Unlocked

When we think of immigration detention, we tend to focus on immigration detention centres, what happens inside them and groups working directly and exclusively on immigration detention. But perhaps, this is changing. More people are waking up to [...]

Illustrations by @carcazan Is there an implicit hierarchy of power, even in work and activities intended to create social justice? How do we make that visible? What do we about it? Who ‘gets to’ lead parliamentary advocacy work [...]

Collaboration is all the rage, particularly among groups and charitable foundations who are looking for the magic solution that can achieve social justice – but what does it mean? How do we recognise and address cultural differences which [...]

Mustapha is a young ambassador on the Red Cross’ Surviving to Thriving project, which supports refugees and asylum seekers aged 11 to 25 in Birmingham, Leeds and Peterborough who don't have parents or guardians in the UK. He [...]

Morton Hall immigration detention centre is one of the lesser known centres. This blog shares some of the impressions of this particular detention centre which are hard to capture by simply reading monitoring reports.  Ali McGinely is Director [...]

Safiyyah (not her real name) has lived in the UK with her family over ten years. She explains how she was suddenly detained with her sister at a reporting centre, then taken to Sahara Unit in Harmondsworth detention [...]

While Brook House immigration detention centre has achieved a certain level of notoriety after an investigative BBC Panorama documentary hit the news in 2017, a nearby centre, Tinsley House, is hardly talked about. Mishka, one of the Detention [...]

In this, our sixth year, many of you will already be familiar with Unlocking Detention. But by way of introduction for newcomers, Unlocking Detention is a ‘virtual tour’ of the UK’s vast immigration detention estate. Using Twitter, Facebook [...]

Can you describe immigration detention in three words? As part of Unlocking Detention 2019, #Unlocked19, we are asking people to take part in ‘In Three Words’ action to unlock the gates of immigration detention centres. This is an opportunity to [...]

During week 8, the final full week of Unlocking Detention 2018, we visited Dungavel IRC, in Scotland. Dungavel is very isolated: more than 30 miles from Glasgow, 14 miles from the nearest train station, 6 miles from the [...]