68 Race & Class 56(4) refugee status; the increasingly harsh technologies of border control; and the system of immigration imprisonment worldwide, with its proliferation of screening centres, regional camps, and so-called off-shore centres (indicating the externalisation of border control).32 A novel paradigm of imprisonment is emerging that integrates humanitarian politics with diverse and mixed forms of incarceration in terms of confinement in national or regional camps, but also deportation or prolonged internment under inhuman conditions and without a fixed date of release. As Wendy Brown and Federico Rahola suggest,33 the current paradigm of immigration imprisonment is a type of custody that aims at managing flows of border crossers; but, in contrast to their assertion, the expulsion of foreigners is nowadays a widespread practice, that may also take the form of ‘voluntary return’ and the extradition of unsuccessful asylum applicants. Deportation and removal have acquired a remarkable dimension and are practised in a way that renders them an integral part of the current imprisonment model, in terms not only of managing flows but also as part of a punitive mechanism, that is about to reach the level of a full-scale business. As Shahram Khosravi has shown in the Swedish case, the budget for removals has dramatically increased: ‘the removal operation is an enterprise involving transport companies, private security companies, five detention centres, deportation escorts, international networking (asylum attachés) and private expert companies’.34 Furthermore, the prolonged detention of asylum seekers and immigrants renders them liable for exploitation by private companies that utilise captive work by detainees living in removal camps as a super-exploitable workforce, as Jon Burnett and Fidelis Chebe have shown in the case of the UK.35 On Lesvos, deportation or removal is not yet the rule, at least not officially,36 due to the lack of bilateral ‘push-back’ conventions with neighbouring Turkey. However, this might soon change, given that the establishment of a department for deportations in the screening centre is in progress. Immigration detention, integral to current techniques of border control and surveillance, also serves to punish and intimidate border crossers. Because of its diverse characteristics, though, it cannot be seen simply as the modern equivalent of ‘a pre-modern prison – nothing more than a site for punishment and the permanent removal of “wasted” bodies’, as Khosravi asserts.37 Still, the violent (indeed, inhuman) treatment of immigrants and refugees gives rise to the impression that bodily and psychic violence is an integral part of immigration imprisonment. Indeed, migrant detainees in and from different countries have testified how in prison they are ‘treated like animals’, forced to live in violence and uncertainty, never knowing when they may be released.38 Harsh conditions of internment have led to (attempts at) suicide and selfharm and also to collective reactions like riots,39 discrediting the alleged provision of humanitarian protection. During an inspection visit to the newly established detention centre of Moria, in Lesvos, in September 2013, we asked the Major General in charge why the surrounding wire and the high security arrangements in the screening centre were necessary if the detainees found a Downloaded from rac.sagepub.com at Oxford University Libraries on June 3, 2016