Immigration detainees are one of the most vulnerable and hidden groups in society.
Little is known about the voluntary sector support to help them cope with life in detention centres.
Hidden social space was a research project funded by The Open University, Faculty of Business and Law, in Milton Keynes, UK. The principal researcher was Mrs Jo Vincett.
The aim of the study was to further our understanding of the everyday work lives of volunteer visitors, known as ‘befrienders’, who visit women migrants and asylum seekers detained in a British immigration detention centre. Volunteer visitors offered emotional and practical support to help detainees cope with the distress and uncertainty of immigration detention. It answered the questions: What do volunteer visitors ‘do’? How do they cope with emotions in their compassionate practices?
I was a ‘complete member’ (Adler and Adler, 1987) of a charitable organisation, Yarl’s Wood Befrienders, as a volunteer-befriender to detainees, trustee, consultant and former detainee. As an ethnographer and befriender, I returned to the centre where I was briefly detained for one night ten years ago. A reflexive approach was taken employing the methods of participant observation, unstructured interviews with befrienders and solicited participant diaries.
This study furthered our knowledge of compassionate organisations and the voluntary sector support for immigration detainees, a hidden and vulnerable group in society. It advanced organisational ethnography by studying one’s own membership group to better understand everyday volunteer work that entailed compassion and emotion management.
Hidden Social Space 