Detain(ed): Media Technologies and Migrants in Swedish Detention Centres

The number of migratory mobilities continues to rise rapidly and, consequently, do the measures adopted in response. These measures are undergoing unprecedented digitalisation, with the introduction of sophisticated technologies to manage and control flows. The impact of contain mobility, including detention, on the lives of migrants remains largely unknown. Detain(ed) explores the intertwining of digital technologies and closure techniques that create a regime of waiting within detention centres in Sweden. Drawing on ethnographic interviews and analysing the media practices made available to detained migrants, as well as the use of technology to manage the daily life in the centres, this thesis describes detention as a socio-technical system. It functions and operates by institutionalising waiting and interrupting simultaneity and correspondence with the outside world, used as a means to achieve its goal: deportations. Miriana Cascone is based at the department of Media and Communication Studies at Södertörn University, Stockholm. Her research interests concern the entanglement of media technologies and practices with regimes of exclusion, deportability and vulnerability.