Border Country by Melanie Friend - a review

Event Date:

Friday, 13 August 2010

Border Country is a poignant portrayal of immigration centres and detention in the UK. Originally put together as part of a documentary/ exhibition, Melanie Friend spent three years interviewing detainees and taking photographs of interiors and exteriors of Immigration Removal Centres (IRC) in the UK.

Depictions of asylum tend to focus on the reasons why people claim asylum and less on their experience and the suffering they face in the UK. Unquestionably, hearing the stories of people’s lives and how they came to seek asylum is affecting and important. However, it is just as crucial to tell the rest of the story. This is what Border Country succeeds in doing.

In Border Country, Friendfocuses on the centres, the detainees and their experience of seeking asylum and being detained in the UK. She does not sensationalise the subject of immigration; she simply presents the centres as they are and gives the detainees an opportunity to speak out about detention.

Friend’s photographs are matter-of-fact. The centres do not seem exceptional or particularly bad. The visiting rooms are clean and tidy; there are provisions for practising religion; there are recreation areas outside.

The power of the images, however, is derived from how they reflect the prison-like conditions of the centres. In one particular photo we see a large outside chess set in the Detainee’s recreation area of a male-only detention centre run by HM Prison Service; high fencing, wire and security lights set the chilling backdrop reminding us that this is not a place for fun.

Security cameras decorate the ceiling with bright lights and the rooms lack colour, ornaments and pictures. The tables and chairs in the visiting rooms are uniform and close together, denying anyone privacy or personal conversation; bars criss-cross every window and the stark lighting and security cameras cannot disguise the sterility and misery of the detainees’ surroundings. Just to look at the photos is chilling.

In a personal note, Friend describes the tight security, the emptiness of the visiting rooms along with the feeble attempts to ‘humanise’ the areas where outsiders can visit. The difference between ‘them’ and everyone else is further magnified by the coloured bibs detainees are made to wear during visiting hours at some IRCs. At Haslar IRC ‘detainees sit on red chairs, visitors on green’.

Excerpts from the interviews are interspersed between the photos. Lillian feels she is treated as a number and not a person; numbers appear in nearly every photo. Originally from Kenya and in fear for her life should she return, Lillian points out that in her country white people are enjoying the country and questions why they can stay in their country when she can’t stay in theirs for a better life. ‘Who is more human than the other?’ she asks – an interesting question that is later used as the title of an essay towards the end of the book.

The audio clips on the CD included with the book provide critical perspectives on the detainees’ experience of immigration in the UK. The first voice laughs that he is happy to be in the UK albeit in detention; at least he has his life.

A female detainee describes an abusive relationship and the death threat back home. In the biography we learn that she has been removed and deported back to Pakistan. A Sri Lankan man speaks of his months in detention and regular thoughts of suicide. All interviewees describe lengthy detention and the prison-like conditions in the centres.

The facelessness of the detainees reflects how they are treated and how they feel as an asylum seeker in the UK and the voices in the audio are testament to the reality of detention in the UK.

Border Country is a particularly powerful illustration of asylum and makes an impact without the need to push an opinion. Any reader no matter what their thoughts on immigration would be unable to deny the miserable existence of detainees seeking asylum in the UK and for this reason, Border Country is unique.

Border Country by Melanie Friend - a review

Border Country by Melanie Friend - a review

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