“Islands of Carcerality”, in Instituting Worlds, 2024
Published chapter in the book Instituting Worlds: Architecture and Islands, edited by Catharina Gabrielsson and Marko Jobst, 2024.
Abstract:
While islands historically acted as places of exclusion and imprisonment during the early colonial occupation of Australia, in the 21st century islands continue to be utilised as extraterritorial sites for the indefinite detention of refugees and asylum seekers. The constellation of such sites is understood to function as a detention archipelago; however, such a network extends beyond remote island facilities, and incorporates a range of civilian infrastructure across major cities. By examining the recent relocation of asylum seekers from offshore detention to mainland hotels, this chapter explores how fluidity can be understood as a quality of the detention archipelago. A dissection of the spatial configurations, architectural qualities and embedded network of one of these sites, the Park Hotel, in Melbourne, acts to reveal how systems of detention are enacted beyond fixed carceral sites and boundaries and integrate everyday spaces into the violent production of the border.