn’t see any people who were new to SDV. The men who came down had all been visited several times, and some for a lot longer. We had a brief chat with a man from an African country – I can’t remember which - who came down on the way to a skype call with his lawyer. He didn’t have a great deal of English but you could see he was quite overwhelmed and low.

As he left, a group of men came down together and the guy who really stood out to me was Polish and he had been detained for months. He had been granted bail in principle and was still detained as he had no appropriate accommodation to be released to. He had gone through frustration and resignation and was now just really pissed off, with no end in sight. It felt important to allow him space to talk about that.

But most of the conversation was just about how people pass their time in detention. I was so impressed by the resilience and resourcefulness on display. There was much talk of the competitions and tournaments that people organised, with cash prizes provided by staff. Basketball, pool, chess all featured and there was laughter about winners and losers.

An unexpected topic of conversation was gaming. Kate didn’t know I’m a gamer and listened in surprise as we discussed racing games, platform games, fighting games. Falling into that topic was great as conversation flowed. I was so aware that gaming was a way of passing the time to try and deal with the mundanity of life in Dungavel.

The overwhelming sense I had when we left was of the boredom of indefinite detention. I was really struck by how SDV’s regular visits – every Monday and Thursday evening and every second Wednesday morning – have become an important part of the routine that people try to impose on a life in which planning is impossible as nobody knows how long they will be there. Several of the men asked after Georgie, our volunteer coordinator, and our regular visitors and it was clear how much they valued people taking the trouble to come and visit.

Driving home, I was so aware that we were leaving them there, in the isolation of the South Lanarkshire countryside. These people are nobody’s priority. They’re not at the top of any Government minister’s list, which feeds into how long individual people’s cases can take to sort out – like the Polish guy.

The intention is that they should be forgotten. It’s SDV’s job to ensure they’re not.