Corrosive places, inhuman spaces: mental health in Australian immigration detention.

Full 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.

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Author information

Author/s: McLoughlin, Pauline (P); Warin, Megan (M);

Affiliation: Discipline of Gender, Work and Social Inquiry, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA, Australia. pauline.mcloughlin@adelaide.edu.au

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: Health & place (Health Place), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2008-Jun; vol 14 (issue 2) : pp 254-64

Dates: Created 2007/12/10; Completed 2008/03/25;

PMID: 17693119, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Emigrants and Immigrants - psychology
Humans
Mental Health

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