The Centre for Foreigners in Veliki Otok near Postojna is a police institution designed for the detention and removal of foreign nationals from the country. Despite the official discourse that describes immigration detention using euphemisms such as "restriction of movement," "accommodation," and "stay," the testimonies of detained persons reveal the experience of a total institution marked by violence, humiliation, and violations of human rights.
In the theoretical section, I present a decolonial epistemological approach to research, normalise the movement of people throughout history, and expose the violence of border regimes. I employ Goffman's concept of total institutions, Agamben's theory of the state of exception and bare life, and Mbembe's necropolitics as an analytical framework for understanding immigration detention. Then I describe the historical development of the detention of foreigners in Slovenia and the legal basis for the operation of the Centre for Foreigners. In the concluding part of the theoretical section, I present social work methods grounded in radical and anti-racist social work.
Immigration detention in Slovenia has been studied primarily from the perspective of legal regulation, migration policies, and human rights, while considerably less is known about the everyday lives of detained persons and how they understand and experience confinement. In the empirical section, which is based on qualitative research, I use interviews and analysis of secondary material to present five areas of detention at the Centre for Foreigners: the everyday lives of detained persons, the institutional regime, mechanisms of surveillance, discipline, and isolation, coping and resistance strategies, and a comparison of the police (i.e. official) discourse with the experiences of detained persons.
Through this research, I aim to demonstrate that immigration detention must be abolished immediately, as it is inherently violent, discriminatory, and racist. The contribution of my work lies in producing new knowledge grounded in the experiences and testimonies of persons who were detained there. I approach this from a perspective that views migrants as active and agentive actors rather than merely passive victims of the border regime.
|
