Ghosts of Ellebæk Prison: Deportation and Control in Carceral Denmark

Abstract

This chapter deals with the imprisonment of migrants in Ellebæk prison, Denmark. The prison, which has existed since 1989, is used for detaining migrants, primarily leading up to their deportation. The prison framework is analysed through interviews with former prisoners. The first section analyses how the treatment of prisoners by prison guards—and bureaucracy as being both individualizing and anonymizing—drawing on Nicholas’ de Genova’s conception of deportation as state power. The next section looks at the self-harm of prisoners and argues—with inspiration in Lorna Rhodes work on confinement and madness—that the mental health crisis of prisoners reveal that the prison system is itself mad. Finally, the way in which the prison routinely traumatizes prisoners is considered to be expressive of the way in which the state understands rejected asylum seekers as disposable. The relation of Ellebæk prison to wider Danish society is considered through the notion of haunting.