Anthropology and Immigration Detention Work in Sweden - Being an Outsider Inside the Fence

This book offers an anthropological inquiry into the labour underpinning immigration detention in Sweden, examining the daily practices, institutional efforts, and forms of knowledge production that sustain the detention regime.
Drawing upon fieldwork involving time spent with detention workers while wearing a uniform, the author offers a rare, immersive perspective, providing insights from detention departments, offices, meetings, training sessions, isolation cells and control rooms. By situating these practices in relation to the European and international deportation industry, the book analyses how detention is not only executed but also increasingly optimized and made the subject of social scientific understanding. Through this lens, the study sheds light on the operational procedures that shape contemporary immigration control. By bringing Martin Heidegger's critique of modern technology into dialogue with this anthropological study of detention work, the book offers an analytical lens on how technology shapes not only practice but perception. Rather than treating technological systems within detention as tools to be studied, this book foregrounds the idea that technological thinking preconditions how detention is conceived, analysed and understood.
Anthropology and Immigration Detention Work in Sweden is suitable for scholars of incarceration, immigration, and deportation, particularly in Nordic and European contexts.

List of contents

1. Introduction; 2. Entering and Getting to Work; 3. Immigration Detention and Work Theorized; 4. Managing Presence; 5. Detention Relations; 6. Training; 7. Bureaucrazy;

About the author

Aina Backman is a researcher and teacher at Stockholm University. She holds a PhD in Anthropology from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway.

Product details

• Authors: Aina Backman
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 10.02.2026
• EAN: 9781032934907
• ISBN: 978-1-0-3293490-7
• No. of pages: 304
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > Sociological theories; SOCIAL SCIENCE / Emigration & Immigration, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / General, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy / Immigration, Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography, Politics & government, Politics and government, Social and cultural anthropology, Legal aspects of criminology, Penology and punishment, Prisons, Sentencing & punishment, Sentencing and punishment, Criminology: legal aspects