Reshaping possible futures: Deportation,home and the United Kingdom |
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| Authors: | Ines Hasselberg |
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| Institution: | Postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford. Her PhD in anthropology at the University of Sussex (2013), examined experiences of deportation and deportability among foreign national offenders in the UK. Currently she is undertaking a multi‐year comparative study of foreign national prisoners in the UK and Portugal. She is also associate director and co‐editor of Border Criminologies. |
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| Abstract: | In this article I examine how foreign nationals in the United Kingdom (UK) envisage the possibility of a forced return to their countries of origin. Drawing on ethnographic data collected in London among foreign national offenders appealing their deportation at the Immigration Tribunal, I show how preparations for an eventual return were seldom made by those appealing deportation, even if the prospect of their forced removal and its implications for the family left behind was constantly on their minds. Appealing deportation can be a long process; living with the risk of being deported strongly impacts on the plans the migrants had devised and hoped for before deportation intruded into their lives. In this sense, and in the course of the deportation process, migrants have to reshape their sense of possible futures to include family separation and possible departures – deportation being only one of these. Generational differences and sustained transnational connections were influential in the reshaping of these possible futures. The data presented shows how for most research participants deportation means ‘leaving the UK’ and not ‘returning home’. |
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