Paper short abstract:

This paper centers on how state security policies are experienced and resisted by migrants who are being deported from the UK.

Paper long abstract:

This paper centers on how state security policies are experienced and resisted by migrants who are being deported from the UK. When migrants undergo deportation they become subjects to be surveilled, controlled and detained. Immigration Tribunals, Removal Centers and Reporting Centres become theaters of state power (Bhartia 2010) over their bodies. A relationship is thus established or reinforced between the migrant (and his family) and the host state. How that relationship develops and resulting consequences are to be addressed here. Further, facing deportation is a long and tiring process that marks deportees' lives with uncertainty and anxiety. This paper aims at granting an insight into how perceptions and experiences of justice and security are shaped and negotiated in such settings by looking at migrants' experiences of state control and their reactions to it. It is found that lack of protest among deportees in the UK is directly related both to their perceptions of justice (and shame) and to fear of stronger state control over their bodies. Resistance, on the other hand, is enacted by deportees as compliance with precisely these state controls of detention, reporting, and immobility. Migrants perceive these as tight and 'unreasonable' state strategies designed to make them fail, rendering them even more deportable. By enduring this power over them, migrants are resisting their removal and fighting to stay.