Making Gender Visible: An Intersectional Exploration of Immigration Detention in the UK, Italy, and Portugal.
A 2 year project led by Dr Francesca Esposito, funded by the Newton Fund through the British Academy.
Immigration detention is increasingly used worldwide to sort, contain, identify, and expel unauthorised and undesiderable non-nationals from state territory. In spite of the concerns raised around this practice, little research has been developed inside these sites, primarily because of the difficulties in gaining research access to them. In particular, we know very little about women's experiences of confinement and their views on detention.
To close this gap, and integrate a gender perspective in the analysis of immigration detention, this project looks at detained women’s lived experiences analysing them in light of a feminist intersectional framework that acknowledges the interplay between gender, race, sexuality, nationality, and other structural determinants that shape women’s experiences in context. In doing so, it also focuses on and problematises the notion of women’s ‘vulnerability’ as framed and operationalised in much detention policy and practice.
The main research questions are: How do immigration detention centres and people working inside them conceptualise women and with what effect on them? And, how do women make sense of their experiences inside these institutions and understand their main challenges? These questions will be explored through a unique comparative case study of the UK, Italy, and Portugal. The ultimate goals of this crosscultural project are i) to help fill a gap in the scientific literature, and ii) to provide resources for the development of policies and practices concerned with the dignity and rights of women detainees, and, above all, with women’s views on detention.
Gender, Punishment and Border Control: Foreign National Women in Prison
A follow-up project led by Francesca Esposito and Mary Bosworth, supported through the British Academy’s Newton International Fellowship Alumni Funding scheme
Despite increasing attention to immigration detention, the experiences of women, particularly those held in prison under immigration powers, remain under-researched and poorly understood. This participatory project addresses that gap by building on existing empirical research to examine the specific needs, challenges, and lived experiences of this group of women. Working collaboratively with NGOs and experts by experience, the project co-produces research-informed resources aimed at raising public awareness, informing policy debate, and strengthening advocacy for systemic change.
Outputs:
Border Criminologies Thematic Series on methodological reflections on researching detention and deportation.
- F. Esposito. (2025) Creating counternarratives on immigration detention: from individual academic research to community-engaged participatory processes. Available at: https://blogs.law.ox.ac.uk/border-criminologies-blog/blog-post/2025/05/creating-counternarratives-immigration-detention
- M. Bosworth. (2025) Slow Academia, Understanding, and Critique: Moving Beyond Emotions. Available at: https://blogs.law.ox.ac.uk/border-criminologies-blog/blog-post/2025/05/slow-academia-understanding-and-critique-moving-beyond
Academic papers:
- Esposito, F., Degenhardt, T., & Lindberg, A. (forthcoming, 2026). Detention and Deportation in Europe: Analyses, Contestations and Radical Visions in the Aftermath of COVID-19. Bristol University Press. https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/detention-and-deportation-in-europe
- Esposito, F. (2025). Per una critica transfemminista abolizionista della detenzione amministrativa in Italia. Controfuoco, 2, 31-37. https://www.meltingpot.org/2025/07/controfuoco-per-una-critica-allordine-delle-cose-n-2-giugno-2025/
- Esposito, F., & Bosworth, M. (2024). Gender, violence and regimes of vulnerability in immigration detention: A transnational analysis. In M. Peterie (Ed.), Immigration detention and social harm: The collateral impacts of migrant incarceration (pp. 137–154). Routledge.
- Esposito, F., Degenhardt, T. & Kalokoh, A. (2024). “I’ve Been Hurt Every Single Day Here, You Know:” A Feminist Abolitionist Analysis of Immigration Detention. Critical Criminology 32, 389–408. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-024-09786-0
- Corazza Padovani, N., & Esposito, F. (2024). Gender, mobilities, and imprisonment: Entanglements between borders, migration control and criminal justice in the experiences of non-citizen women in Italy and Brazil. In M. Bosworth, K. Franko, M. Lee, & R. Mehta (Eds.), Handbook on Border Criminology (pp. 282–296). Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. https://www.elgaronline.com/edcollchap/book/9781035307982/book-part-9781035307982-28.xml
Removed: Animation
Find below the animation of REMOVED, co-produced by the Unchained Collective. The trailer is also available on youtube, and the call to action on the AVID website.
The Unchained Collective
The Unchained Collective is a collective of people with and without lived experiences of immigration detention and border violence who use art & the power of voice as a form of challenging the system. Find more information on the Unchained Collective here.