Paper short abstract:

This paper will examine the often conflictual interface between constructions of deportation through anti-deportation campaigns and the media and the actual experience of those working in deportation spaces in an Irish context

Paper long abstract:

On October 6th 2010, a Coalition of Organizations working on behalf of Ireland's migrant communities gathered outside the Irish Parliament to protest against the most recent draft of the Immigration, Residence, and Protection Bill. With a number of the Bill's points in contention, one of the main issues was the possible introduction of 'Summary Deportation,' a system which meant that those at risk of deportation would have diminished capacity to protect themselves from a quick, unchallenged deportation. Alongside growing acrimony towards the migrant population in a bleak economic climate, the protest outside the Irish Parliament firmly re-anchored the issue of 'deportation' within broader societal anxieties about undocumented migrants and 'asylum seekers.' This paper will examine the often conflictual interface between constructions of deportation through anti-deportation campaigns and the media and the actual experience of those working in deportation spaces (such as immigration police and those working in detention centres) in an Irish context. This analysis will lead to an unpacking of what Cohen (2006) has called, 'the Orwellian world of immigration controls' as well as the 'bare life' (Agamben 1998) of the deportable body, thus revealing broader theoretical and experiential understandings of notions of risk and anxiety as they are grounded within the deportation regime. This paper therefore asks how deportation as a State strategy and a global regime insinuates its presence in the lives of migrants (undocumented or otherwise), Immigration officers, and finally, members of the host society involved in anti-deportation campaigns.