The floating prison and uncharted waters of UK offshore immigration detention

By Isabella Yasmin Kajiwara

Back in May, activist and Reclaim the Sea founder Tigs Louis-Puttick woke up to a video of the Bibby Stockholm arriving in Falmouth. The Home Office announced plans to house 500 asylum seekers on the 222-dorm barge only a month earlier.

“I was just appalled,” Tigs told me. “I didn’t think it would actually happen – it was so preposterous that they would actually put people that have sea trauma on a barge.”

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To relocate people seeking asylum into cramped accommodation where the waters are in constant sight is a particular form of psychological and physical violence. For many, these waters are a site (and reminder) of trauma, isolation, and suffering.

The barge was evacuated within days of onboarding people, after it emerged that Legionella bacteria was discovered in the vessel’s water system. Since then, government memos have revealed their intentions to hire more barges to relocate people seeking asylum, as well as disused RAF bases, prisons, student halls, and former office blocks.

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I spoke to several grassroots migrant justice groups, legal support charities, and individuals about the impacts of offshore detention on immigrant communities based in the UK, and how grassroots resistance groups across the country are mobilising against the expansion of these increasingly carceral border policies.

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The floating prison and uncharted waters of UK offshore immigration detention

By Isabella Yasmin Kajiwara