“… Here I went through deportation – which was also torture for me”: Air-deportations and liberal violence in Great Britain

Monish Bhatia

doi:10.1007/s10612-024-09802-3

“… Here I went through deportation – which was also torture for me”: Air-deportations and liberal violence in Great Britain

Monish Bhatia

Sociology

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

This article contributes to understanding violence in deportation. Drawing on data from eight months fieldwork conducted between 2015 and 2017 and interviews with asylum seekers and practitioners, the article shows how liberal violence, in its various forms, is integral to the contemporary air deportation process. The violence, as argued here, is not unusual, spectacular or resulting from procedural failures and lapses in individual officer judgement, but is integral to it. The conclusion calls for scholars to consider the very practice of deportation as violence and a crime against humanity, gather comprehensive evidence with an explicit aim of making deportations interrogatable by international criminal law, and hold the British state accountable and demand reparations.

Original language	English
Number of pages	19
Journal	Critical Criminology
Early online date	31 Dec 2024
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-024-09802-3
Publication status	E-pub ahead of print - 31 Dec 2024

Bibliographical note

Keywords

deportation
asylum seekers
liberalism
violence
Great Britain
racism
forced migration
colonialism

Access to Document

10.1007/s10612-024-09802-3Licence: CC BY

“… Here I Went Through Deportation – Which was also Torture for Me”: Air‑Deportations and Liberal Violence in Great Britain
© The Author(s) 2024
Final published version, 746 KBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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abstract = "This article contributes to understanding violence in deportation. Drawing on data from eight months fieldwork conducted between 2015 and 2017 and interviews with asylum seekers and practitioners, the article shows how liberal violence, in its various forms, is integral to the contemporary air deportation process. The violence, as argued here, is not unusual, spectacular or resulting from procedural failures and lapses in individual officer judgement, but is integral to it. The conclusion calls for scholars to consider the very practice of deportation as violence and a crime against humanity, gather comprehensive evidence with an explicit aim of making deportations interrogatable by international criminal law, and hold the British state accountable and demand reparations. ",

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