Resisting Immigration Detention

The aim of this article is to provide a normative analysis of the ways in which immigrants resist immigration detention. After having outlined (in Section 2) some general features that make immigration detention a rather abnormal condition for human beings to be kept in, I distinguish three main forms of resistance to it: institutionalized, non-institutionalized, and anti-institutional. I first spell out, in Section 3, some individual characteristics of these forms of resistance. Then (in Sections 4 and 5), using Italy as my test case, I suggest, for each of these forms, an interpretation of their normative meaning (that is, their meaning according to both the relevant legal rules and their underlying social values): under this perspective, I argue that they represent one of the few ways irregular immigrants have to try to assert their existence and to negotiate some space within our societies. I conclude the article by presenting some comments on the effectiveness of the immigrants’ resistance to detention (Section 6).