Visiting Immigration Detention. Care and Cruelty in Australia's Asylum-Seeker Prisons

Adèle Garnier of the Université Laval reviews Visiting Immigration Detention. Care and Cruelty in Australia’s Asylum-Seeker Prisons by Michelle Peterie. In this book, Peterie addresses Australia’s domestic immigration detention centers, mostly focusing on immigration visitors, who have been less researched than detainees themselves. The book’s core argument is that Australia’s carceral system is cruel on purpose — not only toward detainees but also toward visitors. Peterie supports her argument with a detailed account of the harm done through constantly changing rules, microlevel management of interactions between detainees and visitors, and increasing use of deprivation of social contacts through detainee relocation. Visiting Immigration Detention makes a connection with vast immigration literature on civil society’s opportunities and challenges in engaging with immigration enforcement.

Read the book review at https://doi.org/10.1177/01979183231160714.