Abstract
Through the original concept of carceral journeys, Gill and Simon draw attention to the importance of coerced and constrained forms of displacement. In the context of recent work in carceral geography, they argue that the lens of carceral journeys brings into focus the increasing connections between state power, inter-institutional mobility, and coercion. They discuss the visibilities and invisibilities of carceral journeys in particular, as well as the extent to which they are motivated by profit and exploitation. The second part of the chapter focuses on the case of extraordinary rendition, which highlights not only the viscerality of carceral journeys and the opportunities to resist coercive power that inhere even in the most violent journeys but also the extent of the infrastructure required to facilitate them and the breath of people they affect.
This chapter was supported by the European Research Council, grant number StG-2015_677917, acronym ASYFAIR.
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Notes
- 1.
So named to refer to the practice adopted by Irish republican prisoners of daubing their own faeces on the walls of their cells in protest against their treatment.
- 2.
Nonetheless bonding between prisoners and functionaries occurs. In the extraordinary rendition victim Al-Hajj’s words ‘I was always glad to see the familiar faces of our military escorts, who became like old friends over the months. They always greeted me with happy smiles or hugs. “Long time!” they’d joke sarcastically’ (Khan 2008, p. 202).
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Gill, N., Simon, O. (2020). Carceral Journeys. In: Adey, P., et al. The Handbook of Displacement. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47178-1_23
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